The Second Stranger

by J P Tompkins

  A picture of the living room. This is where they watched TV, played, laughed, after dinner. I see him in a recliner, waiting for the kid’s bedtime to arrive, then waiting for the girlfriend to turn in for the night, and that’s when his nights were just getting started.

  A picture of the laundry room. It sits between the kitchen and the garage. There’s the garage door, the door farthest away from the bedrooms on the other side of the house. The door he slipped out of when starting his night of prowling.

  A quiet family in a quiet house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. Yet, this is where it all came from. For a year. As people wondered who it was and where he’d strike next and who would be the victim, here was Nathan Greer, in this house, knowing all of those answers.

  People stand here quietly talking among themselves. And then I hear one of them, a female voice, say: “You never think it’s the person living right down the street.”

  It’s always the person living right down the street, I think but don’t say.

  I think of Erin’s parents and try to call them, but get voicemail both times.

  I could stay here a little longer and try to get some quotes from neighbors. But they’ll just give me lines like the one I just heard. Nobody gathered here knows anything but shock and disbelief, something I can convey without using quotes at all.

  For now, all I can think about is getting an interview with Nathan Greer. This will be the second time I’ve interviewed a murderer. As I drive home, my thoughts turn to how that first time went.

  Chapter 31

  The kidnapping of Amanda, and my survival, was all anyone talked about in town for weeks. I couldn’t get away from it, not when I was around adults, not when I was around kids my age.

  Just about the time it was starting to fade, though, they caught him.

  His name was Kevin Harper, but whenever someone mentioned him—in the press or in daily conversation—they called him Kevin Lee Harper, using his full name, in the tradition usually only reserved for serial killers and assassins. He was thirty-three when he was arrested, and it turned out the day he took Amanda was his thirty-first birthday.

  The two-year investigation finally led police to Harper via that old car that I told them about. All I knew was that it was old, long and wide, a car like I’d only seen in movies and TV shows from the 1970s. And it was blue. I had somehow seen that and retained it in the heavy downpour.

  He’d abandoned it in the woods, set fire to it at some point after taking Amanda. A group of hunters came across it, one of them a police officer. That’s the only reason it became a clue at all. Anyone else probably would have looked at it for a few minutes at most, then moved on, forgetting about the mostly destroyed vehicle. Harper made two big mistakes. One of the rear doors was mostly untouched by the flames, leaving the blue paint clearly visible, damaged only by some rust. The other was that the VIN was still legible.

  Police ran it and traced it back to him. He lived about twenty minutes outside of the town limits, in his grandfather’s house, which was left to him along with his grandfather’s little gas station, the last one anyone would encounter for about a hundred miles when heading out of town. Harper ran it by himself.

  Police interviewed him, asked him about the abduction and murder of Amanda. He denied everything, of course, but what he didn’t know was that they’d followed him for a week, eventually retrieving a discarded paper coffee cup, swabbing it for DNA, and matching it to the previously unidentified DNA collected from Amanda’s body.

  I was spared the trauma of having to testify against him. He pleaded guilty, avoided the death penalty, but was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Not long after his plea, talk of Kevin Lee Harper came to an end. The town moved on. Order restored. It was over.

  But not for me. I had clipped stories out of the newspaper after the arrest and throughout the legal process. I had tucked them into a notebook, thinking maybe someday I’d look at them again, or maybe I’d pick it up one day and throw them away. But for almost a year, I kept looking at them, drawn back again and again for one reason—how normal he looked.

  Just another guy. Just a forgettable face in a crowd. Just a person going about their life, like everyone else. Except for the part about taking another person and ending their life. It was just like all the other killers I had read about in the poached library books I now owned. They were among us. Anywhere. Everywhere.

  Seven years later, as a senior in college, one of my last assignments in my final journalism course was to do a one-on-one interview with a “newsmaker.” Some of my classmates chose politicians, local and statewide; others chose athletes, pro and college; a few chose musicians who had gone to our college and were likely to accommodate the request.

  I chose Kevin Lee Harper.

  When my professor asked why, I explained that it happened in my hometown, it was a big story when I was growing up and since I wanted to go into crime reporting it was an obvious choice.

  College was far enough from home that no one, including my professor, had any clue that I was The Lucky One. The Survivor. It was one of the reasons I chose to go there. Those labels had become identities in my hometown and it was time to shed them.

  Harper wouldn’t know who I was. His lawyer had worked out a plea deal: he would admit to the crime and avoid the death penalty. This also allowed me to avoid having to testify at a trial and because I was a minor, my name was never released in the press, and Harper never knew it.

  The prison signed off on the interview, Harper agreed to speak with me and two weeks later I made the hour drive through farmland, long stretches of woods and a couple of one-stoplight towns.

  I went to the main entrance, submitted to a cursory security check, and signed a few sheets of paper. Then a guard led me down a hallway, bright lights overhead, gleaming floor beneath my shoes, offices on both sides of the corridor, and an overwhelming smell of bleach. Then we got to another checkpoint, where we were buzzed in and everything looked different on the other side: gray walls, hard cement floor, and noise. It was an echo of voices and banging sounds, all coming from an area that I could barely see.

  “We’re not going over there,” the guard said.

  We walked for another minute or so until we reached another small hallway. One room off to the right had a sign on the door: ATTORNEY’S ROOM. A door to the left was labeled: MEDICAL. And down the hall, at the end, a sign that read: VISITORS.

  The guard opened the door. One wall was all cinder blocks. The other side held booths, each with one chair, a flat surface, and a window. A phone was on the side of each booth.

  The guard took me all the way to the end and motioned for me to take a seat.

  “They’ll bring him out shortly, ma’am.”

  It had only been five years since Kevin Lee Harper was locked up, but he looked nothing like the pictures in the press coverage at that time. He was now thirty-eight, but looked like a man who had crossed the fifty-year mark. His hair was starting to gray around the temples, crow’s feet projecting from the corners of his eyes. He had thinned out as if from malnourishment and lack of physical movement. No longer was he the imposing figure that got out of the car that rainy day.

  I was seated, watching him approach the booth on the other side of the glass. He made eye contact with me as he walked and didn’t break it as he lowered himself into the chair. He was far from what I was expecting.

  Until he spoke. His voice was the same: hoarse, scratchy, rough, and with a country twang. The sound of his speech brought me right back to the day of the crime. I remembered his voice so well, so clearly. I shouldn’t have been surprised—I had thought about the attack every day for years, so of course I knew exactly what he sounded like—but hearing it again, live, in person, wasn’t something I had prepared for.

  “I only agreed to this because you’re the first female visitor I’ve had,” he said. Of course he would say something like that.

  I nodded, making an effort
to keep a straight face and not give him any satisfaction. I opened my reporter’s notebook, folded the cover over the back and placed it on the desk. I clicked my pen and we were off.

  He wanted to know about me before he would answer any questions. I recited an entire phony backstory I’d made up on the drive just in case he asked me anything personal, something I was expecting him to do.

  “I’m really here to talk about you, Mr. Harper,” I said after answering a few of his questions. I kept my tone level, professional, but I had to get this moving because we were limited to thirty minutes and he had already eaten up ten of those.

  He stared at me, tilted his head to one side a little. I thought, just for a couple of seconds, enough to make my hands sweat a little, that he might have recognized me. But he didn’t.

  “And what do you wanna know?”

  My eyes were drawn to his hand, the one holding the phone up to his ear, and I thought about how those hands had grabbed Amanda and what else they might have done once he got her alone.

  I assessed his appearance again. There was nothing about him that would make someone look twice or, conversely, look away quickly, put off by some odd feature or wound or anything of the sort.

  There was nothing about the way he spoke that would make someone think he was anything other than the guy with the light southern drawl who owned and operated a local gas station. Only when someone knew in advance what he had done would they see him or hear him and remark that he “creeped” them out or made their “skin crawl.”

  This is how he blended in. How, as with so many like him, he moved through daily life, undetected, unsuspected.

  See him there, the guy in line at the grocery store who turns to you and makes a comment about how long the line is or how slow the cashier is. He’s just like you, just a regular guy trying to buy his groceries and get home.

  See him there, the friendly neighbor, co-worker, fellow member of a church congregation, just a guy who appears to be going about his life like everyone else, making it through the day just like you, looking forward to the end of the day so he can go home.

  Both of them, just trying to make it home. A home like all the others on their street, your street, except inside that home is where the fantasies begin the slow brewing and the planning begins.

  A regular guy, gentle and courteous, helpful and friendly, a pleasant man on the outside, while inside he burns with obsession, dark visions and bad intentions.

  Harper and I went through my list of questions I had prepared. Stock questions, things almost anyone would come up with after reading even just one true crime book or watching an episode of Dateline NBC.

  “How did you choose her?” I asked him, somewhere around the twenty-five minute mark of our allotted time.

  It was a question I had pondered for years, mostly late at night when the world was dark and quiet and thoughts like that intruded.

  “I followed them.”

  Them. It was the first time he had referenced me in any way. I felt my eyes blink rapidly a few times, my hand clutching my pen harder, anger rising inside me.

  “It was raining that day so I figured they would get in.”

  They. He was talking about me and he didn’t even know it.

  I pretended to jot something down in my notebook. “So there were two of them?” I ask.

  “Yes. She was always with her friend. Every time.”

  “What do you mean, every time?”

  “Every time I saw them in the neighborhood. Mostly walking to the pool, but sometimes just walking nowhere specific.”

  I was silent for a few long seconds. “So you had followed them before that day?”

  “Many times.”

  I had to look down, break eye contact, so he wouldn’t see the shock on my face. I lowered my head and moved my pen across the notebook once more.

  Amanda and I had been watched. Many times. We never had a hint of a clue that this guy was observing us from his car for…

  “For how long?” I asked, looking back at him.

  He shrugged. “Couple of months, at most. They were always outside. Sometimes I would find them in one of their yards. That’s the only time I got out of the car, if they were hanging out in one of their backyards.”

  I thought of the fence around my backyard. The one that bordered a long stretch of woods, undeveloped at the time, dense woods, perfect for what he was doing.

  “One of them had a trampoline,” he said.

  That was my yard, my trampoline. Amanda and I spent countless hours on it, laughing and bouncing and falling down and helping each other up and laughing more and being watched by a man in the woods.

  I looked at Kevin Lee Harper, the article already writing itself in my head.

  “Why didn’t you get the other girl?” I asked.

  Harper paused for a moment, rubbing his face with his hand. “I wanted to get both of them.”

  My jaw tightened but I still managed to speak, repeating the question I had just asked. “Why didn’t you get the other girl?”

  “She ran.”

  “And you didn’t try to go after her?”

  Harper shook his head. “I had to get out of there.”

  “Did you ever watch that other girl again?”

  “Once or twice,” he said. “But it wasn’t easy. She was very careful after that day. And her parents were very protective.”

  They were. It was years before they would let me go anywhere outside of home or school without one of them being present.

  “How long did you keep the girl before you killed her?”

  “All of this is public record. It was in all the papers.”

  It was, but I wanted him to tell me. I needed him to tell me. It was the setup I needed for what I was about to do next.

  “I just want to make sure I have all the facts,” I said.

  “A month.”

  “Where did you keep her?”

  He slid the chair forward a little, leaning on the little shelf in front of him. And then he told me how he had prepared his basement for two captives. He had soundproofed the ceiling and walls. There were two windows, he explained, high up on the walls, small windows that would let anyone see in if they were crawling around near the foundation of the house. He had bricked them over.

  “Sort of like this place,” I said, looking around, then back at Harper.

  He just stared at me.

  “These walls,” I continued. “I’m sure you’ve thought of these walls and how you’ll never see the other side of them.”

  Harper said nothing. I noticed a little facial tick—the corner of his left eye twitching slightly. I was getting to him.

  “And I’m assuming you had some kind of strong lock on that basement door. But probably nothing like the locks here. Did you have a bathroom down in that basement?”

  He still didn’t speak.

  “I’m thinking probably not,” I said. “What did you do? I’m sure you didn’t make her go on the floor. Did you give her a bucket?”

  Harper remained silent. The facial tick was gone. His eyes were no longer narrowed. They were wide. And his mouth opened a little, like he was entranced, listening to me saying all of this.

  I had come up with this plan on the drive to the prison, figuring out how I would work it into the interview, thinking of the questions I would ask and also not expecting to get answers. Which was fine. All I wanted him to do was listen, anyway.

  “Did you ever think you’d be in a similar situation?” I asked him. “Locked in a box, being told when you can shower, being seen on video going to the bathroom?”

  “Two minutes.” The words echoed off the concrete walls, the booming voice of a prison guard coming through a loudspeaker, signaling the interview was about to come to an end.

  “I saw where you lived,” I said to him. “Nice open countryside, lake, boat, everything. All that freedom. I imagine you stay up at night sometimes—not just because prison is such a bad place to spend the rest o
f your life—but I think you probably picture everything you used to have and you’ll never see again.”

  “You fucking bitch.” His lips barely moved, his mouth opening just a little to let the hissed words out.

  “I get to walk out of here and you get to watch me get away a second time.”

  I saw it then. He put it all together. He knew I was the little girl on the street that day.

  I hung up the receiver and rose from my seat.

  Harper shot up out of his chair.

  I stood there for a few more seconds, watching him as he shouted at the soundproof glass, then turned my back on him and walked away.

  Chapter 32

  An hour after leaving Nathan Greer’s street, I’m sitting at my kitchen table with my laptop in front of me.

  I called Neil on my way home and told him what was happening. I had the basics from Cole and I relayed them to Neil so we would hopefully be the first to break the news. And we were. I got a notification on my phone just minutes later.

  Now I turn to my laptop. I bring up the video and the preview screen appears. A still shot of Nathan Greer entering an interview room at the police station. There he is—the guy who terrified our community for months, the guy I’ve been obsessed with finding.

  I hit play and watch him step toward the table, followed by Detective

  Hogle and Detective Roark, and then a sheriff’s deputy, who guides Greer to a seat.

  “Cuffs?” the deputy asks.

  “On.” Hogle’s reply comes immediately. Stern.

  Greer is short, but he has that scrappy-strong look about him. He’s in a t-shirt that’s too tight for his torso and arms. Probably on purpose. He’s fit and looks like he’s into bodybuilding but not too far along, just getting into it maybe.

  His voice doesn’t match his physical makeup: nasal and a bit high-pitched. He speaks slowly, with an accent that fits the rural area he was originally from.

  Along with video, Cole included some basics on Greer. Age twenty-nine. Originally from about two hours west of us, in small rural town. Lived in this area for little more than a year.