And every second she spent around me put her in more danger. So why hadn’t I sent her away yet?
Because I was still hoping it wasn’t true.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed. I’d gotten good at spacing out, at watching motionless as time slipped by and I fell into a quiet meditation.
And then I caught sight of the pink robe again, but this time it wasn’t from the front door.
“Upper window,” I said.
“Huh?” Laney asked, looking up from her phone.
“Look.”
I handed her the camera and she looked through the viewfinder. It took her a second, and then she began to snap pictures.
“Holy shit,” she said.
I laughed as she took pictures. Even without the camera’s zoom, I could clearly see the woman and the man standing in front of the window and gently kissing. It was almost a tender moment, and probably one shared often. I was willing to bet it turned them on to risk getting caught, though the idea that someone was actually watching never really seemed possible.
“This has to be enough proof,” Laney said.
“More than enough.”
“I’m almost disappointed.”
“Why? This is more than I normally get.”
“No, I mean in her.” She paused and lowered the camera. “She looked so normal.”
I gently took the camera from her. “She’s still normal, Laney.” I snapped a few pictures until they disappeared. “Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. I turned the key, the engine roaring to life, and we headed back toward the office.
I locked myself in the bathroom to develop the film while Laney busied herself with whatever she did on her laptop. I wasn’t too worried about it as I went through the usual routine.
Developing film was soothing. I liked that I knew exactly what chemicals to use in exactly what proportion and order, and I knew when it was finished. The final product was because of my own two hands.
Plus, it was an excuse to look at the file again. Once the film was hung up to dry, I reached around behind the toilet bowl and pulled the folder from its taped pouch. I sat down on the seat and opened the file.
Lester Seed. Forty-three, single, blond hair, brown eyes. Five-foot-nine and two hundred pounds. He spoke with a slight lisp, but everyone described him as friendly. Some neighbors even went so far as to say that he was the nicest man they had ever met.
He volunteered at children’s organizations, which was a detail that always made me shiver. He worked as an insurance adjuster for a large company and had never had a single complaint from a superior.
All in all, Lester seemed normal.
Except he wasn’t.
It took us over a year to track him down. I couldn’t say why, but there was something about the case that drew me to it almost immediately. It had sat in our unsolved drawer for years, and for whatever reason I had pulled it out and begun to work it from the start.
I hit the same old roadblocks as everyone else. Each victim had her fingers removed, and there were signs of sexual assault, but there was never any DNA. There were no eye witnesses, and very often we couldn’t properly I.D. the girls. They were always girls, too, young girls, but never under the age of eighteen. Lester was a killer and a sick fuck, but he didn’t hurt children.
At least, we found that out later.
It sucked me in, body, mind, and soul. My partner, Martin Rodriguez, didn’t think anything of it at the time. He used to joke that I was trying to solve the unsolvable, and that I shouldn’t waste my precious hours on useless cases.
But each night I came back to the file. We were calling him the Fingers Killer back then for a lack of a better name.
He had over twelve victims that we knew about. We suspected he could have upwards of twenty, especially since the bodies ranged so far through time. He’d been active for over fifteen years, and we worried it could go even further back.
I worked that case harder than I’d ever worked anything in my life. I was obsessed, falling deeper and deeper into the pit as I learned more and more about the town. He was based in Wilder Town, Mississippi, a tiny place just like Mishawaka. Maybe that was what drew me to it from the start.
Maybe I was trying to avenge the ghosts of the dead girls because I felt like I knew every single one of them.
I got my first break after a month. I noticed a pattern to the bodies based on geography, and when we traced the pattern to some of its logical conclusions, we found more bodies.
And more bodies meant more evidence. Suddenly, the Fingerless Killer case was blown wide open. We had another six victims, one of which went back twenty years.
That girl from twenty years ago, she was Lester’s biggest mistake. I figured she was his first, though I never knew about it.