few minutes of small talk later, I gave him an update on the crime scene. Twenty-one bodies for sure. Another half-dozen tarps filled with random bits of clothing and miscellaneous body parts. Search efforts so far limited to the bottom of the ravine.
Then I told him that all the recovered bodies seemed to be male.
“Weird,” he said, which pretty much summed up my feelings. “I wonder how our Jane Doe fits in?”
My question exactly, I thought.
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe she doesn’t.”
Then I spoke my next thoughts out loud. And though Chad had no way of knowing it, I was telling him why—at least, in this instance—I thought it was unlikely that Katie had committed murder. Despite the secret she thought I knew. Despite her threats. Despite the inhaler.
“It’d be a coincidence, wouldn’t it, if someone else killed our Jane Doe?” I said. “And then, by chance, hid the body along the same stretch of ravine where at least twenty other people were executed?”
“One hell of a coincidence,” Chad said with enough passion that I believed him. “Even if all the other victims are men.”
Then he stopped speaking abruptly, as if he was thinking over the words he’d just said or chasing some wisp of a thought.
I knew him well enough that I waited, not interrupting. And though pacing was an obvious remedy for the impatience I felt, I used the time instead to tuck the bagged inhaler into a roasting pan I rarely used. By the time I stepped back down from my kitchen stool, Chad was talking to me again.
“Maybe it has do with the fact that she is female. So she was executed, just like the men. With a bullet through the brain. But, unlike the men, her body wasn’t just shoved into the ravine like so much garbage. The place was remote and the odds were against finding her, so our killer could simply have left her out in the open. But someone made sure that the body wasn’t exposed to the weather or scavengers. I bet, at the time, the inside of that old tree looked pretty secure. In an odd sort of way, our Jane Doe was buried. Or, at least, placed somewhere permanent. Undisturbed. Out of respect, maybe. Or love.”
And that, I thought, let Katie off the hook.
I put my gun away as I always did unless I was wearing it or cleaning it. No matter that I lived alone and wasn’t expecting company. Too many people—among them, Katie—had keys to my house. So I locked it into the gun box in my bedroom and then I showered.
For the second time in the past several days, I stripped and dumped my filthy clothes in a plastic bag, isolating them from a hamper full of more conventionally dirty clothing. Once again, I ran the shower hot, scrubbing away—at least from my flesh—all residue of the day’s activities, the day’s discoveries. And then as I stood in the shower, I checked for ticks, running my hands through my hair, below my breasts, over my entire body. Alert for anything that felt like a freckle, but hadn’t been there when I’d showered that morning.
Finally clean, but far from refreshed, I turned off the shower and dried myself off. Then I wrapped the towel around me, intending to step across the hallway into my bedroom. To get dressed.
I made it out of the bathroom.
Two steps down the hall.
Four steps from my bedroom door.
That was when the kitchen door flew open, its flimsy latch torn away by the force of a shoulder against the door.
He lurched forward into the room, surveyed the kitchen.
Hector Townsend. Wearing tight jeans, leather chaps and heavy boots. The bulging muscles on his upper torso exposed by a black, sleeveless athletic shirt.
“Jackie!” Hector roared. “I know you’re here. One of your new friends called me. Told me how to get here. You can’t trust them. Come on out. I promise I’ll take care of you!”
I flattened myself against the wall, knowing that even the most casual glance down the hall would betray my position. Then I took a step sideways, toward the bedroom.
The floor creaked.
And he saw me.
“Where’s Jackie?” he bellowed as I dove for my bedroom door.
Hector’s heavy footsteps stormed down the hall.
I slid across my bed, losing my towel as I stretched out, grabbing for the gun box on the lower shelf of my night stand.