A prickle worked its way up the back of my neck. “What?” And I could hear the distrust creeping into my own voice.
Red crept into Owen’s pale cheeks and splotched his neck. “It’s about Adam. See, I’ve been keeping tabs on any mention of his name in Hollow Pines. I know it’s not his real name, but I figured if anyone, I don’t know, said anything about him, we should know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I snapped.
Owen let go of my wrist and ran his fingers through this hair. “Well, first of all, you’ve been pretty busy trying to turn him into a ‘real boy.’” He curled his fingers into air quotes. “But, I—look, I didn’t think it’d matter, but something came up. People—only a couple people, really—are saying that he might have had something to do with those two boys.” I sucked in a mouthful of air and let it sit in my lungs. “Look it up for yourself. The Lie Detector. They’re these web-sleuthing forums where people discuss their theories on all these crimes. It’s kind of sick, but…” He looked down at his lap. “Check it out.”
“You think it’s true,” I said. “I can tell.” The hatch through which Adam had disappeared was still.
Owen lifted his chin. “All I’m saying is, how much do we really know about him?”
TWENTY-THREE
Possible neurobiological sources of violence include chronic traumatic stress, testosterone, or dysregulated serotonin. The most common sources of violence, though, are developmental neglect or traumatic stress during childhood. I will plan to test hormone levels to measure possible concerns surrounding impulse control.
*
Darkness had descended over my house. I knew this sounded melodramatic topped with a generous helping of teen angst, but it was true. Adam wouldn’t speak. Not in words, anyway. He hugged his arms around his knees and rocked and tuned me out like I was a staticky channel on an old television set. So the only sentence that I bothered him with was to tell him that I’d be in later tonight after Mom had gone to bed to administer his electrotherapy, the euphemism I’d adopted for the shock. I wished I were better with words, but I was hardly any better than Adam.
Now, with my toes tucked into the comforter of my bed with the squishy, sinking, quicksand middle, my mind turned to the broken mirror, and I ran the search for the Lie Detector. A dated blue-and-white message board appeared on the screen, loading in slow motion, one piece at a time. I read through the long list of topics. The Black Dahlia. Lizzie Borden. Amanda Knox and the murder of Meredith Kercher. The list went on. It was an inventory of the grisliest crimes.
Outside my window, I heard the shrill screech of the weather vane twisting on its pole. I checked my watch. Mom must have fallen asleep in front of the TV. If it woke her, she’d be furious I hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. I plugged my ears against the spine-scratching sound, hoping for the wind to die.
Halfway down the screen I noticed a title topic: the Hunter of Hollow Pines. Ominous, I thought darkly, as I selected the new thread. I was surprised to find that there was already more than a page of responses to the original entry.
Hollow Pines wasn’t famous for much of anything. Our two sources of industry were feminine pads and canned soup and hardly anyone cared where those things came from.
But here it was causing strangers to sit up and pay attention—or at the very least, take a break from playing their Xbox. I was part of it, I realized. I was there when they found the second body. And I felt this messed-up flutter of achievement. I squashed the wings on it when I remembered why I was digging around the bowels of the Internet in the first place.
The static post at the top cataloged the two known deaths. The moderator emphasized the “known,” and I felt a shiver run down my back to think about what exactly that meant. Right away, I could tell that the overwhelming majority thought there’d be more.
Escalation. That appeared to be the word du jour. The unsub’s—after a quick search I determined this meant the unknown subject or killer—pattern was escalating. A poster with the username DeadBunny pointed out that he was growing more confident. He’d refined his method. A bear trap to capture his victim and a souvenir limb.