Page 49 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
“He liked to watch you hurt people?”
Another short, humorless laugh. “No, our father was a classic pervert, a peeping Tom. Guess his name fit. He liked to watch young women undress.”
“He was spying on Lexi?”
A chilling smile stretched across his face. “Yeah, and that one night, he got a real show.”
My brain finally came back online. As I realized what he was saying, the pizza I’d wolfed down earlier threatened to come back up, and I swallowed hard.
“You attacked her, and he saw it.”
“How sick do you think he had to be to go out in that storm just to stand and watch a girl come home from work, make something to eat, and get ready for bed? I mean, that’s not normal behavior for anyone, let alone a middle-aged man with a wife and two kids. But to do that in the middle of a freaking nor’easter? It was a compulsion, Tristan.”
He was talking to me, but then again, he wasn’t. He had a far-away look in his eye and he spoke in a soft, flat monotone. Still, I leaned in and listened, hoping to glean some understanding of what happened that night.
“He just stood outside her window in the driving rain being battered by the wind. It was pathetic. But all he wanted to do was watch, never act.”
He’d never flatly admit that he broke into Lexi’s apartment and tried to gut her. He was too smart to confess to attempted murder. But I was piecing together my own narrative of the events of that night.
“So it was Dad’s fault you tried to kill Lexi?” I filled my voice with disdain, hoping to provoke him into responding.
He narrowed his eyes but kept his mouth shut.
I continued to goad him. “What’s your excuse for what you did to Dana Rowland? Was Dad’s ghost creeping on her? Did a dead man make you do it?”
His cheek twitched. And from that small reaction, I realized he didn’t give a shit about Lexi or Dana, but on some level, he felt responsible for our father’s suicide. From a clinical standpoint, this was an interesting development. Here was a killer who felt remorse not for his victims, but for our father—a man who was a cruel, unyielding abuser and, apparently, a voyeur.
“You need help, Tate.”
“I do,” he agreed readily. “I need a partner. That’s why I’m here.”
“You want me to help you kill women,” I blurted.
He retreated from the statement in a hurry, “I didn’t say that. What’s wrong with you?”
I realized my error right away. Pushing him was a rookie mistake. My professor would be disappointed in me. I switched tacks. “You need treatment.”
He shook his head. “I’m good, bro. You’re the one who needs to decide what to do with his life. I know you’re interviewing for jobs and applying to graduate schools. You need to pick a path and commit to it.”
How did he know all this information about me? My chest tightened. He’d clearly been watching me, spying on me, and I’d been oblivious. It was a wildly unsettling realization, and I didn’t know how to respond to it.
Meanwhile, he was getting antsy. He shuffled his feet. “That town in Ohio, there’s a university there with a graduate program in forensic DNA. You could learn a lot there.”
He brushed past me, opened the door, and walked out into the night. I stood in the hallway, slack-jawed and dazed, for several long minutes before I returned to the table where I’d been studying.
I spent the rest of the night sucking down energy drinks and trying to make sense of the encounter. I was sufficiently self-aware to know why I was drawn to forensic genetics. I wanted to help victims like Lexi and Dana and stop people like Tate.
But if I went to this town in Ohio where he lived and worked, I could stop Tate himself. I could find his next victim and save her before he acted. I knew he must have already selected her. He wouldn’t have risked coming to see me over a hypothetical situation. He was going to kill again, and soon.
I should have called the police. But I knew Tate wouldn’t have said as much as he had unless he knew no evidence tied him to Lexi or Dana. Tate was cruel and damaged, but he wasn’t stupid. Far from it. And he was careful. I realized he never came out and told me the name of the town where he lived.
Calling the police in every small college town in Ohio to report that I had a feeling a young woman would be stabbed soon sounded like a great way to be dismissed as a crackpot or, worse, flagged as a potential offender. Instead, I hopped online and researched all the forensics graduate programs at universities in Ohio. In the end, I had a list of three.
I applied to and was accepted to all three programs. I scheduled trips out to Ohio to visit the campuses during my spring break. I didn’t see Tate in any of the towns. But he must have known I was there. On the second night of my visit to Hope Falls, during a torrential downpour, a co-ed was viciously stabbed and left to die in her roommate’s bed.
Twenty-Seven
Alex
