by Kara Thomas
I force my trembling hands into the pockets of the jean shorts, and I watch Callie type a response back to Captain.
I get off work at 10. What kind of plans did you have in mind?
•••
Rick is in bed by ten-thirty. Callie and I are watching a movie in the family room, each of us tucked into opposite corners of the couch. Maggie putts around in the kitchen. Starts up the dishwasher. At eleven, she pokes her head in to tell us to have a good night.
We’ve just started another movie. “We’ll go to bed when it’s over,” Callie says, with a yawn added for flair.
“Okay.” Maggie kisses us both on the head. I hear her wiggle the front doorknob three times to make sure it’s locked, even though Daryl Kouchinsky is spending the night in a holding cell.
Maggie heads upstairs, and Callie and I are quiet. We watch forty-five minutes of a Fast and Furious movie before her phone buzzes with a text.
“Ryan’s down the street,” she says.
We leave the TV and lights on, since Maggie thinks we’ll be up for another couple hours watching the movie anyway. The Westfield Plaza is twenty minutes from Fayette. If Captain is on time and everything goes according to plan, we’ll be back in an hour.
Said plan is, in Callie’s words, “simple.” We wait in the dark in Ryan’s truck until Captain arrives. We get his license plate number and a photo, and we get the hell out before he realizes that Sasha’s not coming.
Like lighting a Roman candle, if we mess up the timing, it’ll blow up in our faces.
Ryan’s truck is parked two houses down. Lights off. He nods to us as we climb in, his eyes two worried orbs in the dark.
“Can’t believe we’re doing this,” he mutters as he turns the key in his ignition.
The truck engine stalls, and we all take a collective breath. But the engine starts as soon as he turns the key again, a firm rumble beneath us. In front of me, Callie grips the handle on the passenger door, her knuckles white.
We get to the shopping center fifteen minutes early. All the stores are dark, except for a seedy-looking bowling alley on the far side of the parking lot.
“There.” I point to the bowling alley lot. “It’s darker over there. We’ll wait there so he can’t see the truck.”
In the side mirror, I see Callie open her mouth to protest. “We said Sasha would meet him in front of Target.”
“Tessa’s right,” Ryan says. “We have to keep our distance till the last possible minute.”
“So he can realize there’s no Sasha and get away?” Callie frowns. “One of us should hide behind the Dumpster over by Target so we get a clear shot of his license plate.”
“That’s how you wind up in a Dumpster,” Ryan says.
I’m quiet, considering Callie’s point. Ryan turns in his seat to look at me.
“What?” He furrows his brow.
“She has a point,” I say. “He might leave before we make it across the lot, and then we won’t get his plate number. I could hide behind the Dumpster and run around the back of the store to Best Buy once I memorize it. You can pick me up from there.”
Ryan grips the steering wheel. “No one is getting out of this truck.”
“We’ve already risked a lot. I’m not risking him getting away.” Callie has on her stubborn face. Ryan sighs and puts the truck into drive.
“You get the license plate, and you get the hell out of there,” he says to me.
Thanks. I was planning on hanging out, I want to say. I know he’s only agreeing to this in the first place because it’s me and not Callie.
We have fifteen minutes until Captain is supposed to meet Sasha. Ryan drives over to Target, and I hop out of the truck.
Ryan drives off to the bowling alley across the parking lot. Above me, the lampposts cast an orange glow on the pavement. I duck out of their way, to the side of the building where the Dumpster is.
I crouch next to a discarded, wet plastic bag. My bladder constricts, and I remember having to pee every time I played hide-and-seek as a kid. I consider the mechanics of going back here, but it’s ten minutes before twelve, and Captain might be early.
I flip my cell phone open. There’s a text from Callie already. Your feet are showing.
I shift and look at the clock on my phone. Only a minute’s passed, and I swear, time is moving more slowly. I run through every disastrous scenario in my arsenal. Captain isn’t the same man who attacked Pam’s friend. Captain is a cop, but the good kind, and he’s coming to arrest Sasha.
11:56. Headlights wash across the pavement. I crane my neck to get a better look.
A silver Subaru Forester idles by the streetlamp farthest from the store, fifty feet away from me. The car parks and turns off his headlights but leaves the engine on, just like Captain told Sasha he’d do when he arrived.
Captain is early. Of course he is. My breathing becomes shallow, and I can’t move.
Come on, Tessa. I crane my neck slightly, but I can’t see the license plate from here. He’s too far away. It’s too dark. A red light blinks against the brick wall next to me, and I freeze.
I look up; a camera is pointing toward the front of the store. I didn’t notice it before. That’s why Captain parked so far away; he knew his plates would be out of range of the security feed. Goose bumps ripple down my back.
I text Callie. Can’t see. Stay where you are.
I eye my options to the side; there’s a row of shopping carts by a cluster of trees, about twenty feet from Captain’s car and away from the lampposts. If I’m fast, I can dart behind the carts without him noticing. It should be close enough to make out his plates.
Just stay away from the light.
I suck in a breath and get to my feet. And I run.
I duck behind the shopping carts at the same time that the Subaru’s lights go back on. It’s bright enough that I can see the back license plate: CRK-1841.
“Shit,” I say as Captain starts his car up. The driver’s window rolls down, and an arm in a denim shirt hangs out.
Captain pokes his head out the window, surveys the parking lot. His gaze skates over the shopping carts but doesn’t rest on where I’m hidden.
I see his face through the carts. He’s bald, with a beard, and my breath catches.
It’s him.
I know who the Monster is.
Lights wash over the Target lot. Not Captain’s—Ryan’s truck. Captain turns his head, sees the truck pulling up behind him. It looks like he mutters something, and then he gasses it. He’s tearing across the parking lot without rolling up his window.
I run out into the lot, in front of Ryan’s truck as he skids to a stop. Through the windshield, Callie’s face is ashen.
I yank open the door and crawl over Callie to get into the backseat.
“Did you get the license plate?” Callie says, breathless, at the same time that Ryan shouts, “You got WAY too close. He could have seen you—”
“I saw him,” I say. “I saw his face, and I know who he is.”
They’re silent.
“He works at the prison,” I say. “He’s a goddamned prison guard.”
He handed me the bag of my father’s things. He smiled at me, and I thought, He looks like he has a daughter. And I left and never thought about him again.
“Captain is the warden in Cool Hand Luke,” Ryan says quietly. “Damn.”
“What did he look like?” Callie whispers.
“Like Pam said. Bald, but he had a beard. Average build.”
“What about the scar?”
I have to put an arm on the door handle to steady myself. “I couldn’t see. But I wasn’t close enough, and his beard might’ve covered it.”
“I’ll get my uncle to run his plates,” Ryan says. “We can get a name.”
“You don’t have to.” Callie turns and shows me the screen of her phone. She’s on the Fayette County Penitentiary website, on a page titled “Our Staff.”
“Is that him?” She points to a w
hite-haired man in a navy police jacket. Captain Phillip Swain, head of corrections.
I shake my head and scroll down the screen. He’s smiling in his photo.
He had friendly eyes.
Correctional Officer James “Jimmy” Wozniak.
The son of a bitch isn’t even a captain.
•••
Jay Elwood doesn’t have a doorbell. Ryan raps on the door until a dog starts going berserk inside. A light flips on in the hall, and a male voice soothes the dog.
Ryan’s uncle opens the door and blinks at Ryan. “What did you do?”
He thinks we’re here for him to get us out of trouble. I don’t know why, but that comforts me.
“Nothing,” Ryan says as a giant white shepherd pushes past him and bumps its nose into Callie’s crotch. Then mine.
“Sammy, down.” Detective Elwood tugs the dog’s collar. “That’s not polite.” He turns back to Ryan once Sammy is lying down at his feet, and angles himself so we can step inside the house. “Your mom know you’re here?”
I cross the threshold and wince at the smell of dog and old Chinese food. Off the hall is a laundry room with socks spilling across the hardwood. Ryan’s uncle kicks them out of the way and leads us into the kitchen, where he stops.
“Okay, what’s going on?” He crosses his arms in front of his chest.
Callie looks at Ryan.
“Are you looking at anyone besides Nick for Ari Kouchinsky’s murder?” Ryan asks.
Jay Elwood grabs a half-empty bottle of orange juice from the fridge. He sinks into one of the kitchen chairs, spreads his knees. “You know I can’t answer that.”
Ryan holds his uncle’s gaze. A staring contest. “If you were, would it maybe be Jimmy Wozniak?”
Jay leans back in his seat. Eyes Ryan skeptically. “Guy who works at the prison?”
Ryan nods.
“He’s a nice guy,” Ryan’s uncle says. “Does a lot of court transfers.”
Ryan drags a chair closer to his uncle and plops himself onto the seat. “We think he met up with Ari. Nick described this weird guy she found on Connect, and he sounds just like a man who tried to kill a prostitute in Ridgefield.”
Jay sits upright. “Whoa, hold up. Where did you get all this from?”
Callie’s eyes flick downward. Jay doesn’t miss it. He sets his juice down on the table with enough force to jolt me where I’m rooted in the kitchen doorway. “Have you guys been talking to prostitutes?”
“You gotta believe us,” Ryan says. “Jimmy Wozniak uses Connect to find girls to kill.”
“He could be the Ohio River Monster,” I say. “He killed Ari just like he killed those other girls.”
Ryan flinches.
“Who told you how Ari was killed?” Jay’s voice is eerily calm. “Did Elliot Banks the coffee boy tell you that?”
Callie stares at Ryan. “You said your uncle told you the details.”
Ryan looks like a dog that just got spanked. “I didn’t want to get Eli in trouble.”
“Unbelievable,” Jay mutters, making a fist on the table. “Kid’s ass is grass. This is how shit gets to the media.”
“We didn’t tell anyone else,” Ryan says in a rush. He points to Callie and me. “Don’t you think they have the right to know? They testified against the guy your department says is the Monster. Even if there’s the smallest chance they were wrong, they should know.”
Officer Elwood wipes his hand down his face. “Go home, Ry.”
Ryan’s bottom lip twitches. “You have to look into Jimmy Wozniak. Please, Uncle Jay.”
“I’ll pull his file, see if there are any red flags,” Jay says, leading us to the door. “That’s really all I can do.”
Jay whistles as he holds the door open for us, prompting Sammy to stand up to her full height. She jumps up and rests her paws on Ryan’s chest. “I can’t believe you’ve been digging around behind my back,” Ryan’s uncle says. “What were you thinking, Ry?”
Ryan flushes and gently removes Sammy’s paws from his chest.
“You stay far away from this guy,” Jay says. “If he is involved, and you tipped him off…”
I stiffen. Next to me, Callie looks like she’s going to faint. Jay shakes his head and shuts the door.
None of us speaks the entire way home.
•••
Callie goes straight to bed after Ryan walks us up to the house. I lie under the bed in the guest room, unable to sleep. The ticking of the cuckoo clock is like someone rattling the sides of my brain. I crawl out, grab the afghan, and head downstairs.
While the computer starts up, I watch the muted TV. I wonder if Jimmy Wozniak can’t sleep either, now that he suspects Sasha was never real. Does he realize someone is onto him?
I pull the afghan tight around my shoulders. When the Internet browser loads, I search Macy Stevens scar.
I get a hit in the Cyber Sleuths forum and comb through the chatter. Apparently when the police questioned Amanda about it, she said Macy had hit her chin on a glass coffee table. But when they talked to Amanda’s friends, some of them remembered commenting on the scar, and what Amanda told them. When she grows up, it’ll be a reminder not to be such a little pain in the ass.
Years later, everyone seemed to agree with Brenda Dean that Macy’s scar wasn’t from an accident.
My mother’s voice fills my head. I see her, hovering by the TV, two fingers propped gently against her chin as she absorbed the atrocities of the evening news. Something about a woman who had drowned her newborn.
“There’s a special place in hell for people who hurt their own children,” she said.
Above me, the floorboards creak. I shut the computer down and plop onto the couch, afghan over me to pretend I’m sleeping.
Footsteps on the stairs. Callie’s voice. “What are you doing down here?”
I sit up. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Callie sits on the opposite end of the sofa. Tucks her feet beneath her. “Me neither.”
After a beat, Callie says, “Did you know there were gray fibers on two of the victims?”
I nod. The judge didn’t allow the fibers to be introduced into the trial, since they’d been ruled “inconclusive.” Some of the Cyber Sleuths say the fibers couldn’t have come from Stokes. They were polyester, and a search of Stokes’s trailer didn’t turn up any clothing made from that material.
The judge said the fibers could have been from anyone the victims had come into contact with, and besides, Stokes could have gotten rid of the clothes he’d been wearing during the murders.
“The state corrections officer uniform is gray,” Callie says.
I know she’s waiting for me to say it. So I do.
“We have to go to the DA’s office tomorrow morning.”
Callie closes her eyes. Her face is awash in white and blue from the TV. “My mom will never forgive me. Us.”
I can’t tell her what she wants to hear, that Maggie will eventually accept that we’re doing the right thing. “I know.”
“Do you think we’ll ever find out what happened to her?”
I know she’s talking about Lori now. I hear the defeat in her voice, the fear of seeing Stokes walk free without Lori’s real killer to take his place.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But maybe this is the first step. They’ll open a new investigation, and it’ll be something.”
Callie yawns into the dark. She shuts the TV off and curls onto her side, stretching her legs across the couch so they’re grazing mine. I do the same.
Neither of us falls asleep, but we stay this way, sharing the couch and the blanket like we used to back when we didn’t know that monsters were real.
Callie shakes me awake. The afghan is tangled around my feet. The cable box says it’s seven a.m.
“I left a note for my mom saying we’re getting breakfast at the deli and going to the pool,” she says.
I’m still in the pants and T-shirt I was wearing yesterday. Callie hands me the p
air of shorts we bought at the outlets, and I take them into the bathroom in the hall, tear the tags off, and wriggle them on.
“Is the courthouse even open this early?” I ask Callie when I step out into the hall.
“Eight,” she says, “but I want to be the first ones there.”
And she wants to slip out before Maggie wakes up. I don’t think I could look her in the eye either.
I read up on the new district attorney on Callie’s phone while we’re in the car. She was a public defender for fifteen years before being elected DA three years ago. That’s good; she’s been on the other side of the law and may be empathetic to Stokes’s case.
She also supports the death penalty. Not surprising, since this is Pennsylvania. But also not so good.
“What is it?” Callie is looking at me.
“I just realized something. If Stokes gets a new trial, and he loses, they won’t reopen the murders.” I swallow. “Then Wozniak gets to stay free. He gets to keep working in the prison where they’re going to kill Stokes.”
“Don’t say that.” Callie’s knuckles twitch. I know she’s trying to stop herself from pulling at her hair. Her fingers stay wrapped around the steering wheel, leeched of color, for the entire twenty minutes it takes us to get to the courthouse.
There are two news vans parked across the street. Outside the courthouse, there’s an armored truck marked FAYETTE COUNTY PENITENTIARY.
A pit of dread opens in my stomach. I know Callie can sense it too. Something is going on.
A security guard stops us as Callie tries to pull into the parking lot. She lowers her window, and the guard bows his head to check us out.
“You ladies have an appointment?”
Callie glances at me. “No,” she admits.
“No entry today,” the guard says.
“Why? Is something going on?”
“Hearing for a high-profile inmate,” the guard says. “So unless you’re authorized personnel, I’m gonna have to ask you to turn around.”
“A hearing?” Callie looks at me, as if I knew about this. High-profile inmate.
It can’t be. The judge hasn’t set a date yet for Stokes’s first appeal hearing.