Page 98 of I see you Beauty

“My God!” she gasps, stunned. “Was that him? Did Ezra do that to you?” she asks angrily, looking at me with wide eyes.

“No! What makes you think that? What are you doing here? How did you even find my address?” I rattle off all the questions swirling in my mind.

I’m completely confused. Why does she think Ezra is responsible for the injuries? Ezra could never hit or harm a woman.

“I memorized your license plate number because I knew Ezra would never get a car. I… just had to find you. To talk to you. Urgently! Please let me in,” she begs, looking at me as if it were a matter of life and death.

She kneads her fingers nervously and steps from one foot to the other as if afraid of standing outside my house for too long.

“I don’t know exactly what happened between you and Ezra, and it’s none of my business, but he told me he apologized yesterday and that he’s very sorry for what happened. So please let bygones be bygones and accept it,” I dismiss her and am about to close the door when I give her another friendly nod to clarify that this conversation is over.

But she braces herself against the door and pushes it open again, looking at me in bewilderment and snorting angrily.

“You want me to leave it alone? What exactly? That he threatened to kill me yesterday if he saw me again? Especially if I come near you? Or should I just get over the fact that he killed my best friend and her boyfriend in cold blood?” she asks me angrily but continues to speak in a lowered voice as we are still on my porch.

I look at her in horror and shake my head stoically a little later. Bullshit!

“How dare you? Do you know what serious accusations these are? Ezra is the kindest man I’ve ever met. He would never hurt a woman! Please leave before I call the police!” This is how I end this bizarre encounter. She’s crazy!

She shakes her head regretfully as if I’m the younger one here who doesn’t have enough life experience to see the threat.

“He’s not who you think he is. I’m just trying to help you. He spent the last six years in prison for a double homicide. Then, he somehow got out. I just didn’t know about it until yesterday. I thought they would never let that psychopath out again! Please, believe me. Here…”

She pulls an old newspaper article out of her pocket and hands it to me. With a furrowed brow, I take it. When I see Ezra on the front page, my eyes widen in horror. This… this can’t possibly be true!

“Do you believe me now? Do you really want to know what happened? Because if you confront him, you’ll only hear his version, and it certainly won’t be true. Please, I just want to prevent another murder. I want to help you. Please!” she begs me and grabs my hand in panic.

Stunned and quick-witted, I nod and let her into the house so that she can tell me what happened.

My stomach clenches, and I feel sick. Ezra is a murderer? That… that simply can’t be! But here it is, in black and white. He’s never said a single syllable about being in prison for the last few years, and if what the authorities think is true and he really is innocent, why hasn’t he told me? I don’t know what to think anymore, and I’m dizzy from all the questions in my head.

When I get to my kitchen, I slump down on one of the stools. I don’t even have the strength to offer her a drink. I’m too stunned.

“Listen…”

“Cora. Call me Cora, and you’re Jenny?”

She nods.

“Cora, I know it’s a lot to take in at once. But please, believe me. Ezra is sick. He is sickly obsessed when he falls in love. I did some research while he was in prison and found out that all his ex-girlfriends had either mysteriously disappeared or committed suicide, even though there were no known mental health issues. All open or unsolved police cases. Sarah, my best friend, wasn’t the first, and she won’t be the last. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you here?” she asks me and grabs my hand insistently.

I don’t know what to say or what to think. It all sounds completely absurd and far-fetched. But then why was he convicted, arrested, and then released? None of this makes any sense at all! My head is spinning. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to organize my thoughts before I can get to the bottom of everything and make sense of it all.

“What happened to your best friend and her boyfriend? And why has Ezra been released if he’s supposedly guilty?”

“Ezra was obsessed with Sarah. She was his best friend’s girlfriend. I don’t know where he got the idea that he and Sarah were ever a couple because they never were. Sarah loved Milo. She would never have been unfaithful to him or started something with his best friend. One day, Ezra completely lost it and claimed that he and Sarah had been together. He stalked her from then on. Everywhere she went, he went. Always. It was scary. He flooded her with messages and calls. But the crazy thing about the messages was that he pretended they had a normal relationship as if Milo didn’t even exist… And then… one night at a party, when he saw the two of them together, he freaked out and went off on Milo. He was thrown out, and Sarah thought it was finally over, but the next day, they were both dead. He bashed their heads in. They were almost unrecognizable. I… I found them,” she sobs at the end and collapses on the chair next to me.

I pat her shoulder because she is completely distraught. The whole thing still weighs so heavily on her, even though, as I can see from the newspaper article, it was over six years ago.

“I’m terribly sorry about your friend and her boyfriend… But who says it was Ezra?” I clutch at the last straw because I still don’t see a ruthless killer in Ezra, even though the story sends an icy shiver down my spine.

“I saw him that night. I was the key witness who put him in jail, and I was sure he was going to die in there. But now… Cora, he’ll kill me if he finds out I was here.”

Panicked, she glances around as if expecting Ezra to suddenly appear. Her fear of him is palpable, but it leaves me confused. How could I have encountered such a different side of him, while she seems to know another version entirely?

I reflect on every encounter and every conversation we’ve had to see if anything could match what she’s told me here.

“Cora, this guy is sick! You must see that, right? Has he ever done anything strange? Was suddenly there, appearing out of nowhere? In the right place at the right time? Anything? He’s a master at making you believe things that aren’t there. He had everyone wrapped around his finger back then, so no one believed Sarah that he was stalking her. And she couldn’t say anything to Milo because he would have gone through fire for Ezra. He probably never thought he’d die at his hands.”

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