EARLY IN MY career, I worked on a piece for the local news. It was about a boy—I won’t use his name—but he had a horrible illness. The kind that parents won’t even explain to their other children for fear that they will never sleep again. I read up on it before the interview. Even as an adult, I wasn’t the same for days.
When it came time for our meeting, I felt sick to my stomach. Driving to his home, I thought about turning around at every single intersection. I didn’t, though. When I arrived, his mother walked me into their sun-room. The boy sat in his wheelchair, his eyes bright but his body ravaged. I took the seat across from him and cleared my throat nervously.
“It’s okay,” the kid said in a voice at once frail and indomitable. “It’s not contagious.”
I laughed. He smiled. We talked for over an hour. I felt amazing when I left his house. As I drove back to my place, one thing he’d said stuck with me. When I’d asked him how he remained so happy, the boy answered:
“Who said I’m happy? It’s just life. I wake up. I face what I have to face. And I go to sleep. People always tell me how strong I am. I never really understand that. I can’t even lift a sheet of paper. I need help going to the bathroom. The truth is that I’m just who I am. I have what I have. I’ve never known anything different.”
I stood in that library and let his words straighten my back.
“I am who I am,” I announced.
A smiled crept up my face. And I went back to work.
I imagined I was that kid. That I confronted the mountain of madness that seemed to be crumbling all around me. Zora was working with Cassandra. She was going to tear my life apart. Or at least she was going to try. In the face of that possibility, I rose like a phoenix. My fingers flew across the keyboard, possessed with a new energy, a new determination, one that would never be dampened. I had a head start, and I intended to use it.
She thought she was so damned special. That she was the best investigator out there. But Zora had forgotten something. I’m a filmmaker. A damned good one. I’d canned half a dozen lesser known films and The Basement without her.
Smiling, I dove deep. I’d already spent hours parsing through Jasper’s life, not to mention the lives of his victims. When I had, though, I had been looking for something else. The perfect hook. With fresh eyes, I let my gut feeling guide me, and I searched for every article on Jasper’s arrest that I could find.
I read everything I came across, some of it material I’d seen and considered before. Like the story about Barbara Yost’s rescue. Someone at the station must have tipped off a local reporter. She was at the cabin when they rescued Barbara Yost. Video of the moment had gone viral: an emaciated woman covered in a thick blanket, crying as she was led through the darkness into the light of the camera. A perfect shot, really. One that solidified the crime scene in the minds of every American. One I would get for my film.
Then I dug deeper. I searched harder, smaller, more local. As that video played on every national news program, someone would tell the real story. The more intimate one. And there would be a detail that wasn’t as “sexy.” One that would slip into the ever-expanding ether of the American news cycle, the endless drone of the less popular, the less viewed, the less liked. The anti-viral.
That’s where I found it. Searching through the Daily Whale, I came across a front-page article. The reporter, on a ride-around with the Rehoboth Beach Police, had happened to be in a cruiser when the all-points came out on Jasper. Right after an anonymous call. The officer raced to the scene, arriving moments after the state troopers, too late to be a part of the headline news. The reporter took a single, grainy phone shot through the window. It was no wonder the image never caught on. Not only was it out of focus, but the subject, Jasper Ross-Johnson, the infamous Halo Killer, had a jacket thrown over his head. As the police ushered him into a patrol car, he could have been anyone. Male, female, maybe even a teenager.
That photo, however, nearly took my breath away. I stared for a second without realizing why. Then, in the corner of the shot, I noticed it. A small, blockish concrete building. An outhouse.
Frantic, I opened a new window and searched for stories about Miracle. I found the one I was looking for immediately. The first story to break. One showing the tiny outhouse within which a tinier newborn somehow survived four days in a cracked, dirty sink. I moved the two pictures next to each other on the screen.
“How’d I miss this?” I muttered.
There was no doubt. The scenes were identical. Jasper had been arrested in the very parking lot of Miracle Jones’s birth. A coincidence? That thought made me laugh. Not a chance. As I sat there, staring at the screen, the part of my brain that told stories took over. I imagined that night, the fall of the Halo Killer at the hands of Miracle Jones.
In my imagination, I pictured Miracle kneeing in the shadows, inches from the apex of her nightmare. When she closed her eyes, took the briny air in through her nose, the aroma triggered something deep in the primitive parts of her brain. She felt an overwhelming need to flee from that place. From the ghosts of her past. Her own infant screams echoed between her ears.
The agony of Miracle’s truth, however, had never been enough to stop her. She’d survived. She was famous for that trait, known across the Delmarva Peninsula. The steel of her spine straightened. She took in a deep breath, and a hand slipped into the front pocket of her jeans. Her fingertips brushed against the piano wire and electricians’ tape of a homemade garrote. She pulled it out, absent-mindedly admiring her work. Over the course of a few weeks, she’d watched videos on how to make it. Then she’d sat down with her supplies: eight thin metal rods, a roll of tape, and a length of translucent string. She tied one end to the center of a rod, then taped three to that, making a handle and grip. She did the same with the other side. And, like on the videos, she practiced on fruit, wrapping the wire around an orange, crossing the handles, pulling them apart. That first time, as the wire cut the fruit cleanly in two, she nodded. She had her tool.
Miracle’s boyfriend lived in Philadelphia. If she had wanted a handgun, it would have been no problem. He would have gladly contacted a friend of a friend. In fact, with her driving into the city alone to visit him, he would have thought nothing of it. She’d considered it, but a gun wasn’t enough. It was too good for the man that stole her mother away. No, she intended to loop the line around the man’s neck and pull him close as he thrashed and died. She wanted to feel him leave this world in pain and fear. Just as he’d done to so many others.
The time ticked close. He would be there in moments. She was sure of that. Her plans had been meticulous and perfect. Every step led to that parking lot, to the end of the Halo Killer at the hands of Miracle Jones.
Slowly, she lifted the garrote, held it out in the dim light from the one overhead lamp. Staring at the smooth surface of the line, she wrapped it around her own neck. Crossing the handles behind her back, Miracle closed her eyes and tugged. The wire bit into her skin. Her yelp of pain cut off as the pressure closed her airways. She jerked, then whipped the cord from around her throat, letting one handle fall to the ground. She bent at the waist, coughing, as her hand touched her skin. She felt the warm dampness of her blood and nodded. Just enough to look like self-defense.
As if on cue, a single light appeared, moving north on Coastal Highway. She froze, listening, picking up the soft rumble of a moped. It was him. He’d taken the bait she had left at the hotel room. Miracle crouched, her every muscle tensing. Her pupils stretched, turning her eyes black as she peered through the night. Slowly, silently, she picked up the other handle, savoring the weight of it in her dry palm.
He pulled into the lot as if it meant nothing. His indifference infuriated her, breaking down any last stitch of guilt associated with what she would do. He deserved a million deaths. And she deserved to deal every one.
The Halo Killer slipped off the seat of his scooter like a bird hopping on a ledge. Slowly, he moved closer, into the light. For the first time, she saw his face up close. She saw the weakness of his chin. The sallowness of his cheeks. The frailty of his fingers. Then the lamp illuminated his eyes, far darker than even hers. In them, she saw his truth as much as she saw her own.
Miracle rose out of the shadows. She had no intention of skulking like him. Lying in wait and pouncing on the helpless. No, she would come face-to-face with his evil, and watch as it burned.
He saw her immediately. His eyes widened, but he did not slow. Nor did he lunge forward. Instead, he moved like a long-lost lover, shy but unstoppable. The distance between Miracle and the Hallo Killer shrank. She lifted her garrote. He smiled.
In a flash, however, the intimacy of this final moment exploded in flashes of red and blue. Engines roared. Gravel sprayed. Without a thought, Miracle slipped back into the darkness as Jasper stared into the oncoming lights of a half-dozen squad cars.