Page 46 of Aftermath
10
STONE
The loudest thudwoke me from my sleep.
I jolted upright and hopped out of bed. I quietly pulled open the nightstand drawer and pulled out the gun I kept stashed inside.
I held it in front of me, slowly walking through the room, careful not to make more noise than necessary. No noise followed the thud, but it was loud enough and close enough for me to know it came from inside.
I kept close to the wall, exiting the bedroom and making my way down the short hall to the stairs.
My footsteps felt deadly loud in the quiet of the night, and I sucked in a breath as a floorboard beneath me let out the deepest creak. My body tensed, every single hair on my arm standing.
Rustling sounds carried up the stairs, and I paused to listen. It was too far away; I couldn’t make out anything distinct beyond movement in what sounded like the dining room.
Was I being robbed?
I took each step one at a time, moving painfully slow downstairs. I could hear the shuffling getting louder. The closer I got, I poked my head around the corner, but it was completely dark, and the only thing I spotted was light from some screen on the table. The wall between the entry and the dining room partially blocked my view.
I got to the last step and started my careful approach. My gun was still raised, and I refused to take my eyes off the person moving around the dining room.
They were small in stature from the silhouette I could see and wore some type of robe. It was hard to make out details in the dark.
“Raise your hands slowly,” I demanded.
The person jumped back from the table, startled, and quickly threw up their hands, ignoring my instructions.
“Turn around,” I breathed.My eyes widened as they adjusted to the dark and realized who stood in the middle of the dining room.
“Lenore? What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I had to show you this,” she said a bit frantically.
She moved aside to show me the screen of her laptop she’d opened on the table.I lowered my gun still pointed at her, which did not seem to faze her in her frantic rambling.She started going on about a stalker and note, but none of her words made much sense, and she was speaking too fast for me to process.
Had I pushed her too far earlier, making her admit she was Jane Doe? Was this her final break?
“Len, slow down,” I instructed. “Start from the beginning. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, quickly brushing me off. “Like I was trying to explain, I think I found footage of the Coastal Killer.”
“No one‘s ever found footage from any of the attacks. How could you possibly have some?” I asked.
Her words still didn’t make sense. The FBI thoroughly searched every surveillance option, checking all cameras within a certain radius of every attack site. There’s no way she could’ve obtained it from the local bar without some form of law enforcement to back her, so I doubted she’d already explored that option.
“New footage,” she said
“There hasn’t been an attack in years,” I muttered. I still felt like Lenore could be having a psychotic break, having to face past events. Most peoples’ minds found a way to protect them from hard truths, blurred reality.
“They came to my apartment,” she said, and I froze.
“What do you mean, they came back for you? Did they try to hurt you?“ A new panic washed over me as I realized the gravity of her words. I dragged her into this mess, put her straight in harm’s way.
“Someone slipped a note under my door that saidstop looking. I can’t imagine what else it would mean. I had Mallory send me the footage that showed someone coming and leaving at that time. You can’t make out much, and they clearly knew what they were doing, but I did see one thing.”
I took a step closer to see her laptop screen as she pressed play. I watched the footage as someone dressed in all black avoided the camera’s sight best they could and entered the alley to her apartment.
So they knew what they were doing. The FBI always assumed that much in its profile.
