To Mr. John Wayne Cleaver, and his Esteemed Colleagues,
Hello again. It is, as always, a pleasure to write to you, though I admit I haven’t given you much of a chance to respond since my previous letter. Worse still, I haven’t given you the means to respond, and for this I am truly sorry. Only a churl would be content with a one-sided conversation, and I assure you that I am not such a boor as to talk and talk about myself without ever letting you respond.
In light of that, let me suggest a number of options that might facilitate a more interactive discussion. The option you are considering first is simply to capture me, but I assure you that this is ridiculous. You will neither catch me nor even find me. Option number two is equally unlikely, but in the opposite direction: you could simply communicate in kind by killing a victim of your own and leaving a note pinned for me to find. While I can promise you I would find such a note, I imagine your superiors would be displeased with the manner of its delivery. Until such time as you no longer care what they think, we must find another way of communicating.
Option three, then, might be one to consider: you could publish a letter in the newspaper. It would not be the first time the police have sent messages this way. This method has some sub-options, as you could choose to be brazen about the message—my unfinished meals are already headline news, after all—or you could couch it in secrecy, burying it in a coded letter to the editor in which only every second word counts. Title it something about lions and antelopes, if you do, so I’ll know where to look.
But in the end, why bother with all of this rigmarole? If you’ve been paying attention, you know who I’m going to kill next. Slip a note in his pocket, and I’ll have something to read while I eat.
Yours,
The Hunter
P.S.—I was extremely gratified to learn that Mr. Potash is recovering so quickly. May his restored health bring him as much happiness as possible before the end.
“Dios mio,” said Dr. Trujillo.
“Where’s the body?” I asked.
“Still in the autopsy,” said Ostler, gesturing at the police station’s examination room behind us. “Barring any shocking discoveries, though, the story’s the same as last time: a middle-aged person, female this time, found mostly naked with her body covered in bite wounds. Head and neck undamaged. The note was pinned to her chest.”
“Pinned?” asked Nathan.
“With a safety pin,” said Ostler. “Keep in mind, she wasn’t wearing a shirt.”
“The weirdest part of this job,” said Diana, “is that none of that counts as a shocking discovery.”
Potash sat down, breathing in slow, controlled breaths.
“Why does he keep addressing them to John?” asked Nathan. “I want to know what that’s all about.”
“He mentioned Potash, too,” I said.
“But they’re to you,” said Nathan. “When he said he wanted to start a conversation, he was talking to you specifically. When he suggested that we murder somebody, that was also to you.”
I looked at Potash, and found him staring at me. He was still the only one who knew about my brutal stabbing of Mary Gardner.
He didn’t say anything.
“He used John’s name because he was trying to show off,” said Trujillo. “Everything about these letters—the tone, the vocabulary, even the message itself—is a deliberate attempt to exert control over us by showing his superiority. Not just showing it, but hammering it home with all the subtlety of an oversized cartoon mallet. He wants us to be afraid of him, and part of that is showing what he knows about us: John’s name and Potash’s health.”
“Well it’s working,” said Nathan. “Once again, I humbly request that we pack the hell up and leave this town ASAP.”
“You’ve never done anything humbly in your life,” said Diana.
“All he’s really showing us are his limits,” I said. “He knows my name because my picture was on the Internet, and he put it together and knows who I am. He knows Potash’s name because it’s on record at the hospital. Those are the only two members of our team with an easily researched identity—even Brooke is registered under an alias at Whiteflower. The only things he knows about us are the things anyone could know about us.”
“Maybe there’s more to come,” said Ostler. “He could know everything, and just be rolling it out slowly, one snippet at a time.”
“That’s going to mean a lot of chewed-up corpses before he finishes,” said Diana.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think he’s actively researching us while we’re researching him. Read the header again.”
Ostler looked at the paper: “‘To Mr. John Wayne Cleaver, and his Esteemed Colleagues.’”
“He used my middle name,” I said. “He didn’t do that before.”