The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,123

no one outside the investigation could have known about. The killer talked about William LaBrecque having no moral boundaries at all, about him being a bully and a wife beater and deserving a beating himself. No moral boundaries? This killer was judging based on morals!

A short entry talked about the first time he had killed, at sixteen years old, about remaining so unaffected by this that his grades had not even wavered. Wishbone had been killing since he was a teenager! He had bragged once to Rauser in a letter about being active longer than anyone was aware. Who fell victim to the young killer first? Was it Anne Chambers, as we thought? Had it been a crime of convenience that wet his whistle for killing or was Wishbone already plotting out the murder in high school? So many people had been hurt. So many lives destroyed. My heart ached for all of them. But the last entry felt like that mean knife was splitting my flesh, like he was driving it into me, and I relived leaving that park with pieces of Rauser’s skin and blood stuck to my face and hands while this killer must have rushed home to boast to his online fans.

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Your Online Adult Edge Fetish & Knife Play Community blogs > beyond the EDGE, a fantasy by BladeDriver blog title > Memories

It really is not much fun. In fact, it’s a bit of a letdown once you get past the challenge of taking aim. It happens too fast, a quick pop, and it’s over. Not like a blade. Not like seeing everything, every cut, every fluid that leaks out of the dying, the way pain pulls the skin tight and every expression line is exaggerated, painted on. Pop, pop. It’s so … impersonal. I saw his knees buckle. I saw her misery. Her pain was something anyway. However brief, her suffering is a memory to savor.

Soon that will be what I have, just memories. Videos will be deleted and all my beautiful photos, all those triumphant moments will soon be gone too. I hate to see them go, really. But it is time. And I know each picture by heart, cherish each moment with them, each sound, each smell. Tonight I will toss my pictures into the fire and watch them yellow, watch the corners turn up, watch the centers blacken and ignite. It’s nice, actually. Never let it slip away—the first fire of the year, the turning leaves, the first snowflake—small pleasures. Life slips by so quickly.

Quicker than you think, you sonofabitch, I thought, and searched for a way to comment on this blog, read some details from the website. I had to sign up in order to comment. I left this message at the bottom of BladeDriver’s last entry: I won’t rest until I find you. KS.

I was worried for anyone close to me—Neil, my parents, my brother, even Diane. I hoped issuing that kind of challenge would keep his focus on me. There had been too much collateral damage. I sent Lieutenant Brit Williams’s BlackBerry the link with an email, explaining. Neil found this blog, Brit. It’s Wishbone, I’m sure of it. Check out the dates. At least one entry was after Charlie’s arrest.

I walked out of Rauser’s house and locked the door, remembered the million times I’d left this house with him, us laughing or arguing. We’d been good friends so long it seemed we were always doing one or the other. I climbed in the Impala and pointed it down Peachtree toward Piedmont Hospital. I wanted a drink so bad I could feel the stampede of cravings all the way to my back molars.

I kept thinking about the knife at Charlie’s place, the one the police had found under his mattress. The first search had turned up nothing, but the second netted them a bloody knife? Something was wrong. God, why didn’t I listen to my instincts? Wishbone knew Charlie was our prime suspect. APD had gone out of their way to make that public. They’d even organized a leak of his mug shot. Had Wishbone seized advantage of this, framed Charlie, to keep the heat off? Charlie was a thug anyway. Send him off to jail and get some breathing room, rest and plan, kill again. I wondered if Wishbone had gone to the trouble of planting the serrated fishing knife that had ravaged so many lives. Or had he simply left it where Charlie was bound to pick