Chapter 14.

We make the drive into town in uncomfortable silence. My mind is racing and I know as much as she doesn't want to believe me, Kelsea's eyes tell it all.

She'd tried to explain it away, to make sense of this senseless act. She wants to believe things aren't as bad as they seem and part of me is jealous of that.

I'm jealous that she has such a hard time wrapping her head around such malice because it means she has never had to live through it before.

Sure, crime in New York is awful. There are countless stacks of unsolved homicides and muggings and all sorts of other depravity, but something about serial offenders just hits different.

It stirs a fear in us and a desire to give reason to the things that cannot often be explained.

The whole world is obsessed with them. Movie after movie, podcasts, Netflix series, books. They all try to explore the mind of these people who must be so different so other. Like they're alien to us.

Because to so many, that's true.

It's something to study and gossip about. It's something that draws the attention of even the most careless minds.

It is an entirely different experience for those of us who live so closely to these unexplainable, inexcusable people.

For us, the why is such a different kind of cross to carry.

Growing up I'd heard all about Bundy, Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, The Golden State Killer. They were the monsters we would tell stories about at sleepovers, trying to scare each other. I'd gone to movies and sat in theaters on the edge of my seat watching movies of fictionalized versions of these kinds of people.

You never think that it can happen to you. Not to your friends. Not in your town.

Until you live through it, the spectacle is just that. Living nightmares that took place in distant places, long ago.

They don't happen here and now and to you.

"We're here." Kelsea breaks the silence and my train of torturous thought.

She pulls her truck off onto the side of the road outside of a large gated lot. We get out and I follow her into the small dimly lit office building where a short bald man smokes a cigarette behind the counter, a thin plexiglass separating his office from the tiny lobby with three folding chairs and a small tv in the corner set to the news.

I do my best not to look at it, though the man's eyes seem transfixed on whatever they're covering right now.

"Hey," I say, getting his attention and he moves his eyes to me, annoyed. He puts out his cigarettes in the overflowing ashtray to his right and raises his brows at me expectantly. "I'm here to pick up my car?" I don't know why it comes out as a question. "The police had it towed here."

"Name?" He's still disinterested.

"Missouri Jacobs." I say lowly, something I've been in a habit of doing for a long time now, desperate not to draw attention.

"Alright." He huffs, patting his large belly. "I'll ring em and let them know you're here to pick up." He says, reaching for the phone beside him. "They'll pull it around to the gate. But so you know, backseat upholstery and the lining of the trunk was removed, I don't got no liability on that. It's the way it came."

Fuck.

I shutter to think how much this rental is going to cost me now that it's not only wrecked but ruined.

An even worse thought than the money I'll now owe, is what he said. The police removed the backseat and the lining of the trunk? The only reason they'd do that is if they really thought they were going to find something.

The police really think I what? Carried a body to my trunk before I dumped it in a ditch at the same spot my father had?

Realizing just how much they want to believe that I have something to do with these new cases makes me want to retch.

"Yeah ok." I say to the man, turning to leave the office when he calls me back.

"Need your ID." He says and I reach into my pocket to pull it out, but then I freeze.

"I don't..." I sigh. "I don't have it."

It's still in my coat pocket where I'd put it when I got released from holding at the jail.

"No ID, no car." He spits. "Same thing I told your friend." His spiteful gaze passes me to look at Kelsea behind me. "I know who you are." He says, looking back at me. "Knew your daddy pretty well back in the day. Can't say I'm surprised at what happened to him. He was always off." He says it so flippantly, like his words don't gut me. "Not surprised you're caught up in this too. Especially keeping that sort of company." He glares at Kelsea again.

"What the hell is your problem?" I snap. "You don't know me or her."

"I don't need to know either of you personally to know you're both trash." He laughs to himself. "A murder's kid and that thing."

I slam my hands against the plexiglass between us and I like the way he looks when he jumps back, stumbling out of his chair.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" I slap at the glass again.

"I'm a man who is about to have the cops down here so fast." He snaps back.

Kelsea pulls on my arm. "Come on, he's not worth it."

"I'm not worth it, huh?" He laughs. "At least I know what the hell I am. You people think you can just make it up as you go along, tell people what you are and the rest of us are just supposed to play pretend with you? You're sick in the head is what you are."

Anger surges through me like a white hot wave and my fist is flying before I can even comprehend what I'm doing.

I punch into the plexiglass between us and watch with a smile as it breaks, the man's pig features twisting in surprise, his beedy eyes going wide.

"That's destruction of property you little bitch!" He shouts, inching forward to grab the phone off of the receiver, standing back as far as the cord will allow him to while he shouts into the phone. "I'm gonna take you so far down even your piece of shit daddy wouldn't be able to find you."

"We have to go!" Kelsea yanks me back, tugging and jerking until she's got me outside of the office and is shoving me towards the truck. "He's calling the cops, let's go!"

Adrenaline still pulses through me as I run and climb up into the passenger seat of her truck and her tires squeal, kicking up black snow and gravel in our wake.

"He's a damn prick!" I shout as we fly up the road.

"Yeah but you're an idiot." Kelsea fires back.

"What?" I turn in my seat. "He's the one who was saying-"

"They're words, Missy, you don't think I've heard worse? You can't let stuff like that get under your skin. He got exactly the reaction he wanted and now the cops are for sure going to be showing up to your door."

"I don't care!" I snap but she lets out a low scream.

"I do!" She says. "You don't understand what it's like to be me! You don't get it. You have been through shit but so have I. We have different baggage to carry. You think the cops hate you?" She laughs. "You have no fucking clue what a place like this would do with someone like me if they had the chance. I can't get dragged into shit. Can't you see it's not the same for me as it is for you? You should have just left!"

"I-I..." I can't form any words that will assuage what I did. I hadn't been thinking, not really. I was just trying to defend her, myself. I thought in the moment I was helping but the way she grips the steering wheel now with such force the knuckles on her fingers turn light, I know I fucked up.

And not even just for her.

The police already think I had something to do with the Linn girl, and I don't know if they'll figure out that I was at the scene for the other one. I should be keeping my head down and instead I placed a target on both of our backs.

"Stop the car." I shout, and when she keeps going I scream it again. I grab at the wheel until she swerves off onto the side of the road and I swing the door open and jump out.

"What the hell are you doing?" She screams at me from inside the truck but I just shut the door and take off back up the road.

She was right, after all.

She cannot be dragged into this, whatever this is. I can't cause more harm to people around me. Whatever is going on here, going on with me, it's my baggage and mine alone.

I'm the one who has to carry it.

I'm the one who has to figure it out.

I hear her trying to turn the truck around but I duck into the trees where she won't be able to see me.

I watch from my spot as she circles back and forth three times before she seems to have finally given up.

When I think it's clear, I trudge back up the small hill up onto the side of the road again and I just start walking.

After a while I can see downtown approaching and I keep going. Just keep walking. I don't know where I'm going, I just know I can't go home. Not right now. She'll look for me there. And if not her, then the police surely will.

I do my best to keep my head down as the wet crunchy ground turns into sidewalks that slowly become thicker and thicker with people.

I make my way through town, stopping once to look up the road where yellow caution tape still flaps in the wind. People just keep passing that alley without sparing it a glance. As if her body wasn't just there days ago.

I don't even know her name.

I'd touched her lifeless body, and I didn't even know who she was.

I keep walking until I find myself at the foot of a brick staircase that leads up into the library.

I slowly take the steps one by one, in my mother's boots. Literally in her shoes walking the same path she'd walked every Saturday for as long as I could remember.

I push into the big glass doors and breathe deeply as I take in the scent of old books. Of worn leather chairs. Of the smell of a memory.

I bypass the front desk, hoping no one looks up from their filing to notice me.

I follow my feet down two rows of Historical Fiction and make a left at the Young Adult section. Up on the wall, right where I knew it would be, is one of my mother's paintings. A beautiful landscape painting of a farm house with rolling green hills in the distance and a small wooden swing, frozen forever in it's stillness hanging from one of the trees.

I used to come in here on the weekends while I waited for my mother to finish her children's art class in one of the back rooms. I was always jealous of how talented she was. How she could create these places in her mind and with the twist and twirl of a brush she could make them real for all of the world to enjoy.

I resented her for being so good at something when there was utterly nothing special about me.

What I'd give to sit and watch her turn a blank canvas into a work of art just one more time.

Leaving her paintings in the house behind will always be one of my regrets.

Though most were ruined with her blood, I could have salvaged the ones left untouched, but I hadn't. I don't even know what ended up happening to them.

So many things I don't know.

I straighten my spine and look upon her work with awe for a moment longer before I go to the back, slipping into the small computer room and closing the door behind me.

I pick the furthest computer and pull back the rolling chair with steel in my blood. There is too much I don't know, and I need to find some answers.

With a jiggle of the mouse the screen comes to life and I move the cursor over the blue and yellow internet icon and double click, allowing it to open to the saved pages.

The library website, The New York Times website, and on the third tab, The Faulkner Journal.

I click open the latter and right there on the main page, a story is covering the disturbing disappearances of three local girls.

Linn Pierce, the first of the three. She was a beloved daughter and sister. She played volley ball on the school team and had a boyfriend Named Shawn. She and her family were due to move out of Faulkner in the summer to be closer to family on the East Coast. Her body was found in a ditch, naked and beaten beyond recognition. She had last been seen at school.

Courtney Tolbert. The second missing girl. She was sixteen and had just gotten her driver's license. She was in the school marching band and tutored elementary school kids in math after school three days a week. She had four younger sisters. Her body was discovered in an alley, jammed beneath a dumpster naked, and severely beaten. She had last been seen by her parents as she drove alone for the first time to go and meet friends at a diner downtown.

Both girls, while suffering brutal injuries, were suffocated.

And now, Jasmine Vines.

Missing and presumed in danger.

Unlike the others, who they said were about, they said she is.

Jasmine is seventeen years old and skipped a grade and is on track to graduate early with early acceptance to Yale University where she will attend in the fall. Her parents are offering a $20,000 reward to anyone who can bring forth any information leading to her whereabouts. They remain hopeful that their only daughter will be returned safely to them and thank the community for their continued prayers and support.

What the article cannot yet say is that her body will be found in a field. She will be naked and beaten and like the others, although there will be blunt force trauma to her head, her final cause of death, will be suffocation.

Right this moment her body likely already lays in that field. Alone and cold.

Police are sparing no time in their hunt for this killer. FBI and neighboring stations are also helping in their efforts to bring back peace to Faulkner.

The articles mention no connection to my father's past crimes, but I know by now the police are already looking into a copycat killer.

Only this copycat is more than just that.

He's not only targeting the same age and displaying the same modus operandi, he's not just a twisted freak set on being like my father in his killings.

He's copying my father's murders down to the minute details.

Whoever this new killer is, he wants to be John Jacobs, not just admire his handiwork.

I stare back at those three faces on the screen. Their cases and discovery is not the only thing that stands out to me...but their faces.

They are identical ages as my father's first three.

Madison Reach.

Trina Kelley.

Rebecca Reeves.

They even look like them.

Down to the freckles across Jasmine Vines's nose, so similar to the ones Rebecca had.

How twisted? How vile? How evil must a person be to do this? To put this place that had already lived through this nightmare once through it all again? And like this?

The articles all end with the same phrase.

"The police at this time have no leads, but continue to search and ask anyone with any information to come forward."

The line sticks out to me over and over. Likes it's reaching through the screen and shaking me.

Anyone

With

Any

Information.

I do have information.

Their faces stare back at me.

Jasmine especially.

The others have been returned to their families and by now are in their final resting place where they can hopefully find whatever peace may wait outside of this cruel world that took them away too soon.

But Jasmine...

She's still out there.

All alone.

While her parents still cling to hope that she will be back in their arms, warm and thankful to be with them once more.

I know I can help her.

My help will come too late, but I know where she is. I can bring her back to her family, if not in the way that they wish, I can at least give them resolution.

I look at Courtney Tolbert, her big green eyes beg me not to do to Jasmine what I did to her.

I'll help you, Jasmine.

I just have to do it in a way that doesn't land me back in a jail cell.