by J P Tompkins
THE
SECOND
STRANGER
A Novel
J.P. Tompkins
Copyright © 2019 by J.P. Tompkins
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written consent of the Author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo: iStock/Getty
Also available in paperback
Ebook edition: July 2019
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Epilogue
Prologue
Fifteen years ago, when I was thirteen, I started stealing books from the library. They were always true crime books. Those were the ones I knew my parents would never let me read, not just because I was too young for the subject matter, but also because of what happened one rainy summer day earlier that year.
It should have been like any other day. Sleeping late, no school, the whole long day to do whatever we wanted, which always included going to the neighborhood pool.
That afternoon, storms were approaching, stealing our summer sun, replacing it with a threatening wall of blue-black clouds filling the sky.
“Let’s go before it gets bad,” I said to Amanda.
We had been friends since kindergarten, when her family moved into a house on the next street, directly behind ours. A fence separated our yards, but our dads had installed a gate since Amanda and I were always going back and forth between our houses.
Amanda groaned. “Why don’t we just wait it out?”
I looked out from the clubhouse, out toward the pool. The surface was a blur, punctuated with ripples from the hard rain.
“Okay,” I said. “Stay here. But I’m going.”
So I left the pool and left Amanda behind. Or started to, anyway. I didn’t want to walk alone. I was halfway down the walk, just outside the gate, when I turned around and went back in, toward the clubhouse.
Amanda was still seated at the picnic table. She was twisting the end of her towel in her hands as if wringing it out but it wasn’t wet. I knew her well enough to know her nervous habits and this was one of them. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t.
“You’re scared,” I said as I approached her.
“No I’m not.”
I used her fear against her. I called her on it, pushed her on it, used it in just the right way that she finally hopped off that picnic table bench and clomped alongside me as we exited the clubhouse and started our walk home.
The downpour began about halfway home, coming down fast, each drop of rain like a hard pebble against my skin. We wrapped ourselves in our big towels and splashed along the edge of the road, avoiding the sidewalk that had become a river of runoff water.
One lightning strike nearby. A clap of thunder the next second.
Amanda let out an exaggerated scream behind me. We laughed together for the last time.
We were three streets away from home when I saw the old car coming toward us. It slowed and pulled over to our side of the street. The driver cracked the window. Just enough to speak, but not enough to reveal his face.
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”
Amanda and I looked at each other. Looking, I guess, for agreement on whether we should take the ride.
That’s all the time he needed. Just that short pause.
The old car was less than five feet away from us. The door swung open faster than I thought it could.
He wore dark slacks and a blue raincoat. With the hood pulled tightly around his head, I couldn’t see his hair. The way he had it pulled up to cover part of his face, I could only see his nose and eyes.
Amanda screamed again. This time it wasn’t exaggerated and this time it wasn’t because of lightning. The man grabbed her by her forearm.
He turned his head toward me.
Amanda slipped out of his grip.
He got her again and pulled her toward his car, all while glancing over his shoulder at me.
Was he trying to take both of us? Was he going to secure her in his car and then come after me?
I didn’t stick around to find out.
I ran.
They caught the guy eventually, but it was too late for Amanda.
I’m not proud of what I did the day he took her. When I replay the events in my head all these years later, I often find myself debating which was worse: challenging Amanda’s fears, or running away at the moment she, my best friend at the time and ever since, needed me most.
The therapist I saw back then told me none of it was my fault, that we were doing normal kid stuff, and all the blame goes to the stranger who committed the crime.
One day, about three months after Amanda was taken, I made a discovery of my own at the library: the true-crime section. Hundreds of books, filled with gruesome crimes and the horrid people who committed them.
I thumbed through a few of them, starting with the collection of pictures in the middle of the book, then to random pages to read a few paragraphs, all the while looking up and making sure my mom and dad hadn’t found me in this aisle.
A few minutes of perusing and I was hooked. These were infinitely more interesting than the books meant for kids my age then. But I knew I couldn’t check them out of the library.
So that day, I slipped one under the waistline of my shorts and bunched my shirt up a little to try to hide what would have otherwise been an obvious and out of place lump.
I repeated this every time we went. I started wearing the baggiest shirts I had to make it easier to hide the book I swiped that day. I even pulled off a two-for a couple of times.
After a couple of months, I had about two-dozen true crime books hidden in my closet. I read them all, cover to cover, studying the photos, bookmarking the most interesting passages, making notes in the margins, and eventually moving on to filling notebooks with important things I wanted to remember.
I read books about cases that were solved, fascinated and terrified by the perpetrators, but I found myself more drawn to the unsolved cases. Puzzles that were missing pieces. Just like with Amanda’s case. And even though there were few answers in those books, I felt a connection to the peopl
e—the survivors and witnesses. I wasn’t alone.
Despite those books making me feel like I wasn’t alone anymore, I’m not sure I’ll ever really leave that street where it happened. I could be two hundred miles away, as I am now, or two thousand miles away, and it wouldn’t matter. Even though Amanda’s killer was caught, part of me is still on that street, standing in the rain, as a stranger showed me how dangerous the world is.
Chapter 1
My eyes scan the crowd of people gathered here downtown on the lawn of City Hall. Women, men, teenagers, children. They’ve all come here to take part in something called “Take Back The Night.” A public demonstration of defiance. The collective message: We are not afraid.
But they are afraid. That’s why they’re here, after all. It’s a safety in numbers kind of thing. But that will only last as long as this rally is in progress. Then everyone will depart, go their separate ways, no longer protected by a gathering of thousands. They’ll go back to their homes and barricade themselves inside for the night.
They’ll try not to think about the danger. The same danger that may be lurking in the bushes outside their homes. The danger that wears a mask as he hops over a fence, crosses the lawn, and gains entry to their home through a sliding glass door or window.
They’ll do things to distract themselves. Laundry. Dishes. Watch a movie. Anything. But their ears will be on alert to every sound that’s out of place.
Something outside—a dog barking, a pine cone falling on the roof, a bug flying recklessly into a window.
Or a sound inside—a random creak, the rush of air as the AC unit turns on, the ice machine knocking and rumbling as it refills the container.
Once normal sounds, all, but not anymore.
All of those noises could be nothing. Or they could be something, maybe even one of the last sounds they’ll ever hear. And they’ll think about it all through the darkness of the night.
Because they are afraid.
If they weren’t, local locksmiths wouldn’t have a wait list, local gun stores wouldn’t have seen a spike in sales, and local gyms wouldn’t have overflow self-defense classes. But all of those things are happening. A few months ago, I wrote a story on how the attacks had been affecting those local businesses.
Many people tell me they never expected anything like this to happen in this area. Some even say that’s why they moved here, away from other places, larger cities, where things were changing and not for the best.
Things are changing here, too, in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. They’ve been changing, growing, for decades, but nothing like the explosion since I was in college here. Sixty-four people move here every day, on average. The population has grown by over forty percent in the last decade and a half. A significant portion of the growth is seniors, but by far the largest segment is made up of young professionals, recent college graduates. And over half are single women. That, plus the population of three major universities nearby, makes for fertile hunting grounds for a killer like the one terrorizing the community now.
Over the last year, the killer has claimed five victims. Beth Callahan survived the attack. Kristi Stroup, Janelle Morris, Payton Donnelly and Brad Starke were all killed.
I wonder if their killer is here at City Hall, standing somewhere along the edges of the crowd, watching, maybe even hunting his next victim.
Or maybe he’s in the middle of the gathering, standing with friends. Is he participating in the chants? Is he holding up a sign?
He could be here with his family. Could he have a wife and kids, standing with him, maybe a little one holding onto his leg, or hoisted up on his shoulders like some dads are doing, his wife and kids afraid, not knowing he’s the one?
Roughly ten weeks fell between each of the first four attacks, but now it’s been four months since the last one and it has only increased the tension. Maybe there isn’t a pattern at all. Maybe the intervals between each of the attacks is just coincidence, not an indication of when the guy will strike next.
Maybe he moved out of town, though there aren’t any recent reports of similar murders in any neighboring state or anywhere else for that matter. This guy is local and he isn’t going anywhere.
Maybe he’s hoping the intense coverage will subside and people, as we do now in this fast-moving age of information, will move on to something else.
But people aren’t forgetting, aren’t letting their guard down.
The police have increased patrols in neighborhoods that match the profile of the ones he’s already attacked. Women move in groups now, even during daylight hours, despite all of the attacks happening in homes and at night.
I talked to numerous people who told me they never spend the night alone anymore. More than one group of friends told me they take turns staying at each other’s apartments now, sleeping in shifts. Nothing was making that fear go away.
Which is why all these people are here tonight. And I’m here to talk to them.
A woman approaches the microphone on the stage and thanks everyone for coming out tonight. The crowd gives themselves a round of applause as they extinguish their candles, which weren’t giving off much light to begin with because the “Take Back The Night” rally is ending before complete darkness settles in. Maybe they should have called it “Take Back The Dusk.”
The sun is low in the sky, no longer there to burn off the humidity and there’s no breeze to speak of. People slap at the bare, sweaty skin of their arms and legs and necks to fight off mosquitos.
“Remember the three most important words if you find yourself under attack,” the woman on stage says. “Run. Hide. Fight. In that order.”
Earlier, a self-defense expert addressed the attendees and explained that, statistically speaking, you gain nothing by giving in to an attacker like this one. You should try to run. If you can’t, you should try to hide. And if that doesn’t work, fight.
It seems straightforward enough. But probably not so easy when you’re asleep one second, and the next you’re jolted awake by a stranger standing at the foot of your bed, temporarily blinding you with a flashlight, and before you can react, he’s on you, tying you up.
Investigators are sure this is his MO because of what Beth Callahan told them after surviving the attack.
As the people begin to disperse, I spot a group of young women. They look to be college age, just a few years younger than me.
“I’m a reporter with the City Herald,” I say when I catch up to them. “May I ask you a few questions for a story I’m doing?”
They stop. One of them, a girl who holds a rolled up sign, asks my name.
“Kate Downey,” I say.
Another one says, “You’re not going to use our names, are you?”
That’s the most common response I get when I introduce myself to someone and ask for an interview. Just about everyone I’ve talked to wishes to remain anonymous, but they’re all eager to talk. Like it’s some form of therapy, a purging of fear, say it out loud and maybe it’ll go away. But they’d still stick with their companion, or their group.
I think about these girls and how they fit the victim profile perfectly. I shake off the thought.
“I won’t use your names. I won’t even ask who you are.” I point with my pen to the rolled up sign. “What does your sign say?”
She raises it, unfurls it, and shows me: I WILL NOT BE NEXT.
“Mind if I take a picture? I won’t show your face.”
All three arrange themselves shoulder to shoulder, each placing a hand on the sign. I take a picture with my phone, their faces not shown as promised, and I let them see it.
“Are you roommates?” I ask.
“We are now. Well, two of us are,” says the one who hadn’t spoken yet, standing there with her arms tightly folded across her chest. “I have my own place, but I got tired of having friends come inside with me to check my apartment. So I’m staying with them until this is all over.”
“If it’s ever over,” her frie
nd adds.
It has been going on for almost a year, but feels longer. Especially the nights. When the morning comes, we wake up wondering if he’s claimed another victim overnight.
I talk with a few more people as they leave the rally, collecting enough quotes for my story. As I’m walking to my car, sharing the sidewalk with hundreds of other people, I fall in next to a young couple.
They’re holding hands. His right, her left. I focus on his other hand, swinging by his side as they walk, and I see a wedding ring.
“The last one was a couple,” the wife says.
They’re talking about the attack on Payton Donnelly and Brad Starke. Like many people, she’s convinced they were targeted because they were a couple.
She looks up at him, her hair brushing across her back. I see her profile. She’s young. They’re both young. Maybe newlyweds.
“I doubt he planned for that,” he says. “Probably surprised the guy. And he probably didn’t have a gun. Don’t worry.”
Their conversation fades as I slow down, letting them get farther ahead of me.
The husband was wrong on two counts.
Brad Starke did have a gun. It was in a drawer in the nightstand, just a reach away. But he couldn’t get to it. I know he didn’t even have a chance to get it. I’ve viewed the crime scene photos and the drawer is closed. The police report includes the gun, but the fact that he had it was something that wasn’t even mentioned in the reporting, mine or others.
The husband is also wrong about the attacker being surprised by the presence of a male. Some, including the police, said this was a mistake on the killer’s part and that he didn’t know Brad was there. But it was planned. I have no doubt about that. And I’m convinced it was because of a story I wrote, citing the fact that he hadn’t struck in a home where a male was present. I had unwittingly issued him a challenge and he took it.
It’s almost nine o’clock when I reach my car. The parking lot is crowded, so I sit there for a few minutes, letting it clear out a little. I go over my notes that will become the story I’ll begin writing when I get home.
My phone chirps. It’s a notification for a reminder about tomorrow morning’s appointment with Dr. Benson. It’s an appointment I can’t miss. It could cost me my job.