Twisted

by Hannah Jayne

  The sites were bad enough. The idea that perhaps her father visited or even followed the sites made Bex’s stomach turn.

  “Okay…” she said slowly.

  “There are forums where”—Schuster grimaced—“fans can get together and talk, like chat rooms. We think your father might frequent one or more of the chat rooms under an alias.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I think that if you post to one of the sites, your father might respond.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest, doing her best to smother her nerves with anger. “You think he might respond? You want me to cyber hang out with a bunch of serial-killer groupies in case my dad decides to drop in? No”—she shook her head—“I’m not going to do that.”

  “You wouldn’t be ‘hanging out’ with them per se.”

  “Well, whatever you call it, the answer is still no. How am I supposed to do that anyway? Why would he talk to me? Let me guess… You want me to use the screen name ‘Hey, Dad, it’s me?’”

  Detective Schuster stared at Bex, his lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. “I think you should go public with your identity.”

  Nineteen

  Someone hit Bex in the chest with a sledgehammer. That was what must have happened; that was why Bex’s lungs felt as if they had collapsed. That was why her heart was struggling to beat.

  “You want me to do what?”

  “If you come out with who you really are and publicly announce that you’d like to talk to your father, to get to know him, I think that would draw him out.”

  Bex’s body started to shake. She gritted her teeth to avoid the clack-clack-clack of them banging together. Detective Schuster wanted her to make contact with her father. Ridiculous visions of the two of them relaxing at the kitchen table, sipping tea, flashed through her mind, only to be crashed by the thought of her father looming huge and turning into a monster, his hands morphing into talons that closed around her throat.

  “I-I can’t. I can’t do that.”

  “You could really help people. You could help your father.”

  Bex snapped her gaze to Schuster. “Like I helped him before?”

  “You did the right thing then, and I’d hope you would do the right thing now.”

  Bex wished she could name the feeling that roared through her. It wasn’t simply anger. It wasn’t simply pain. It was something like rage mixed with sadness and guilt, and she was feeling it more and more. She closed her eyes and pressed the pads of her fingertips against her eyelids. The girls the Wife Collector had murdered marched by in a macabre parade—lives lost, stories that never were. They were inexplicably connected to Beth Anne, and no matter how far Bex ran or who she became, they would always be connected to her.

  And then there was her father.

  After he was arrested, even after he was arraigned, he never spoke to Bex about the murders. She had never asked, though sometimes she had wanted to. Late at night, she would go over memories and details in her head, anything that could have been suspect or hard proof that her father had or had not committed those crimes. But the few times she had been face-to-face with him then, she had known there was no reason to ask. He was her father. He loved her and protected her. He was the greatest man in her life.

  But had he been another way with someone else?

  “I can’t…I can’t think about this right now.” Her head was pounding. She felt itchy and jumpy.

  “I know this is a lot to take in. But if you could just—”

  Bex stood up. “I’ll think about it, okay? But right now…” She looked around, not exactly sure what for, then shrugged. “I just can’t do this right now, okay?” She didn’t give Detective Schuster a chance to answer before grabbing her shoulder bag and disappearing out the coffeehouse door.

  It was cold outside. The fog was rolling in off the ocean in a thick, gray haze. Bex zipped her sweatshirt up to her neck, trying to avoid a chill that went all the way down to her bones. Cars zipped by and a small group of girls just a few years older than her shimmied past. She couldn’t help but glance at each one, taking in their features, their clothes, and their hair. She paused by her bike, staring in the direction the girls had gone.

  “Always be watching,” her father seemed to whisper in her ear. “What you need is out there just for the taking. The key is finding exactly what you want.”

  Bex couldn’t remember what her father had been referring to when he’d whispered that in her ear, but now his advice took on an eerie tone. She glanced around out of curiosity. He glanced around when he was—

  Something thick and heavy settled low in Bex’s gut.

  Her father glanced around like that when he was hunting.

  Was he looking into the faces of women to find one that he liked? One with blond hair and pretty, summery features?

  One that he could destroy.

  A memory dislodged itself when Bex slumped against her bike, her hooded eyes trying to figure out where the gray surf ended and the sky began.

  She was sitting on a park bench—no, at a picnic table—her sandaled feet nowhere near touching the ground. Her mother was there, right next to her, trying to clean Beth Anne’s hand, but Beth Anne didn’t want to wait. She struggled against her mother’s grip while her father mumbled something across the table.

  Beth Anne was reaching, her fat, little fingers pinching… A cup. She was reaching for a cup. She felt the flimsy Styrofoam between her fingers, then felt it slipping through. She remembered the arc of the bright-red juice as the cup toppled. Her mother dropped Beth Anne’s hand and tried to reach out as though she could stop the spill. But it splashed her father and Bex remembered the way the droplets hit his white T-shirt, leaving bright-pink trails down his chest.

  She remembered the flash in his eyes.

  The way his lip kinked up with a snarl.

  His eyebrows diving down. Nostrils flaring. The red of his cheeks so much brighter than the stains on his shirt. She saw the veins bulge, stretching the skin on his neck taut. His hands seemed so big when they slammed against the picnic table. The other cups trembled. The smack of skin against skin. She was vibrating. Her skin, her teeth. The taste of blood. Sand against her cheek, peppering her lips.

  What had happened?

  Bex sank onto the concrete, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Was her father the kind man she thought he was—or just a kind man in her memories?

  Twenty

  It was barely an hour since Bex had sat across from Detective Schuster but it felt like a thousand years had passed. She tried to curl her hair and brighten the blush in her cheeks, but no matter what she did, she looked exhausted.

  Her father had surfaced. According to the picture in the file, he was officially out. Bex had her hand on her cell phone, ready to call Trevor and cancel, when she heard the muffled din of his engine, the thunking bass of his radio. He was pulling into her driveway. Bex did her best to push everything to the back of her mind, to hang on to what might be her last few hours of normalcy. If—if—her father came for her, contacted her, or made his presence known, then the whole of Kill Devil Hills—and the high school—would know who she was.

  Your father has already made his presence known, the tiny voice in the back of her head taunted. Remember Darla?

  She stamped out the thought and smiled at Trevor when he smiled at her, nodding mutely and allowing him to open her car door. She was on a date—her first date! Sure, they were just going to a party, but he picked her up and told her she looked nice and she had waited for this moment her whole life.

  And once again, her father was ruining it.

  Bex’s mind swam as she sat in the passenger seat of Trevor’s car. She knew he was talking to her, but she had no idea what he was saying. She kept her eyes focused on the dark landscape zooming by outside the passenger wi
ndow. A bar parking lot clogged with shiny motorcycles. Is my father in there? A graveyard of school buses parked at the district bus depot. How would he get to me? A car? A bus? She swallowed down a niggle of sadness. Would he try to get to me?

  A newsreel zipped through her head. Dateline, 20/20, “special” reports, anniversary specials, anchors, and experts talking about her father, calling him dangerous, predatory, not able to be rehabilitated.

  “Some people are born without a conscience. Quite simply, they are pure evil,” she remembered a psychologist in an ugly tweed suit commenting about her dad. “A monster,” said the shaking lips of one of the victim’s husbands. He “doesn’t care about anything because he can’t care about anything”—from a criminology expert.

  “No conscience, no capacity to love. It might seem like he was a good neighbor, a loving father, but he would have been acting. Sociopaths like the Wife Collector have a keen skill set for making people believe exactly what they want them to. This man wants a wife. He’s clearly charming, good looking. He plucks these girls—because that’s what they are, girls, barely women—that he wants as his own. He takes them to satisfy his own sick need to have and then kill a wife. We feel revulsion and horror. He feels nothing. There are no two ways about it.”

  Bex started blinking rapidly, rubbing her eyes.

  “Hey,” Trevor said, leaning over. “You okay?”

  She sniffed. “Yeah. I…just got some sand in my eye or something.”

  Trevor squeezed her knee, his touch tender, not at all pushy or suggestive. “Just making sure,” he said, his smile evident even in profile.

  Again, Bex struggled. She was lying to Trevor. He was a nice boy who thought she was a nice girl, two nice kids going on a date, going to hang out at a house party and have a good time. Two kids who should be thinking about a first kiss at the end of the night—not whether one of them was responsible for luring a murderer into town.

  They parked in a sand-dusted cul-de-sac already clogged with cars from the student lot at Kill Devil High.

  “Wow, I thought it was just going to be a few of us.”

  Trevor shrugged. “It always starts out that way. We always end up on the beach, so…” He handed her a fluffy, blue comforter and hoisted his backpack onto his back. “That’s Chelsea’s place.” He pointed to a house that seemed to meld perfectly into the sand behind it. “Ready?”

  Bex wrapped her arms across her chest. “I hope they have a fire up. It’s cold.” Now that the car was parked and the headlights were off, the street was plunged into darkness. There was one lonely streetlight, but its sad, yellow beam barely filtered through the cypress trees dotting the sidewalk toward the sand.

  Anyone could be hiding in that darkness, Bex thought. No wonder it took so long to find Darla’s body.

  She started when she felt Trevor drape something over her shoulders.

  “Hey! Sorry!” he said, holding up his hands. “Just trying to warm you up.”

  She looked at the jacket that Trevor had draped over her. It was heavy, in Kill Devil Hills High colors.

  “Your letterman’s jacket?”

  Even in the darkness, she could see the crimson burn on Trevor’s face. “If you don’t mind. It’s cool if you don’t want to wear it.”

  Bex felt her own cheeks burn as she broke out in a wide grin. “No, yeah,” she said, pulling the jacket closer around her. “I’d love to wear it.”

  Her mind soared and the barely visible path swam in front of her eyes. I’m wearing a boy’s letterman’s jacket… When Trevor’s fingertips found hers and their fingers intertwined, Bex thought she would fly away. Nothing mattered but that feeling, the way that Trevor anchored her to this spot, this moment on the beach in her new home with her new friends. She was Bex Andrews and nothing could touch her.

  Chelsea threw open the door before Trevor was able to touch the doorknob.

  “Hello, lovebirds!” she tweeted, shoving red party cups in their hands. “Fill up with whatever you want. There’s soda and stuff in the kitchen. Martin’s got some concoction brewing in a garbage can out back. Please note I am not responsible for whatever side effects that stuff might cause. And, uh, just have fun.”

  “The ultimate hostess,” Bex said, holding up her empty cup.

  Trevor took it from her hand. “What can I get you?”

  Bex had never had alcohol other than a few stolen, bitter sips of her father’s beer when he had passed out and the bottle sat warm and open on the counter. She remembered the bubbles burning up her nose as the liquid burned down her throat. She also remembered the airy, light-headed feeling she got when she tossed back her head like she had seen him do and glugged those first few sips. Feeling light-headed and airy was exactly what Bex wanted now.

  “I’m feeling adventurous.”

  “Garbage brew it is.”

  As the party started to build, Trevor snuggled closer to Bex. “You seem happy.”

  She cuddled against him, tucking her head underneath his chin. “I am.” She closed her eyes, loving the sound of his heart beating steadily. They were sitting on Chelsea’s patio, feet in the sand, the fire pit crackling in front of them. The garbage brew tasted like a horrible concoction of cherry cough medicine and Sprite, but Bex had sucked down two cups, liking the way the booze softened the hard edges of the thoughts that barreled through her mind.

  “It’s like there’s nothing to worry about out here on the beach.” Bex closed her eyes. “Let’s just stay out here forever, okay?”

  Hovering there, it was almost as if she had moved past her father, past the horrible memories. She was just a kid at a party. Trevor’s lips found hers, and everything else in the world fell away.

  “Okay, everyone? Everyone!” Chelsea stomped out on the patio and clapped her hands, the sound sharp in the night. Bex lazily lifted her head from Trevor’s shoulder and tried to straighten up.

  Laney followed behind Chelsea, her arms full of white carnations that seemed to mass together in one fluffy head. Bex blinked, trying to focus, but her eyes kept going to the carnations, their powdery smell wafting over the scent of fruit juice and smoke. Something was pulling her out of the softened state of drunkenness. Something about the flowers en masse…

  There must have been hundreds of them pushed together to form the limbs of the cross. Beth Anne rolled down the window and sucked in a breath of air heady with the sweet scent of the carnations. She loved everything about them, from the way they smelled to how they formed a soft, cloudlike pile, the arms of the cross reaching outward, embracing. In the center, there were more flowers—exotic and brightly colored among sprays of ferns and baby’s breath.

  The arrangement was at least six feet tall; it dwarfed her and looked regal and hopeful propped up on the lawn in front of the iron gates of the cemetery as Beth Anne and her gran drove by. Something was woven right into the flowers, written in sparkly silver letters that glittered in the sun. They were driving too fast for her to read—the names of all the women her father had killed.

  Bex sat upright, the brew burning a hole in her stomach, the sharp pain of memory cutting through the fog of alcohol. It didn’t matter if her father was looking for her—he was never far from her mind.

  Twenty-One

  “Excuse me!”

  The kids at the party—about forty that Bex knew or recognized—reluctantly stopped talking and laughing to give Chelsea their attention. Someone even turned down the speakers when she cleared her throat and pinned them with what Bex was beginning to recognize as Chelsea’s patented glare of death.

  “As we all know, a very dear friend passed away recently just a few dozen miles from here.”

  The sweet warmth and comfort Bex had been feeling dissipated as quickly as mist on the waves. Trevor must have sensed it because he pulled her in to him again, but her entire body was stiff.

  “The police have
n’t caught Darla’s killer yet, but they have some good leads. They even think they have a suspect.”

  Bex’s heart began to thud in her throat.

  “The timing, the victimology are right…”

  “But we’re not here to talk about her killer, we’re here to celebrate her life. Since Darla touched everyone here, we thought we would send her memory out with the waves. Everyone take a flower and think of your best memory with Darla, and we’ll throw them out into the water.” Chelsea beamed while Laney began handing out the single-stemmed flowers.

  There was some grumbling, some muffled laughter, but all Bex could focus on was what Chelsea had said: “…they even think they have a suspect.”

  She broke away from Trevor and zigged through the crowd to Chelsea, blindly taking the flower Laney handed her.

  “The police have a suspect?” she asked, her stomach in a vice. “Who?”

  Chelsea scanned the dunes as though everyone were listening. “There was a witness who saw a car pulled over on the side of the road the…the night just before we found her.”

  “What kind of car?”

  Laney shifted the few remaining flowers. “Just like an old truck or something, but the witness got a pretty good look at the guy and actually recognized him.”

  “You know that weird security guy from the mall?” Chelsea asked. “He was always around us when we were with Darla. Like, always for the last six months. He was totally obsessed with her.”

  “Well,” Laney clarified, “Darla did shoplift.”

  “Yes.” Chelsea crossed her arms in front of her chest and jutted out one hip. “That could be what drove him over the edge, you know? Like, here’s this perfect little rich girl stealing.”

  Relief flooded Bex’s system. “Oh.”

  “Anyway, that’s kind of what the police are saying.”

  Bex nodded and numbly followed Chelsea and Laney to the edge of the water. It lapped at the tips of her bare feet, the water so frigid it was nearly painful—but feeling something she could actually identify felt good.