A Secondhand Life

by Pamela Crane

  When he stopped to watch me, I feared I’d been caught. But when he didn’t advance—his face still too deep in the shadows for me to see his features clearly—I felt optimistic. I might survive this after all … though did I even want to survive with this memory?

  Chapter 11

  Friday night’s dream wasn’t much help in filling in the gaps or solving the case. Even though Alexis’s memories were becoming my own thoughts, my own translation of events, I lumbered through a clueless haze, unable to piece the puzzle together.

  Without a clear picture of the elusive killer’s face, I had nothing. So I decided to apply more conventional investigative methods. I called Landon, telling him to meet me at the police precinct that originally handled the murder investigation.

  He talked me into grabbing a bite to eat first, which sounded perfect since I hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was approaching eleven o’clock. Despite my fears of a repeat coffee shop episode with Brad, I met Landon at a diner down the road from the station, the Silver Spoon, and ordered typical lunch fare—sandwiches and fries. Seated at a picture window that overlooked the busy four-lane stretch of concrete with unruly, untapped forest beyond that, I got comfortable in the booth. The cushion squeaked under my fidgeting.

  After triple checking the parking lot for Brad’s car—just in case—I told Landon about my suspect list, which he wanted to see.

  When I showed it to him, he pointed to

  Friends

  “You can scratch that off the list.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “She didn’t have any friends?”

  “There was no one she hung out with regularly outside of school. One visit to our house would send kids running right back out the door. They were kind of afraid of Alexis because of my parents and where we lived.”

  “What about church? You did grow up in the Bible Belt, after all.”

  “We didn’t go to church back then. I think my mom thought she’d catch on fire if she entered a holy place.” Landon’s finger rested on

  extracurricular activities

  “And we weren’t involved in any sports or extramural activities.”

  “I thought Alexis played soccer?” I recalled the newspaper article.

  “Yeah, when she was, like, five,” he said between bites of his club sandwich. “Neither of us could get into sports seriously because our parents were too self-absorbed or trashed to take us anywhere on time. I had to drop out of Little League for that reason.”

  I remembered Landon and his dad mentioning that at our meet-and-greet. I couldn’t imagine a childhood so … lonely.

  “How did you end up so normal?” I wondered aloud as I ran my pencil through another item on the list. I was down to

  Uncle Derek

  Neighbors

  Cousins

  Jennifer’s boyfriends

  “You think I’m normal? Thanks!” he said with mock gusto.

  “Maybe I don’t know you well enough.” I grinned.

  My finger traced Dan’s penciled-out name on the list. “Are we fairly sure your dad is innocent? I don’t know what he was like drunk, but before I write him off, I wanted to ask you … unless that’s too personal, Landon.”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s not a bad question. But he wasn’t usually a mean drunk, didn’t beat on us constantly or anything like that … More excitable than anything, wanting to party harder. But not violent. Usually he’d just get loopy, then fall asleep.”

  I felt satisfied with that answer.

  Next he pointed to

  Cousins

  “No cousins. My mom was an only child, and my Uncle Derek never married or had kids—well, that he knows of, that is.”

  “A bit of a player?” I asked as I scribbled a line through cousins.

  “You could say that.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “My guess is he hit midlife hard and has Peter Pan syndrome—no matter how old he gets, he can’t handle growing up. Into drugs and perpetually jobless. And a total user, in my opinion. He was always using my dad for money and stuff.”

  “How about murder—is he the type to kill someone, you think?”

  Landon scratched his chin. “Maybe … Uncle Derek—he could be worth talking to … just to see if he has an alibi or some information about that night. While I have a hard time thinking he’d be capable of something like that, Uncle Derek was kinda shady. Always a little … off. And a tad perverted.”

  When Landon didn’t elaborate, I prodded him on. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he’d been in jail a bunch of times for petty theft, and he had a couple of inappropriate relationships with, uh … girls.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Girls—as in prepubescent, Watson?”

  “Not as young as Alexis, but not much older. Way too young for him. Like seventeen years old when he was in his thirties. Even as a kid I remember him preying on girls in my grade—asking me about them, you know? Creeped me out seeing him with girls from my class.”

  This was getting juicy. “Girls—plural?”

  “Yeah, he dated a couple of them. Back then he could charm the pants off of anyone, and he constantly worked out. He was kind of a bad boy, which was appealing … total opposite of me, the book nerd. You know how girls love a bad boy.”

  “Aw, I’m sure you weren’t that geeky.”

  “My pocket protector testifies otherwise.”

  We shared a laugh.

  “You probably dated the quarterback for the football team,” he added.

  “Not my type.”

  “So, what is your type?”

  I giggled. He was fishing and I found that incredibly funny. For despite his charm and my new singlehood, I wasn’t interested … was I?

  “I don’t know if I really have a type. Confident, interesting, adventurous … I haven’t really dated enough people to know what I like or don’t like in a person. I guess I just know it when I feel it.”

  “Are you still seeing that guy we ran into—Brad?” The way he asked was tinged with a subtle shyness. It was cute.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, though. Were Brad and I officially over? Or were we just taking a break? We hadn’t spoken since our exchange at the coffee shop, which was a telling sign of doom. We used to talk daily. The thought made me miss him. I was nowhere close to over him. It took a lot longer to fall out of love than it did to fall in love.

  “I’m not sure. We were pretty serious not that long ago, but he wasn’t too thrilled about my latest activities—this whole investigation.” I rolled my eyes. “So we’re on a break. In guy-speak, does that mean we’re over?”

  “Nah,” Landon assured me, “he just needs time. He’s probably worried something bad is going to happen to you. It’s not like you’re investigating the latest Bigfoot sighting. You’re dealing with a bona fide murderer, not a cryptid. That puts you at risk. I wouldn’t want my girlfriend—if I had one—to be doing this either.”

  “I suppose that’s reassuring—the part about my relationship not being over with, not the life-threatening killer-catching part.” I smiled weakly.

  The realization of just how dangerous my research was hadn’t sunk in until that moment.

  **

  I had never been in a police station before. It wasn’t quite what I expected. I imagined cement block walls, bare light bulbs hanging from exposed wires in shadowy interrogation rooms, and donuts. Lots and lots of donuts.

  Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. While there weren’t more than a handful of windows, I found standard overhead waffle lighting and desks organized into neat cubicles. A couple of ferns added ambience, and the gurgle of a modern water dispenser rose above the chatter. A plump woman at a semi-circular front desk greeted us, offering to help “y’all” in her thick-as-sorghum-syrup Southern accent.

  “Is Detective Williams in today?” Landon asked.

  “Sure, hon, he’s at his desk in the far right corner over yonder.” She pointed and answered a ri
nging phone with a chirpy, “Dur’m Police Department. How can I help you?”

  We wove through a sea of puke-gray metal desks, Landon leading the way. When we reached Detective Williams’ desk, the two men hugged.

  So they were friends—friendly enough to hug. It wasn’t shocking, since they appeared close enough in age to have gone to high school together, and they even looked similar. Clean, chiseled jaw, same lean build, same average height … only Detective Williams’ blond hair gave him a slightly boyish look. But I wondered why Landon hadn’t told me just how effortlessly he could access inside information. My excitement skyrocketed. This could give us a break in the case!

  “Landon, how ya doin’?” the detective asked, patting Landon’s shoulder.

  “Doing okay, Evan. You?”

  “Just staying out of the line of fire until retirement,” he joked. “And who is this?” Detective Williams glanced at me.

  “Mia Germaine,” I said, shaking his offered hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective Williams.”

  “Please, call me Evan. You make me sound … professional or something.” He winked. “Girlfriend finally?” he directed at Landon with a raised brow.

  Landon and I responded with a simultaneous “No.”

  “Just friends,” Landon clarified.

  “So you two know each other?” I asked.

  “Evan lives on Willoughby Way. I’ve known him my whole life.”

  “Did you go to school together?” I wondered aloud.

  Landon chuckled. “No, Evan’s got half a dozen years on me. I’m still a young’un compared to this old geezer.”

  “Yep, forty’s come and gone for me, broheme, but it’s coming for you soon,” Evan chided.

  “At least I’ll be looking good as I hit forty. Back in the day Evan was nice enough to let me play ball in the street with the big kids.”

  “You never thanked me for taking it easy on you back then,” Evan joked.

  “And you never thanked me for taking it easy on you now,” Landon retorted. “Anyways, we wanted to talk to you about Alexis.”

  Evan shook his head solemnly. “Man, don’t go down this road. It’s been twenty years, dude. You still trying to find out who did it?”

  “She never got justice, man. But Mia may be able to help.”

  “I want this killer brought to justice just as much as you do. I’ve made it my life’s work trying to catch this guy. But I don’t know anything new.”

  “I don’t need new,” I cut in. “If I could have whatever’s old, that would work.”

  “First of all, Mia, I can’t just hand over evidence to a civilian. There are proper channels for handling and distributing case files—despite what the media may think.”

  I sensed a defensive tone.

  “Who was the detective handling her case?”

  “He’s retired and living in Florida. You need his address?”

  Now I knew he was being sarcastic, but I was about to call his bluff. Landon rested a hand on Evan’s shoulder.

  “Take it easy, man. She’s just trying to help.”

  Evan was taking this Q&A way too personally. I wondered if something happened that I wasn’t supposed to know.

  “Fine,” Evan grumbled. “What do you need?”

  “If the detective in charge of the case isn’t here anymore, is there anyone else who would know the details? I only have a couple of questions.”

  “I was the first responder to the 9-1-1 call, so I know a bit about it, but since I was still green, I wasn’t the lead on the case. What exactly do you want to know?”

  Ah, at last his skeptical attitude toward me was starting to make sense. My guess was that as a newbie he had screwed up the investigation. But I didn’t dare say what I was thinking.

  “So you have firsthand knowledge of everything.”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you ever have any suspects? I mean, who would want to hurt a little girl, and why Alexis specifically?”

  “Why any of these recent victims?” Evan threw back at me. “We’ve had two young girls—Gina Martinez and Violet Hansen—murdered in the past two years. If you look back over the past twenty-two years, there’ve been eight girls in that age group whose deaths are mighty damned suspicious—all killed by a fatal stabbing.”

  “Eight?” I stammered. “That’s a lot of lives. Why hasn’t the FBI gotten involved? You would think they’d have taken over by now.”

  “My thoughts exactly. We’ve tried involving the FBI, but they don’t see any hard connection between the murder victims other than approximate victim age, and considering the long time span, I guess it’s not convincing enough for them.”

  Evan shook his head wearily as he went on. “We’re presenting them with archaic cases over a span of twenty years that appear unrelated. Because of the locations, demographics, and race, the FBI argues that it’s most likely gang related, since the girls were underprivileged and had known ties to gang members. The girls were black or Hispanic, and from the ghetto, other than the case of Violet Hanson—the only Caucasian other than Alexis.”

  “Seriously—they don’t think serial killers target poor people too?”

  “Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. Hopefully the public outcry about the Triangle Terror will finally prompt FBI involvement, but when the murders are so spread out and don’t involve the socially elite, they won’t step in. Even I have to wonder about the timeline logic—I mean, why wait years between each victim?”

  He sighed heavily, clearly distraught.

  “While I can’t prove all the victims have been killed by the same person, it seems awfully coincidental to me when young, healthy girls pop up dead for no reason other than some psychopath is getting his jollies. All starting with Alexis.”

  “You seem pretty convinced it’s the same killer, though,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, the common threads we can find are the method of attack, age, and around the Triangle area. While it’s not a slam dunk, it’s enough to convince me that we’re dealing with the same guy over a period of twenty-two years.”

  “Wouldn’t that make him pretty old, though?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how young he was when he started killing.”

  “So we’re dealing with a genius serial killer, then, if he’s been getting away with murder for two decades.”

  “My guess, yes. But because the deaths are stretched out over such a long period of time and all of our victims have questionable associations, I can’t convince anyone else of this. My entire career has revolved around catching this scumbag, yet I’m nowhere close to solving it. We’re not equipped to handle this kind of criminal activity. We don’t have the forensic capabilities to find everything there is to find. We’re overworked, understaffed … and with budget cuts, there’s just not enough money to go around. I wish I could help you, because I believe we’re looking for the same person, but I don’t even know where to start.”

  Evan’s big ham of a fist struck his desk in frustration. Precinct chatter ground to an expectant halt for a good five seconds, then resumed. There was no doubting his devotion to his duty. He seemed so distraught that I felt extremely bad for him—the empath in me coming to the fore.

  I wanted to tell him about my visions, but I knew better than to confess to having dreams about murders. Cops believed in hard evidence, not pseudo-science. I’d only make a fool out of myself.

  “So you think the murders are connected—Gina, Violet, and Alexis?”

  “I think it’s very possible. They were all around twelve years old, same stab wound pattern in the abdomen, and all within a short drive of Raleigh. And when I pull up all of the similar murders in the past twenty-two years, I noticed a subtle trend. It takes some imagination, sure, but I think the killer perfected his craft over the years. Each one is a little less sloppy.”

  “How so?” I wondered aloud.

  “At Alexis’s crime scene, presumably his first, he left her for dead. She survived unt
il they reached the hospital, and had she lived, she could have identified him—big mistake on his part. But a year later in 1993—same date, the fourth of March—another girl, also age twelve, is stabbed in her home. Same scenario. Stab wound, 9-1-1 call from the house, but this time he succeeded in killing her. Though his mistake that time was leaving prints on the phone.”

  “So you have the killer’s prints?” I asked eagerly.

  “Unfortunately we couldn’t pull an ID from them. The mother got home as the ambulance arrived and she unwittingly grabbed the phone to call her husband before we pulled the prints. As a result she smudged them. But the killer was sloppy back then, and increasingly more meticulous with each kill. That tells me it’s the same guy.”

  “Why didn’t they make a connection to the two murders if they were only a year apart?”

  “You want the truth?”

  I nodded.

  “Because the victims weren’t noteworthy. Lower class families never are. People don’t care when so-called expendables are murdered. It’s sad but true.”

  How awful. How could anyone determine one person’s value over another based on where they lived and how much money they had? Society—and I use the term loosely—was royally screwed up.

  “Is there anything else that ties the murders together?”

  He shrugged. “There’s one thing that popped up with Gina that caught my attention. Back when Alexis was killed, the killer left an alcohol pad with her makeup on it at the scene of the crime. It was the first thing I noticed about Gina’s crime scene—another alcohol pad. It could be his calling card.”

  I wondered what message the killer was trying to send. Girls are growing up too fast? Losing their innocence too young? I jotted down a note to reflect on it later.