by Hamel, B. B.
But each night I came back to the file. We were calling him the Fingers Killer back then for a lack of a better name.
He had over twelve victims that we knew about. We suspected he could have upwards of twenty, especially since the bodies ranged so far through time. He’d been active for over fifteen years, and we worried it could go even further back.
I worked that case harder than I’d ever worked anything in my life. I was obsessed, falling deeper and deeper into the pit as I learned more and more about the town. He was based in Wilder Town, Mississippi, a tiny place just like Mishawaka. Maybe that was what drew me to it from the start.
Maybe I was trying to avenge the ghosts of the dead girls because I felt like I knew every single one of them.
I got my first break after a month. I noticed a pattern to the bodies based on geography, and when we traced the pattern to some of its logical conclusions, we found more bodies.
And more bodies meant more evidence. Suddenly, the Fingerless Killer case was blown wide open. We had another six victims, one of which went back twenty years.
That girl from twenty years ago, she was Lester’s biggest mistake. I figured she was his first, though I never knew about it.
Lester Seed still haunted my dreams. Lester was one of the smartest, most dangerous men I had ever come across, even as an FBI agent who dealt exclusively with smart and dangerous men.
And I was terrified that he was back. He was supposed to be dead, shot in the chest by my gun. He was supposed to be buried somewhere deep, deep down.
But the girl without the fingers and the other bodies that kept cropping up said otherwise.
I shook my head, trying to dispel the ghosts.
Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a copycat. But I had a feeling, a sinking stone in my gut, that made me think something horrible was going on. Something that was just outside my reach.
“You almost done?” I heard Laney call.
I looked up, surprised. I must have been in the bathroom for a while.
“Yeah,” I called back, hastily pushing the file back into its hiding spot. “Just finished.”
I glanced down at my feet. I wasn’t done with Lester. He wasn’t letting me go.
I opened the door and quickly shut it behind me.
“You’re going to turn into a vampire if you stay in there any longer,” Laney said, smiling.
I grinned back. “If only you knew.”
Chapter Seven: Laney
She looked pissed.
“I don’t believe it.”
I watched as the woman leafed through the pictures Easton had just handed to her. She was in her mid-fifties, not exactly in the best physical shape, but I could tell she was still pretty underneath all that stress. Frankly, she looked haggard.
“I’m sorry,” Easton said, “but it’s true.”
“Marcy would never do this.”
I leaned up against the filing cabinet and frowned. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins, but it’s the truth. I was there, too.”
She gave me a dirty look. “Who’s this?”
“My assistant,” Easton said.
“What’s some silly little girl doing helping you?”
I gaped at her. I had never met a stranger that just randomly insulted me. Easton glanced at me and then back at Mrs. Jenkins.
“I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Jenkins, but this is the truth.”
She shook her head violently. “No. Not with Marcy.” She looked at me. “This is your fault, I bet. You took these pictures. You don’t know what you’re doing.” She seemed hysterical.
I couldn’t believe she was blaming me, but I was beginning to understand what Easton meant. People came to him when they were desperate. In a lot of ways, he was a last resort for these people, and they often were not exactly in the best way mentally or even financially. Easton’s job was to confirm suspicions, but very often the truth was so much worse.
I wondered if anyone was better off knowing. At least this woman knew not to trust her best friend and her husband anymore. At least now she could move on, even if it was painful.
“I took the pictures,” Easton said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins.”
She leaned back in her chair, defeated.
The look on her face was almost heartbreaking. I had never seen an adult look so broken down and depressed before. She was probably on the verge of tears.
I walked over to her and knelt down next to her chair. “I’m sorry. It’s going to be okay.”
And then it happened so fast. Easton went to say something as I reached out to comfort Mrs. Jenkins. However, she reacted so fast that I didn’t have time to even think about it. Suddenly her arms whipped out, knocking me back and away, sending the mug of coffee on Easton’s desk sprawling.
“Get away from me!” she shrieked.
I sat back on my hands, covered in coffee. The woman looked like a dog backed into a corner. Easton quickly moved around his desk.
“Are you okay?” he asked me.
“Fine,” I said, standing up.
Mrs. Jenkins stared and slowly regained control of herself. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Clean up in the bathroom,” Easton said softly in my ear. “I’ll take care of her.”
“I’m really fine,” I said back, and he nodded.
I walked off, back toward the bathroom. I shut the door behind me and leaned up against the wall facing the toilet.
I was fine, but shaken. I had never seen a person react like that, with such animal instinct and revulsion. Easton had probably been trying to warn me away from trying to touch her; he’d probably seen that before. For me, though, it was totally new, and it seriously shook me.
I let out a breath and looked down. Right then, something caught my eye. It looked like the corner of a file folder poking out from behind the toilet. It was just a corner, but it was definitely there.
Curious, I knelt down next to the bowl and reached around. Taped to the back of the toilet in a little nest was a thick file folder. Without thinking, I grabbed it and pulled it out.
It was heavy and full of images. Written on the tab were the words “The Fingerless Killer” in black ink.
I sat on the toilet and opened the folder.
The writing was in his handwriting. It was Easton’s, obviously from back when he’d worked for the FBI. The first page was a field report, really dry at first until I got to the crime scene description.
Dead girl, fingers missing, possible sexual assault. No DNA or any other evidence found.
I blinked, suddenly remembering the day Easton had come and checked on me. That had happened right after he’d read a story about a woman that had had her fingers cut off.
It had to be a coincidence. But then again, why was he hiding a file from me?
Nervous, I turned on the water in the sink to mask any sounds I made. I knew I should just put it back, not read it at all, but I couldn’t help myself. This might even be the reason he had been so angry at me for going through his files when I’d first started.
It was like the holy grail. The right thing to do was to put it back and pretend like I had never seen it. But sometimes the wrong thing seemed so much better.
I began to read, skimming through it. There were pictures, horrible pictures of crime scenes and bodies, and I tried to skip over those. But what disturbed me more and more was the narrative that began to cohere.
Lester Seed was a serial killer working out of the Dallas area. He had a lot of victims, at least ten that I noticed as I skimmed, probably more. Some of the cases dated back a pretty long time, and it looked like the farther back I went through the file, the more the handwriting all changed.
It had clearly been worked by a few different people. But Easton and his partner were the most recent two names that I kept seeing come up again and again.
Lester Seed. He’d been caught by a freak accident al
most. Apparently they found an old victim, extremely old, and got a piece of his DNA from her body. Maybe he had been sloppy early on, Easton speculated in some field notes. Maybe he wanted to be caught one day.
Easton and his partner, Martin, found Lester when his DNA matched a database of blood donors. They had staked him out, followed him around, taken countless hours of observations.
And then something had happened.
My eyes widened as I read the last field report, the grisly details becoming clear.
Slowly it dawned on me exactly why Easton had left the FBI, and why he was drinking so much.
Easton had become convinced that Lester was about to kill again. He had pushed for the bureau to do something, but they didn’t feel that they had enough evidence and wanted to continue to observe. Going against orders, Easton followed Lester Seed to his home and confronted him.
Seed turned violent. In the ensuing struggle and chase, Martin Rodriguez was stabbed in the neck and eventually died of his wounds in the hospital. Easton shot Seed four times in the chest, killing him instantly.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Easton’s partner had been murdered, and Easton had killed a man. All in a single moment. All in some freak accident.
Then there was a knock at the door.
I almost jumped out of my pants.
My heart was pounding and my mind was stuck imagining that night. Lester running through his house and then popping out from behind a door, stabbing Martin in the neck. I could only guess at the fear and the emotions Easton felt, then and now.
“You okay in there?” I heard him say.
“Yeah, fine,” I said quickly. I closed the folder and dropped to my knees, gently placing it back into the little taped holder he had made.
“You fall in?”
“I didn’t fall in,” I said, annoyed.
I quickly got up and grabbed some toilet paper and began to dab at my pants. I opened the door after a second.
He grinned in at me. “Crazy, huh?”
“Totally insane,” I said.
But I couldn’t help but see the person who was hiding behind his gaze, the person who had lost his partner. The person who had gotten too close to a case and had lost everything.
“That’s not even the worst I’ve seen,” he said.
“Is she gone?”
He nodded. “We won’t see her again.” He paused, and I saw him quickly glance at the toilet. I held my breath, but he looked back at me and smirked. “Paid pretty well, though.”
“Oh good,” I said and began to dab at my pants again.
“Need a hand with that?” he asked.
“I think I can handle it myself.”
“Good. I’m only good at getting you wet, anyway.”
I gave him a withering look. “How about a little privacy.”
“Whatever you want, sis.” He turned and walked out.
I closed the door behind him and let out a long breath.
I had no clue what I was going to do with this information, but it did speak to something scary happening. That article had mentioned that the body was relatively near Mishawaka, and Easton was clearly paranoid if he was willing to come check on me.
Did Lester Seed somehow survive? I couldn’t see how, not based on what I had read. But I understood why Easton was worried. Seed had a particular killing style, and that murder matched it very well. As far as I could tell, it was Lester Seed, back from the dead.
But people didn’t come back from the dead.
I dabbed dry paper on my pants and quickly cleaned up. I needed to get myself together before I went out and looked at Easton again.
So much was suddenly clicking into place, and yet it opened up so many other questions.
I dried my hands, opened the door, and walked back into the office, not sure about anything.
Chapter Eight: Easton
Not a single call for the rest of the day.
That crazy lady’s money would pay my rent, and maybe buy some groceries, but I needed more clients, preferably high-paying ones that needed someone for long-term work.
Unfortunately, small towns rarely had a high need for a private detective, which meant that I was constantly just barely scraping by. That suited me, more or less; I’d never cared before. But suddenly with Laney around, I cared about the condition of the office, cared about needing to keep the electricity running.
No calls all day. I looked in at Laney as she scrolled idly through her Twitter feed.
“Let’s do something,” I said.
She looked back at me. “What do you have in mind?”
That was a great question. Ever since that lady’s blowup the day before, Laney had seemed strange, maybe a little distant.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing my keys from the desk.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” She stared at me for a second before closing her laptop’s lid and following me out the door.
“Still interested in criminal justice?” I asked her as we got into the car. I started the engine and headed out of town.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because most clients are like her.”
Laney was quiet for a second. “She was just hurting.”
“Yeah, she was.”
“People need other people the most when they’re hurting. Even if they push them away.”
“Could be right. But you got covered in coffee.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Of what?”
“She can get me wet so easily.”
I looked at her and then burst out laughing. “Laney, are you flirting with your stepbrother?”
“Flirting? You wish.”
I grinned at her. “I love when you pretend like you aren’t thinking about me every day in the shower.”
“You’re the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Doubtful. I’m sure you wonder what it would be like if I slipped my thick cock deep inside you.”
“Where are we going?”
I watched as trees flashed by. We were outside town, heading to the border of Mishawaka. I wasn’t sure if she’d ever been where we were going before, but it was one of my favorite spots in the whole town. I hadn’t been there since I’d moved back home yet, and I figured maybe it was the thing she needed to come out of her funk.
“You’ll see. We’re close.”
I drove a bit farther while she fiddled with the radio. I slowed down to a crawl and flipped on my high beams. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, but the trees were casting long shadows. Finally, I spotted our turnoff. It was a small dirt road leading into the forest.
We bumped our way off the main road and began up the dirt track.
“Okay, now I have no clue where we are,” she said.
“Good.” I grinned at her. “I can’t believe you’re a native and you’ve never been here before.”
We took the dirt road another ten minutes as Laney tried desperately to defend her native status. I mostly grunted in response, paying careful attention to the road in front of us. Finally, at long last, the road opened up into a bit of a clearing.
I pulled the car off to the side. “Here we are.”
Up ahead was a large, rushing river. It was the river that stood along the border of Mishawaka and the neighboring county. Spanning the water was an incredibly old steel and wood bridge.
We got out of the car. “I’ve never seen this before,” Laney said.
“It’s my favorite spot. Come on.” I walked confidently toward the bridge.
“We’re not going out on that thing,” she called back.
I turned and walked backward. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid, sis.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I didn’t think so.” I turned back around and walked out onto the bridge.
I understood her hesitation. The bridge looked like something out of a horror movie, especially a zombie movie. It hadn’t been used in any serious way
in a long time, and so there were plants crawling up its sides. The steel was beginning to rust in places, and some of the wooden boards were slightly rotted out.
But I knew it was steady. I used to fish off it a long time ago, back when my father was still alive. He passed from cancer, but I never forgot the bridge he used to take me to.
I leaned up against the railing, looking out over the water. I didn’t even notice when Laney appeared next to me. We silently stood like that for some time, listening to the birds and watching the water.
“It’s really pretty out here,” she said.
“Yeah, it is.”
“How’d you know about this?”
“My dad. We used to fish out here.”
She nodded. “He died, right?”
“He did. Cancer.”
“Sorry.”
I shrugged, bumping my shoulder against hers. “Long time ago. But it’s one of my favorite spots in town. I haven’t been back here yet.”
“Really? Why not?”
“Not sure. Just never felt like it until now.”
“I’m glad you brought me.”
I stood closer to her, feeling my heart beat hard in my chest. I realized in that moment that although I was telling myself our little trip was to cheer her up, it was really all for me.
Because I wanted to share this spot with Laney. I didn’t want everything she knew about me to be all about the job, all about the shitty parts of human nature. I wanted her to know about the good stuff.
And she looked so fucking good. Her T-shirt was tight and tucked into tiny little shorts, her long hair cascading down along her back. I could feel my cock stirring as I began to imagine fucking her pressed up against the railing, out in the open for anyone to see.
She seemed to sense what I wanted, or maybe she was just cold. She shifted closer, our shoulders touching.
“You had a reputation, you know,” she said.
“What kind of reputation?”
“Back in high school. You’re a few years older, but I still heard about you.”
“Probably all lies.”
She laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Apparently you were a big man whore, though.”
I paused. “That may be true.”