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The room fills with soft light as she switches on a lamp on the nightstand. There’s a painting of a white horse on the wall and a book on the foot of the bed.
The camera pans in as she drops the towel. She seems to consider something for a moment and then moves to pick it up. She lays it over the lounge chair in the corner. Closer to the light, I can see that her underwear are purple, her breasts nonexistent. Sandy blonde hair, long angular face. She can’t be more than eleven.
The camera moves slowly backward as a tree limb moves in front of the lens. When the bedroom comes into focus again, there is a man at the window. The girl stands with her back to him, arms folded across her chest. He approaches the girl and then peers out into the darkness, smiles, and as satisfaction passes over his features, he closes the curtains. It’s Geoffrey Dunsmore. He is aware they are being watched, and he welcomes it.
I am not naive enough to think that killing Dunsmore, or any other pedophile for that matter, will put an end to videos like the one I’ve just watched. But that has never been the point. There is only one thing that can combat evil, and it isn’t what most people think.
If I don’t kill again, and soon, I am going to further spiral down this rabbit hole I’ve slipped into. I am going to keep giving interviews, keep training strangers on the internet, and I’m going to put my family further at risk.
I don’t know if it surprises me or not that I am like my own mother in that way, someone who could so easily trade this life, this family, for another, effortlessly, the way you might sub out a ham sandwich for turkey.
I suppose it’s in my DNA. My father understood this every time he suited up for work, every time he walked out the door. It was there in his eyes, the sorrow of doing something he loved, knowing the risk of losing us, weighing the two each time he put on his badge.
And ultimately, it was not a fair fight. Two months before Sophie was born, my father was killed in the line of duty. It wasn’t a dramatic thing—he was dispatched to a local bar to break up a fight. A drunk swung a Maglite at someone, striking my father in the process, fracturing his skull in three places. In the hospital, though unconscious, he looked like himself. Peaceful and perhaps slightly amused, his expression was fixed.
Hours turned into days. As I stroked his weathered hand, he smelled of the beer and trash he’d landed in. Even though I washed him, just like the nurse had showed me, that smell, so unlike my father, never went away. Eight days in, he died from a brain bleed.
It was a relief to leave that hospital room, that smell, that fixed expression. But from that moment on, everything was different. Everything that I’d ever belonged to, or that had belonged to me, was either dead or gone. Everything except the baby I was carrying and the stranger I’d agreed to marry.
Chapter Twenty-Three
JC
My heart thumps so fast it robs me of breath. What irony this is, I think, as I listen to the footsteps coming from behind, counting them as they hit the pavement. I am following her. He is following me.
Memorizing the rhythm of his footsteps, I listen as one by one they match mine. Judging by the thud with which they hit the ground, I know he has picked up pace. I know he is close.
Why this man is following me, I haven’t a clue. In any case, at 1:44 in the morning, when you’re in a dark, empty park on the edge of town, why becomes irrelevant, because whatever the reason, it can’t be good.
This is not how this is supposed to go, I muse, tightening my grip around the base of the knife. I steady my breath, and as I run the coolness of the blade across my fingertip, I audibly exhale. On my next inhale, I mentally prepare myself for a possible confrontation, and then I slow my pace and wait.
He, too, slows, before he switches up his pace. With each step forward, I sense him there, lurking in the shadows not far behind, and the thought of us coming face to face does not exactly thrill me.
I can feel he’s holding back and so I stop abruptly and turn—certain if I spun around to my left I could reach out and touch him. Only when I do, there’s no one behind me. Or at least, not that I can see.
He’s there, I’m certain. Although I can’t see anything, nothing further than a few inches in front of my face, I can feel his body heat.
A dead silence fills the air, and even when I strain to make sense of my surroundings, I don’t hear anything except the intermittent rush of wind.
For a second, I’m annoyed with his reluctance to show himself. I imagine us facing off, a scenario which ends with me subsequently snapping his neck. Not only is he rudely interrupting my sleep, he’s being sloppy about it as well. He shouldn’t be here—he shouldn’t be involved with her. He shouldn’t be following me.
Taking a step backward, I scan the dark edges of the wooded area just beyond the point where the soft glow of the lamp posts touch.
Carefully, I begin to turn and start back the way I came. I figure if he won’t show himself, then I’ll retreat to the warmth and the safety of my truck and wait him out. I take just two steps before I feel him closing in. I firmly adjust the base of the knife in my palm, strengthening my grip, and suddenly, his hands are on me. With one hand clasped against my mouth, the other around my shoulders, he drags me backward into a row of thick bushes.
This isn’t even remotely how this night was supposed to go, I think, bucking against him, utilizing all of my bodyweight as I attempt to ram my foot into his shin. Unfortunately, he’s quick. He dodges it, and I don’t make any headway at getting free. Bringing the knife around my body, where I plan to plunge it into the arm he has draped around my neck, I stab at the air, missing the chance. In the scuffle, we move sideways, out of the brush and onto the path, where he releases me and backs away.
It takes milliseconds for my brain to fully register what I am seeing, but in the dark, the shiny metal of the revolver pointed at my head is unmistakable.
I hold my hands palm up. “Easy,” I say, my eyes adjusting to the light of the lamppost. I can hardly make out his face, much less his features, but I can easily hear his breathing. He isn’t panicked. His hand is steady.
“Whatever you want, take it,” I say to him, but I know I am going to die.
“You,” he says, shining a flashlight at my face, blinding me. “You put cameras in her home.” He widens his stance and steadies his gun. “You sick bastard.”
I fling myself to the side as he fires the gun, and then I take off in a full sprint in the opposite direction. Sound travels fast in the cold, and the sound I hear is a relief, a thousand prayers answered. The pistol misfires.
My legs burn, the undergrowth tears at my pants, but I press onward. Gasping for air, I fill my lungs, trying to maximize the oxygen in my bloodstream. It will help to outrun him.
