Chapter 31 Nicola
THE SHACK FEELS even smaller than it looked from outside. I pace back and forth, back and forth, four steps to one wall, four back to the other. Connor snapped a new padlock on when he left with a muffled promise that he’d be back first thing in the morning.
“And then what?” I shouted, slamming my palms against the door. “What are you going to do with me?”
The only answer: the leaves rustling under his feet as he walked away.
I imagine the most likely scenario. They’ll turn me over to the police, who will be quick to believe whatever allegations are made against me.
For months, reports of my culpability have been plastered across televisions, cell phone screens, social media feeds.
With nothing in my bank account, I’ll be relying on a public defender to disprove the case made by a multibillion-dollar entertainment network.
I’ll end up locked in a jail cell, just like my father.
Which is probably what I deserve.
I slump into a corner, pulling my knees to my chest, and my thoughts turn to Claire’s disappearance.
I’ve replayed the events of that night countless times, trying to sharpen each detail to its truest version.
After the photos were stolen, Claire had been even angrier than me—yelling at the guys to fuck off every time they catcalled in the hallways and offering to come home with me for vacation.
“We don’t need them,” she sniffed. “We’ll spend the summer together, just you and me.
” While I hated the way everyone stared at me in the studio, snickering behind their sketchbooks, the prospect of spending three months with Claire almost made the abuse worthwhile.
However, when we arrived in Oliante, she seemed strangely withdrawn.
No matter how hard my dad and I tried to make her feel like part of the family, she remained buried in her artwork.
That night, she was editing photographs on her laptop; I was curled at the opposite end of the couch, half watching the news.
“—last seen outside Striker’s.”
The screen rotated through pictures of the Ellicott Creek Ripper’s victims. It seemed like that was all anyone could talk about that summer.
Oliante had gone from a town where everyone left their doors unlocked to one with signs in every front yard: SECURED BY ADT.
Maybe that was the reason for Claire’s sudden change in mood; maybe she was worried that our town was dangerous.
“Hey,” I said, pressing my foot against hers. She flinched and shifted farther away. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You know you don’t have to be afraid of anything on the news, right? He only goes after high school girls, locals.”
She looked up from her work and blinked once, slowly, at the television. The first victim filled the screen: Heather Dickerson. She wore a burgundy Oliante High sweatshirt. A silver horseshoe charm dangled over the collar.
Claire hummed, returning to her laptop. Not the news, then. I watched her work, prayed that she’d say something, anything, but she seemed to have forgotten I was even in the room. “I’ll be back,” I muttered, easing myself off the couch, not wanting to disturb her. She didn’t so much as glance up.
Upstairs, I pulled the bathroom door closed behind me and checked my reflection in the mirror above the sink.
Why had Claire come all this way only to ignore me?
This was supposed to be a chance to deepen our relationship; instead, it felt like we were on the brink of breaking up.
I turned on the faucet, splashed water on my face, but as I reached for the washcloth, a buzzing erupted from across the room.
Claire’s cell phone lay, forgotten, on a stack of towels.
I stared at its reflection as it buzzed again. I knew I should take it downstairs and return it to her, but something was wrong with Claire, and I wanted to know what it was. Needed to know, if knowing might help save our relationship. I flipped the phone open and clicked the first text message.
I wish you were here.
I frowned. Who was this from? Her parents? I scrolled to the next one.
I’m sorry about the photos. You trusted me with them. I never should’ve showed them to the guys.
The photos. This couldn’t be about the photos she’d taken of me, right?
Claire had convinced me they’d been stolen, but this message made it sound like she’d…
I checked the contact information. Justin Billings.
Why did she even have his number? She hated Justin, mercilessly mocked him after every studio class—the way he smelled like vinegary developer mixed with cologne, how he wore T-shirts pitted with holes when everyone knew he came from old money, his pathetic attempts at picking her up when she clearly wasn’t interested.
She never would’ve given him those photos.
Next text message:
Do you think she might still consider? You know how much I’ve been looking forward to this.
Who was “she”? Consider what?
The phone buzzed in my hands with another incoming text:
Love you. Talk soon.
Love you. The words grew larger and larger the more I stared at them.
With a growing sense of dread, I clicked through their previous messages.
The early ones were innocent enough—questions about assignment due dates, complaints about a professor’s harsh feedback.
As the months passed, though, the thread shifted: casual banter gave way to flirtations, then plans to meet up outside of class—for coffee, a gallery show, drinks at his apartment, all during the times she usually disappeared to take photos around the city.
Then, a request:
Someone told me that you and Nicola are an item?
Not really. We’re seeing each other, but it’s not a long-term thing, you know?
Really?
Yeah, it’s just something girls do in college.
You two hook up though, right?
Yeah.
I’d love to watch that.
No response for the next hour, but Justin persisted.
Maybe join in?
It wasn’t until the next day that Claire texted back.
What would you want to do to us?
What followed was a detailed game plan that made me want to heave.
Justin talked about how “thicker girls” like me tended to be more adventurous in the bedroom.
Claire argued that I wasn’t really; that, for an artist especially, I was a little prudish.
Then Justin asked to see photos of me, with her—
Claire said yes.
My whole body was shaking by the time I finished reading. How could this be real? Claire loved me. She loved me. We’d gone apartment hunting together, cosigned a lease, bought all our furniture—the bed we shared. You don’t do all that with someone who’s nothing more than a college experiment.
But whatever she felt for me would never be enough.
I should’ve realized it during that dinner with her parents, her father picking apart every little thing she did, while she sat, silent and still, absorbing his criticism like blows.
He would never approve of me, and she could never be satisfied with a partner who didn’t receive a blue ribbon from her father.
A knock on the bathroom door.
“Nic?” my dad called. “You in there?”
I tried to pull myself together, even though he must’ve heard me crying. “Yeah.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I stared at the phone in my hand. What should I do?
Go downstairs and confront her? There had to be another way.
Maybe I could convince her to leave him—or maybe I could return the phone, pretend I’d never seen those messages.
But what if she eventually asked me to spend the night with her and her (say it, you coward) boyfriend?
If I didn’t have the strength to end things now, would I be able to say no when the time came?
Or would I go along with whatever she wanted, allow her to use me as a prop because it was better than being alone?
It was pathetic. I was pathetic. I made myself sick.
“Nic?”
No, this couldn’t continue, but maybe—
“Just a minute.”
Maybe I didn’t have to be the one to end things.
If my dad saw these messages, he would realize she’d deceived me.
He would demand she pack her suitcase, drive her to the train station, leave her to find her own way back to the city.
By the time I returned for junior year, she probably would’ve cleared her belongings out of our apartment, and I’d be free to start over again.
Free. It was supposed to be a liberating word, but at that moment, I hated it. There was nothing I wanted less than to be free.
I left the phone on the sink, where he couldn’t miss it; I even clicked on the most damaging text message—the one where Justin described what he wanted to do to us, to me.
I tugged on the legs of my shorts, the neckline of my shirt, until they covered as much skin as they could, then, face swollen and eyes damp, I opened the door and fled down the stairs, aware he was watching me the entire time.
The next morning, Claire was gone.
When the police found her in the creek, doubts about my father started surfacing in my mind.
It felt insane, insane and disloyal, but no matter how much I tried to push them out, they wouldn’t leave me alone.
I started researching the case: pinning down a timeline of each murder, then trying to uncover his alibi because he must’ve had one—except he didn’t.
I read true crime books, watched documentaries, listened to podcasts.
I looked for him in descriptions of men like Michael Bernecke and Tom Woods, but he was nothing like them.
I became so obsessed, I almost failed out of college; it destroyed any chance I had of becoming a professional artist.
On the good days, I convinced myself that grief and guilt were driving me out of my mind; on the bad days, I rode the subway until the PA system announced an unfamiliar stop, Rego Park or Grand Concourse, then located the nearest pay phone.
Slipped in a quarter, dialed the non-emergency line, and huddled as close as I could to the receiver while pedestrians passed by with their crinkly tinfoil shawarma wraps.
I rehearsed my introduction under my breath: “Hello, my name is Nicola Fischer, and I think my dad might’ve…
I think my dad…” But as soon as the dispatcher answered, I slammed the receiver back onto the latch.
The moment those words left my mouth, they would become real.
But they couldn’t be real. They simply couldn’t.
Because if they were, Claire’s death had been my fault.
If I’d had the courage to confront her on my own, to show her the messages and end our relationship, she would still be alive.
Instead, I’d wanted my dad to get rid of her—and he had.
Bzzz.
I leap up from the floor. What was that? Is someone outside? Another buzz. I whirl around, searching for the source of the noise. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the forest. It almost sounds like—
My gaze drops to the floor. As the buzzing continues, I slowly make my way across the shack until one of the boards creaks. I bounce my weight, feel the give beneath my sneakers, then drop to my knees and pry the screws loose. Underneath yawns a narrow gap.
I press myself flat against the floor, reach in as far as I can. Nothing, nothing, nothing—but then, my fingers bump against something. I stretch even further, until the wood digs hard enough into my shoulder to bruise, and grab ahold of the object, pulling it free.
A cell phone.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, because it’s not just any cell phone. It’s Steffani’s cell phone. The one she supposedly took with her when she left the lodge. I silence the alarm, and the buzzing stops. “Holy shit.”
This could be where the murderer keeps his trophies, just like the cranny in our bathroom wall.
I put the phone aside, reach back into the crawl space.
My fingers wriggle against the dirt until they catch on something else.
It’s much heavier than I expected; my wrist twinges with the effort of dislodging it.
I ease myself backward, pulling the object all the way out.
It’s a fertility statue. The back of its bulbous head has been smashed in.
Blood is smeared up and down the ceramic, especially in the empty gap where a shard used to be.
“Holy shit,” I whisper one more time, because I’m willing to bet anything on that shard being the one we found lodged in the back of Zach’s skull.
I’ve found the murder weapon.
I’m also touching it with my bare hands, which isn’t good, especially when everyone considers me the main suspect.
I gently lay the statue on the floor. Connor knew about this shack.
He was the one who locked me in here, after all.
He had Steffani’s broken necklace in his desk drawer.
He claimed she stole her phone back before she left, but here it is: buried alongside the murder weapon.
I turn back to the phone. There’s no password; Connor must’ve disabled any security when he confiscated the device.
He’s still at the lodge, which means the club members are all in danger.
I pull up the keypad and am considering whom to call when I notice the message in the corner of the screen: NO SIM.
That’s right. Connor removed the SIM card and threw it into the bonfire, which means I can’t call anyone except the police.
Should I call them? Not only would bringing the police up here betray the club members’ privacy, they would immediately accuse me of killing Zach—and with the negatives, the bloodstains, and my fingerprints all over the murder weapon, they’d have an open-and-shut case.
If only I could find something that would clear my name before they arrive.
I quickly click on Steffani’s voicemail messages.
Maybe there’s something here that will tell us where she’s gone or what happened to her.
I tap the first one: “Hey, it’s Mal from NBC—” The phone almost fumbles out of my hands.
“Just wanted to check in and see how the contact worked out for you. Let me know if there’s anything else you need. ”
NBC. Why would Steffani be reaching out to them? Was she contacting other news outlets to help with her father—in case To Catch a Killer fell through? I play through the rest of the messages. Most of them are from her friends:
“Hey, give me a call when you get this.”
“No one knows where you are.”
“Are you there? We’re really worried about you.”
I click on the final one. “Hey,” a woman says, drawling the word into three separate syllables, each imbued with vocal fry.
“I’m not sure where you are, but your dad’s been looking everywhere for you, and he’s going crazy—like, totally fucking off the wall.
He just left the apartment, and I thought you should know—
“He said he’s coming to get you.”