Chapter 21
CONDUCTING THE SEARCH OF WYATT’S home was surprisingly easy because he wasn’t there to interfere.
After using Muller’s reports and securing a search warrant, Leroux and Maya Rodriguez, along with a few other officers, arrived at an empty home out in Pointe-aux-Mercier.
When inside, the smell assaulted them immediately.
It was a truly nauseating mix of decaying food, sour milk, and stale garbage, lingering in the air as if it had threaded itself so tightly into every part of the atmosphere that it existed between molecules.
Every room was messy and unkempt, suggesting months of abandonment.
Filthy dishes were piled up, and bugs ran across the floor and flew through the air, having made themselves at home.
Under the debris were books, old and new, about autopsies, embalming, and anatomy.
Scattered along every surface was a litany of concerning items, like sixty-four bones that appeared to be human.
They would need to be tested to determine their origins.
It became clear that Wyatt was a grave robber, among other things, which explained the mysterious body parts found alongside Melissa’s body at the haunted house scene.
It was all damning, all evidence that would push the case against him further and further along until it became as solid as stone.
But it was what Maya found in a cluttered desk that shocked them all to their cores: a stack of letters.
When Leroux unfolded the first letter and saw what it contained, he had to sit down; otherwise he would have fallen over. Maya took the chance to snatch it from his hand, reading the first page out loud.
Wyatt,
You can’t overthink this. I know you are scared of the urges, scared of your own primal instincts, but for god’s sake, just get it the fuck together.
There’s no room for self-reflection here; there’s only action.
You are ready to do this, and these feelings you describe are exactly what this girl wants.
She wants to manipulate you and figuratively castrate you.
Do you want that? Do you want to be some dickless loser who misled me into thinking you have what it takes to stand next to me?
Or do you want to be someone who is respected and feared in equal measure?
Do you want this girl to take the power that you know you have inside of you, the power you told me you have?
No, you don’t. So take it out on her. Show the world that safety is an illusion.
Show everyone you belong among the monsters.
When Maya turned the page over carefully in her hand, the signature was there to confirm what they already knew: The letter was from Jeremy Rose, inmate at Dead Creek Penitentiary.
Their communication evolved over the course of the letters.
Initially Wyatt had reached out to praise Jeremy, telling him how much he admired his perseverance and his commitment to vengeance and pain.
Jeremy had eaten it up, lapping up his compliments while also encouraging Wyatt to lean further into his own strange urges and dark thoughts.
Within the letters were also codes and ciphers they’d created together—their own clandestine language—and it culminated in Jeremy urging Wyatt to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The chilling instructions were clear. Wyatt was to kidnap as many young girls as he could by endearing himself to them and then create a tableau of carnage that would confuse investigators and lead them in Philip Trudeau’s direction.
Jeremy sent a vial of his own blood to Wyatt with one of the letters, likely using a guard he had turned to get it through the mail check.
The funniest part of this whole thing was that the blood was intended to obfuscate, throwing everyone into a frenzy and branching the investigation off to increase chaos, but it had eventually linked the investigation to Philip.
Jeremy had no idea that his blood was similar to Philip’s and would lead investigators farther down that path.
He just wanted to sow chaos, making them wonder how his DNA was still ending up at crime scenes while he was rotting behind bars.
The irony would be almost laughable if it didn’t have such deadly stakes.
So Jeremy fell backward into a halfway-decent frame job.
The problem was that he’d picked the wrong guy to pull it off.
It was all supposed to be a game that never actually tied back to Jeremy in a meaningful way.
After all, he has the mother of all alibis: He’s locked safely behind bars.
In several spots in the communications, Wyatt and Jeremy indicated that this was all a sacrifice: Wyatt would take the fall in the end …
after an extended reign of terror with a much higher body count.
The problem is that Wyatt is a dope who is completely incapable of covering his tracks after executing such a complex scheme.
Leroux couldn’t even begin to understand how Jeremy had put any confidence in him.
It felt like Jeremy had mistaken Wyatt’s sheer brutality and appreciation for extreme cruelty as something else entirely, like tact or cunning.
This only made the urgency to find Beth more pressing, knowing Wyatt was essentially a venomous snake let loose into a crowd.
It would take days to comb through that mess of a house, but Leroux and Will had enough to take Wyatt in, and thanks to the Halloween party invitation they found sitting in plain sight on his kitchen table, they had a pretty good idea where Wyatt could be.
The first thing Leroux notices when he and Will pull into the long, dark driveway is that the house is massive and foreboding.
It’s a beautiful old Southern gem way out in the country, reeking of old-world Gothic charm.
But there is something sinister emanating from it as well, something that warns them to tread lightly.
On any other night, this place is probably quiet and serene, with a porch swing and a backyard garden maze that people dream about.
Tonight it’s a carnival, with colored stage lights pointing in all directions, pumpkins spilling off the stairs leading up to the porch, and cobwebs strung in the trees and across the columns.
Music blasts from within, echoing off the endless expanse of night that surrounds them.
People are everywhere. Each person is dressed in a costume and a mask.
The requirement was written in bold print on the invitation found in Wyatt’s house, and everyone seems to be in complete compliance.
As they walk through the front doors, there is a palpable heat in the air that Leroux can feel and see in equal measure.
The atmosphere is thick with what he can only describe as lust: A good portion of attendees desperately grasp for each other, seemingly swept up in a gossamer haze of drugs and sex.
He and Will walk through the home without causing any immediate alarm, ghosts among the countless impostors.
No one even gives them a second glance; they’re too busy trying to hear each other over the too-loud stereo.
Leroux can’t even hear himself think; all he can hear is the strange song playing at full volume.
The music is haunting in a way and feels like something one might hear at an industrial goth club.
It’s forcing close contact, which is likely part of the manipulation game.
He’s seen this before, been part of it, and hated it.
Leroux was never a party guy, nor has he ever been mistaken for one.
He’s always preferred a smaller crowd, a feeling of warmth and a quieter scene.
The atmosphere is full of slow chaos, and something about the guests feels artificial.
There’s a warmth to the home, but somehow it’s simultaneously inhospitable.
To his surprise, there is a small fire crackling in the big antique hearth in one room, and that seems to be where the quieter crowd congregates.
Although “quieter” is relative given the inescapable sound of bass that vibrates the bones of the house.
The heat thrown off the fire is uncomfortable and is only intensified by the added body warmth.
Sweaty people move against each other, falling deeper into the grip of substances as the music relentlessly pulses.
The smell of smoke, sweat, and alcohol is only mildly diluted by the aroma of pumpkin-scented candles sparsely placed around the rooms. It’s a wildly dangerous fire hazard, but Leroux is willing to bet that maintaining the vibe outweighs the risks.
Nevertheless, the brief notes of sweet spice aren’t enough to offset the rest of the decadently sour olfactory experience.
He and Will walk through that big room with the fireplace, and only a couple of people even notice them.
This is when it becomes clear that this is not just a costume party but a masquerade.
Everyone is wearing some kind of face covering, ranging from classic masks to those worn by Victorian plague doctors.
The rest of the home is a maze of dimly lit rooms, expertly kitted out with Halloween decorations and crammed with sweating bodies.
Leroux has to duck under a couple of scratchy cobwebs and notices that someone has gone through a lot of trouble to carve and light jack-o’-lanterns in almost every room; they’re the only sources of light aside from a warmly lit lamp here and there.
It feels like a home from a movie, the perfect mix of upscale sophistication and audacious wealth.
The darkly gothic aesthetic is a fitting backdrop for both the party and their nightmarish search for a killer.
They pass people dressed as animals, movie characters, and tokens from different eras, a veritable banquet of fake blood and glistening makeup. Several partygoers eye them hungrily as they pass, but no one bothers to ask who these maskless men could be.