“Hello?”
“Hello, Miss Riley.” His voice sounds rushed and not at all like him. “Listen, something has happened, and your mother didn’t answer, so I need you to pass on my message to her as well.”
My stomach sinks. We’ve had one phone call like this before. Daddy had been beaten up in Polunsky and ended up in the infirmary. I say a quick and silent prayer before asking, “What is it?”
“My informant just contacted me. There was a murder last night. A new victim was found. I can’t be sure until I get there, but it sounds the same as the others.” Masters starts talking very fast, but none of the words he’s saying are things I’ve prepared myself for. It takes me a minute to understand what he’s talking about.
He starts rattling off details and my head spins. These are words that I’ve heard dozens of times before: strangulation, blond woman, mid-thirties, tortured. But they’ve always been things Daddy was being accused of doing. Never something he couldn’t possibly have done due to being locked up in Polunsky.
“When? Who? Do they know who did it? Where did it happen?” I start shooting off questions just to signify to him that I’m still here.
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out. I’m heading there now. I’m almost to the corner of Barlow and Prairie, so it isn’t far from here.” I hear the ticking sound of a blinker in the background and realize he’s in his car. “I’ll head your way as soon as I finish talking to the detectives. You just sit tight, Miss Riley, and I’ll get back to you with answers as quick as I can.”
Then I hear a click and he’s gone. I stare at the phone without seeing. My brain is a tumbling mass of confusion and excitement.
This news is what we’ve always wanted. A reason to cast doubt on Daddy’s entire case. Finally, it’s something to make people start questioning everything they accepted as truth more than ten years ago.
This is it. But it comes the week after Daddy tells me he is guilty. Does this mean that what I’d hoped is true, and he only said what he did because he’d given up? I blink and breathe and just keep thinking. What I want to do more than anything is drive to the scene of this new murder right now. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I feel it pulling me all the same. Half of this need I’m feeling comes from the hope that I could possibly find answers to the truth there. The other half is something more like morbid curiosity. I’ve always believed Daddy was innocent, so I’ve always wondered about the person who had really committed these crimes. If they caught him, will he still be there? Handcuffed in the back of some police car? What kind of monster could he be? Does he look like a killer or does he keep all that darkness locked up inside?
The murderer had been tricky in the past, but now he’s out of practice. After all, twelve years is a pretty long break. It was more likely someone could catch him now than ever before. But seeing if they’d finally caught the real murderer isn’t my only reason. I’ve seen so many awful things over the years in pictures in a courtroom that the scenarios have felt like a TV show. This is the chance to see what they’ve been holding over Daddy’s head for most of my life—in person—and as sick as it seems, it’s also more morbidly tempting than I can even try to explain.
And I could be there in twenty minutes.
While I was considering, I threw on a pair of jeans, a striped T-shirt, and a baseball cap without even thinking about it. My body seems to have decided for me.
So I decide not to argue. I pick up my keys and run out the door.
*
I drive through the streets like the devil himself is hot on my heels. When I arrive at the intersection Mr. Masters mentioned, the actual crime scene is easy to find. Everything looks exactly as I expected. Yellow police tape blocks off the entire parking lot in front of the pharmacy on the corner, as well as the entrance to the alley behind the building. I park a block away and run toward the crowd gathering at the edge of the yellow tape. The first news van has arrived, and I have to dodge around it to get closer. As I pass, the words of the reporter drift over me. She raises the same questions that have been plaguing me.
“Sources have told us that this murder seems to mimic those of the East End Murders from over a decade ago. This is especially shocking because the convicted perpetrator of those crimes, David Beckett, is currently on death row. Mr. Beckett lost his final appeal last week, and is scheduled to be executed at the end of this month. The police now have a big question to answer and a limited window in which to do it. Do we have a copycat killer on our hands? Or has the district attorney kept an innocent man in prison for the last eleven years?”