Chapter Eighteen #2
For a moment, Asa just stared. He heard his own breathing in the tight space.
“Asa?” Maya’s faint voice floated in. “Is everything okay?”
He exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “I found something.” He retrieved the gloves from his pocket, then carefully slid the bundle toward the opening. Clutching the bag in his hand, he backed out, boots scraping against the boards.
Maya and Rachel were waiting at the door. Both moved aside to let him out. Will stood next to JT, their eyes narrowing at the sight of the plastic-wrapped sack.
“Gloves,” he said. Rachel was already pulling a pair free from her pocket. The others did the same.
Asa placed the bundle on the hallway floor then gently peeled back the brittle plastic.
The notebook was small and black, the kind one bought in multipacks at office stores. The cover was scuffed, with the edges softened from handling. On the front, in his father’s familiar block handwriting, were the words, Mainland Murders. Possible Witness.
Maya’s gasp filled the space. Asa’s knees went loose, and he sat back against the wall.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
Rachel angled her flashlight to give more light. “Take it slow. We photograph, then we read. We do this right.”
They snapped a few quick shots with Rachel’s phone, the flash briefly brightening the narrow hall. Then Asa opened the notebook and flipped through it.
His father’s handwriting jumped out at him. “Unlinked disappearances across Maine between ’98–’00. Victim profiles, female ages 20s–30s. Many were runaways or prostitutes. Those no one was looking for. None were ever found.”
Asa swallowed.
The victims' names followed. Locations where they’d lived. Augusta. Bangor. Rockland. Portland. A town he didn’t even recognize with a note in parentheses: “tiny fishing community.”
Asa felt the hair on his arms lift. He flipped the page and kept reading. Halfway through the notebook, a separate section took shape—a heading written in slightly darker ink, the letters carved deeper into the page.
“Witness – V. W. (Vanessa)”
Maya’s hand landed on his shoulder. “That’s her,” she whispered. “My mother.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It is.”
His father’s notes here were tighter. More urgent.
“Met Vanessa at the small bar off Route 7, where she worked nights. I went there on a lead from one of the victim’s friends.
Vanessa recognized where my questions were going before I asked them.
She refused to talk at first. Said, ‘I like living.’ I returned twice.
Brought photos of the missing women with me the last time.
She froze at #5 and finally admitted the women had all been to the bar shortly around the time they disappeared.
She said she knew the person who took the women.
I asked her how, thinking it might be her daughter's father. She told me no. Maya’s father was a casual relationship that ended when she became pregnant, and the father didn’t want to have anything to do with her or the baby.
Asa stopped reading and glanced up at Maya. The pain on her face confirmed how much it hurt to hear her father didn’t want her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She shook her head, tears hovering in her eyes.
He continued reading:
“Vanessa admitted she saw the man who took those women. She said, ‘He watches the way they leave. He likes the ones who leave alone.’”
Maya sniffed several times, her fingers tightened on his shoulder.
Asa drew a breath and read the next line.
“She said she saw him take victim #5 from the parking lot behind the bar when she was taking out the bar’s trash before closing up.
She hid but made a slight sound. Vanessa’s not sure if he heard her, but she’s terrified she might be next.
She said he comes into the bar and watches her.
” Below that, his father had written, “She’s the only witness who saw his face and watched him take someone. ”
The ink had dug so hard there the paper had nearly torn. Vanessa had tried to do the right thing, and it painted a bigger target on her back.
He turned the page.
“Vanessa refused to do a formal statement at the station. She believed the killer was someone of importance. Someone with a lot of influence. We made an arrangement: I get her off the mainland quickly. She agrees to talk once she’s somewhere he would never think to look.
I chose Hope Island because there are no ties to the murders.
It’s rural, so someone new to the island would stand out.
The plan is to bring her and her daughter Maya over as ‘family friends’ needing a break.
I’ll set them up at Hardesty farm outside town, which is close to my place and vacant at present. ” That last part was underlined twice.
Below that was a short line, almost an afterthought.
“Someone is already watching. Saw the white SUV twice driving near the farm. I gave chase, but the driver whom I couldn’t see got away.
I don’t think Vanessa has seen the vehicle yet.
I’ve made it a point to drive by the farm as much as possible for her and Maya’s protection.
Still, I need to move fast.” Asa stared at the words until they blurred.
JT’s voice came from somewhere above him. “So, he knew. Before that night. He knew the danger was active.”
“And he still tried to help us,” Maya said, her voice tremulous and fierce all at once.
Asa turned another page. Near the middle, his father had taped in a photocopy of what looked like a shipping schedule. One line had been circled.
“Brucker Freight. The bar is on the delivery route.”
Brucker.
The name rang a faint bell. Nothing solid. Just an echo from some long-ago conversation about companies servicing the island.
Was someone from Brucker the killer?
Asa filed it away for later. Not now. The last thing he wanted was to leap at coincidence just because he was desperate for something solid. He flipped to the final pages. The handwriting there grew tighter, more compressed.
“Vanessa says she’s ready to talk on record once I can move her and Maya to a different location.
She’s terrified and convinced the killer will find her here.
She has reason to be if the SUV being spotted was any indication.
I’m working on a backup plan now. If something happens to me, someone needs to know about this. ”
The last line was written at a sharper angle, as if he’d been interrupted and came back to finish it. Asa’s chest constricted at the mention of his name. “Asa, if you’re reading this and I’m dead, assume he found Vanessa and Maya and murdered me.” Silence closed in around Asa.
No one moved. No one breathed.
Will was the first to find his voice. “We have confirmation now,” he said quietly. “This wasn’t an isolated murder in a barn. This was part of a bigger pattern spanning multiple cities and years. Vanessa wasn’t just an unlucky bystander. She was the one person who saw him clearly and lived.”
“My father knew it,” Asa said, his voice low. “He knew exactly what he was up against.”
Will’s fists clenched. “He still went alone that night.”
“Maybe because he knew the wrong partner could get them killed faster,” Asa said. “If Vanessa was right about him being someone with influence, then my father might not have known who to trust.”
Will looked down at the notebook, his expression bleak. “He was right not to trust anyone,” he murmured. “Whoever removed that adoption file had access to state systems. They knew exactly what they were doing.”
“Maybe it was the deceased agency employee. She might have been working with the killer,” JT said.
Maya knelt beside Asa, her leg brushing his. “What does this mean for us?”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “It means someone has been trying to erase you using intimidation since the moment my father died.”
Her throat worked. “And the others? Those women. The ones on that list. He killed them, didn’t he?”
Asa didn’t sugarcoat it. “Probably. Your mother saw him take at least one of the missing women. That’s what made her a target.”
Will straightened. “We need copies of everything,” he said. “Photographs. Scans. We get this to the state cold case unit, and we start cross-referencing every one of these incidents. We cannot assume he stopped killing with Raymond and Vanessa.”
Rachel nodded, already pulling out new evidence bags. “I’ll secure the original,” she said. “We’ll log everything under both cases—Raymond’s and Vanessa’s.”
Maya’s hand slid from Asa’s shoulder to his hand, fingers curling, hesitant.
He turned his palm up, letting her tuck her hand into his.
“My mother—she’s dead, isn’t she?” she said, her voice wobbly.
He gently squeezed her hand. “I believe so.” Asa hated saying that. The only good thing to come from all of this was that they now had more to go on, and they knew Maya’s name was Maya Warren. “At least we know now that your mother was running for good reason.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but they didn’t spill. “She stood up even when she was terrified. She decided to talk. I keep coming back to that.”
“Bravery doesn’t always mean fighting,” Asa said, remembering the way his father had once described it. “Sometimes it means leaving. Sometimes it looks like telling the truth when you know it could hurt you.”
Maya’s grip tightened.
Asa breathed a prayer he didn’t bother to polish. Thank You for them. For her. For him. Don’t let us waste what they gave us. Out loud, he said, “We’re going to finish this. For both of them.”
She nodded once. “And for the others,” she added. “The ones whose names we don’t even know yet.”
He could feel it—like something shifting under the surface of the case. A current pulling harder. Faster.
The killer had spent two decades making sure these pages never saw the light of day. He made sure Vanessa became a ghost and Maya stayed an orphan in the system with no past.
Now, those words were out. They weren’t just paper anymore. They were evidence. They were a story. A promise that the man who’d hunted them all was running out of shadows to hide in.
“We head back,” Will said. “We secure this, we loop in the state, and we assume he will hit back the moment he realizes Raymond’s insurance policy didn’t stay buried.
” He met Asa’s gaze. “From here on out, we’re not just chasing a killer in a barn.
We’re hunting a serial killer who’s been at this longer than any of us have worn badges. ”
Asa stood, pulling Maya up with him. “Then we make it count,” he said. “For my father. For Vanessa. For the girl he tried to erase and failed.” He glanced once more at the dark opening of the crawl space, at the place his father had chosen to hide the truth.
Echoes in the walls.
Now finally, finally, the echoes spoke.
Somewhere out there, he knew the man who’d killed Raymond and hunted Vanessa felt it too.
Not safety. Not control. But the first real tremor of something he hadn’t expected to feel.
Pressure.