Page 84 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

I do find something though.

A handful of messages from someone whose username is just a string of numbers.

I click on them.

It’s a one-way conversation. Antoinette has read them but hasn’t replied.

I’ve seen your photos

On PrivatePool

I’m going to find out where you live

Slut

You deserve to die.

You’re just like the others.

The words send chills through me. Could this be the killer? Why didn’t Antoinette say anything to me about this?

I click on the profile but there’s nothing to help me identify the sender. It’s a new account, no posts yet and that ambiguous grey silhouette as the profile picture. No followers and not following anyone. There’s nothing I can do with this. I sigh and report it anyway, just to feel like I’m doing something.

Where are you, Antoinette?

47

Kitty and Antoinette’s Airbnb, West Hollywood, Los Angeles

I don’t sleep.

How can I? Knowing Antoinette is out there somewhere. With someone who either means her harm. Or has already caused her harm.

Why else would there be blood on her phone?

Why else would it be in a bush with the screen smashed unless it was lost in a struggle?

I’m almost tempted to take Agnes up on her offer for something to help me sleep. But that would be worse. What if something happens? What if there’s news and I miss it because I’m out of it in an artificial sleep? I can almost hear Charlie or my mother reprimanding me.

‘You’re no use to Antoinette if you’re exhausted.’

And they’d be right.

But I’m even less use to her whacked out on benzos or whatever Agnes has in her stash.

So instead I do the only thing that I can think of to do.

I research.

Knowledge is power, after all.

Although I feel the complete opposite of powerful right now.

I’m sitting in bed with my laptop open on a Reddit sub about the WeHo Ripper. This is a different one, one where users speculate about things like motive and patterns.

The villa feels so wrong without my sister, like her absence is a living, breathing thing. It’s too cold and too quiet.

Just me.