He stabbed her forty-one times that night.
The water laps at my skin, and I picture what those women must’ve looked like when they went into the creek. I make my face go slack; my eyes, dull. I float until I can’t feel my fingers anymore—and even then, I refuse to pull myself out of the water.
I stare at the sky and wonder if this is the only way out.
3NICOLA
IT’S 8:57 P.M.
My sketchbook’s open in front of me, pages just as blank as they were an hour ago. The television’s turned off; the clock ticks over to 8:58. Picking up my pencil, I study the sheet of paper. Put the tip down. Start to draw a line. Stop. Check the clock again—still 8:58. Use my hobby knife to sharpen the point. Refill my glass and take a drink. Check the clock.
Now 8:59.
If my life were normal, I’d grab my keys and go for a long walk. However, last time I checked, there were so many news vans parked up and down the street that the police had been called in for crowd control. I’m trapped in this house, with this television, and this clock. With myself.
9:00 p.m.
I resist for as long as I can before seizing the remote control. The opening credits forTo Catch a Killerhave already started. One by one, photos of my father’s victims appear onscreen. The last is of a young woman with sun-bleached hair, pulled back in a scrunchie. Her nose is wrinkled; the photographer caught her in the middle of alaugh, and not a small one, either. Not the kind of laugh you’d expect from a girl like her, but one that blasts from her nostrils and makes her tumble back into the grass until her sweatshirt’s stained with dirt and chlorophyll. It’s my favorite photo of Claire. I gave it to the producers when they asked for one, and now, I regret it.
Cut to Greer Woods bent over a steel table in the prison visitation room, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, tattoos covering her arms from wrist to god-knows-where. Her black curls have been pulled back in a jawbone clip, presumably to keep them out of her eyes as she closes the case file in front of her. The bars on the prison windows cut shadows across her face. “The Ellicott Creek Ripper has gone quiet for twenty years,” her voice-over says, “leaving everyone to wonder, when will he strike again? We’re here to make sure the answer to that question isnever. This season, join us as we hunt down the Ellicott Creek Ripper, because sometimes…”
A cell door clanks open, and the camera pans from canvas shoes striding down the corridor up a dark blue jumpsuit to hands cuffed and chained. Finally, it settles on the face of Tom Woods, one of our country’s most notorious serial killers. That’s when Greer delivers her catchphrase:
“To catch a killer, you need a killer.”
Cut to black. Title card. Boom.
Greer Woods made us a promise: She would do whatever she could to catch the man who’d terrorized our small town, then gone unpunished for all these years. She was a prolific defense attorney who understood the criminal mind. She had all the resources of a television network at her disposal and one other important tool that law enforcement didn’t: her father, Tom Woods. In the pilot episode, Greer, stymied by the case, visited her father on Montana’s Death Row, where he provided her with insight into the murderer. “Look for someone these girls trusted,” he advised. “A teacher maybe, a coach, aclassmate’s parent, even a store clerk that everyone knows—someone from the gas station or the 7-Eleven. Serial killers usually hunt close to home, and sometimes they’ll try to insert themselves into the investigation so they can keep tabs on what you know.”
On her first day in town, Greer visited my family’s hardware store looking for help. I’d been the last to see Claire alive and, with all the turnover at our local police department, knew almost as much about the case as they did. Over the course of the investigation, we grew closer, became friends.
Or at least Ithoughtwe became friends.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when Greer started suspecting my dad. For weeks, months maybe, she pretended that everything was fine. Every weekend, she came over to our house for dinner—praised my dad’s home cooking, laughed at his jokes, then excused herself to the bathroom, so she could scavenge through closets and AC vents and toilet tanks.
Onscreen, Greer examines the loose tile in our upstairs bathroom wall with her iPhone camera. “I think I can…” She digs into the seams with her fingernails and pries it off. It clatters onto the floor. Switching her flashlight on, she aims the beam into the dark crater beyond the pipes. A shimmer. Her hand stretches inside and when it reemerges, she’s gripping a clump of jewelry.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, holding up an earring to the camera: a little gold hoop. “I think this belongs to Claire Tenenbaum.”
I reach for my glass of wine while onscreen-Greer sneaks into the hallway, turns the corner, and runs straight into me. The shrill scratch of violin strings. Jesus Christ. A jump scare. They’ve turned me into a jump scare.
If her silence regarding her suspicions hadn’t been bad enough, when the series aired months later, I was blindsided by an even worse betrayal. The first few episodes ofTo Catch a Killerwent as expected;they followed our investigation as we trekked to each crime scene, questioned anyone who had known the victims, scrutinized suspects the police had identified—then dismissed. But around episode five, something changed. The camera started lingering on my profile, cataloguing every suspicious wince, every uncharitable sneer. Strange, but it wasn’t until they edited Tom Woods’s voice-over to match one of these reaction shots that I finally understood what they were suggesting: “They’ll try to insert themselves into the investigation, so they can keep tabs on what you know.”
This after Greer approachedme, beggedme, to be part of her stupid show. Not only did she leverage our friendship to conduct a surreptitious investigation into my father, now she was painting me as an accomplice in front of millions of viewers. She cost me my friends. She cost me my job. And now she’s costing me my home.
All because I trusted her.
I watch as, onscreen, law enforcement inspects the jewelry. A warrant is secured, and an arrest becomes imminent. Greer excuses herself and ducks out the back of the station. Pacing back and forth, clearly distressed, she dials the number for Montana State Prison.
“You did the right thing,” her father reassures her.
“I just…” She sighs. “I just didn’t want it to end like this.”
“I know. You caught him, though. I’m so proud of you.”
There are only a few minutes left in the episode. The police file up our front stairs, battering ram held at the ready. Next thing you know, my dad’s being hauled out in handcuffs, and I’m shambling behind them. “He’s a good man!” onscreen-me calls from the front porch.
I slug back the rest of my wine. Goddamnit.
