Thirty-Three
It takes both Beck and me nursing an electrolyte drink from the watchtower to really shrug off the shock.
But it’s still dark out when we feel ready to start searching Evan’s cabin.
We throw a blanket over Evan and get to work.
There are a few items we need to find: If we find Evan’s hair, we prove for certain he’s been the one stalking us; if we find a landline, we can call Natalie and get a ride out; and if we find another item of Paisley’s or her body, well, we cinch up this horrible story once and for all.
When the authorities discover Evan’s body, we’ll just tell the truth: It was self-defense.
There’s no reason to believe two teenage girls would kill a grown man in a premeditated murder.
Dread hangs off my shoulders as we each pick a room, but it has to be done.
Beck starts with the living room.
“Wouldn’t a body smell?” Beck asks as she yanks every drawer open. Items clang in an overwhelming cacophony of sound. I tense, waiting for the corpse on the ground to somehow wake up and tell us to shut up.
I move to the bathroom. “Honestly, if we find anything of hers, that would be enough. Considering his surroundings, he probably buried her.”
“But why bury her and not Opal and Harlow? Why leave their body parts somewhere else?”
The bathroom smells like mildew and cheap soap, a million times better than the scent could’ve been. I open the mirror medicine cabinet. There are prescription pills, but it’s for something I don’t recognize and can’t look up.
And there is a ton of hair in the trash can. Hair and bloody bandages. I take as many photos as I can.
He really was the one torturing us this whole weekend. When I breathe, I can finally breathe deeply and fully again.
I can’t wait to tell the federal cops.
There’s no phone in the bathroom. Judging by Beck’s silence, she hasn’t found one in the living room. My stomach starts to knot.
Even if this place doesn’t smell, there’s no relief to get rid of the queasiness still settled in me. “Maybe he…liked her more.”
Even after everything Paisley did to me, there is nothing that would’ve made her deserve to be this monster’s favorite.
“God, I wish I could kill that guy again,” Beck says. “Fucking monster. Do you think he just used the witch stuff for cover?”
“I’m sure. God, poor Vanessa,” I say. “Not to mention what he did to get us out here. It’s so messed up.”
I know Beck wanted to come out here just as much as I did, but guilt gnaws at my insides.
I’m the one who got all these messages, because I was the one who was there that night, who left that stupid voice note.
If I had been on the trip in the first place, Beck would be back in LA with her parents, mourning but safe.
We shouldn’t be the ones to find her sister’s body, whatever state it’s in.
But I don’t find anything else in the bathroom. When I return to the main room, Beck’s empty-handed too.
“Wanna try the garage?” Beck asks.
I nod but put Evan’s gun in my backpack. Anywhere with doors we can’t keep an eye on suddenly feels very reasonably dangerous.
The garage is more of a workspace than anything. Tons of tools, workbenches, more taxidermy on the walls. Something shines on the bench.
It may not be Paisley’s phone, but I grab Evan’s burner phone like it’s the prized jewel it is.
“Maybe he wrote down coordinates for where he buried her,” I say.
I do a search through the burner, my mind running a million miles an hour. He doesn’t have bars, either, which may be another reason why the baiting texts stopped. I find our text exchange. I find…photos of Vanessa’s body before the coyotes got to her.
It was a violent death.
Sickened, I move to the other photos. There’s one of Paisley’s phone, taken at the watchtower.
I know how helpful it’d be to the investigators, but I’m grateful not to have found any physical trophies in this cabin yet.
I don’t think either of us could handle finding a lock of Paisley’s hair or a piece of her clothing.
Still, I search through these drawers, my stomach churning as the number of places to look dwindles.
“Yeah, shit,” Beck says, her voice a little far away. “And our luck’s turned around!”
I wheel around to see Beck holding a key to Evan’s car.
Despite everything, it does bring a light to me.
We can drive out of this hellacious forest and take what we have to the federal cops.
If we’re fast enough, they can find Paisley’s body and close this up before the townies realize what we’re doing.
Sure, our parents will be pissed we lied about where we were going, but it’ll have been worth it.
“Amazing,” I say, actually meaning it.
But then I look down at the contents of a drawer: Polaroid photos of girls in cute hiking gear posing with Evan. Sometimes they’re smiling big, sometimes they’re smizing for the camera.
Women’s sunglasses. A pink bandana. Some lists written in feminine handwriting on the motel stationery. Someone’s bottle opener from Dollywood. The kind of things you’d take from the lost and found.
There’s also…a stringy strip of pink fabric. I zero in on the fabric, something itching at the back of my brain. It’s got a tiny, intricate pattern sewn into the pink, something that—
Holy shit.
I wheel around to Beck, who’s still wearing a heather-gray zip-up camping-sweater-thing.
“Did your mom buy you that?” I ask.
Beck furrows her brow. “Yeah. Why—?”
Beck’s mom bought them the same sweater in different colors.
I bring the swatch up against Beck’s and sure enough, it’s the same fabric. I’d bet if we had the samples from what was found in the coyote den, it’d match that too. “This was Paisley’s,” I say.
Beck slaps her hand to her mouth, her whole body heaving as she stares at the fabric in my hand. “Can I have it?” For once, her voice is even softer than mine.
I hand the fabric off, another thought occurring.
This man keeps a lot of trinkets. It’s not that I think he’s killed all those women in the photos, but he likes documenting stuff.
I saw his photos, but I didn’t look at his call log.
If he were smart, he would’ve deleted it.
But he was also stupid enough to keep a piece of Paisley’s jacket. There’s a chance.
I grab Evan’s phone again and click to the call log, my heart slamming. Every click backward feels like running toward a light in a cave when you’re unsure whether it’s an illusion or not.
Calls go back to the beginning of this year.
Calls go back to December of last year.
November.
Mid-October.
And finally, the day everything went down.
There’s one call at one a.m. the night Paisley, Harlow, Opal, and Vanessa were killed.
The number isn’t saved, but it’s familiar.
I pull out the motel stationery.
I massage my throat, where it feels like my heart will never dislodge for as long as I live.
It matches.
“Beck…” I say.
It’s so sick. From the very first invitation, he wanted me to come to his special place.
My lips quiver. Paisley always hated the woods.
“I think Evan went to the motel the night he killed everyone,” I say. “Maybe it’ll explain what he did to Paisley.”