Chapter 22 Hat Tricks #2
“Okay. Great. Do you want to text me when you’re on your way home tomorrow, and I’ll come over?”
“Yeah, that works.”
“Hey Vaughn,” I greet as I sit down with a latte in hand and shrug off my coat, which is beaded with water from the incessant drizzle outside. It’s nine in the morning, and we’re meeting up in yet another coffee shop.
“Alyssa. How are things? I saw there’s going to be a press conference,” he says, propping his chin on his fist and looking more like The Most Interesting Man in the World than ever.
“Yes. It’s… suboptimal,” I agree.
“Do they have any information about you?”
“No,” I reply, having the distinct impression he’s trying to decide if he needs to figure out a way to smuggle me out of the country.
“You’re sure?” He’s staring me down as if I might be lying to him. I’m not though. No one knows anything. I was careful.
“Yes. But if you’re concerned and want to be helpful, I have a trash bag in my trunk that you could get rid of.”
“Yeah. I can do that. How are things with Katie and Mark?”
I take a sip of my latte, feeling like I’m being interrogated. “Are you checking up on me, Vaughn?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “Maybe.”
I snort. “As good as they can be, all things considered. The three of us are having dinner together on Wednesday, so ask me again after that.”
“Alright. I’m still nailing down Steichen’s routine, but I do have information about the address book you gave me,” he says, pulling a folder from the messenger bag on the seat beside him.
He sets it on the table. “I’d wait to look at it until you’re back at home.
But long story short, not including Katie, I found six women that I’m almost positive were raped by him—and possibly the others—and three more that I suspect may have been, but I haven’t been able to get enough info to be sure about. ”
“What makes you confident about the six?”
“It’s all in there, but a combination of things depending on the specific woman.
Either they moved shortly afterward, they visited a doctor for an STI screening, they were given DoxyPEP or visited a pharmacy to purchase Plan B, or they started seeing a therapist or attending a support group shortly after a time where they were likely to have been assaulted by him. ”
“How do you know that?” I probe.
“Once I figured out who lived at the addresses listed in the book, I was able to get most of the information from their social media posts. People share too much. The three that I’m not sure about either don’t have public social media profiles or they don’t update them regularly.”
“Did any of them report it?”
“No.”
I lean back in my chair and sigh. “How long have they been doing this?”
“It started about two years before Katie, as far as I can tell. But that doesn’t really mean anything.”
“Damn,” I mutter. “You know, for a while, when all the ‘Me Too’ stuff was happening, it seemed like things might actually be different.”
“Yeah. I know,” Vaughn agrees softly.
“Can you get me a tranq gun? And some Telazol?”
“Telazol?” Vaughn asks.
“Yeah. It’s what they use when they need to dart a bear.”
Vaughn’s eyebrows rise at that, but he merely nods and says, “I’ll see what I can do. I’m going to be out of town for a few days next week. I’ll call you when I have a tranq gun and enough info on Steichen for you to act.”
“Thanks,” I say. It took me forever to come up with the Telazol idea. It wasn’t until I saw that scene from The Secret Life of Elephants yesterday that I thought of it.
I must’ve run through at least twenty ideas that would’ve only ended up with me dead.
But when I saw them tranquilizing the elephant in the documentary, a lightbulb went off in my head.
Rhys Steichen is so much bigger than me—he’s got eight inches and close to a hundred pounds on me.
I have no chance of winning a physical fight against him.
It would be equivalent to a ten-year-old child trying to fight me.
If I can’t incapacitate him prior to interacting with him, I’ll have to acquire a handgun and put a bullet in his head—anything else would be too dangerous.
And a bullet to the brain is too fast, too clean.
He doesn’t deserve to get off that easily.
I spent a good chunk of last night reading into how they tranquilize big game for tagging and tracking.
And the biggest game in this part of the country is bears.
Telazol is used on all types of bears. But it’s most frequently used when interacting with black bears.
I doubt they’ll be able to nail down the fact that Rhys will have been drugged with Telazol during an autopsy because it doesn’t have any human equivalents, but if they do figure it out… Well. Talk about poetic justice.
It’s one in the afternoon, and I’m lying on my bed, shuffling through the pages in the folder Vaughn gave me this morning when there’s a knock at the condo door, which is weird.
I’m not expecting anyone, and I didn’t hear the intercom go off for someone asking to be buzzed in.
I’m trying to put the pages back into some kind of order before getting up to answer the door when I get a text from Katie that says, Don’t come out
What the hell, I wonder, reading the message again. I shove the stack of papers and the folder under my pillow. I’ll sort it out later, I decide as I move toward my bedroom door.
There’s an indistinct man’s voice, followed by an equally muffled woman’s voice. I don’t recognize either one, and I crack the door.
“We’re just here for a couple of routine questions,” the man says, the sound filtering to me more clearly now. It must be the police here to follow up with Katie.
We watched the press conference together when I got home, and like I told Vaughn earlier, it doesn’t seem like they know anything.
It lasted for a grand total of fifteen minutes, during which they asked for anyone who’d interacted with Brandon the night before last to come forward.
They also asked for anyone who may have noticed suspicious activity around the time of Joey Carmichael’s and Matt Davidson’s deaths to call the tip line as well.
Naturally, the first thing reporters seized onto was that Matt’s death was being lumped in with the others.
The police spokesperson was quick to say that his manner of death had not yet been reclassified, but noted that it could be if they received additional information.
When it ended, Katie and I looked at each other and shrugged, and then I came back here to look through the files Vaughn put together.
I’m not sure why she doesn’t want me to come out while the police are here, though.
“About?” Katie responds sharply. She’s definitely not thrilled.
“The death of Brandon Miller.” There’s an awkward pause and then the man asks, “Where were you on Halloween night?”
“Here,” Katie states.
“All night?”
“Yes. I don’t leave the house often anymore.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“I was tutoring students online all night.”
“What time was that?”
“From six in the evening until one in the morning.”
“On Halloween night?” the woman asks skeptically.
“Yes. International students. From China mostly. It wasn’t Halloween for them.”
“We’ll need their contact information,” the man says.
“Fine,” Katie grates out.
Fuck. If they contact the parents of the students she’s tutoring, she’s going to lose those jobs.
“Do you recognize this woman?” the man asks.
There’s a moment of silence before Katie says, “No. Are you sure this is a woman and not a man in drag?”
“What makes you ask that?” the woman questions.
“Well, Brandon is six-two. The person in this picture is practically the same height as him. There aren’t many women that tall. Even most men aren’t that tall.”
We must be in the middle of a crowd in whatever picture they’re showing her. Most likely all that’s visible are our heads and shoulders. They must not be able to see the heeled boots I’m wearing.
“How tall are you?” the man asks.
“Five-three.”
There’s another pause, then, “Okay. Thank you for your time.”
“Wait. Hold on,” Katie says. “You’re here because they raped me, right? The players who have died?”
“Yes,” the woman says.
“Well, you should know that I don’t think I’m the only person they did that to. You’d probably learn more if you asked for other victims to come forward than you will by doing… whatever this is.”
The condo door thuds shut, and there’s the distinctive sound of the deadbolt slotting into place. Then, Katie flings my door open as I jump back from it, narrowly avoiding being hit in the face.
“You killed them,” she states.