Headlights(27)

“The chat rooms didn’t talk about me leaving?”

“I don’t do that stuff anymore.”

“You don’t go in the chat rooms?”

“Look, it was … My wife got into all that stuff a while ago, and she got me into it, and it was a stressful time, and it was just this thing to let off steam. As soon as I realized it was affecting investigations and lives, as soon as I realized, I guess, how real this whole thing is…”

“By ‘all that stuff,’ you mean like true crime?”

A pause, a slight shift in the air. “Yeah,” he says.

“You used to log on after your evening walks?”

“Yeah, I guess, sometimes before. Look, like I said, it was stupid, and a long time ago. It’s easy to get caught up in stuff like that—religion, whatever, stuff you think you need.”

“Did you know that one of the chat rooms you belong to has an entry and exit log?”

“Yeah, that sounds right, I dunno.”

“And your username is CanisLoopus?”

“Was,” he says. “Look, I really … I told you, that was not a great moment of my life. Could we—”

“Because of your arrest.”

“That and just family stuff, life.”

“The assault. Was that around that time?”

“Man, it wasn’t … My students organized a climate protest, and one of the cops who came to break it up put a hand on this girl from my freshman seminar. She was so small, and he was so big with that gun on his belt. It just … You don’t put your hands on an eighteen-year-old. You don’t bring guns on a college campus. It was a protest. Just students with signs. Something in me snapped, seeing it, his hands on one of those kids. But I didn’t hit him, just pulled his hand off her. Guess that’s what they call assault.”

“I have a report here, for the chat room. It shows that you’ve logged in a lot over the last year or so. About three times a week on average.”

Everett looks puzzled. “But … I haven’t.”

“Here, you can take a look.”

“I … don’t know what to say. Maybe I got hacked.” But a look crosses his face, some kind of understanding maybe.

“Do you know who might have hacked you?” I ask.

“No.” It’s a lie. I can feel it.

“Is there anyone you can think of in your time on the internet who might be pulling some strings on all this? Anyone who could be in charge?”

A flash of panic, there and then gone, but clear as day. “Not that I can think of,” he says. His jaw is tight.

“What about this—Wizdumteller? They seem to be the organizer of a lot of these online conversations. They said they knew that the murders were going to start back up again.”

Everett’s face goes blank, his knuckles white where his hands grip each other in his lap. “I really don’t want to talk about the chat rooms anymore. It’s bad enough that everything I’ve ever done with my life is going to be forgotten for this murder I don’t remember committing and have no connection to at all. I don’t need to be remembered as one of those freaks too.”

“Okay,” I say. “I just have one more question for now.”

He’s tense, now. But he nods.

“Back in your early chat room days, you said you thought every one of these killers was guilty, you suspected that they had found each other, online, like you and your chat room friends did, and came up with this whole elaborate plan. What do you think now, if you could guess?”

“I don’t have to guess.”

“Really?”

“None of this is the work of people. People can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never liked religion. But … I don’t know if it’s God or spaghetti monster or something else. I just know it’s bigger than us. A hell of a lot bigger. I had no idea what this was like, before. I hadn’t felt it.”

“You don’t seem afraid of what’s going to happen, if you’re found guilty,” I say.

“I will be found guilty, because you’re not gonna solve anything. And I’m not even accusing you, that’s just how it’s going. I can’t stop thinking every second about my career and my students and my wife and every day of my life that I took for granted that I’m never getting back. I’m so terrified I can hardly breathe. I had no idea fear could be so paralyzing and all-consuming and lonely. I just sit here, and— But … I’m a lot of shameful things, but stupid isn’t one of them. Least … not anymore.”

Everett looks up at me and holds my gaze straight on, leans forward. “If it’s something bigger than us, and it is, then we won’t be able to stop it. Avalanche is coming, and we’re in the path whether we like it or not. I’ve been there, deep inside it. I’m there now. Fuck, I’m all the way down. And it is so dark.

“And I feel sorry for you,” he says. “’Cause somehow, something tells me before this is all over, you’re gonna join me down here too.”





4



The looming homes, larger than anyone needs. The trees. The quiet. I grip the wheel as hard as I can and force myself to take the turns.