Bess sighed. “It wasn’t a telemarketer. Greg is the guy I had a date with. He’s been, well, he’s been sort of a handful.”
Bess told Carol the story of her date with Greg and the SOS message she received from Amelia Earhart—Amy Eckhardt. She tried to swerve away from anything too unexplainable. Anything that seemed even remotely supernatural. Not only because she wanted Carol to believe her, but because she feared that if she said those things out loud, really thought about them, she might truly go as insane as she probably already seemed.
“And turns out this weird old lady has been trying to low-key manipulate me into becoming Matlock,” she finished.
Carol was silent. She’d finished her beer and helped herself to another one while Bess spoke. Bess didn’t blame her. The story basically required alcohol.
“And Lucy is convinced the guy is innocent?” Carol finally asked.
“Yeah. That was truly the strangest part for me, too.”
“Lucy’s a good judge of character. That’s all.”
“Sis real woke. I know.”
Carol stayed silent and Bess started peeling the label off her bottle, slowly at first, until she had it cleanly removed.
“What I don’t understand is how this person could be sending these messages through your radio,” Carol said.
“You and me both. For all I know it’s some elaborate scheme to drive me crazy. But honestly, I don’t know why anyone would care enough about me to want to drive me crazy.”
“You make it seem really pathetic.”
“It is.”
“Bess, I don’t mean to go where I’m not wanted, but how did your life get like this? All this loner stuff. You’re too young to be so isolated.”
“Shit, I don’t know. After high school most of my friends went away to college and never came back. That’s small-town life. I worked and attended community college and minded my own business.” Bess felt satisfied with this answer, but Carol was eyeing her suspiciously.
“That’s not all of it though.”
“Then you tell me.”
“I mean, you were engaged a couple years ago. And then it all just… I don’t know what. It all disappeared.”
A sudden flush of shame and anger swelled inside Bess. This whole having-people-over-to-her-house thing was turning out to be a pain in the ass. “That didn’t work out,” Bess said quietly.
“That much is obvious,” Carol said. “But what no one knows is, why? One day you’re getting married and the next POOF! Brandon’s gone. And not just gone from the house—gone from Antioch.”
“We wanted different things,” Bess said.
“We’d all heard the rumors, Bess. That he was screwing around. Did he leave with one of them?”
“That’s enough. We aren’t doing this.”
Carol held up her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I was only saying. You weren’t always a loner.”
“Great, cool. Can you mind your fucking business now?”
“Wow, just because your ex was screwing half a dozen other women, there’s no need to snap at me.”
The two glared at each other in silence, neither ready to admit they’d been too harsh. A knock on the door made them both jump. Carol even let out a high yelp that would have been funny any other time. Bess glanced down at her phone, waiting for it to ring like it had before, waiting for the demon voices to start pouring in. It remained dark and unassuming.
“Do you think it’s that Greg guy?” Carol asked.
“I have no idea,” Bess replied heading for the door. The porch was dark and she didn’t bother with the light. In one fast motion she pulled open the door and scanned the yard slamming it shut again.
“Did you see anything?” Carol asked.
“Not a thing. Which isn’t unusual.”
Bess opened the door again, slower this time, and scanned the yard. She stepped out and swore as she banged her bare toes into something on the stoop. There was a large cardboard box nestled against the doorstep. Taped to the top was a piece of stationary that proudly proclaimed its origin as the Antioch Historical Society. Bess picked it up and read it out loud to Carol.
“‘Bess—I deeply regret causing you stress. It was never my intention. Please take these notebooks. You’re the only person who can help Tam. Sincerely, Winnie Tate.’”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Carol said.
Bess hefted the box into the entryway and closed the door behind her. The flaps were not folded down, so she could already see the papers and notebooks neatly arranged inside.
“How did that old lady even carry that up here?” Carol asked.
“Least of my worries,” Bess responded, pulling out the first book. It was a thick, 5-subject spiral bound with a plain black paper cover that was pulling away from the spirals. On the inside of the cover someone, presumably Tam Gillis, has written the name Ashley Bunkirk.
The first pages were filled with a detailed biography of the dead girl. There were notes on how she looked, where she ate, where she lived. He even had information on her parents and close friends.
“This looks more like evidence that he definitely, for sure killed her,” Carol said, peering over Bess’s shoulder. “The little freak was a stalker.”
Some of the phrases were highlighted. Things like “ate at Morning Glory Café” and “used to work at movie theater.” Bess flipped to the second section of the notebook and read the heading: “‘Brandy Leroy.’”
“She was the third victim,” Carol said.
This section was much like the first, Brandy’s life story, in as much mundane detail as possible. Brandy also ate at the café, but as far as Bess could tell, she’d never worked at a movie theater. Brandy had been a nail technician. She lived alone. Her parents were both dead—victims of a freak car accident when Brandy was twenty.
The other sections of the book outlined the lives of the other women claimed by the Impaler. The more Bess read, the more uneasy she felt. It was like reading someone else’s diary. And none of it exactly spelled Tam’s innocence. Carol was right, it made him look guilty.
“Where’s the first one?” Bess wondered aloud. “This notebook starts with Ashley, she was the second victim. So if he’s the killer, or just an avid biographer, where’s number one?”
“I can’t even remember her name,” Carol said.
Bess knelt next to the box and started pulling out the contents—loose papers, notebooks, photographs, even maps. There was an orange notebook about halfway down. On the cover he’d used an eraser to etch a ghostly white number one. The name Margot Cooper was printed neatly on the first page.
“That was it,” Carol said. “Margot.”
“Sounds a lot like Margaret,” Bess said.
“Not exactly.”
“But real close.”
Margot had been twenty-three years old when she died. She was a self-taught culinary whiz and worked as a chef at a local steak house called Farber’s. She was single, but often went out with her co-workers at the end of the night to close down bars and dance. Margot’s parents were devout Baptists and Margot attended regular services as well as Bible study twice a week. On her days off, Margot would head out early for breakfast at the Morning Glory Café, in the afternoon she would watch a movie, whatever the cheap matinee happened to be, or window shop. She had a gym membership, but rarely used it. She almost never ate at home, preferring instead to have her meals out in public—often alone—where she would usually receive free food from her culinary friends. She had thick blonde hair, generally pulled back into a ponytail, and light brown eyes.
“She sounds nice,” Bess said.
“Isn’t that the same church Wayne goes to?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“This feels so ugly.”
Bess nodded.