The Carolina Creeper is good at what he does, and I am afraid. I'm not good at being afraid, so I'm going to find him. I have to. It's the only option—and it's all I can do to avoid total obsession with it.
Andrew and I spend another date reading horrible things in case files. I'm fairly sure he's using vacation time to do so. I look up at him and smile. He is oblivious, reading glasses slipping down and forehead furrowed.
"Thank you," I say, as he looks up questioningly.
"If you're going to do this, I'm here to help, too. Well, as much as I can." He gestures at the pages in front of me. "Read. I have an hour left today to do this."
The biggest anomaly in the cases is the missing heiress: Teresa Morris.
There are only two realistic choices: The Carolina Creeper has either killed her or he still has her. I can’t decide which would be a worse fate. She was one of the last girls to go missing in North Carolina, but she gets a lot of attention because of her family—especially in the last year: Her mother died about fourteen months ago, and her entire estate was left to her missing daughter.
I find Sterling Morris’ final act of faith unsettling. She died believing her daughter was alive. I never want to have another woman with a flower bud tattoo under my gloved hands, but I cannot imagine wishing for anyone to survive what he does to the women.
Years of being trapped there would be more than I’d wish on an enemy. What sort of woman would wish that fate on her daughter? Or did she just foolishly think that her daughter was elsewhere? Safe and not his victim?
I’ve made use of my connections through the police department to get files from around the state, and I’ve looked for the missing girls. Andrew has used his ties to the paper to help me as often as I’ve wanted. Henry has left files out where he knew I'd see them. It still isn’t enough. Amateur sleuthing doesn't work like it does on TV. I haven't found some magical clue that would lead to the killer's apprehension.
Instead, the Creeper is watching me. I know it. His letter proves the fears I’ve tried to ignore the last year.
The man whose victims I’ve prepared for their graves, the man whose actions make me far too often unable to sleep, knows my name. He knows where I am. He knows who I am. The sheer weight of that realization makes me shudder. Too often we imagine that killers are people we'd notice, but in reality, they often aren't. Richard Ramirez, Paul John Knowles, Charles Schmid, Paul Bernardo . . . a lot of serial killers are charming and attractive.
"Jules?" Andrew slides a paper from one of my files toward me. A missing person's file. A thin, dark-haired woman. “What about this one?”
The woman in the picture is a light skinned Latina girl of the right age.
“She’s a likely candidate.” I read her name: “Ana Mendoza.”
“A lot of women are likely candidates,” Andrew points out. This is what he does. He switches to devil’s advocate.
“He usually picks paler girls,” I admit.
“As far as we know. There could’ve been others, ones we didn’t realize were his . . .”
That’s the part that’s maddening sometimes—one of the parts. For all we know there are dozens more who weren’t included in the list because they weren’t perfect matches. Until I can examine their bodies, or the police catch the Carolina Creeper, we can’t say for sure. Even then, we might not be able to find them all. That’s more common for killers than the myriad crime shows or thrillers admit: There are bodies that will never be found.
“Ana vanished from Wilmington,” Andrew reads.
I stare at her face. Heart-shaped, pretty, wide-eyed. I want her to speak to me, to let me know if she’s one of the women I’m looking for. The dead don’t truly talk, but their bones do. Their paper trails do. A lot of forensic information gives voice to the women who no longer can ask for help.
“She’s a strong maybe." I take Ana Mendoza’s picture and add it to the maybe file. There are so many dead girls, so many men preying on lost women. I’d tried to tell myself it was a coincidence that he left their bodies where I’d be their caretaker, but it hadn’t only been journalists drawing the unpleasant conclusion that it wasn’t an accident. They were fascinated because of my brother-in-law’s crimes, as if some people draw murderers to them. It doesn’t work that way, although most articles about Darren mentioned that I introduced him to my sister and I work with the dead. A part of me wonders if the Creeper’s interest in me is the fault of those journalists. It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that a killer is watching me—and not from behind bars like my brother-in-law.
“Next file.” I drop my gaze to the stack of photocopies of pictures of missing women. Some are no longer missing. Their files include autopsies. Most don’t. So many of the women in these files will never be found. So many not in these files won’t even be reported as missing.
Andrew reaches out and squeezes my hand. “It’ll be okay.”
All I can think about are the rest of the girls whose bodies we haven’t found. I think about Ana, and Maria, and Courtney, and Christine, and Yolanda, and the others whose names I don’t know yet. I want someone to stop the Creeper because of them. I want the list to stop where it is, no names added, no new bodies with ink etched on their wrists.
I want to stop seeing them on my table.
I slide a stack of missing person and Jane Doe coroners’ files out of the folders. “No, it isn’t, but it will be fine once he’s stopped.”
He wanted my attention, and now that he has it, I'm going to find a way to help the police stop him. There is no other option.
12
Tess
“Why don’t you stay at my place?” Michael’s hands stroke my skin, tracing tattoos as if he can read the stories by touch. If we reach a point where I need to share everything with him, we’ll start here: in bed, naked, where I’m not the only vulnerable one. I don’t want to discuss my skeletons, though; I want to be a blank slate. I want to be someone other than the woman with these memories.
I want to not expect pain to accompany caresses.
“I only sleep at my own house,” I explain for what might be the sixth time. If he were anyone else, I’d be done speaking. But I’m enjoying Michael and I’m on the verge of trying to be someone Michael wants to keep in his life. Maybe I miss a life with comforts, or maybe I want to be loved. I can’t say for sure. What I know is that I want to stay in Michael’s arms, and it’s been a very long time since I wanted that.
I still have limits. I have to have them, my rules, my pills, my forgetting. If not, I’m not sure what I’ll become.
“I don’t see why we can’t stay in the same place.”
“Yes.” I don’t admit more, but I see his eagerness. He looked for the woman I used to be, and I want him to see me. So, I roll over and set to distracting him. It’s not unpleasurable. He has a good body, trim and firm, and he has the sort of penis that justifies some of his arrogance. Nice girls tell you that size doesn’t matter. It’s a polite lie that we use when necessary, but it is a lie.