“Why did he do this?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to consider them.
When authorities went to search Dr. Gold’s place of work, they found that her office had been ransacked, her personal files upended and unorganized. Missing files lead police to believe that Gold’s killer was likely a disgruntled patient.
Bex shook her head, the words on the screen blurring. “He wasn’t a patient,” she mumbled to herself. “He was searching for one.”
“Um, hello?”
Bex jumped, her thighs slamming against the underside of her desk.
Zach blanched.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You were just talking”—he scanned the room—“to yourself, I guess. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Bex frantically wiped at her face and sniffed. “No, sorry,” she said, trying to exit the newspaper site. The fan on the old machine spun as an icon whirled around, telling her to wait. She saw Zach’s eyes drift to the page on her screen, then back to Bex.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was just…coughing…and my eyes were watering.” She stood, shouldered her backpack, and clicked off the computer. “I’m done here if you needed this machine or something.”
She stomped out of the room, head held high, hoping that her facade wouldn’t crack. Once she was out of the building, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. The phone didn’t even finish a full ring before it was answered.
“How do I do this?”
“What’s that now?”
“I want to find him,” Bex said. “How do I… There are so many websites. How am I supposed to be sure which one he’ll go to?”
There was a long pause before Detective Schuster answered. “Thank you for doing this, Bex. I know it can’t be easy—”
“Just tell me, please. Before I change my mind.”
“Do you have a pen and paper handy?”
? ? ?
Bex stared at the blinking cursor on her screen, then at the torn-off piece of notebook paper in her hand. She had carefully written down everything the detective told her, then folded the paper and put it in her jeans pocket. She had touched it throughout the day, certain that if she were to lose it, it would somehow be linked back to her. Every hour or so she had smoothed it between her fingers, rolling it in her palm so much that now it almost felt like cloth. The blue lines had started to bleed their color, the red to run. The black ink from her ballpoint pen didn’t smear though, and the websites looked permanent and menacing, like black tattoos across the white paper:
WifeCollectorFanatic, FreeWTC, SerialLover/WifeCollector
She slowly typed the first entry into the search bar, studiously checking each letter against the paper, then hovering her finger over the Search button.
She didn’t really want to know…but soon the guilt was consuming her—guilt for Darla, guilt for her father, guilt for bringing her hideous, warped world to Kill Devil Hills. She hit Search.
The results seemed to take ages to load, then suddenly it was too soon. The pages cascaded down Bex’s screen, each one flashing gory pictures or grainy black-and-whites of her father and splashed with all manner of icons—from bloody butcher’s knives to barbed-wire-wrapped hearts. With each new ping! of the computer, Bex’s resolve chipped away. This wasn’t an attorney doing his best to prove her father was responsible for every reprehensible crime splayed in gory photographs; these were people who believed—and reveled in the fact—that her father was the Wife Collector. Again, the guilt, the slight bit of terror, and that hideous thought: If he’s guilty, you’re guilty too.
Bex bit down hard on her lower lip, the surge of pain a welcome distraction.
“I’m doing this for Darla,” she muttered.
She closed all the other pages, leaving only the first one from Detective Schuster’s list open, her fingers trembling as her cursor circled the Forums menu. She clicked and the page loaded, sterile and white compared to the previous one. Bex watched a list populate questions and topics from tiny, thumbnail-sized avatars of people named GOBLIN, PATDRAGON, or GAMECREATOR with trending subjects like “What would you do for a million dollars?” and “Does this make you sad?”
They were basic questions, but posted on a site created by and populated with people who adored serial killers, these took on an ominous, dark edge and goose bumps trailed along Bex’s bare arms. She slid into her hoodie and pulled the hood up, somehow in need of the extra comfort and protection the fleece cocoon gave her.