High-pitched cries filled the room as he wrapped the length of the chain around her neck and fastened a padlock through the last link. A loud click loomed in the air as it locked. The man, fully visible now, straightened the black mask over his face before lifting the young woman off the ground. He secured her onto the hook that hung from the center of the room. She twisted and squirmed as she grabbed at her neck, trying to pry the chain from around her throat.
She gasped for air as she choked on the restraint around her throat, her feet kicking in midair as she desperately searched for anything to stand on. Streaks of mascara trailed down her face as a barrage of tears poured from her eyes. She lifted her arms into the air and wrapped her hands around the thick rope. She tried to raise herself, a pointless effort to relieve the pressure off her windpipe. Her arms trembled as she lifted herself slightly.
The man stood less than a foot from her reach. She unsuccessfully kicked at him, her feet missing the target by mere inches. The mask clung to the man’s nose with every breath he inhaled. He waited patiently for her to tire, standing there as if bored with her struggle.
As her kicks became less forceful, the man raised his left hand, and a long blade gleamed in the sunlight. He swiped the knife across the woman’s wrists, and she let out a painful shrill as she released her grip from around the rope. Her body slumped closer to the ground as she dangled from the chain-link noose. Blood streamed down her hands, past her fingertips, and dripped onto the ground below. She brought her bloody hands up to her throat, gagging under the pressure of the chain, and clutched at her neck. Her fingers stiffened as if her hands and wrists had been paralyzed—likely due to severed tendons from the assailant’s knife.
A loud cough released from her lips as her hands fell back to her sides and her head hung low. She slowly swayed back and forth, like a rag doll limply sagging from a rope, as the masked man raised his knife again and slashed it across her sternum. A flood of bodily fluids and organs spilled out of her. Her intestines plopped onto the floor and splashed upward with a sickening splatter. The camera picked up the sloshing sound, like water against a rowboat, as her entrails dangled from her midsection.
The masked man turned his head slowly toward the camera, the knife in his left hand dripping with blood, and he glared into the lens. His dark eyes stared blankly into the camera as if he tried to hypnotize the audience with his gaze. Then the video abruptly shut off.
My muscles tightened to keep the bile brewing in my stomach from rushing up my throat. The screen went black, and Captain Fluellen—”Flu” to his colleagues—cleared his throat.
“That’s where the video ends,” Flu said. The glow from the projector overhead highlighted the wrinkles around his eyes and the place where his bald spot met his receding hairline. He scrolled the cursor to the top right corner of the video program and clicked the red “X” with his mouse. He closed out of the program, and the randomly scattered icons on his desktop remained visible on the screen. “This is the second video we’ve received anonymously,” Flu added someone turned the fluorescent lights back on.
“Does she have a name?” an officer asked from the third row of chairs.
“I’m sure she does. But we don’t know it yet—mainly because we haven’t found her,” Flu said. “We scanned her image from the video, and we’re running it through facial-recognition programs, but that takes times,” he added. “We were, however, able to determine the name of the victim from the first video. Pamela Westlake, age thirty-three. Caucasian female, worked as a hair stylist part time. She lived in West Joseph her entire life. She was reported missing by her boyfriend in July.” He paused. “We still haven’t been able to find her body—so we aren’t able to treat this as a homicide yet. As far as we know, this is some kid with a bucket of pig’s blood playing a bad prank. But if the video is real—and I believe it is—it’s safe to assume she’s dead.” Flu lowered his head and slowly shook it from side to side. “We received Pamela Westlake’s video last week. Both videos were sent to the department’s email address. Both were sent on consecutive Wednesday evenings between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Both were presumed auditions with the same nefarious outcomes.”
“Can’t we just look up the email address it was sent from?” the same officer asked.
“If it were that simple, we wouldn’t have received a second video, now would we?” Flu snapped. “Perhaps I’m not the best person to explain this….” Flu motioned toward the back of the room.
Abram Myers, West Joseph Police Department’s most recent Information Technology hire, had been with the department since February. My first interaction with him was the second day I came back to work. He gave me a department-issued laptop so that I could work from home if I wanted. I took the laptop without protest, knowing this job didn’t have banker’s hours. He looked me up and down and politely complimented my investigative skills. He didn’t specify which investigation, but I knew he meant the Lathan Collins case.
Abram sauntered up the aisle as he made his way to the podium at the front of the room. He barely made eye contact with anyone as he strolled past each officer. His curly, auburn hair neatly skimmed the collar of his checkered shirt. When he approached the podium, he scratched his right cheek, his nails scraping along the scars embedded in his skin from what must have been years of bad acne.
“To answer your question, yes. We can look up the email address it was sent from. And we tried. But the service provider has up to ninety days to respond to our subpoena requesting more information about the user’s account.” Abram paused, then continued more confidently. “What we do know is that the first video was sent from a laptop that used a coffee shop or a fast food restaurant’s Wi-Fi. I’m sure you all know what Wi-Fi is?” He paused again, as if he was teaching a class. “It allows for users to connect to the internet wirelessly. In every email header, there’s a detailed log of the network path between the sender and the receiver. We usually see ‘To,’ ‘From,’ ‘Date,’ and ‘Subject.’ But beyond that, there’s more information, like the IP address.”
A wave of contrasting reactions washed over the room. The younger officers, who knew the internet well, crossed and uncrossed their legs as they listened to Abram explain something as everyday to them as brushing their teeth. The older officers, the ones who could barely turn on a computer, let out sighs of confusion as Abram continued his lecture.
“The Internet Protocol, or IP, address is a numerical code that resembles longitude and latitude on a map. The numbers are something like, one-four-two dot eight-two dot one-nine-two dot two. Unfortunately,” he said, “the IP address isn’t as precise as longitude and latitude is. It can only pinpoint a user within a five-mile radius. But I was able to narrow it down by the city block, and it’s somewhere in the West Joseph Shopping Plaza,” Abram said in a boastful tone. “There are a few fast food and coffee shops there that provide free Wi-Fi to customers. And any one of those could have been where the video was sent from.”
“Can’t we just ask the coffee shops for their IP addresses?” one of the elderly officers asked.
“We did,” Flu interjected, “and none of the businesses are willing to give up that information without a warrant. It’s likely the Wi-Fi being used is in the West Joseph Plaza, but we don’t know for sure. And we don’t have the manpower to go knocking on every door within a five-mile radius.”
“Even with each business’s actual IP address,” Abram said, taking back the proverbial microphone from Flu, “it would be easier to find a needle in a haystack than to track down whoever might’ve used their Wi-Fi. A coffee shop has over two thousand sales a month. We know the date and time the email was sent, but the coffee shop doesn’t keep track of who uses their Wi-Fi. We could subpoena their sales receipts for that date, around the time the email was sent, but there’s a possibility the sender didn’t buy anything or could have paid cash. And not every shop has a camera. Whoever’s sending these videos could be anyone tech-savvy enough to connect to Wi-Fi
—so, basically, anyone.”
“There is some silver lining, though,” Flu said, walking back to the front of the room where Abram stood. “The sender sent each of the two videos on the exact same day, one week apart. It’s too early to say this is a pattern, but it’s not too early to dismiss it as a coincidence.”
“Is there an established motive?” I asked from the back of the room. A domino effect of heads turned to look at me.
“Each video we received was some type of audition gone wrong,” Flu said. “We’ll have an agent from the Bureau of Criminal Investigations here in a few days to assist. Until then, everyone keep your eyes peeled—especially around the West Joseph Shopping Plaza. We don’t have it in the budget to add extra patrol, but if you’re acquainted with the shop owners, see if you can get a little more information out of them about their customers. Ask if they remember anyone using their Wi-Fi who may have sat in a secluded area. Abram says that video file of this size would take around twenty minutes to upload, especially on a shared network, and whoever sent it would want their privacy,” Flu said and then dismissed the second-shift officers.
A cacophony of chairs skidding along the linoleum pierced my ears as the officers made their way out of the briefing room. It was early afternoon, and the first-shift officers were headed back into the station. They had received the same briefing prior to their shift this morning, along with Flu’s instruction to patrol the Shopping Plaza carefully. It was my hope that they didn’t return empty handed.
I waited for the officers to leave before I maneuvered my way to the front of the room. Abram was still there. “Any calls?” I asked Flu.
“One, but not about the video,” Flu said. “We’re needed in Mirror Woods. They found a body in the lake—the dive team is already there.”
“Mirror Woods,” Abram said. “You do your best work there.” He patted my shoulder. I looked at Flu as I tried my best to ignore Abram’s compliment.
The Lathan Collins case had been closed for nearly a year, but it seemed like I was the only person in West Joseph willing to move on. I felt as if I was the star quarterback who threw the winning touchdown in the championship game. Back in high school. Two decades ago. More than a few restaurants in town refused to charge me for my food, and star-struck residents offered to buy me a drink. I was a local celebrity, but I didn’t want to be.
“Let me know the moment you ID the woman in the second video,” Flu said to Abram. He turned to me. “Evans, let’s go.”
I sat in the passenger seat as Flu drove us to Mirror Woods. After the horrific murders that happened here last year, the West Joseph Planning Committee entertained the thought of changing the name of Mirror Woods to something less haunting. But City Council quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, they had an enormous slab of marble, engraved with the victims’ names, placed by the entrance of the park. On the anniversary of each victim’s death, friends and family would place bouquet of flowers, stuffed animals and other tokens of remembrance along the stone.
In the past year, West Joseph had slowly grown in popularity—mostly among individuals who are intrigued by serial killers. The increase in local tourism meant more business for the city: hotels, restaurants, even a Lathan Collins Bus Tour that went through Mirror Woods.
Soulless residents who lived near Mirror Woods profited the most from the tour. They would tell tourists tall tales of what it was like to live by Mirror Woods during the murders—some even went so far as to say they saw Lathan Collins lurking nearby after victims were found. The tourists would shell out dollar after dollar, sliding the cash into the residents’ hands like a vending machine that spat out gumballs. And the tourists sucked down every last bit of the residents’ fables.
The winding road that led through the thick forest of Mirror Woods twisted like a serpent’s spine as Flu and I made our way toward the lake. I stared out the window, the trees blurring as we whizzed by, and I felt my chest start to close in. A sudden surge coursed through my body as the back of my throat tightened. I shut my eyes and counted backward from ten.
Ten, I thought to myself. My hands and legs started to tingle into a familiar numbness.
Nine… eight. I took in a deep breath and held it in hopes that would control my shallow breathing.
Seven. I opened my eyes—the trees still a blur and I blinked back the tears that formed in my eyes.
Six… five. I exhaled, my heart slowly retuning toward a normal beat.
Four… three. I dragged my palms against my pant legs and wiped the sweat from my fingertips. I clenched my hands into a tight fist, my knuckles turning white from the strain.
Two. I swallowed hard, and the pressure in my chest eased.
One. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly. My heartbeat eased to a natural rhythm, and I felt calm again.
Flu parked the car, and I stared out the window. A blanket of water and spectators stretched before me. My head throbbed as my vision returned to normal.
“You all right, Evans?” Flu asked as he opened the driver’s side door.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat dry and itchy.
A light breeze blew through the late August air. An orchestra of birds chirped as I opened the passenger door. I followed Flu down the dirt path toward the lake. Grapefruit-sized stones lined the way leading to the man-made beach. The “beach” was mostly loose gravel, and the deepest part of the “lake” reached a maximum of ten feet. Locals used to argue whether to call the lake a “pond” instead, but most everyone referred to it as “Mirror Woods Lake,” so the name stuck.
“Captain,” the responding officer said to Flu as we approached the shore.
“This is Sergeant Evans,” Flu said, officially introducing me to the officer. Beads of sweat formed along the officer’s hairline. “What do you know?” Flu asked him.
“We believe it was an accidental drowning,” he said, his overgrown buzz cut revealing the dark bristles of hair sticking out from his head. “The dive team found algae wrapped around the woman’s ankle. Her arms were outstretched, so she must have run out of oxygen as she fought her way to the top.”
“Her name?” Flu sighed.
“We believe her name is Wilma Reynolds,” the officer said.
“You believe?”
“Yeah,” the officer replied. “The ranger said he remembered seeing the same blue Corolla parked in the lot for a few weeks now. We ran the plates and came up with Wilma Reynolds.”
“Why didn’t he report it weeks ago?” I chimed in.
“I don’t know.” The officer shrugged. “He doesn’t sound very good at his job,” he added.
“Has the family made a positive ID?” Flu asked.
“Not yet. She’s still in the water. We checked Missing Persons for her name, and she was reported missing by her husband on July eleventh,” the officer informed us.
“That’s over a month ago,” Fluellen pointed out, clearly flabbergasted.
“Yep,” the officer concurred.
“Is that her family?” I gestured to a small huddle of people standing on the dock on the other side of the lake.
“Could be?” The officer shrugged again. The ranger wasn’t the only person here who wasn’t very good at his job. “We told them to meet us at the station, but somehow they showed up here.”
The family—presumably Wilma’s mother, husband, and daughter—watched the dive team’s boat bob up and down in the middle of the lake, which stretched over an acre wide. The crystal blue gleam of the water’s surface rippled as the breeze blew a steady wind across the lake. One of the dive team members, dressed in a red windbreaker, sat along the edge of the boat as he peered into the water. He held a thick, white rope that hung off the side of the boat and into the water.
Next to the family stood a local reporter. The slender brown-haired woman was dressed in a gray pantsuit and held a wireless microphone as she smoothed back her shoulder-length hair. The lone camera operator, a chubby man with a backwards cap, had his camera hoist
ed onto his shoulder as he fiddled with the buttons on the side. Their white news van was parked in the grass along the white picket fence that separated the parking lot from the dock entrance. Next to it, looking like its twin, was the coroner’s van.
The coroner leaned against his van as he took a long drag off his cigarette. A thin trail of smoke lingered above the red bud as he sucked on the end of the filter. Large bags had formed under his eyes, and his poorly combed-over gray strands of hair wisped in the wind. He sighed heavily as he took one last puff on his cigarette and threw it on the ground. He lifted his foot, stomped on the butt with his black shoes, and ground it into the pavement before walking toward the dock.
A series of large bubbles broke through the water near the shore as the second member of the dive team surfaced. His scuba tank glimmered in the sun as he swam toward the boat. Alongside him, tucked under his arm, was the victim. Her matted brown hair stuck to her bloated pale-blue face, which had chunks of skin missing from her cheekbones. Large welts ranging from dark red to light pink popped around her eyes, which had turned yellow from the submersion. The victim’s arms were locked upright due to rigor mortis, and as the member of the dive team swam toward the boat, her arms swayed from side to side, as if she was waving.
“Look, Dad!” the little girl called out. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, and her blond hair had been pulled into a high ponytail that curled at the end. “It’s Mom! She’s waving to us.” She threw her hands in the air and waved them above her head. “Hi, Mom!” she shouted.
“Oh, thank God. It’s her,” the dad said and clutched his heart. His wavy black hair fell slightly past his shoulders, making his round face stand out. “Wilma!” He waved his arms. His cheeks stiffened into a tight grin.
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