“No.” I take several steadying breaths until I know my voice will be level. When I’m sure I sound calm, I say, “He wants my attention. It can’t be just because of my job. There are other morticians, others who work for the coroner’s office, but he wants my attention. There’s a reason. I'm going to figure it out.”
Andrew shakes his head. “And if the reason is simply that he wants you?”
“Don’t.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen, Andrew. I’m not stupid, or being stupid. I know he’s out there. I knew better than most women. I see the bodies. I . . .” I swallow hard before I can continue. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to tuck tail. I need him to stop.”
I wonder if any man can understand the fear that women know intuitively. The victims of the Creeper have had those fears all realized. My sister was overpowered by a man who claimed to love her. I can't decide if that's worse than a stranger. Either way, it's the stuff of every woman's nightmares at some point. Andrew has rarely sounded so insensitive.
“He can’t stop killing. If he could, don’t you think he would’ve?”
I shudder. In some ways, killers like the Creeper are not so different from any other addict. The difference, of course, is that this sort of addiction destroys a lot more lives.
It’s not going to destroy mine.
“He’ll stop because we’ll catch him.” I open the next folder. “Read it or don’t. I’m going to find something.”
10
A Girl with No Past
“Did your roommate quit?” Edward asked after only an hour at my temporary job.
“No.” I filled him in on Elle’s temporary absence and my job woes.
“You’ll take care of me. Won’t you, Tessa?” He nodded, his tone making it apparent that this wasn’t truly a question.
I nodded—not that it mattered. The manager wouldn’t allow me to tell him no. That was the rule at the Red Light: Edward was never wrong.
“So, you’re only here until Elle gets back?”
“That’s the plan.” I felt odd just standing and talking to him, but Kari had been explicit that I should do so as long as he wanted.
“Just to wait tables,” he clarified.
“Definitely! Can you picture me up there?” I gestured toward the stage. I was a little in awe of how girls like Elle and the others could dance so confidently. I wasn’t unfit or unattractive. If I had been, I couldn’t even wait tables at the Red Light. That didn’t mean I felt bold enough to spin around a pool or gyrate on the ground wearing only a G-string and garter.
I’d taken the job in a sort of desperation, and maybe a secret fantasy of my mother discovering that I’d rather let men ogle me than take her money. Maybe it was petty. Maybe I wasn’t being a survivor as much as a fool.
“I can picture a lot of things,” he said.
I forced a smile. He wasn’t unattractive, but he made me nervous.
In truth, he was handsome. Muscular without being bulky, no visible tattoos or scars. Blue eyes. Luscious mouth. Everything else about him was so carefully cultivated. His suits were off the rack, but tailored. His haircuts were salon quality, but not attention drawing. The look of his mouth, though, when he smiled was the stuff of fantasies. It was like he had a decadent side that explained away the cold in his eyes.
He worked at one of the myriad companies over in RTP. If I had to guess, I’d think he was in charge. I didn’t ask. A lot of suits came into the strip club. Men like them liked to pretend they were civilized, but they still visited the place where they could treat women like objects.
Edward slid two bills across the table, drawing my attention away from my thoughts. “I need a whiskey.”
“You don’t pay. Kari said—"
“It’s not for the drink, Tessa. It’s yours.”
I blinked stupidly at him for a minute. He’d just tipped me more than I made in an entire shift at the bookstore.
I brought his drink back and smiled as I accepted the tip waiting on the table.
“Tell me about you,” Edward ordered.
“What do you want to know?”
“No secrets, Tessa. Tell me about you. What state? What’s your family like?” His breath curled over my skin.
“Massachusetts. Awful but . . . wealthy.” I swallowed.
“But you’re here,” he said. “Letting men look at you.”
I nodded.
“Do you like it?”
There were a lot of things I could say. I could tell him that I liked the money. I could say that I liked knowing that the men who looked at me wouldn’t ever be ones I would let touch me. I could even tell him that I thought about how shocked-horrified-jealous my old friends would be. Something about Edward’s words scared me, though, so I said nothing.
“Little rich girl playing at being bad . . .”
I shrugged. “I’ll inherit enough not to need to work, but . . . I hate my mother. I hate her husbands. I hate the stupid lies and—”
“But you want to be taken care of, don’t you?”
I shook my head instinctively. “I can take care of myself.”
It wasn’t a challenge, but I know now that he heard it as one.
11
Juliana
Since I learned about the letter from the Creeper, I can’t stop thinking about them, the flower bud girls. Courtney Hennessey. Maria Adams. Christine Megroz. Yolanda Waters. It bothers me that he thinks of them as his because no woman belongs to anyone but herself. I suppose the same is true of men. We are our own keepers. We define ourselves, possess ourselves, and what he did to these women cannot change that.
Murder is not ownership.
His possessiveness is part of what the police need to understand to find him, though, and I’m sure Henry is thinking about it. The Carolina Creeper not only holds them captive, but he also marks them. He tattoos them. So many killers—and I have researched far more of them than I ever planned as I try to understand this one—keep tokens, like talismans from their crimes. In some perverse way, it’s akin to the holiday mementos regular people tote home from every excursion. The police don’t know if he keeps anything, but they—we—know that the Creeper sends his victims out with a memento. A tattoo, a specific one: Flower buds.
Of course, journalists have speculated. Why that one? Is he a florist? Is it symbolic? Is it about the language of flowers? There are a lot of questions, and not very many answers.
The only truth I know for sure is that he's out there. Right now, he has another victim with him or has another victim he's still watching. He has a pattern, a type, a timeline, and he's good at it.
He kills in the South. Regional. No DNA. No forensic evidence that leads to him. He’s white and in his thirties in all likelihood, based on profiling. I have read every snippet I could get—not that I am technically allowed to do so, but Henry has bent more than a few rules so I can sleep at night.
We don't know how to find him, though. I don't know if we'd even find the victims if he wasn't so eager to share.