Page 25 of The Drowned Woman
I studied my fellow killers—those who had gotten caught, especially. And I realized that their biggest mistake was allowing themselves to fall into a pattern. Lazy bastards deserved to get caught. But not me. I wouldn’t repeat their mistakes.
I bought an assortment of dice, coins,I Chingdivination rods, Tarot cards, and a random number generator app for my phone. And I began to allow them to control my life, every decision made guided by pure, unpredictable, capricious random chance.
If killing was to be my destiny, then I had to embrace Chaos in all its glory.
More—much more, I promise!—next time.
Your devoted fan.
Leah stopped there. The next file wasn’t a letter from the stalker but Risa’s notes: a running list of clues the stalker had revealed. Parents divorced, father moved to LA, heart attack, etc. A second list held a series of questions with possible research avenues and annotations on what Risa had found.
There were pages and pages of research, everything from obituaries of men who’d died of heart attacks in LA county during a span of years, survived by teenaged sons and ex-wives, correlations with the names of the sons and databases of army enlistment, to overseas deployments, sniper and special ops training. Leah wondered how Risa had gotten those records—obviously the reporter had her sources in the military. But every lead Risa followed turned into a dead end.
Leah scanned the files Risa sent and realized the largest one was a spreadsheet. She hated spreadsheets but with this kind of research, she could see why it would be the best way to organize the information. Leah opened the file, just to see how many leads Risa had followed over the past year.
The spreadsheet was huge. 3019 entries with 212 data fields. Each. And that was only the first tab—the tabs went from A to the end of the alphabet and then from AA to HH. All color coded and labeled with Risa’s shorthand notations, like GEO, WITS, etc.
Leah stared at the dizzying display splashed across her screen. How much time had all this taken? These were only the data points, the end result of painstaking hours and hours of research. How had Risa found time to do her paying work? Clearly she was as obsessed with her stalker as he was with her.
She clicked the spreadsheet closed, her screen returning to the text of the next letter, dated only three weeks after the previous one.
Dear Obituary Reader,
I feel we’ve gotten close enough for me to share some intimate details. I thought you might enjoy a moment-by-moment account of how I go about my business. I warn you, I won’t make it easy for you, but I’ll play fair and leave enough clues that you’ll eventually work things out. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to reunite my chosen one with his family… if you’re not too late.
Wish I could help you with a name, but honestly, I have no idea. The dice led me to him. I will tell you he lives in Indiana. I watched him for most of a day. He worked at a landscape company and I’ve never seen anyone so… More than happy—content might be a better word, yes, he was content with his job. All day long, a smile on his face, he helped people pick out shrubs and trees and rocks and dirt. He loaded their cars and SUVs, loaded pickup trucks and even used a forklift to load bigger trucks headed out to some suburban development or a new golf course or wherever.
That was his life. Digging in the dirt. And it was clear that he loved it. It was as if he had some special shine to him—despite the grime that covered him. The way he leapt to greet each new customer, the way he hummed and sang as he watered and tended the plants, even the way his body moved when he shoveled fertilizer—as if he were performing intricate choreography, a ballet.Joie de vivre, the French call it.
I feel that way about my own work, so I knew when his time came, it had to honor his love for his work.
He was the last one there after closing. Bedding the plants down for the night as if tucking children into beds, complete with a lullaby sung in Spanish. Using a tractor to push fallen dirt, fertilizer, and mulch back up into their small mountains. Even sweeping around the base of this tiny mountain range, despite the fact that as soon as he turned his back, wind and gravity would cascade more down to the ground again. And he knew it—as soon as he finished sweeping and walked away, a breeze gusted, rippling across the display of ornamental ponds, and he glanced back at those mounds of soil with a grin that said,Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll return to fight again. You can’t beat me, but have fun trying.
And that’s exactly when I knew how he had to die. No need for casting the dice, not when it was so blindingly obvious what Fate had in mind for him.
He’s still there to this day. Waiting for you to find him, reunite him with his family—or what’s left of him.
Let the games begin, dear Obituary Reader. The clues are all there. Good luck!
Your devoted fan.
Leah leaned back. She felt dirty; the urge to go wash her hands overwhelmed her. Turning a man’s death into a game? Surely the stalker hadn’t actually killed anyone? No, he’d said he wanted Risa back working; this must have been a way to try to lure her into writing again.
Except… it felt real. The way the stalker’s mind worked, the lovingly drawn description of his victim, the strange combination of clinical detachment and intimacy.
There was a knock on the door, and she jumped, chiding herself for allowing herself to be drawn into the stalker’s macabre game—just like Risa had. Still, a shudder sent goosebumps racing across her skin as she took a breath and called out, “Come in.”
It was Naomi Harper. “Walt Orly,” the young detective said as she came inside and plopped herself down in Leah’s sole guest chair. “His doc says he couldn’t have done it. Can you talk to him, translate the medical jargon? Because the man is stronger than he looks—you saw him tear apart that living room.”
“Sure. Is he ready?” Leah reached to close her computer, the words she’d been reading still glowing on the screen. She hesitated—should she ask Harper to read the files? No. Better to give them directly to Luka. After all, Harper was the youngest person on his team, a patrol officer allowed to wear plainclothes. Not yet a real detective.
“Yep. Guy’s awake. Calm, lucid. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde compared to the way he was this morning. I’m just waiting on Luka to get here.” Harper said it as if she assumed Leah was sitting at their beck and call, nothing better to do than come when summoned. True, she didn’t have anything other than paperwork, but that was only because she’d just begun this job this week—a job that was hers to define within the parameters of the funding.
For the first time, Leah realized the possibilities of her new job were endless. She could be more than a figurehead scribbling her signature on administrative forms and advising the CIC’s staff—who were already experts at their jobs. The sexual assault nurse examiners underwent rigorous training as did the social workers they partnered with.
Leah had enjoyed the call-out this morning—it felt like being back in the ER. How could she do more of that? She was already certified in CISM—the crisis debriefing that first responders underwent immediately following a major trauma or disaster. How hard would it be to get training in hostage negotiation? Or more acute mental health interventions—other than dosing someone with Haldol, like she almost had to do this morning.
She’d seen courses for tactical training for physicians so they could work with SWAT. No, ERT, she reminded herself. Except… It was too dangerous. She had to think of Emily. After all, Emily was the reason why she’d left the ER. Stable hours, decent paycheck, no more night shifts. Those needed to be her goals. Not chasing the thrills she’d left behind in the ER.
