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I blink, freeze.
For a full ten seconds I stare down at the pile of pictures that fill the drawer. Pictures ofme.My own face stares back at me in a collage of images carefully cut from newspapers, magazines, online articles.
My heart starts to race as I pilfer through the pile, pausing on a jagged, torn page of a yearbook—a yearbook frommysenior year. A red lipstick heart encircles my acne-riddled face.
“Holy. Shit.”
The light falls out of my mouth, flashing intermittent beams of light against the wall as it hits the floor.
Shirley darts out of the room.
I retrieve the flashlight, and after blowing off the dust motes, I replace it between my teeth and squat in front of the open drawer.
I begin pulling out the contents one by one. Images of me in the courtroom during the trial—actual pictures. More, printed from the countless internet articles about the case. A newspaper clipping of the announcement of my new business, Cohen Carpentry, from twenty-five years ago.
At the bottom of the pile are snapshots of me on the television. As if someone had taken a picture from their couch and then printed it from their phone.
Jesus Christ.
I cannot believe what I’m staring at. This goes far beyond Sylvia collecting stories of her mother’s death—Marjorie’s Death Folder, as she’d called it. This isallabout me, an extremely unnerving obsession.
My stomach rolls and suddenly I want nothing more than to get the hell out of this house.
I replace everything just as I’d found it, then make a final run through each room to ensure I’ve left no trace of myself.
I keep the spare key.
Mind racing, I jump into my (Juan’s) truck and make my way to Deep Shadows to continue my investigation while untangling this new development in my head…
Sylvia’s interest in me goes well beyond a crush, as I’d initially thought, and has been active for years. So, what does this mean? How does this tie into the letters, the necklace, her disappearance? Or am I overthinking it?
Is it really so bad? So she likes me—no big deal, right?
Wrong. It feels significant because of the sneakiness of it. If Sylvia is this obsessed with me, why didn’t she make a move, given the amount of time we’ve spent together over the last week? Try to seduce the man she’s pined after for so long, now within her grasp. But she didn’t. In fact, she made no indication of exactly how interested she was in me—and this makes me wonder what else she’s hiding from me.
Unfortunately, I am far too familiar with Hybristophilia. A mental disorder characterized by a female’s intense sexual interest in men who commit crimes. The more heinous, the greater the obsession.
While in prison I was the focus of multiple female-driven groups who wrote me daily and visited weekly. There was Cohen’s Cupcakes, (a clever play on my now-nonexistent company, Cohen’s Carpentry), The Cohen Commitment Crew, (women who were—you guessed it—committed to breaking me out of prison) and, finally, the Free Rhetts (the least creative of the groups).
One commonality between these women and Sylvia? An extreme obsession. One major difference, however, is their communication of this obsession. The groups were very vocal about their feelings. Sylvia kept hers hidden.
Why?
I scoot lower in my seat as I drive past the iron gates of Deep Shadows and make a mental note to buy a baseball cap next time I fill up on gas.
The streetlights stutter on as I pass the Taylor home, which appears locked up. No lights, no movement inside. I slow as I round the cul-de-sac. The abandoned house sits darkened under the shadows of the bushy, unmanicured trees that surround it. The house has an entirely different feel now that I know a satanic sex club commences under its roof after midnight.
I don’t care to ever set foot in that place again.
Exiting the neighborhood, I turn onto a secondary road—not so much of a road, really, as a parallel path of rutted dirt—that snakes around the back of the properties. For maintenance trucks, I assume.
I park behind a thicket of trees, then make my way through the brush until I reach the back of the Taylors’ home.
I settle in and watch.
For hours I watch, eyes peeled not only for Sylvia—if Harris Taylor did take her, which I don’t think he did—but also for any sign that suggests there is more going on in the Taylor home than weird sexual fetishes.
* * *
