“Now, listen to me, Kerry,” he said, pressing down on the man’s throat. “Listen. Kerry, stop.” But the young man kept struggling, bucking his chest, kicking his legs, so DJ pressed harder, letting his anger take over. No one ever listened to him.
DJ brought his face close to Kerry’s, saw it turning red even in the shadows cast by the streetlight. At last, the younger man grew still. “There, see? You’re going to have to trust me, Kerry.” DJ’s arms shook as the tension fell out of Kerry’s body, his eyes closing. DJ closed his own, breathing deep. “Trust me, it’s better this way.”
For a moment, everything was still. The distant sound of cars passing in the night, a rustle of wind in the dead branches above. DJ opened his eyes, staring at the boy. Then he looked around. The opposite side of the street was lined with parked cars, forming a barrier between him and the unlit houses beyond. As far as he could tell, no one had seen a thing. Still, every moment they were out in the open was a risk.
Snapping into motion, DJ rolled Kerry’s body over his shoulder and rose slowly to his feet. He walked carefully to the passenger’s side of his car, door hanging open like an invitation. With Kerry slumped and buckled into the seat, he ran to the other side and got back in with one more glance around the neighborhood.
He needed to buy himself time to think, time to plan. No one knew Kerry had gotten in the car with him. If he could get the boy out of the way, there would be time to make sure he didn’t have any evidence on him, and DJ could decide what to do next.
The barn. DJ could dump Kerry’s body in the barn—one of the many places on the property his father couldn’t get to anymore, since his stroke. Forcing his eyes to stare straight ahead, DJ started the engine and drove toward home.
34
Elle
January 19, 2020
Five days. It had only been five days since Amanda was taken, and now she was dead.
In the interview room at the police station, Elle stared at the chipped wooden table under her arms until her eyes burned.
Every time she blinked, she saw the girl’s face again: purplish bruising on her lips, bursts of red flecking the skin around her eyes. Smothered, Martín had guessed while waiting for the first responders to arrive. He was in the room next to hers, answering questions for Sam. They weren’t suspects, she knew, but it made her anxious nonetheless.
Five days, not seven.
She wasn’t Cassandra, after all—not some omniscient prophet, doomed to be disbelieved. She was no better than a cheap psychic, making baseless predictions and hoping one would land. Amanda and Natalie’s cases were connected; she had gotten that right. But they hadn’t been taken by the Countdown Killer. No matter how the deaths varied over the years, he never broke his signature. The bodies were always found on the seventh day.
The door handle turned, and Elle looked up to see Ayaan enter. Exhaustion made her usually glowing skin dull, darkening under her eyes. Her somber navy hijab had been put on in haste, slightly askew across her forehead.
“Elle, were you offered a drink?” she asked.
“Yes.” The word croaked out of her. “Ronny’s bringing me a tea.”
“Good.” Ayaan sat across from her, opened a folder. Inside were freshly printed crime scene photos.
Elle closed her eyes, but the images were already branded on her mind from seeing them in person hours before. At this moment, Amanda was probably being cut open by someone in her husband’s office, dissected for secrets. Maybe they would find the killer’s DNA. Maybe this would give them a lead, an opportunity to save Natalie. But that wouldn’t change the fact that an eleven-year-old girl was dead.
She thought of Dave and Sandy Jordan, wondered if the police had told them yet. Ayaan would have been the one to do the job. Would the police wait until a reasonable hour to wake the Jordans up with the worst news they’d ever received, or had Ayaan already been to their house and returned? Elle opened her mouth to ask, but the words stuck in her throat. It didn’t matter whether they knew yet or not; the result would be the same. The couple would be destroyed.
Ronny came in with a mug of peppermint tea, set it down in front of Elle with a sad smile. The crisp smell cleared her sinuses, stuffy from crying, as she wrapped her hands around the mug. After a moment, she lifted her eyes to meet Ayaan’s.
The commander’s gaze was steady, her pen poised to take notes. “Tell me what happened.”
Between sips of tea, Elle explained about Martín coming home after being called to a crime scene, talking to him in bed, the doorbell ringing, the discovery of Amanda’s body. She had no idea when she had last slept, but the peppermint and adrenaline shot through her, making the words come out fast and unfiltered. She finished with the text she had sent to Ayaan, after they had called 911.
For a few moments, Ayaan let the silence rest between them. She finished a note and met Elle’s gaze again. “I noticed you didn’t talk about what you did earlier in the day. The time you spent with Detective Hyde.”
Elle froze with the mug lifted halfway to her lips. Slowly, she set it back on the table. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh. He and I had an interesting chat. Seems you didn’t tell him I had asked you to take a step back from Amanda’s case?” Ayaan’s head tilted to the side as she held Elle’s gaze.
Elle took a bigger drink than she intended, scalding her throat. Her eyes watered as she tried to keep from coughing. “I’m sorry. We got to talking in the lobby, and he asked if I’d found anything on Leo, and then I had an idea about where the van was headed on the security footage that came through . . . I just wanted to help. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse.”
For a moment, they looked at each other in silence. Finally, Ayaan nodded. “Probably not the time to bring it up, I suppose. But you must have known I would find out; I wish you had told me yourself.”
“You know me, Ayaan. I’ve always been more of the better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission sort of person.”
Frustration sparked in Ayaan’s eyes. “If we’re going to be able to work together in the future, you can’t be that way with me. I consider you a friend, Elle, not just a colleague. I’d like us to trust each other.”
Elle looked at the pale green liquid in her mug, fiddled with the string hanging over the rim. “You’re right. It won’t happen again.” She wanted that to be true, but the promise rang hollow. There was so much Ayaan didn’t know about her. Maybe if Elle had trusted her sooner, Amanda would still be alive. As soon as the thought tried to burrow into her head, she pushed it away. She had done the best she could with the information she had. Shouldering the blame wouldn’t bring Amanda back, wouldn’t help her find Natalie.
Ayaan cleared her throat. “Now, can you think of any reason why Amanda’s body was left on your doorstep?”
“I . . . Martín and I were talking about this right before it happened. That maybe TCK was attacking me for covering him on the podcast. But I was wrong about him, Ayaan. I’m sorry. I was so sure, but this isn’t TCK. The victim showing up five days later, with no marks from whipping and killed by asphyxiation? It doesn’t make sense.”
“How do you know she was asphyxiated?”
“Martín. At least, that was his guess.” Elle’s fingers shook on the tea mug.
Ayaan nodded, wrote something down.
Elle continued: “So, I don’t know. If it’s not TCK, then I don’t know why the person seems to be coming after me. The only other thing I can think is—” She paused, shaking her head. The thought had been prodding at her for the last few hours, too horrible to allow in.
“What?” Ayaan leaned forward. “What do you think?”
“I’m sure I’m overreacting.” Elle looked away, focusing on the window behind Ayaan. She wondered if Sam was in there, watching her, and then she kicked the idea away. This was not an interrogation. Finally, she said, “I’ve been getting threatening emails lately. Some private messages on social media. Tina reported a few to our local PD, but last I checked, most of
the IP addresses showed they came from out of state—some even from overseas.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
Elle looked at her, surprised to see the commander’s eyes glowing with concern. “I get harassed all the time for the work I do. I thought the spike in messages was just because the podcast had gotten more popular, was reaching more people. Plus, conversations about TCK always bring out the trolls. I didn’t think it was relevant to our investigation, and like I said, Tina had the locals looking into the ones that seemed to know my address.”
“But you were concerned about your safety. Didn’t you think I should know about that?”
“A little girl was missing, Ayaan. Compared to that, my concerns seemed small. Still do.” Elle cleared her throat, trying to rid it of the tightness brought on by another wave of emotion. “If someone took Natalie as a way of tormenting me because of this podcast . . .” The depravity of people shouldn’t surprise her anymore, but sometimes shock still broke through.
“Okay, Elle. When you get home, please send me everything you and Tina have flagged, including the stuff you sent to the local department. I’ll get in touch to let them know we’re taking over.”
Ayaan folded her hands on top of her notepad. Her expression tensed, and Elle felt her shoulders bunch. It was one of the few times she’d ever seen Ayaan look hesitant.
“What is it?” Elle asked.
“Well, we didn’t know about the online harassment. So, that’s a possibility. But Sam and I have developed another theory I want to run past you. In fact, the two might fit together.”
Elle nodded for Ayaan to continue.
“We’re thinking along the same lines now in terms of this being related to your podcast. The second victim being so close to you and the first victim showing up dead at your house, wearing the coat of the second victim, make that almost undeniable. But we came at it from a different angle. We think it’s possible that someone has been inspired to copy TCK’s methods, carry the mantle of his countdown, so to speak.”
Elle stared at her, unsure what to say. The thought had crossed her mind before, but up until today every part of the kidnappings was so perfectly aligned with TCK’s methods that it seemed obvious it was him. A huge mistake like this, though—displaying a body two days early when TCK had never done so before—that had the marks of a sloppy mimic.
Ayaan pressed on. “You said yourself that the man who took Amanda and Natalie couldn’t be TCK, because he never reveals his victims early. Even if he accidentally killed one early, he would always put them in a public place on the seventh day. That is the one part of his pattern that has never varied, not once.”
“That’s right.” Elle’s mind raced, trying to put together everything that this would mean. Ayaan was right; it still fit with her concerns about the online harassment. If the copycat hated the podcast and wanted to hurt her, what better way than to emulate the most horrific things her featured villain had done?
“But there’s no denying the killer did copy some of TCK’s methods,” Ayaan said. “You were right about the similarities: taking the girls three days apart, continuing with the ages TCK left off on twenty years ago. So, he’s a copycat. He wants what all copycat criminals want: the fame and notoriety of their idols. What better way to get it than using his supposed return to work to target the very woman that is making the case go viral in 2020? He’s got all the information he needs on how to be TCK right there.”
That jolted Elle out of her thoughts. “Right there . . . as in on Justice Delayed? Are you saying the killer learned how to copy TCK’s murders by listening to my podcast?”
Ayaan’s expression was grim. “It’s possible, don’t you think? Law enforcement has always worried that shows like Criminal Minds give bad people too many ideas for how to kill. Why wouldn’t murderers also take inspiration from true crime podcasts?”
“But I’m not putting out any information about his methods or patterns that isn’t publicly available.” Her breathing picked up, and she could hear the panic in her voice, but she was too exhausted to restrain it. “Besides, I don’t glorify the killers like a lot of the shows out there. I’m trying to get justice for the victims, not tell some lurid story about a serial killer.”
Ayaan pulled her lower lip into her mouth for a moment, then nodded. “I’m sure that’s true. I haven’t listened to all of this season, but you’ve always done a good job of focusing on the victims rather than the perpetrators.”
“That’s all I want to do,” Elle said. She ran her fingers through her hair, giving it a subtle yank; the sharp pain helped her brain to focus. Despite Ayaan’s placating words, fury still rocketed through her body. Every word she had spoken on her podcast, every detail she had provided her hundreds of thousands of listeners, seemed to gather in her mind like a noisy crowd. She was wrong. This case was different, and she knew it. It was only a few days ago that a Twitter user had suggested that very thing.
“That bastard,” she spat. “I am going to destroy him.”
35
Justice Delayed podcast
January 19, 2020
Transcript: Season 5, Bonus Episode
Elle:
The body of Amanda Jordan was left on my doorstep in the early hours of this morning. The evidence now shows without a doubt that she was taken by the same man who kidnapped Natalie Hunter.
When I took on this role, hunting monsters who hurt children, I knew that it came with risks. I knew that I was putting myself in danger. But I never could have guessed that it might cause two families to lose their precious daughters—one of them, at least, for good. I will never be able to express how truly, deeply sorry I am for their loss.
Amanda’s body being left on my doorstep is all the proof that I need. The man who kidnapped these girls is coming after me. He listens to this podcast, of that I’m sure. I don’t know if you’re one of the trolls harassing my accounts, sending death threats to my email, or if you’re smart enough to stay away from anything that could be traced back to you. I don’t know if you were inspired by the details on this podcast, but I suspect that no matter why you kidnapped these girls, you wanted me to blame myself.
You planned this out. You made it look like the Countdown Killer had returned, just to torment me and undermine my credibility. You wanted me to make a fool of myself, to raise the alarm and start spreading panic that TCK was back. But you broke the structure, killing Amanda early. You couldn’t stick to the control, the calculated patterns of TCK. You like chaos, don’t you?
But you don’t know who you’re messing with. You don’t know who I am.
I have enjoyed living the past two decades with hardly anyone knowing my real identity, but the time for secrets is over. Because I want you to know that you will lose. You might have the most important girl in the world to me, but you underestimate just what I’ll do to get her back. You can’t possibly know what I will endure to find you until you know who I am.
I am Eleanor Watson.
Twenty-one years ago, I was playing at a friend’s house when a man came to the door and asked for me. He told me that he needed to take me home, that my mother needed me. He said he was friends with my dad, so it was okay. I went with him. Instead of bringing me home, he drugged me, and I woke up in a cabin with another young girl who had already been there for several days. Jessica Elerson—the last girl to be killed by the real TCK. The man’s features are a blank in my mind, but I remember Jessica—every curve and dimple of her face. I’m doing this for her, for all of the ones before her who weren’t as lucky as I was. For what possible reason did I survive if it wasn’t to stop men like you, men who think they have a right to our bodies and our lives?
That’s why I started this podcast—and I’ll be damned if a monster like you scares me into stopping.
I am the one who beat the real TCK. You think I can’t defeat a cheap copycat like you?
36
Elle
January 19, 2020
That done, Elle set about downloading all of the red-flagged emails, as well as taking some screenshots of the worst tweets and private messages in the bunch. The one she’d opened a few days ago, Careful what you wish for, stuck out once again. It was sinister in its simplicity, but something else nagged her about it—she couldn’t figure out what. She dragged everything to a folder titled FILTH and sent an email to Ayaan with the link, copying Tina in so she knew it was being taken care of. If there was even a chance the copycat killer had been stupid enough to contact her, the police’s computer analysts would hopefully be able to track him.
It was just past noon. Elle stood up, turned around to stare at her Wall of Grief. She had added Kerry’s pictures next to Beverly’s only a couple weeks ago. His freshman college photo smiled down at her, young and full of promise that he would never get to fulfill. Someone had really leveraged the stories of these victims, these young lives snuffed out, to torment her—to achieve some twisted sense of notoriety for themselves. They had killed Amanda and taken Natalie, and they knew how to do it because of her.
Elle pulled her phone out of her pocket. Martín had texted while she was interviewing with Ayaan to say that he’d gone to the morgue to watch Amanda’s autopsy. Other than that, there were no messages. After responding to him, she sent Sash a quick text.
MISS YOU. I’M SORRY. YOU WERE RIGHT. I’M DOING EVERYTHING I CAN TO BRING NAT HOME.
As she pressed send, her computer chimed. A call was coming in from Tina.
“So, you’re finally ready to tell the world,” Tina said as soon as Elle accepted the call.
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