There are others.
Jarrod gripped the steering wheel hard and stared straight ahead at the back of the blue semi he was behind on I95. He tried to concentrate on the traffic, but he couldn’t get the detective’s words out of his head.
Others.
As many as three women.
It was now hitting him exactly what the detective had been insinuating: this guy might be a fucking serial killer. A serial killer. His wife and his four-year-old had not just witnessed a girl fighting with her boyfriend – they had very possibly witnessed a girl in the clutches of a serial killer. And they might well have witnessed her final moments before she was … tortured. Before she was mutilated. Before she was murdered. That thought was making his hands shake, which was why he was holding the steering wheel so hard.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a name … hopefully before this psycho picks another victim.
Jarrod looked over at Faith, at the back of her head – she was blankly staring out the passenger window. My God, it could have been her, he thought. This guy might have gotten in the car and pulled her out – tortured her, too. Mutilated, was what the detective said. Mutilated. The word had many meanings, none of them good. Cut open? Dismembered into pieces? Disemboweled? Jesus Christ. The graphic images inundating his brain were making him nauseous. ‘Thank God …’ he said aloud, without intending to.
Faith didn’t look away from the window. ‘What?’ was all she quietly asked.
‘Thank God,’ he repeated softly. ‘Thank God you didn’t open the door.’
He could hear her sniffling and even though he couldn’t see her face, he knew she was crying. He reached over and awkwardly stroked her hair.
And Maggie … Jesus, what would that man have done to a child? His brain couldn’t even go there. He had represented horrible people as a public defender in Miami. Mostly fuck-ups and drug addicts who made poor decisions because they were brought up in Shitsville with no role models and were beaten as kids and raised by gangs. But in those five years he had represented a handful of truly evil individuals – people who had no bleeding-heart excuse for being so fucked-up: psychopaths, sadists and sociopaths who enjoyed inflicting pain on others. Those people were why he got out of Miami, out of the PD’s office and out of criminal defense altogether. Being too good of a trial lawyer, going up against neophyte prosecutors who were still cutting their teeth in a courtroom, had resulted in him having an epiphany one day after celebrating another not guilty verdict with his home-invader/aspiring-rapist client: some people should never, ever be allowed to live in free society. Politically, morally, he opposed the death penalty, but quietly he acknowledged there were a few select people who deserved it. Scum that the world would be much better off without – human killing machines who, without conscience, hunted fellow humans for the thrill of it, not the necessity. Even a life sentence offered limited protection – anyone they were to come in contact with inside the system was at risk. And heaven forbid their sentences were ever reduced, thrown out, or commuted and they were released …
The thought made his blood run cold.
He checked the rearview, where Maggie sat in her booster, watching a DVD with her headphones on, remaining remarkably and uncharacteristically quiet. The car ride home from the police station had basically been the same as the ride up: silent and filled with tension. Faith continued to stare out the window, thinking about God knows what.
Yes, thank God she didn’t open the door. Thank God. But why hadn’t she called the police? Why hadn’t she told him what happened when she got home that night? The next morning even? He thought he knew the answer, but he suddenly wanted to demand she answer the question. That she say it aloud, admit that she had fucked up, that she had been driving drunk, so that he would know, like he might with a wayward teen or client, that she’d at least learned from all this. So that he would know there was a reason she hadn’t done anything for that girl. To know for sure she was driving shit-faced and was sorry for doing it would be strangely more comforting than believing she was apathetic.
He looked over at her again. He wanted to ask her. Ask her if she was drunk. The pressure in the car might be relieved a little, just by asking the question. Maybe she’d answer him, and maybe they’d talk – actually talk. Or yell. He’d take that – hell, he’d even welcome an argument. He looked back at the semi. He noticed it was a different one than the one he’d been behind for the last ten miles. When had that happened?
An overwhelming feeling of sadness mixed with shame came over him and he swallowed the confrontational question back down. Truth was, they didn’t talk much any more. They said words and exchanged pleasantries, and they definitely didn’t argue. All that was on him. It was the fallout from his mistake. He deferred to her on most everything and he didn’t argue, because he owed her that. Repairing a relationship after an affair takes time, a friend had advised him – a friend who should know. Rebuilding trust can take years and the slightest misstep – a sprinkle of doubt is all it takes – will crush whatever relationship you’ve managed to build up right back down. So be patient and be on your best behavior.
He stared at her beautiful honey-blonde hair. It fell just below her shoulders, but it used to cascade down her back in beachy, sun-streaked waves. He used to bury his face in it when she was sleeping and her back was to him – to smell the Freesia-scented shampoo she favored, mixed with her perfume, Ms Dior, and … her. He used to love to smell her, to breathe her in, because he couldn’t seem to get enough. He shook his head. The pressure in the car was too much to take.
‘He’s still out there,’ he announced suddenly.
Faith turned away from the window and looked at him.
‘This girl’s body has turned up and now that sketch is gonna come out with his face on it and he will put it together,’ he said quietly, matter-of-factly, as though he were talking to a client who he was strategically trying to get to cough up the truth – a truth that he could live with defending. ‘The detective is talking about three other murders they think this guy has committed, which makes him a serial killer, Faith. The detective is right – the press is gonna eat that up and that sketch is gonna be everywhere. And when the media finds out that a four-year-old is the eyes behind that sketch, Maggie and you will be everywhere. I don’t want it to happen, but it will. Because that’s the type of story that people are interested in.’
She started to tear up again.
‘Even if no one recognizes that sketch in the paper or on the news – or wherever the hell it is they put it – he will. Because he’s looking to see when he finally makes the papers. And he’s gonna know who helped the police sketch it. He knows there’re witnesses and now he knows they’re talking. Two witnesses: my wife and my kid. It won’t be hard for him to figure out the rest – name, address, phone number—’
She turned back toward the window, crying again. ‘If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working.’
That’s what he wanted to do. He’d wanted to scare her into admitting an answer to the question he was afraid to ask. He wanted to impress upon her how terrifying this whole thing was. How devastated he would be if he ever lost her to a madman. If he ever lost her, period. But the whole thing kept coming out wrong, like everything else he’d been saying for the past ten months.
So he clenched the steering wheel even harder and stopped talking and he didn’t finish the most disturbing fact he had hoped to scare the truth out of her with.
And that was that serial killers don’t like witnesses.