But the girl without the fingers and the other bodies that kept cropping up said otherwise.
I shook my head, trying to dispel the ghosts.
Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a copycat. But I had a feeling, a sinking stone in my gut, that made me think something horrible was going on. Something that was just outside my reach.
“You almost done?” I heard Laney call.
I looked up, surprised. I must have been in the bathroom for a while.
“Yeah,” I called back, hastily pushing the file back into its hiding spot. “Just finished.”
I glanced down at my feet. I wasn’t done with Lester. He wasn’t letting me go.
I opened the door and quickly shut it behind me.
“You’re going to turn into a vampire if you stay in there any longer,” Laney said, smiling.
I grinned back. “If only you knew.”
7
Laney
She looked pissed.
“I don’t believe it.”
I watched as the woman leafed through the pictures Easton had just handed to her. She was in her mid-fifties, not exactly in the best physical shape, but I could tell she was still pretty underneath all that stress. Frankly, she looked haggard.
“I’m sorry,” Easton said, “but it’s true.”
“Marcy would never do this.”
I leaned up against the filing cabinet and frowned. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins, but it’s the truth. I was there, too.”
She gave me a dirty look. “Who’s this?”
“My assistant,” Easton said.
“What’s some silly little girl doing helping you?”
I gaped at her. I had never met a stranger that just randomly insulted me. Easton glanced at me and then back at Mrs. Jenkins.
“I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Jenkins, but this is the truth.”
She shook her head violently. “No. Not with Marcy.” She looked at me. “This is your fault, I bet. You took these pictures. You don’t know what you’re doing.” She seemed hysterical.
I couldn’t believe she was blaming me, but I was beginning to understand what Easton meant. People came to him when they were desperate. In a lot of ways, he was a last resort for these people, and they often were not exactly in the best way mentally or even financially. Easton’s job was to confirm suspicions, but very often the truth was so much worse.
I wondered if anyone was better off knowing. At least this woman knew not to trust her best friend and her husband anymore. At least now she could move on, even if it was painful.
“I took the pictures,” Easton said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins.”
She leaned back in her chair, defeated.
The look on her face was almost heartbreaking. I had never seen an adult look so broken down and depressed before. She was probably on the verge of tears.
I walked over to her and knelt down next to her chair. “I’m sorry. It’s going to be okay.”
And then it happened so fast. Easton went to say something as I reached out to comfort Mrs. Jenkins. However, she reacted so fast that I didn’t have time to even think about it. Suddenly her arms whipped out, knocking me back and away, sending the mug of coffee on Easton’s desk sprawling.
“Get away from me!” she shrieked.
I sat back on my hands, covered in coffee. The woman looked like a dog backed into a corner. Easton quickly moved around his desk.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
“Fine,” I said, standing up.
Mrs. Jenkins stared and slowly regained control of herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Clean up in the bathroom,” Easton said softly in my ear. “I’ll take care of her.”
“I’m really fine,” I said back, and he nodded.
I walked off, back toward the bathroom. I shut the door behind me and leaned up against the wall facing the toilet.
I was fine, but shaken. I had never seen a person react like that, with such animal instinct and revulsion. Easton had probably been trying to warn me away from trying to touch her; he’d probably seen that before. For me, though, it was totally new, and it seriously shook me.
I let out a breath and looked down. Right then, something caught my eye. It looked like the corner of a file folder poking out from behind the toilet. It was just a corner, but it was definitely there.
Curious, I knelt down next to the bowl and reached around. Taped to the back of the toilet in a little nest was a thick file folder. Without thinking, I grabbed it and pulled it out.
It was heavy and full of images. Written on the tab were the words “The Fingerless Killer” in black ink.
I sat on the toilet and opened the folder.
The writing was in his handwriting. It was Easton’s, obviously from back when he’d worked for the FBI. The first page was a field report, really dry at first until I got to the crime scene description.
Dead girl, fingers missing, possible sexual assault. No DNA or any other evidence found.
I blinked, suddenly remembering the day Easton had come and checked on me. That had happened right after he’d read a story about a woman that had had her fingers cut off.
It had to be a coincidence. But then again, why was he hiding a file from me?
Nervous, I turned on the water in the sink to mask any sounds I made. I knew I should just put it back, not read it at all, but I couldn’t help myself. This might even be the reason he had been so angry at me for going through his files when I’d first started.
It was like the holy grail. The right thing to do was to put it back and pretend like I had never seen it. But sometimes the wrong thing seemed so much better.
I began to read, skimming through it. There were pictures, horrible pictures of crime scenes and bodies, and I tried to skip over those. But what disturbed me more and more was the narrative that began to cohere.
Lester Seed was a serial killer working out of the Dallas area. He had a lot of victims, at least ten that I noticed as I skimmed, probably more. Some of the cases dated back a pretty long time, and it looked like the farther back I went through the file, the more the handwriting all changed.
It had clearly been worked by a few different people. But Easton and his partner were the most recent two names that I kept seeing come up again and again.
Lester Seed. He’d been caught by a freak accident almost. Apparently they found an old victim, extremely old, and got a piece of his DNA from her body. Maybe he had been sloppy early on, Easton speculated in some field notes. Maybe he wanted to be caught one day.
Easton and his partner, Martin, found Lester when his DNA matched a database of blood donors. They had staked him out, followed him around, taken countless hours of observations.
And then something had happened.
My eyes widened as I read the last field report, the grisly details becoming clear.
Slowly it dawned on me exactly why Easton had left the FBI, and why he was drinking so much.
Easton had become convinced that Lester was about to kill again. He had pushed for the bureau to do something, but they didn’t feel that they had enough evidence and wanted to continue to observe. Going against orders, Easton followed Lester Seed to his home and confronted him.