THE LIST SLOWLY began to take form.
She had Kent introduce us.
She set up the interviews.
She ran me ragged.
She disconnected my phone service.
She had Kent tell Steph that I had upset Cassandra.
What else could she have done? Could she have been the reason I felt like someone was watching me? Could she have placed the flower outside my door? Cleaned my apartment out?
One thing she had done, without a doubt. She had handed me the fateful gun that killed the Halo Killer.
How had I not seen it before? How could I have thought Jasper was playing me? When all along, it had been someone else. She had led me on a wild chase. Kept me off-balance for weeks. Played on my recklessness, exaggerating it until it became predictable. She could have done it all.
Zora.
Motive may be the most important tool in storytelling. A person can do anything, anytime. History has surely taught us that. But any action that can’t simply answer a singular question will ring untrue, unbelievable. And that question is—why?
Maybe that was how Zora had fooled me for so long. My gut might have hinted. My mind might have caught on to the inconsistencies. Yet I never could have imagined why Zora, at the top of her game, would do so much to risk it all.
Miracle Jones.
I remembered Zora’s stories. Her parents. The young filmmaker who’d saved her. The truth, or at least part of it, was piecing itself together. But I needed to know for sure. I needed to catch Zora in the act.
Standing alone in my apartment, I thought about Jessica. About how she had left the project earlier. How she had said Zora had told her that I shouldn’t call anymore. She was in on it too. Zora’s little helper. As I realized that, a plan slowly took shape in my mind. I called Jessica.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you available?”
“Sure,” she said. “Did you finally edit that footage?”
“Well,” I said, pausing. I had to know. The hunger had to be fed. “No. I actually need you to meet me at the train station. Bring all your camera equipment.”
I listened to her breathing for a moment. When she spoke, her confusion seemed louder than her words.
“I thought we had all the film we needed?”
“One more shot.”
I pictured it. A grand confrontation where it had all begun. Standing on the dune. The song of the ocean as our score. Miracle’s birthplace as the backdrop. Zora, Miracle, and me. The truth revealed below a sprawling sunset. It would never happen. Not like that. But it was visually stunning to consider.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Back to where it ended. I’m onto something new. Something big!” And, with a smile on my face, I set the hook. “Just don’t tell Zora.”
I didn’t purchase train tickets. I didn’t pack up my equipment. I didn’t call an Uber for a ride to the station. No, I sat on my couch and waited until my door handle rattled. The lock popped. And Zora strode into my apartment, uninvited but not unexpected.
“You’re a persistent little shit, aren’t you?”
“Jessica called you, huh? I figured she was your plant.”
Miracle walked in behind her. She moved to the window and lowered the shade. Zora shut the door behind them, locking it tight.
“I guess it’s time for this to end,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess it’s time for the truth.”
Zora shook her head. “I guess it is.”
ACT THREE/SCENE 14—ALTERNATE ENDING
EXT. MOTEL—NIGHT
The Halo Killer stalks the shadows outside a dark motel. A light in one of the rooms comes on. A silhouette passes in front of the glass, small, almost childlike. It is Miracle Jones. And the trap has been set. A CHYRON appears on the screen: AUGUST 13, 2016.
After finding the key card in that abandoned parking lot by the sea, Jasper haunted the motel for hours. Like a siren of the ancient tales, it sang to him, beckoning him into the light. Urging him to try every lock until one revealed his prize.
Patience, planning, purpose.
That had been his mantra. Even in the darkness of that night, his dry lips moved as he repeated it softly, over and over again. Those three words had kept him free. Yet, with each passing second, they became harder to pronounce. Harder to understand. Slowly his whispers lost meaning, slipping into the animalistic rumble of a predator.
After so long. After so much practice. What could call him this strongly? With such passion? Only the past wielded that weapon with such success. Only the closing of a circle left open for far too long.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
As if in answer, she appeared. Or, at least her silhouette did. A light flickered to life inside one of the ground units. A lithe shadow slipped between the glow and the gossamer curtains. With no detail, without even seeing her face, he knew.
Jasper moved. He stalked through the gloom, inching closer and closer. With each slithering step, he watched her. He had to have her. She was it. She was the one. The only one. He was closer. So close. Almost there.
The light cut off suddenly. The soft glow through the translucent fabric turned to blackness, swallowing the shadow of his prey in a single blink of the eye. Jasper froze, confused, panicked. Frantic. All control slipped from his fingers as he clutched the key card even tighter. Breaking into an awkward sprint, he covered the last few feet separating them. Without a pause, he jammed it into the lock. The mechanism clicked. He burst into the room. And fingers that felt like five steel rods wrapped around his thin neck. As he gasped for breath, Jasper was slammed into the wall. The windowpane rattled and the door swung shut. The light turned back on, blinding him for a moment. A dangerous voice hissed in his ear.
“If you move, I’ll fucking kill you.”
The light blazed. Zora’s pupils focused to pinpricks of black as she stared into the eyes of the Halo Killer.
“If you move, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Would she? Certainly. Was she tempted to just do it? Very much so. As her fingers tightened, however—as she relished the idea of ridding the world of this pathetic little man—she saw her in the periphery. Miracle stepped away from the light switch, her eyes wide and as dark as Zora’s mood.
Zora’s grip loosened as she remembered why they had come this far. Why she had risked everything. She felt him against her palm as he struggled to take a breath. Turning her shoulder, she dragged him toward the single queen-sized bed. When she tossed him down onto the mustard-yellow bedspread, she marveled at how little he weighed.
The Halo Killer sputtered, his frail hand covering his throat. He did not look human. His hairless skin glowed a shining pink. No stubble. No eyebrows. No arm hair. Not even lashes. Nothing. And he was small, almost childlike, with the mannerisms to match. But it was his eyes that troubled her. They stared back at her undaunted, as if looking for an opportunity to strike. Air hissed between his lips, and her hand slipped into her front pocket, finding the revolver hidden beneath her leather jacket.
Miracle inched closer. When the movement caught his eye, his attention snapped toward her. His hands moved, fingers bending into claws. Zora gripped the gun, pulling it free. Before she could level the barrel, she stopped, staring, for something had changed. As he focused on Miracle, his fingers relaxed. The murderer became a man. The Halo Killer became Jasper Ross-Johnson once more. As if, somehow, he already knew.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Zora took a silent step backward as Miracle sat beside him on the bed. He remained still, transfixed.
“You killed my mother,” she said softly.
“My first,” he said.
There was no way he could have known that. It was impossible. The gun dangling at her side, Zora had never experienced something as surreal in her life. Joined together in a cheap motel room that smelled of marsh and chlorine bleach, the three could not have been more different. A professional, a victim, and a killer. That’s how she saw it, at first.
Miracle met those eyes without flinching. Her right hand slipped across her stomach, cupping the growing child within.
“Do you remember her?” she asked.
“Every day,” he said.
Zora flinched. She wanted to lunge across the room and smash the avian bones of his face in with the butt of her gun. Miracle’s presence held her in check. All she could do was watch and listen.
“What did she look like?”
His eyes closed. “Broken.”
Miracle flinched. And he noticed. His tongue darted out, moistening his lips. At the same time, two fingers pinched at a nonexistent eyebrow.
“Tell me about her.”
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“I am.”
“I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t planned. I saw her at night, on the beach. Much like … But it wasn’t that. She was alone. But there was something else. Something … calling me.
“It might have been the way she moved. It was not … right. She lurched. Staggered. Like a wounded … I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. But it was something … more, too. Something that slipped through the night and entered me. A … sadness.”
She shifted closer. “Sadness?”
“Broken,” he whispered. “I could tell you more. I could tell you everything. But that’s not what you’re after, is it. That’s not why you brought me here. Because that’s what you did, correct? Somehow, you found me and you brought me here. How?”
Miracle glanced at Zora. Zora cleared her throat.
“Tell him,” Miracle said.
“I waited for a missing-person report in this area.”
“So, what,” he said. “I was careful. I was always careful. They could not figure me out. No one could.”
“I didn’t have to figure you out,” Zora said coolly. “I needed to figure them out. All the women you murdered. I stepped into their shoes, not yours. I bought a neon-yellow Walkman, the exact model that her mother had with her. I added the flower to make sure the hook set. But otherwise, I became one of them. One of your victims. You did the rest. You found me.”
He nodded slowly. “You should be a detective.”
She ignored that comment. A silence spread between them. Jasper returned his attention to Miracle.
“She said something about your birth.”
“What?”
“Your mother. I believe it all happened that same night. Your birth. Her death. Beautiful … in a way.”
“My mother abandoned me in a sink—”
“You are the Miracle Baby,” he said, his voice rising. “I remember. I remember well.”
A new expression grabbed his face. His lips pursed. His eyes focused, and he nodded his head over and over again. Zora had never wanted to kill anyone as desperately before.
“You’re strong,” he said. “Not like the others.”
“I survived,” Miracle said. “I don’t know if I had a say about any of it.”
“Oh, you did,” he said. “Not in what was done to you. What you did with it. But it haunts you still. Anyone could see that. You want to know why she did it.”
“No,” Miracle said, her head turning. She rose, moving to the window. Peeling back the curtain, she stared at the darkness, cradling her stomach. “I need to know that I won’t.”