Chapter 2
EVEN THOUGH IT HAPPENED TWENTY-FIVE years ago, Barb still remembers everything about the night Lorelei died, from the pine-scented crown air freshener mounted to the dashboard that gave Nicolette a headache, to the cartoon hot dog that danced on the screen during intermission, to the sounds of heavy breathing coming from the backseat where Lorelei was making out with a man twice their age in a car so big it took up nearly one and a half parking spaces at the drive-in.
With its burgundy exterior and chrome detailing, the well-preserved tricked-out Lincoln Continental was a showy ride, a curious choice of vehicle for a serial killer.
But then again, do serial killers even know they’re serial killers?
Or do they only realize it once the media gives them their nicknames?
A week after she was last seen at the Starlight, Lorelei’s body was found floating in the flooded cranberry bog a quarter of a mile from the drive-in. The next day, Samuel Figg—who by then had been dubbed the Carnival Killer—confessed to her murder, along with four others.
When Barb’s mother woke her up to tell her that the police were downstairs because Lorelei had been murdered, her first thought was, Good.
It was a terrible thought, one that formed while she was still half asleep and well before she understood that her mother wasn’t being dramatic just to get her out of bed early.
Becky Bonifacio did tend to say things like that—The house is on fire!
Get up!—but not this time. Nevertheless, the guilt and shame that hit Barb later would stay with her for the next two decades, shaping her as a person in every imaginable way.
“You’re very lucky,” the police officers had said to Barb back then. “It could have been you.”
Now, sitting across from her therapist, Barb is thinking about those words again. Dr. Leto charges two hundred dollars per session to help her process her trauma, but he hasn’t been able to help her heal from this. But that might be because she hasn’t told him everything, and probably never will.
“I’m not surprised that today’s discovery of a dead body would trigger these memories.” Dr. Leto is peering at her from behind rectangular-shaped spectacles. “What are you feeling right now?”
“The police told me I got lucky.” Barb plucks a Kleenex from the garishly colorful box sitting on the coffee table between them. “As if I was supposed to feel grateful that my best friend got killed instead of me.”
Dr. Leto’s brow furrows. “I assumed they were referring to Samuel Figg’s physical type, because the other victims looked more like you than Lorelei.”
“I mean, obviously I’m glad I didn’t get murdered by the guy who turned out to be a serial killer,” Barb snaps. “But is there any nice way to say, ‘Gee, thanks,’ without sounding like a dick?”
Her monthly sessions with Dr. Leto—first name Alexander, though she’s never been invited to call him that—take place in a room at the back of his townhouse.
It’s a warm and comforting space, filled with worn leather chairs and pieces thrifted from antique stores and, of course, Marvelous, the therapist’s Siamese cat.
Marv doesn’t see well, but he hears everything, and whenever Barb’s upset, he’ll plop into her lap and purr until she calms down.
She strokes his fur. Right now, Marv sounds like a rusty motor.
“The part that people don’t understand when they tell me I’m lucky, or that it could have been me, is that it was never going to be me.
” Barb twists the tissue into a thin rope.
“I was never the girl who got asked to homecoming. I was never the girl who got invited to the cool parties. I was never the girl whose picture appeared in the yearbook more than once.”
She was also not the girl who caught the eye of the man at Wonderland who had no business looking at girls their age.
Lorelei was the third victim in a killing spree that started in Sacramento, passed through Portland and then Seaside, and ultimately ended in Seattle.
It had been surreal to see her best friend’s picture on the front page of the Seattle Times a month after her body was discovered, where the photos of all five of the victims were printed under the booming headline carnival killer caught.
She remembers whispering the headline to herself at the kitchen table as her mother made pancakes, appreciating the alliteration of the hard kuh sounds at the back of her throat, making the words as dramatic to say as they were to read.
Of the five women, Lorelei had been the youngest by a few years, and she was the only blonde.
The other four were brunettes, like Barb.
They all had brown eyes, like Barb. But they were all fresh-faced and unselfconscious, which was decidedly unlike Barb, who’d been plagued with a hapless awkwardness for as long as she could remember.
“Such an unimaginable tragedy,” Becky Bonifacio had said mournfully, looking over her daughter’s shoulder at the newspaper as she stirred the pancake batter with a long wooden spoon. “Those poor girls and their families. You’re so lucky. What if he’d picked you?”
Barb knew she was supposed to express sadness or grief in that moment, or any emotion that might demonstrate an understanding of the horrific thing that had happened to her best friend.
But as her clammy finger smeared the grainy newsprint image of the victim’s faces, all she could feel was sorry for herself.
Despite her being more his physical type, Samuel Figg hadn’t chosen her.
She wasn’t even pretty enough to get murdered.
She never said this to her mother back then, of course. And she doesn’t say it to Dr. Leto now. Because it’s a terrible thought, and she’s a terrible person for thinking it.
After Lorelei’s funeral, the grief came in waves over the following year, often hitting Barb when she least expected it.
Eventually, it passed. The nightmares did, too.
But the guilt lingers, the secret heavy even after all these years.
She wonders if it’s the same for Nicolette, but there’s no way to know; they haven’t spoken since the day Nicolette left town.
Deep down, in the dark chambers of her heart where no therapist has yet reached, Barb can’t help but secretly feel that Lorelei brought some of it on herself.
The way her best friend flirted with abandon, utterly shameless.
The way she stood near the Wonder Wheel between Barb and Nicolette in her short skirt and cropped tee, her belly button ring flashing in the sun as she licked her strawberry ice cream cone.
The way her pink-stained tongue trailed along her bottom lip as she made direct eye contact with the handsome stranger almost twice their age who was standing across the midway, observing them.
The way her smile invited him over. The way he’d introduced himself as “Sam,” his gaze roaming over Lorelei’s body, and then Nicolette’s, and then back to Lorelei, as if Barb weren’t there, as if Barb didn’t even exist. The way Lorelei climbed over into the backseat of his car later that night at the drive-in, forcing Barb and Nicolette to move up to the front.
The way their heavy breathing fogged up the windows, making it difficult to see the movie that was playing on the giant outdoor screen.
Feeling unattractive is one thing. It’s a whole other thing to feel invisible.
Dr. Leto is watching her, and he seems concerned and sympathetic. There’s no way to confirm whether he actually feels those things. In Barb’s opinion, therapists are terrific actors. She would know; she’s seen more than her share over the years.
Her first therapist was Dr. Agar—first name Elizabeth—whom her mother insisted she talk to when Barb fell into a depression after Samuel Figg’s conviction.
The next was Dr. Chang—first name Marianne—whom she saw while she was doing her undergrad at Puget Sound State in Seattle.
She liked Dr. Chang, but once she moved back to Seaside after college to take care of her mom, the three-hour drive made it impossible to continue working with her.
Over the next ten years, she tried out four more therapists, treating each appointment like a series of job interviews before finally landing on Dr. Leto, whose office was only fifteen minutes south of Seaside.
She’s been seeing him for six years now—since around the time Kylie Kahl disappeared, actually—and of all the professionals she’s worked with, he’s helped her the most.
Which is why she’s devastated he’s retiring.
He hasn’t broken the news to her yet. But it’s Barb’s job to know things, and she’s aware that Dr. Leto and his husband are planning a move to Portugal, where, during their vacation to Lisbon last month, they purchased a small three-bedroom house with a nice kitchen and partial ocean views.
A recent photo from his husband’s Instagram account, which Barb found not long after she and Dr. Leto began working together, shows the happy couple sitting on a pair of scooters, wearing matching red helmets and pointing to the sold sign.
Dr. Leto will soon be living his best life. How nice for him.
Everybody gets a best life except for Barb.
Dr. Leto is unbothered by long silences, a skill Barb wishes she could learn. He also has the most pleasant poker face she’s ever seen on a person. Blank but interested. Neutral but compassionate. Nonjudgmental always.
“Is it crazy that I thought the body this morning might have been Kylie Kahl?” she asks him. “I know it’s not healthy that I still obsess over her disappearance. It’s not like I knew her.”
“You watched her on that reality show every week,” Dr. Leto says. “It’s understandable you feel invested. But I wouldn’t describe it as an obsession. It’s more like . . . a distraction.”
It was a little more than a distraction, but okay.
“I imagine that checking for updates on Kylie’s disappearance gives you a sense of control that you didn’t have with Lorelei,” Dr. Leto continues. “There’s no one way to process trauma; there’s only your way. And you’ve done really good work these last five years we’ve been working together.”
“Six.”
“Six years, yes.” Dr. Leto smiles. “You’ve come a long way. Which is how I know that you’ll be okay.”
Here it comes.
“This is not an easy thing to say, especially to longtime patients like you, but . . .” Dr. Leto pauses, and it’s the first time Barb has ever seen her therapist express any kind of hesitation or trepidation.
“Barb, it’s time for me to retire from private practice.
Your next regular appointment will be our last session together. ”
She knew this was coming, of course. But still. Still. The sting of yet another person leaving her behind is more than she was prepared to feel.
“I understand this is a surprise.” The therapist’s voice is gentle. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you need some time to process?”
Barb finds her voice. “Will you be available at all after our last session?” In her hands, the tissue rips in half. “Even for, like, an emergency Zoom?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Then thirty. In her lap, Marvelous lifts his head, sniffs the air, and starts purring again.
“I guess this is where I say congratulations,” she finally says, stroking the cat’s fur. “I’m going to miss this little dude. And you as well, of course.”
“We’ll miss you, too.” Dr. Leto exhales, and Barb realizes he must have been nervous. He checks the time. “We still have a few minutes. How are you feeling about the Samuel Figg documentary?”
“The docuseries producer reached out again,” she says. “She called me at the Chronicle.”
“Maybe telling Lorelei’s story would help.”
“Help who?” Barb’s tone is sharper than she intended, and she takes a breath. “It’s not her story they’re trying to tell. It’s his story. The whole point of Criminal Confessions is to spotlight the villains, not the victims.”
“I thought you liked that show.”
“I do.” She pauses. “I did. I guess I’m just worried”—that everyone will find out—“about what he’ll say about Lorelei.
That he’ll try to”—tell the truth about that night—“make excuses for what he did, and blame her.” Barb swallows.
“He’s a murderer. He doesn’t deserve anyone’s compassion.
In fact, I’m thinking about visiting him. I have . . . questions.”
Dr. Leto sits up straighter. “What would you ask him?”
“Details about that night that only he would know,” Barb says. “And why he picked her, I guess.”
The therapist sets his tumbler down. “In my experience,” he says, appearing to choose his words carefully, “someone who’s capable of crimes of this magnitude is not a person you can trust to tell you the truth about anything.
If you ask him why he picked Lorelei, he won’t have an answer that will make you feel better. In fact, you might feel worse.”
Barb says nothing.
He tries again. “Barb, you appreciate it when I’m blunt, so let me be blunt. Visting Samuel Figg is a fucking terrible idea. Let’s take that off the table right now.”
Barb’s phone pings before she can respond. She always has it set to Do Not Disturb when she’s at a therapy appointment, but there are a handful of contacts who can still get through. “I’m sorry, I need to check this,” she says, and Dr. Leto nods.
It’s a text message from Greg, the editor-in-chief at the Chronicle. Barb never used to allow her boss emergency access to her until he’d assigned a great story to someone else when he couldn’t reach her.
Heard that a detached foot was also found at Legacy Sands. How soon can you hoof it over to the morgue?
Barb rolls her eyes at the pun and checks the time. The hospital is fifteen minutes away. She types back a reply:
20 mins. And you’re awful.
His reply is immediate:
You’re right. I’ll shoe myself out.
STOP. You’re going to hell
for making jokes like this.
I know, I already sold my sole.
“I have to get going,” Barb says to Dr. Leto. She carefully moves a sleeping Marv off her lap. “Editor wants an update on the body from this morning.”
“We’re out of time, anyway,” Dr. Leto says. “See you next month? And give some thought on whether you’d like a referral to a new therapist. I have someone in mind, and I can always leave you her contact information.”
I can’t, Barb thinks as she leaves the office. I can’t have yet another therapist, not anymore.
Because if she hasn’t managed to tell Dr. Leto the truth after all their years working together, there’s simply no possible way she’ll ever get there with someone new. Dr. Leto still doesn’t understand. Barb doesn’t want to visit Samuel Figg to ask him why he killed Lorelei.
She would ask him why he confessed to a murder he didn’t commit.