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My first step to figuring out how the victims were connected—if there even was a logical connection, given serial killers’ typically twisted reasoning—required digging into each victim’s past. With no clear work or recreational similarities among all three, it had to be something obscure that tied them together in the killer’s mind. Their secrets, their veiled lives, their transgressions—that’s what I was after.
It wasn’t hard to unearth everything about Scott Guffrey when I Googled his name and a dozen news reports popped up online about his relation to Kathryn Brannigan, daughter of Helen Brannigan, who was his fiancée at the time. Then shortly after Kat’s disappearance Helen became his ex. The question was why. I was pretty sure it had to do with Kat’s presumed death, but there had to be more to the story. There always was.
After a quick search for Helen’s last known address, I headed out. As soon as I pulled up to the ramshackle trailer, I could feel the strife, the ache, the sorrow that plagued this place. Row after row of godforsaken dwellings covered in mildew, walls chewed alive by rust, roofs sagging and ready for the meager weight of a falling leaf to send them tumbling down. The park was surrounded by kudzu monsters—trees transformed into fascinating grotesqueries by the bane of the South, an invasive vine introduced to check erosion, but instead gobbled up and strangled everything in its path. The kudzu grew up the sides of some of the trailers too, sticking its insidious fingers into seams and cracks. In urban slums human neglect was housing’s worst enemy. Here, there was another, more chilling wrinkle: Mother Nature slowly but inexorably reclaiming what was Hers.
I waded through knee-high weeds to the front door, running a gauntlet of broken toys and stuffed animals, their googly eyes staring disconcertingly up at me from their ruined bodies. The screen door dangled dejectedly from its sprung hinges, and the roof held at least a decade’s worth of debris. The whole trailer slumped like it was too weary to hold itself up anymore, making me wonder just how much longer it had before it collapsed into a depressed heap. A set of termite-chewed wooden steps led to the front door, crumbling under my weight. I wondered if the trailer represented the state of Helen’s soul after losing her daughter.
I held the cattywampus screen door open with my knee and knocked on the alligatored, cow-patty-brown main door, a dull thud that I doubted anyone could hear over the television blaring inside. The walls were so thin I could overhear people talking inside, so I knocked again, harder. This time a woman inside screamed, “Turn that TV down!” her voice growing louder as she neared the door. A moment later the background noise died and the doorknob rattled.
The first thing I noticed was the height of the woman who answered. Easily five-foot-ten. And skinny. Almost-never-eats skinny. Her black hair was cut into a chin-length bob that had probably looked chic at one point but had grown out to lay flat and lifeless against her sharp jawline.
“Hi, I’m Ari Wilburn. I’m looking for Helen Brannigan?”
She shifted to prop her hand on one jutting hip.
“That’s me. Whatd’ya here for?”
“I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking into your daughter’s disappearance about two years ago.”
“Lookin’ into it how? The police haven’t contacted me about anything.”
She was clearly guarded, tense, unwilling. I needed to break down the wall that divided us if I was going to get anything worthwhile from this trip.
“Can I level with you? My father was recently attacked—almost killed—and I think it might be connected to your daughter’s disappearance. I believe that the person who tried to kill my dad knows what happened to Kathryn.”
“Kat,” she corrected. “We call her Kat.”
Present tense call. She clung to a hope that Kat was still alive.
She stepped aside, holding the door open for me. “You wanna come inside?”
“Yes, thank you. I really appreciate this.”
I followed her into what she probably called the living room, but what anyone else would call a personal injury lawsuit waiting to happen. Within five steps forward, a foot-sized hole peeked through the floor to a patch of earth underneath.
“Sorry, watch your step. We had a roof leak and the floor got so wet it broke through.” A defeated look clouded her face. “Been meaning to fix that.”
Despite the trailer’s ramshackle state, the room was neatly organized. Toys in a wicker basket in one corner, books stacked tidily on a small bookshelf. On a clean sofa a little girl watched a DVD of the Disney animated feature Frozen while eating Cheetos. Crumbs fell in her lap and her fat little fingers turned a brighter shade of orange with every bite.
“Make yourself comfy. Want some coffee?”
“Sure, that sounds great.” While I hated to accept an offering from this penniless family, I needed a kick of caffeine after this morning’s early rise. I hated mornings, hitting the snooze button on my alarm at least five times before I could force myself out of bed. Tristan was convinced I was a vampire.
“Hi,” I greeted the little girl while Helen stepped into the kitchen. And I mean one step. The house was smaller than it looked from the outside. “I’m Ari.”
The girl glanced up at me and grinned. “I’m Tempest. I’m six years old. Have you ever watched this movie? I’ve watched it at least a bajillion times.” Her cheeks were full of food as she chattered, and I felt a light spatter on my cheek as I sat next to her. The TV was a big, boxy CRT model, at least twenty years old; the remains of a yellow Goodwill sticker clung to the chassis. I recognized the Craig DVD player as a cheap model sold at Dollar General, a discounter I wasn’t too proud to admit I’d shopped at with some frequency. Frozen was nearing the part where Anna met Olaf. I would never admit it to Tristan, but I had watched it so much that I memorized the entire movie and could sing every song ... and I often did while in the car, the shower, or pretty much anywhere alone.
“Oh yeah. I love this one. Who’s your favorite character?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “Elsa. I like her hair.”
“Me too! Though Olaf makes me laugh, so I guess I like him a lot too.”
Helen sat down next to me, handing me a cup of coffee. “Sorry about that.” She nodded toward Tempest. “She’s my little chatterbox.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I love kids.”
She leaned in to me and said conspiratorially, “Well, don’t let her catch wind of that or else you’ll be stuck here all day,” adding normally, “So whatd’ya wanna know?”
I didn’t know where to begin. I had looked up the case records at work the day before, but there wasn’t much to go on. No body found. No witnesses. Only a ripped screen in Kat’s bedroom window and several sets of boot prints outside the house, which could have been from anyone. Scott had been living with Helen at the time, and the ex-husband, Cody, had custody every other weekend. According to the case file, Cody had been a primary suspect in her disappearance based on his record—domestic assault. Several times against Helen, but he never touched the children. Apparently the man had a bad temper, but even Helen admitted he had nothing but hugs and kisses for his little girls, and he’d kill anyone who laid a hand on them. Just because he couldn’t keep his hotheadedness in check with his wife didn’t necessarily mean he killed his daughter. And without a body, no arrest could be made.
And that’s when the trail—and case—went cold.
“From what I understand, Kat was taken from her bedroom while she was sleeping. Did you ever have a hunch on who would have abducted her?”
“At first I thought it was Cody—my ex—trying to make a point. He had never been thrilled with the divorce, and hated the custody arrangement. But after he beat the crap out of me one night I decided it was the last time and I feared for the kids’ safety with him having a temper like that. Lord, if he ever beat the kids like he did me ...” She shook her head and closed her eyes as if pushing the images away. “I can’t bear to think about it.”
I wanted to hear her personal corroboration of the case file. “Did he ever hurt the kids?”
“No, never. The man adored them. Even basic discipline was always left up to me to handle. Wouldn’t spank them, barely even raised his voice to them. They were his angels, as far as he was concerned. Spoiled them rotten, too. Thought it was cute how they favored him over me. But still ... I always had reservations about them being alone with him after how he treated me. You never can be sure, y’know?”
“I’m glad you had the courage to walk away. That must have been hard.”
“Going from two incomes down to one was the hardest part. I knew getting child support payments would be like pulling teeth.” Glancing over at Tempest, Helen placed her hands over the child’s ears. “But getting away from that wife-beating prick was the best thing I ever did.”
Pushing her mother’s hands off her head, Tempest whined and returned to her world of ice and catchy melodies. I saw that she was oblivious to the adults’ discussion. Still, I instinctively kept my voice low, and Helen followed my lead.
“Any idea why he beat you?”
“Well, mostly ’cause of the guys that hit on me where I work. I bartend. Back in my prime I had it going on. Cody’d get all jealous when I’d come home with good tips ’cause he thought I did something extra to earn them.” She air-quoted the word “extra” and rolled her eyes. “Thought I flirted too much. Duh! You gotta flirt if you want good tips. That’s the whole friggin’ point—excuse my French. But I never did nothin’ more than flirt. Cody was convinced otherwise. Then he’d beat me. So I divorced his sorry ass.”
I wondered if the family drama swirling around them could have set Cody off.
“Do you think he took Kat?”
“I imagined he might have kidnapped Kat so he could have her to himself. In fact, that morning when I saw her empty bed I thought he had taken her, but when she never showed up—and hasn’t since ... well, obviously Cody doesn’t have her. He’s still pretty depressed about it and hasn’t been the same since. On weekends when he has Tempest all she says is how sad he is. So clearly it wasn’t him. It had to be someone else. As for who, I hoped the police would have figured that out by now.”
“What about Scott, your boyfriend at the time?”
“No, Scott would never hurt Kat. He was an amazing father. Had a son—two actually. Though the oldest is in the Air Force down in Florida right now. The younger one, Mikey, lived with us most of the time. A sort-of shared custody deal, but the mom ... well, you know how those things go. It’s never simple.”
I drew Helen’s attention to subtle details at the time of Kat’s disappearance. Had she ever noticed an unfamiliar vehicle parked down the street? She couldn’t remember. Had she ever seen a stranger walking past their house? No one that stood out to her. During the day Kat was abducted, had anything unusual happened? It was too long ago to recall. Someone had to have seen something, but those details were long buried, too deep for me to unearth.
What really bothered me, though, was two people in her life, gone. Too much death tied back to this woman to simply ignore the coincidence.
“Why’d you and Scott split up?”
“It just got ... hard after Kat went missing. I wasn’t myself. Always angry. Always trying to pick a fight with him. He never treated me bad, and he understood why, but I just couldn’t get past it. Things were ... tainted after Kat was gone. Scott was a reminder of her. I wonder if he’d still be alive today if I hadn’t broken up with him.”
“Do you know why anyone would want to kill Scott?”
“No idea. He was a genuinely nice guy. Even his ex-wife couldn’t say anything bad about him. Loved to go hunting with his uncle. Worked hard. Was even up for a promotion at work.”
“Where was that?”
“Drew’s Plumbing. Drew, his boss, loved Scott. Everyone did. He just had one of those easygoing personalities that you can’t help but like. I just can’t believe someone would want to kill him. Why?”
Her eyes searched mine. I looked away, discomfited. Tempest was still engrossed in Frozen. When I looked back at Helen, she was rising to show me to the door.
“Wish I could tell you more.” Helen sighed as I eased past her and gingerly placed the ball of my foot on the rotting steps. “So many whys,” she added dreamily. “Like, why don’t my sorry-ass neighbors help me with my yard? God, how I miss having a man around.”
There was a private ache in her voice, and I didn’t know quite what to say. “You have a nice day, Helen,” I muttered stupidly, following the path I’d made in the overgrown grass back to my car.
“You let me know if you find out anything, hear?” she called after me.
“I will.”
I had a suspicion about one why. Perhaps the killer knew something about Scott’s involvement in Kat’s disappearance. It would make sense if this was a vigilante killer. Of course I couldn’t tell Helen that and sully her memory of a man she clearly loved. But if I could find out who killed Scott, maybe the killer knew what happened to Kat.