Page 57 of The Executioners Three
She was, after all, her mother’s daughter.I can handle it.
Today, Freddie’s mission was to look at newspaper articles from 1975 and 1987. Anything that her father might’ve missed. She might not know why he had gathered those documents—and the poem too—but there had been a reason. Something Freddie was certain connected to the current chaos.
She started with theBerm Sentinel,also grabbing newspapers from the neighboring towns. Alas, there wasn’t much to find. Her dad had been thorough, and she only came across the same articles he’d uncovered.
Which… was… well,strange. Looking at the exact same article and knowing her dad had looked at it too… It made Freddie’s joints stiffen and her stomach roil like she had heartburn.Tamp it down,she told herself.Focus, Gellar.
After three swallows, Freddie succeeded. Or at least, she succeeded enough to work through all of theBerm Sentineland move on to theCounty Weekly,where she found a few wild animal reports that corroborated what Frank had found. An account of icebergs forming close to the shore, too, which made gooseflesh trickle down her arms and her gut sit up and take notice.
There was also a report of a missing person in 1975, but the guy had come from Elmore, twenty miles away. She decided it wasn’t important and moved on.
After thirty minutes of scouring articles, Freddie had all but given up on finding anything from 1975 or 1987 to add to her dad’s stash. Until suddenly she came across a copy of theElmore Gazette(a paper that didn’t even exist anymore) dated the first week of November 1975.
“City-on-the-Berme Lumberjack Pageant Leaves Historical Village,” the headline read, and right away, Freddie’s gut set to squishing. She knew the pageant had been moved to the high school for almost ten years before going back to the Village with Mom’s help. Freddie had always assumed it was because the stage had needed replacing or something…
But nope.Bignope. Apparently the performance in 1975 had been disrupted by a teenager—drunk off his ass and screaming of monsters in the woods. He had been partying with his friend in the county park when the friend had wandered off by himself. The first guy had gone looking for his buddy, and found the body…
Without a head.
Like, the guy had been full-ondecapitated. No skull attached to a spinal column. Guillotined without a guillotine.
And to make it even more wild, the police decidedthatwas an accident. There had still been some logging in those days; an axe had fallen off a platform, andkersplat.
Who the victim had been, though, the article never named. Nor who the traumatized drunk guy had been.
Freddie needed more. Her gut needed more, because as far as she was concerned, this many deaths in a single location didn’t point to bad luck so much as murder. The question remaining, however, was whether it had been a series of copycat murderers—each death echoing elements of “The Executioners Three” poem—or whether they were all committed by the same killer over the last twenty-four years.
Aserialkiller.
After printing out the article, Freddie dove back into the microfiche filing cabinets. Except when she searched for papers from October 22, 1975 (the day after this event had supposedly happened), there were none. Absolutelynone. In fact, no papers from any town or county for the day of October 22 were anywhere inside the library.
“Uh, Miss Gupta?” Freddie called. Her gut wasn’t just awake now; it was hyped up like a Chihuahua barking at the neighbors.
“Yes, Freddie?” Miss Gupta popped up beside her.
“There seems to be a day missing.” Freddie pointed at the gap in articles. “Could the papers have been misplaced? Or maybe loaned out to another library?”
Miss Gupta’s forehead pinched. As she flipped through all of the yellow microfiche folders, her frown deepened. “How strange. There’s no reason these articles from 1975shouldn’tbe here. Look.” She tapped a series of barcodes along the tops of the folders. “If these had been loaned out, the entire folder would be gone. But they aren’t.”
“Maybe… they got damaged and were removed?”
“Maybe,” Miss Gupta murmured, though she didn’t sound convinced.
And Freddiedefinitelywasn’t convinced. Those articles were important to her fact-finding mission—and really, what were the odds that they had all vanished on their own? “Is there somewhere else I could go, to read articles from that date?”
“You could go to all the newspapers’ offices,” Miss Gupta suggested, slipping the empty folders from the cabinet. She was frowning in a very un-Miss-Gupta way now. “They should all have archives—well, the ones that are still in business. Or,” she added, finally looking at Freddie. “Fortin Prep keeps an extensive collection of periodicals.”
Of course they did. Freakin’ rich kids.
“It isn’t open to the public,” Miss Gupta went on, “but they offer special research passes for people who want access. It only takes about a week to get one.”
A week?Freddie’s nostrils flared. She didn’t have a week. There was a suicide that wasn’t a suicide, an injured Mrs. Ferris, a recurring theme of hangings at the park, a freakingdecapitationfrom twenty-four years ago, and nowanotherdead body.
“Do the students at Fortin Prep have access to the collection?”
“I presume so.” Miss Gupta’s smile returned. “The school is famous for its journalism program. Didn’t you know that?”
Of course Freddie knew that. Just as she knew Roberta Allard Fortin had been a total badass and famous for her investigative reporting. Freddie had just never considered that all the money going into the school might also mean they’d have a massive collection of periodicals for their students to use.
