once upon a time, he was an innocent. An innocent who someone damaged and twisted until he grew sharp and dangerous.”
She didn’t share Greta’s sentiment. How could she? To Rain, he’d always be her worst nightmare come true. Rain thought of Gillian: He was a person, killed in cold blood. No one has that right.
“He killed a child,” said Rain. “My friend.”
“And quite likely his parents,” Greta agreed. “He was a bad man, who was aptly punished. But I still remember that skinny boy in the woods, too. Somehow they seem like two different people to me.”
Rain saw the softness in her then, the thing that allowed Greta to capture images of such breathless beauty, light and love. Compassion.
“You told all of this to the police?”
“To Detective Harper, yes, back then,” she said. “I gave him the photos I took.”
Detective Harper. He’d blown Greta off as a nut. Said he hadn’t learned anything from her. That she was crazy. He hadn’t mentioned the photographs; true they were essentially useless except to document that someone—two people—had been there the night that Kreskey died. Like the other images captured on other nights, they were indistinct. Notes from his interview were missing. The 911 call wasn’t logged.
“Do you have any idea who those people are?” asked Rain.
Greta turned that gaze back on Rain. “No,” she said. “I have no idea.”
Rain watched Greta a moment; the older woman was tiny but looked as strong as a coil of wire.
“I put in a bid at a county auction last month for the Kreskey property,” said Greta. “I won. There were some crazies there, looking to have that house for god knows what. That property belongs to my family again—even though my brother and I are all that’s left.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Raze the house for one thing,” she said. “I have a shaman friend—I’ll ask him to bless and cleanse the site. Then I’ll plant some trees, let nature do its thing.”
Rain felt a sudden lightness. Yes, that was right. That house shouldn’t still be there.
“So, if you need anything from that place, you have about a month. Then it’s coming down. Sometimes you have to kill the past, let the earth take the ashes away. People create damage. But nature is perfect in its design—life, death, decay, rebirth. It heals.”
“Did you ever find it? The nightjar?”
She shook her head. “No, I never did. Not that night.”
“Do you have any theories on who killed Kreskey?”
“I tend not to trouble myself with the actions of humans,” she said grimly. “Look at the world we live in. Look what we’ve done to the planet, to each other. I stay here on this property mostly and try to take care of it. I’ll try to give that ugly piece of it, that bit that the Kreskey family defiled, back to the planet. Trees will grow, animals will burrow and birds will nest. When I die, all this land will be donated to the Audubon Society, and hopefully there will be peace here. Finally.”
Digging into this story suddenly felt salacious and wrong. But separating yourself out from the world—that was easy. Trying to understand it, to survive it, to make it better through that understanding—that was the hard thing. Writers explore the world on the page, her father always said. And readers come not to escape but to understand. We don’t turn away from ugly things, we dig in. Evil thrives in the dark. If you shine the light, sometimes it just shrivels and dies.
Greta let Rain snap photos of those pictures with her phone, and they finished talking about Greta’s work, her plans for the property. The conversation grew softer, easier, and Greta seemed lighter, less stern and grim.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you and your friends,” Greta said. “My mother suffered terribly, so angry at her father for selling that land, at the Kreskeys for what they were. She was such a peaceful person, so loving. She couldn’t stand the thought of anyone or anything being hurt.”
“It was a long time ago,” said Rain. “But for me it’s yesterday. I guess that’s why I’m doing this story. I’m still trying to make sense of it all, the cycle of violence—Kreskey’s parents, what they did, how it formed him, what he did. Then someone killed him.”
Greta nodded, stared over at the northern cardinal on her mantel. So red and still.
“My mother is gone, Eugene Kreskey and his parents are gone, your friend, too. One