Chapter 11
ELEVEN
It was strange to see Detective Winslow on the TV screen in her living room as though he hadn’t once been sitting on this very couch. Despite the morning sun trying to break into the trailer, Claire kept her curtains shut, hoping to indulge in the last pieces of privacy before Dillon returned.
Her hands shook as she sipped her morning coffee, filled with sugary vanilla creamer.
It wasn’t often she tuned into the local news station, but the cops’ press conference on the murders wasn’t something she wanted to miss.
Winslow stood on the podium, a grim line of officers, including Chief Wells, behind him.
He appeared self-assured, his posture as straight as always.
“He’s sweet on you, y’know.”
Her dad’s words taunted her, a cruel joke. A man like Winslow would never. Handsome as he was, Claire wouldn’t even allow herself to go there. To torture herself with some sort of fantasy life she’d never have.
“We’re setting up an anonymous tip line,” Winslow was saying. “I encourage anyone who might have information about this to come forward. Anything at all, any small detail, might help. Until then, we’re recommending all townsfolk stay inside or travel in groups after dark, especially women.”
The reporters chattered up, and he chose one of them with a motion of his hand. A man said, “Just to get this right, are you saying we have an actual serial killer operating right here in Fairview?”
“As I said, we believe these two homicides are connected.”
“So, what, you’re waiting for more people to die before you’ll call it what it is?”
Winslow paused as the crowd stared at him. Claire bit on her thumb, still jittery. She could imagine it was stressful, having all those people watching him, all those expectations.
“We’re doing everything we can to prevent there from being more victims,” Winslow said.
“Which is why it’s so crucial now to execute caution, and please, call the tip line if you’ve seen anything.
The electronics store downtown will be carrying a heavy stock of security cameras moving forward.
It never hurts to have home surveillance. ”
More chatter erupted over the crowd, at the same time a car door slammed outside the trailer. Claire turned off the TV and ran to the window, peeking beyond the curtain. Dillon stepped out of her dad’s pickup. Crap.
He stormed inside. Claire stood there, stunned as he appeared in the doorway to the living room. He looked horrible—his right eye was bruised and black, his skin pockmarked and sallow. But it was the scowl that made him truly ugly.
After a moment, he clicked his tongue. “Don’t act so happy to see me.” He stomped down the hallway, toward their room.
Something in Claire snapped, and she chased after him. “The hell would I be happy to see you for after what you did? The whole town knows you can’t keep your dick in your pants now.”
He stopped and faced her. “And you actually care about that?”
Claire said nothing. She hadn’t cared about Dillon—about whatever semblance of a “relationship” was left here—in a long time.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Dillon said. “Look, just leave me alone.”
“No, you need to tell me what happened. Why do you have a black eye?”
He laughed, but there was something different about him. Something defeated. “Why do you think?”
She crossed her arms, putting the pieces together. It wouldn’t have been the cops. “My dad did that?”
“He doesn’t want me knocking up anyone but you, so go ahead and stop your birth control or whatever and we can get this over with.”
“I’ll pass,” Claire said, disgusted. Since she and Dillon had stopped having sex, she’d stopped taking birth control—but the first thing she did this morning was restart, considering what her dad said last night.
Not that she intended on sleeping with Dillon anyway.
“This is ridiculous. We obviously hate each other, so can we please break up? My dad won’t let me break up with you, so can you just break up with me? ”
Once more, Dillon laughed, but his face grew red with frustration. “You think it’s that easy, huh? You think you can’t break up with me ’cause of your dad, but what, I can? You really don’t get it. You don’t get anything.”
She stood there with the weight of his words. Her bottom lip trembled, and she struggled to keep her voice even with the unexpected wave of guilt. “What are you saying?” she asked, even though she knew.
“Figure it out, since you’re so smart. And leave me alone. Please.”
He stomped down the hall till he reached their bedroom and slammed the door behind him.
Claire was stunned. He’d never said anything like this before, and in the aftermath, she truly did feel blind. A sob escaped her throat. She covered her mouth and went into the living room, collapsing on the couch as her chest heaved with pain.
She didn’t know how to feel. Guilt, but also anger.
It’d probably been her father who’d sent Dillon to her room all those times when they were young, working in the shadows like their phantom puppeteer, but Dillon didn’t have to go along with it.
He’d actually had the freedom to leave many times, something Claire never had.
But he’d stayed. To secure himself a spot in a family with some money, not giving a damn about the price he’d pay.
It wasn’t her fucking fault.
She was sick of all of it, sick of all of them. At least Dillon was let into the truth of the “family business,” but Claire had been left on the fringes. Not anymore.
She wanted answers. And she was going to get them.
Tonight.
The bullpen was a flurry of activity when Seth got back to the station.
This morning’s press release had gone about as well as expected—the town was understandably frustrated, but all of the information they could give was out now.
He would have loved a sketch to go along with the release, but they couldn’t get an artist down here until Friday.
For now, he had to look elsewhere for a new lead.
He found Officer Craig Yess at his desk, surrounded by a pile of papers and folders. In his own chaos, he’d knocked over a family photo of him and his two adult sons in front of a lake, wearing camo gear and holding fish.
“How’s the tip line going?” Seth asked him.
Yess fixed the picture, his face flushed.
He had a gray handlebar mustache and a wide, round face.
Most of the cops here were pushing retirement, and the only two women were Chief Wells and Pereira.
“I’ve had about six of them so far, and five have been crap.
One might have some legs.” Yess handed Seth a paper with a list of random names on it, going all the way down the page.
“An anonymous tip of thirty names?”
“No,” Yess droned out, “we got a call about an hour ago—a lady saying she’s been seeing a weird van around town. She thought it was maybe white. Now, I remembered something—a case from years back. Nearly a dang decade.”
Yess held out a folder. Seth opened it, finding a report about a sexual assault. A picture was pinned on the front page of a white work van with the label “possible suspect vehicle.”
“This lady came in and told us she’d been abducted and raped,” Yess said, leaning forward.
“She said she’d noticed a white van like that one following her around in the week before it happened.
Guy used chloroform to knock her out. And the kicker—once he took her home, he injected her with something. ”
“Heroin,” Seth said.
“That’s right. The details ain’t pretty. Poor thing woke up part way through, and the man who’d taken her—she never saw the guy’s face, ’cause she was blindfolded—had her dangling from the ceiling by her wrists, buck-naked. He tortured her. Left her with small cuts all over her body.”
Seth skimmed the report. “Cuts from a kitchen knife.”
“Not a boxcutter, but still, cuts. She blacked out and woke up in a park, clothed. Needless to say, we never made an arrest, and the victim moved. We figured the culprit wasn’t even in town.
Nothing like that had ever happened before, sure as hell never happened again.
But as soon as I heard that tip about the van, I thought shit.
I’d completely forgotten the heroin till I re-read the files. ”
Seth mulled it over. It’d be foolish not to consider this, but he wasn’t fully convinced.
“The MO’s different; neither Eliza nor Kelsey were sexually assaulted.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be a sexual component.
For some killers, it’s the act of taking someone’s life that gratifies them.
Sex isn’t enough. The man who abducted this woman was a sadist, at the very least. It could have escalated to murder. ”
Yess shuddered, going pale. “You know, I really wanted to think this was a drifter. Ever since that second girl died, now we all have to face it… maybe this guy’s been living among us for a lot longer than we realized.”
An unfortunate reality. Seth flipped to the next page of the report with a photo of the victim. A woman in her thirties with a short brown pixie cut and dark brown eyes. Ellen Harrison.
“There are a lot of other differences here too,” Seth said.
“The victim looks nothing like our current two. The weapon was a different kind of sharp object. There were no ligature marks on the Eliza or Kelsey’s wrists, no chloroform…
” He placed the file back on Yess’s desk, but kept the original list of names he’d handed him.
“But the heroin is something. What’s with all the names here? ”
“That’d be everyone we checked after the incident happened. Everyone with a van matching that description. Could be nothing, but maybe these guys need to be paid another visit.”
“Thanks, Yess. This is really helpful.”
Yess gave him a look. “I know it’s hard to believe, but we do do our jobs here.”
Seth ignored his comment and scanned the names. At a glance, none were familiar.
The sudden trill of the tip line ringing cut into the moment, and curious, Seth watched as Yess swiftly picked it up.