Maybe I needed a drink. Some hard liquor should do the trick. I went into Layna’s kitchen and looked in her cabinets. There was no alcohol in the place. I settled on a tea bag and boiling kettle.
I started to root through the drawers, looking for a spoon. Layna was a minimalist. She didn’t do clutter. She didn’t seem to hold onto meaningless items.
So it was with surprise that I opened the drawer closest to the bottom of the cabinets to discover it crammed full. A bulging folder was shoved in, paper peeking out on all sides, not able to hold it all in.
I shouldn’t.
But I did.
I pulled out the folder, forgetting about the kettle that whistled on the stovetop.
“Curiosity killed the cat, Elian,” she warned, and I knew she was mad. She was always mad at me lately. Always angry. Mom said she was just being a teenager. I didn’t know why that mattered.
“Where are you going?” I asked her, not giving up. I wanted to know. She was my big sister. She got to do stuff that I didn’t. I was curious.
Like a cat.
“Mind your own business,” she huffed but then she smiled and ruffled my hair. I pushed her hand away but smiled too. I was too old to be treated like a baby. But I didn’t mind when she did it. She was the only one.
“You’re only twelve, Elian. You don’t understand grown up stuff,” she said and I rolled my eyes.
“You’re not a grown up either, you know. And you’re only four years older than me,” I reminded her.
She didn’t say anything else, and my curiosity was still there. I wanted to know. Where she went when she left and where she planned to go next time.
“You’ve met a boy,” I sing-songed, knowing she hated it when I said things like that.
“Shut up, runt,” she said but not in a mean way. I loved my sister.
Amelia…
I opened up the folder and saw the photo of a young girl right on top. She was pretty but not smiling. She had long, dark hair and dark eyes. It was impossible to see the color in the black and white newspaper clipping.
February 2, 1995 No answers in cold case
The Randolph County police department is still looking for information in regards to the kidnapping and murder of sixteen-year-old Hailey Gold. The body of the teenager was found over a year ago just outside the town limits of Dayton, her throat slit and her hands severed from her body.
I flipped to the next print out. Another picture of another girl. A teenager. And a newspaper article from almost twenty years ago detailing a similar murder. A slit throat. Severed hands.
And there was another girl. Another article. Six more in total.
My eyes went fuzzy and my gut clenched. Why did Layna have these?
I kept flipping through and stopped when I came to another picture from a newspaper. This one was of a police sketch. Hand drawn and rudimentary but I knew it all too well.
The nautical star.
Points and lines exact. A copy of the one on my back. Of the one on Layna’s hip.
Beside the drawing was the headline: On the hunt for The Nautical Killer.
The Nautical Killer.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t startle. I didn’t jump. I continued to riffle through the papers in the file I had found stuck in a bottom drawer in my girlfriend’s kitchen.
Layna yanked the paper away from me and closed the folder. “Why are you snooping through my things?” She sounded flustered.
Layna Whitaker was never flustered. But she was now.
“What is all this? Why do you have all of these?” I yanked the folder out of her hands and dumped the dozens and dozens of printouts onto the counter, shuffling through them with my hands. I turned over pictures. Girls with sightless eyes staring up at me.
“I don’t get it. Are you writing a book? Are you some sort of serial killer junkie? What the fuck is this?” I was yelling. I was getting worked up.
I was getting angry.
Layna licked her lips and stared at the girls. The pictures of dead women.
The Nautical Killer.
“Why do you have that star on your back?” she asked suddenly. I hadn’t been expecting that. She blindsided me.
“What?” I asked. My chest ached. My head hurt.