Chapter 9
Nine
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I’m using that line like a jump rope.
—Hux’s secret thoughts
Hux
A serial killer.
And not just any serial killer.
A fucking terrifying one that’d never been caught.
The police involved were no closer to catching him now than they were twenty years ago when he’d started.
As I stared into Bernice’s frightened eyes, I thought about everything I knew about this serial killer.
Twenty years ago, in a little town south of Oakland, New Jersey, a serial killer was born. Though not figuratively. Literally.
This serial killer they’d dubbed “Corpse Violator,” which was a quite appropriate serial killer name, started his reign of terror.
He completed his year of stalking—something that was well-documented through the police department of a young woman around Bernice’s age—then he’d killed her. The cops all figured it was coming, seeing as the longer the stalking went on, the worse the escalation.
Any man who ever dated the woman that Corpse Violator had made his obsession was killed off. Anyone who tried to help his stalkee was gently dissuaded—at first. Then, they were harshly dissuaded until they were forced to stop or die.
On the last day of the stalking period, the woman was kidnapped—though the woman had been watched like a freakin’ hawk because of the buildup. She was stolen out from under two cops’ noses. Once with him, the victim had been brutally assaulted—though not sexually.
When she’d given up, she’d been murdered, no longer an amusing game to him.
From there, he allowed her body to be found.
Cops took the body to the morgue, and from there, the Corpse Violator did his thing again by stealing the corpse and defiling it.
He made sure the evidence was found, too.
He always, always left DNA evidence behind in the form of his semen.
He’d taken nineteen women.
For nineteen years, he’d done this same song and dance.
Until last year.
Last year, no body had been found, indicating the Corpse Violator had struck again.
Everyone had thought that he had died.
Only, he hadn’t.
His plaything had outsmarted him, and the Corpse Violator would never, ever let that go.
I knew it deep down in my bones.
“Say something,” she urged.
I put my hands up behind my head, grabbing my neck, and stared.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “I can’t believe that you’re alive.”
She looked slightly green at that news.
“I was going to run away,” she admitted. “I had everything ready. I found the person to make my new IDs. I got three years’ worth of medication stocked up. I sold everything. Cashed in everything. I was literally about to run when Birdee found me.”
My hands dropped back to my sides. “We have to talk to your brother.”
She crinkled up her nose. “I know.”
“Today,” I said.
“Today?” she asked, voice raised. “We can’t do it today! It’s snowing cats and dogs outside!”
My lips twitched at her terminology.
“This isn’t something that we can play around with.” I paused, my eyes hard and open. “I’m not saying that it’ll happen. Because that would be fucking terrifying if it did. But what do you think would happen to this town if a serial killer is found here?”
She blanched.
“Your brother, who broke out of prison along with six other men, would be found. This town would light up like a goddamn Hallmark Movie at Christmas. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, would show up. His quiet life in a Montana town would be gone. He’d have to move.
All those lives that are based on a lie here would have to go, too.
And everyone would have to separate. No one could stay together just in case.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What do you think your brother would do if this serial killer found you here? ”
Her shoulders slumped.
“That’s right,” I said. “We need to figure this out. Right now.”
Her eyes were slick with tears when she said, “I didn’t mean to hide something so important. I just…I figured if I didn’t bring it up, if there wasn’t a trail that led me here, and I didn’t push anyone into doing any research, it would just be gone.”
“Or he could find the video of you and Birdee in the same hotel and come up here on the off chance that you came here. Facial recognition software is a real thing, Bernice.”
She covered her face with her hands. “Shit.”
I started closing the butcher shop down, cleaning up as I went.
When I was done, I headed outside to start the truck.
I made sure to set the heater on high before heading back toward the shop.
When I got through the door, she was already there slipping on her jacket, having retrieved it from The Mercantile.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” she grumbled, dragging her feet as she followed me outside.
Before her boots—which were wholly inadequate for the Montana weather—could touch the snow, I hauled her up in my arms by wrapping both arms around her thighs and lifting.
She squeaked as her hands went onto my shoulders and clutched.
When I got to my truck, I let go of her legs with one arm and yanked the door open.
When she was safely inside and her seat belt was buckled, I walked around the truck and looked out over the roads.
The plow hadn’t been through yet. Probably wouldn’t be through until much later.
But I could still see the outlines of the curbs, marking the way.
The drive to Creed’s place took twice as long as it usually did from my shop, and all the while, Bernice squirmed in her seat.
Her breathing had escalated, also, and I was watching her like a hawk the entire drive.
Every slip caused her breath to catch. Every bump caused her to inhale swiftly.
By the end of the drive, she was hanging onto her breath for dear life.
“You got your inhaler?”
She patted her pocket and then looked at me, eyes wide as fuck.
She didn’t have it.
Goddammit.
That was going to make me show my hand.
“Where’d you leave it?” I asked.
“The counter at The Mercantile.”
I reached over her and yanked the glove box open.
Since my truck was older than dirt, the glove box fell off at her feet, and several things fell out.
A box of condoms—expired, because I hadn’t used them since a certain someone had moved in next door.
A bottle of Jack.
And an inhaler that I kept in my truck, her medicine and dosage, just in case she ever needed it and didn’t have it.
She would ask why, I was sure.
I’d have to come up with a good lie.
But no questions came out of her mouth.
She just snatched the inhaler up, shook it, then pressed it to her mouth.
The truck continued to idle, the old Cummins Diesel purring in the background, as she closed her eyes and waited for the medicine to do its job.
She shivered, and I reached back behind my seat and produced a blanket that I also kept there just in case I saw her and she was shivering.
I was a fucking goner.
I had her favorite foods in my cabinets at home. Her favorite blanket brand. Her favorite drinks in my fridge.
Literally, I stalked her so fucking well that I probably knew her better than she knew herself.
I wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, and her entire body relaxed instantly. “Oh.”
“That’s the only one I have, though,” I said apologetically. “You get any colder, and I’ll have to take my jacket off.”
Her eyes went soft as she took a deep breath.
Much easier than the ones before it.
We sat in the driveway another ten minutes before the front door opened and Creed stepped out, looking worried.
“Shit.”
“Come on,” I said as I shut the truck off. “Let’s get it over with.”
I got out and rounded the hood.
She had the door open and was about to step out when I caught her the same way I’d picked her up earlier.
Slamming the door closed, I walked us across the yard that was covered in a foot of snow and dropped her on the front porch.
“What’s going on?” Creed asked.
Birdee appeared at the door behind him.
I jerked my chin. “Inside before she freezes.”
Creed stepped inside, caught the blanket around Bernice’s shoulders, and tugged her inside as well.
I followed, kicking my boots off in the plastic tub near the front door.
Birdee threw the door closed behind me just as Creed said, “You didn’t shoot that moose with a twenty-two, did you?”
Bernice rubbed her face with her hands, the red rescue inhaler clutched between two fingers before she miserably said, “I was the target of a serial killer.”
An hour later, Bernice sat at the kitchen table sipping a hot cocoa as Birdee, Creed, and I sat crowded around her.
Apollo was on my phone, Denver, the Dixie Wardens Sawtooth Montana Chapter club president, on Birdee’s. Then there was Silas, the national chapter president, on Creed’s.
Bernice had just spilled her guts for a second time in an hour, and it was still just as much of a shock as it was the first time I’d heard it.
“That guy hasn’t given fucking anything up in nineteen years. Then he fucks up, fucks this corpse in front of you in a bathroom stall, then you ID him, and he stalks you for nearly a year before you escape.”
“How tight is your security, Apollo?” Denver asked, worried.
“From what I understand, this Corpse Loser is connected. He has people helping him. He’s been able to adapt with the times, and he hasn’t been caught on any video camera in the years that they’ve been out there.
In fact, just as fast as information is brought up on him, it disappears.
Someone who has knowledge in technology is helping him. This guy has to be old by now.”
“It’s like a vault,” Apollo assures us for the second time. “And I know y’all were worried about Birdee’s visit to see Bernice, but I erased any and all information involving their little meet-up. This Corpse Violator won’t find anything that leads him back here.”
“Other than he could start trying to connect his dots. It’s not like it’s a secret that Birdee was down there in the same hotel as me,” Bernice pointed out.
“I’m not saying that he’ll make the leap, but he could.
He could start looking at anything that might help him find me.
Maybe it’d just be a cursory look, but it’d be a look, nonetheless. ”
Apollo hummed. “I will do another look-through, but I’m not worried about this. The only way he’s finding you is if he comes here accidentally.”
“You said that you didn’t bring anything with you, right?”
“Not a single thing,” Bernice confirmed. “Everything is new. I didn’t bring even a single photo with me.”
“I did.”
I looked over at Birdee, who looked worried.
“You took something of mine?”
“Just a photo,” she said. “You left your wallet open on the table, and I snuck out a photo. It was of you and Creed.”
“That’s not a problem,” Apollo said.
“Are we not worried that Bernice was being watched at the moment that she met with Birdee?”
That question was asked by me.
Silence.
“Shit.” Creed leaned forward, looking sick.
“No.” Bernice shifted forward too. “I was very, very, very careful. Like, I was about to run away carefully. I watched eight months of true crime. Did so much research on how to escape without a trace that I know I wasn’t followed.
Everything I did was careful. I can assure you that I was not followed.
Nor was anyone even aware that I was in the city.
I even escaped the security detail that was on me from the FBI. ”
Relieved breaths sounded across the line.
“So what do we do now?” Birdee asked.
“She lives,” Apollo suggested. “And I do what I do best. I’ll find him.”
“No one in twenty years has been able to find this guy,” I pointed out. “And there’ve been a whole lot of fucking people working on this. Hackers galore have had this case as their ‘I’m going to solve it’ case of a lifetime. You’re not going to find this guy.”
“Bet.” Apollo sounded confident.
I wasn’t confident, though.
But, likely that was because I’d become a bit obsessed with the woman, and I didn’t trust her safety to anyone. Not her brother. Not Apollo. Not Denver. Not even herself.
Maybe I’d do the finding of this serial killer asshole.
I mean, after all, it would take a stalker to find a stalker, right?