three of us encountered him in the woods just a mile from my house. He was twenty-two years old.”
Rain brought the car to a stop and stared, took a few pictures with her phone.
“Doesn’t it sometimes seem like places hold energy? This house—shingles falling, windows cracked, red siding peeled and puckered—looks as if it has never been a home. Only bad things can happen here.”
She clicked off the recorder, glanced at Lily sleeping and rolled down the windows. She stepped out of the car, started recording again and walked toward the house, footfalls crunching and loud in the quiet.
“Since Kreskey’s arrest, this house has sat empty. An examination of public real estate records reveal that after a decade of taxes in arears, the county seized the property. But the house stands, and the property has not been sold. Local kids, of course, say it’s haunted. That on full moon nights, you can see Tess running through the brush. Sometimes she’s just a floating light, they say. Sometimes you can hear screaming.”
She moved closer, came to stop at the stoop and looked up at the front door, which stood ajar. There was a sign pasted there, stating that the property was owned by the county, had been condemned. Trespassers would be prosecuted.
“Eugene Kreskey came for me that day,” she said.
She paused a minute, surprised by a sudden rush of emotion. Then went on, “He’d seen me a week earlier at the garage where he worked when my father brought his car in for service. He’d been educated by the state, learned a trade, was good with his hands. His ability to earn a living was part of the reason for his release. He’d never shown a tendency toward violence.”
The woods around hummed with the sound of insects and bird chatter. The sun was high in the sky, the temperature had risen. Sweat beaded on her brow.
“His boss was a distant cousin who wanted to give him a chance after all he’d been through—the abuse, the death of his parents, most of his life in a hospital. That’s why he was working at that particular garage.”
She had her reporter voice on, something low and soothing that didn’t match her everyday voice. It let her keep a distance from what she was saying. She didn’t feel the quaking inside that she usually felt when she told this story. Which wasn’t often.
“Kreskey had use of his cousin’s car. He spent the next week following me when he could. He told police that I looked like a nice girl, and he just wanted to talk to me. But it turned out, he said in the transcript of his police interview, that I was a little bitch with a smart mouth and it made him angry. That I fought. I hurt his dog. I ran. So he took the others—to punish me.”
She imagined music here. Something slow and morose, with a light note that might communicate hope.
“Ten years later, after Eugene Kreskey was released again from psychiatric care to a halfway facility nearby, someone killed him. Here in this house, where he assaulted Hank Reams, and killed our best friend, Tess Barker. He died the way he killed—a victim in terror and unspeakable pain.”
She paused again, watching the grass blow and the trees bend in the wind, casting shadows on the house. She tamped down the rise of anger; it was an acidic pain lodged in her throat. All the ugly pieces fitting together.
“Since then, two other men, both accused killers who many believed escaped justice, have been murdered in ways that mimic their alleged crimes.”
Another pause, another breath.
“Is there a connection? The FBI seems to think so. Is there a vigilante at work? I’m Rain Winter. And since in many ways this story begins with me, I intend to find out.”
She clicked off the recorder. It was a decent start. She’d edit and rewrite, rerecord. But that was the lead. Her father was right; this was her story. The one maybe she’d been trying to tell with all the other stories she’d told. She felt something like relief, a thorn pulled from her paw.
A movement in the brush caught her eye, and she felt her body freeze.
She cast a quick glance back at the car, all the windows wide open, and she could just see the top of Lily’s head, her little toes. Feet still. They were the first thing to start moving when she woke up. When Rain turned back, there was an old