The truth was that Bex—Beth Anne—had had a debilitating need to know exactly what her father was accused of. Once the files became available on the Internet, she had nearly lost an entire summer poring through the documents—the testimony, the crime-scene photos, the autopsy reports. Somewhere in her mind she thought that maybe the clue was there, something that the police had missed that would vindicate her father, that would vindicate her for attempting to send him to prison. The clue to absolution wasn’t there. A preponderance of evidence linked her father to the sadistic, horrifying murders of young women all over the county—including the one who Bex remembered getting into her father’s car and another who tucked her number into his hand.
She had run across the other websites accidentally, but then her curiosity drew her in. The sites were horrible. One showed a grinning photo of Bex’s father—she remembered the shot and had herself been cropped out. The webmaster had made red flames flash across the picture with the words “The Wife Collector Should Burn in Hell.” Another site rooted for her father with photographs and court documents and was populated by sickos who thought the Wife Collector was “the greatest,” listing his body count and even some of their “favorite kills.” Bex wasn’t sure which site was worse.
“People who run these sites have followers, and while we’re not one hundred percent sure, there’s a really good chance that your father could be one of those followers.”
The sites were bad enough. The idea that perhaps her father visited or even followed the sites made Bex’s stomach turn.
“Okay…” she said slowly.
“There are forums where”—Schuster grimaced—“fans can get together and talk, like chat rooms. We think your father might frequent one or more of the chat rooms under an alias.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I think that if you post to one of the sites, your father might respond.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, doing her best to smother her nerves with anger. “You think he might respond? You want me to cyber hang out with a bunch of serial-killer groupies in case my dad decides to drop in? No”—she shook her head—“I’m not going to do that.”
“You wouldn’t be ‘hanging out’ with them per se.”
“Well, whatever you call it, the answer is still no. How am I supposed to do that anyway? Why would he talk to me? Let me guess… You want me to use the screen name ‘Hey, Dad, it’s me?’”
Detective Schuster stared at Bex, his lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. “I think you should go public with your identity.”
Nineteen
Someone hit Bex in the chest with a sledgehammer. That was what must have happened; that was why Bex’s lungs felt as if they had collapsed. That was why her heart was struggling to beat.
“You want me to do what?”
“If you come out with who you really are and publicly announce that you’d like to talk to your father, to get to know him, I think that would draw him out.”
Bex’s body started to shake. She gritted her teeth to avoid the clack-clack-clack of them banging together. Detective Schuster wanted her to make contact with her father. Ridiculous visions of the two of them relaxing at the kitchen table, sipping tea, flashed through her mind, only to be crashed by the thought of her father looming huge and turning into a monster, his hands morphing into talons that closed around her throat.
“I-I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“You could really help people. You could help your father.”
Bex snapped her gaze to Schuster. “Like I helped him before?”
“You did the right thing then, and I’d hope you would do the right thing now.”
Bex wished she could name the feeling that roared through her. It wasn’t simply anger. It wasn’t simply pain. It was something like rage mixed with sadness and guilt, and she was feeling it more and more. She closed her eyes and pressed the pads of her fingertips against her eyelids. The girls the Wife Collector had murdered marched by in a macabre parade—lives lost, stories that never were. They were inexplicably connected to Beth Anne, and no matter how far Bex ran or who she became, they would always be connected to her.
And then there was her father.
After he was arrested, even after he was arraigned, he never spoke to Bex about the murders. She had never asked, though sometimes she had wanted to. Late at night, she would go over memories and details in her head, anything that could have been suspect or hard proof that her father had or had not committed those crimes. But the few times she had been face-to-face with him then, she had known there was no reason to ask. He was her father. He loved her and protected her. He was the greatest man in her life.
But had he been another way with someone else?
“I can’t…I can’t think about this right now.” Her head was pounding. She felt itchy and jumpy.
“I know this is a lot to take in. But if you could just—”