Eleven
We sit in Millicent’s car. She drives the nicer one, a luxury model crossover, because she often drives clients around while showing them houses. The leather seats are comfortable, it’s roomy, and with the doors shut, the kids can’t eavesdrop.
My hand rests between us, on the center console, and she put hers on top of it.
“You’re nervous,” she says.
“You aren’t?”
“They won’t find anything that leads to us.”
“How can you be sure? Did you think they’d find her?”
She shrugs. “Maybe I didn’t care.”
It feels like what I know could fit in my hand and everything I don’t know would fill the house. I have so many questions but don’t want to know the answers.
“The others have never been found,” I say. “Why Lindsay?”
“Lindsay.” She says the name slowly. It makes me think back to when we first found her. We did that together: We looked, we chose, I was a part of every decision.
After I went hiking with Lindsay a second time, I told Millicent she was the one. That was when we first devised the code, our special date night, except we didn’t meet in the garage. While a neighbor watched the kids for a little while, Millicent and I went out for frozen yogurt. She got vanilla, I got butter pecan, and we walked through the mall, where everything was closed except the movie theater. We stopped in front of an upscale kitchen store and stared at the window display. It was one of Millicent’s favorite stores.
“So,” she said, “tell me.”
I glanced around. The closest people were at least a hundred yards away, in line to buy movie tickets. Still, I lowered my voice. “I think she’s perfect.”
Millicent raised her eyebrows, looking surprised. And happy. “Really?”
“If we’re going to do it, then yes. She’s the one.” She wasn’t the only one; she was the third. Lindsay was different because she was a stranger we chose from the Internet. We picked her out of a million other options. The first two we didn’t pick at all. They had come to us.
Millicent ate a spoonful of vanilla yogurt and licked the spoon. “You think we should, then? We should do it?”
Something in her eyes made me look away. On occasion, Millicent makes me feel like I cannot breathe. It happened right then, as we stood in the mall deciding Lindsay’s fate. I looked away from Millicent and into the closed kitchen store. All that new and sparkly equipment stared back at me, mocking me with its unattainability. We could not afford everything we wanted. Not that anyone could, but it still bothered me.
“Yes,” I said to Millicent. “We should definitely do it.”
She leaned over and gave me a cold vanilla kiss.
We never said anything about holding Lindsay captive.
Now, we are sitting in the garage having another date night. No frozen yogurt, just a small bag of pretzels I have in the glove compartment. I offer them to Millicent, and she turns up her nose.
I get back to the reason we are sitting in the car. “You must have known Lindsay would be found—”
“I did.”
“But why? Why would you want her to be found?”
She looks out the car window to the stacks of plastic tubs filled with old toys and Christmas decorations. When she turns back to me, her head is cocked to the side and she is half smiling. “Because it’s our anniversary.”
“Our anniversary was five months ago.”
“Not that one.”
I think, not wanting to screw this up, because I’m supposed to know. I’m supposed to remember these things.
All at once, I do. “We picked Lindsay a year ago. We decided.”
Millicent beams. “Yes. A year to the day that she was found.”
I stare at her. It still doesn’t make sense. “Why would you want—”
“Have you heard of Owen Riley?” she says.
“What?”
“Owen Riley. Do you know who he is?”
The name is not familiar at first. Then I remember. “You mean Owen Oliver? The serial killer?”
“That’s what you called him?”
“Owen Oliver Riley. We used to just say Owen Oliver.”
“So you know what he did?”
“Of course I know. You couldn’t live here and not know.”
She smiles at me, and, as sometimes happens, I am lost. “It’s not just our anniversary—it’s Owen’s,” she says.
I think back, scouring my mind for events that happened when I was barely an adult. Owen Oliver showed up the summer after I graduated from high school. No one paid attention when one woman disappeared, and no one paid attention when the second woman disappeared. They noticed when one was found dead.
I remember being in a bar with a fake ID, surrounded by friends the same age. We drank cheap beer and cheaper liquor as we watched the first body being uncovered. Nothing ever happened in Woodview. Certainly nothing like the murder of a nice woman named Callie who worked as a clothing store manager. She was found inside an abandoned rest stop off the interstate. A trucker found her body.
At first, it was just the gruesome murder of one woman. I spent that summer watching, riveted, as the news and the police and the community tried to come up with a motive.
“A drifter” became the acceptable answer. Everyone felt better believing the killer wasn’t a resident, even if it meant this outsider kidnapped Callie and kept her alive for months before killing her. We believed it anyway. Even I did.
When it happened a second time, we all felt betrayed. It had to be one of us.
No one knew it was Owen Oliver Riley. Not yet. We just called him the Woodview Killer.
Nine dead women later, he was caught. Owen Oliver Riley was a thirtysomething man with strawlike blond hair, blue eyes, and the beginning of a paunch around the middle. He drove a silver sedan, hung out at a sports bar, and volunteered at his church. People knew him, had spoken to him, had sold him goods and services, and waved to him as he passed. I stared at his picture on the TV, thinking that couldn’t be him. He looked so normal. And he was, except that he had killed nine women.
Owen Oliver was initially charged with one murder; the rest of the charges were pending, due to lack of evidence. Bail was denied. Owen Oliver stayed in jail for three weeks, right up until he was released on a technicality. The warrant for his DNA sample had not been signed at the time the police swabbed the inside of his cheek. Even his court-appointed lawyer could drive a truck through that discrepancy. And he did.
With the DNA thrown out, the police had nothing. They were still scrambling for evidence when Owen Oliver walked out of jail. He was so normal-looking he blended right back in with society and disappeared.
When he went free, I was overseas and I still heard about it. That was one of the few times I heard from my parents before they died. When they did, I returned home but had no plans to stay, until I met Millicent. Back when she first agreed to go out with me, I assumed it was because she was new and didn’t know anyone else.
Sometimes, I still think that.
By then, Owen Oliver was long gone. But every year, on the anniversary of the day he was released, his face is back on the news. Over the years, Owen grew to be our local monster, boogeyman, serial killer. Eventually he became a myth, too large for life.
“It must be seventeen years since he last killed someone,” I say.
“Eighteen, actually. Eighteen years ago this month, his last victim disappeared.”
I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together in my head. As always, Millicent does it for me.
“Remember when Lindsay first disappeared? When people were looking for her?” she says.
“Of course.”
“So what do you think will happen when another one goes missing? Like one of the women on our list.”
One by one, the loose ends start to come together. If another woman disappears, the police will start to think we have a serial killer. Millicent has resurrected Owen to blame our work on him.
She is setting up our future.
“That’s why you kept Lindsay alive for so long,” I say. “You were copying him.”
Millicent nods. “Yes.”
“And he strangled his victims, didn’t he?”