Cody looked surprised. “You two were always thick as thieves. Did something happen after … you know.”
“No, nothing like that,” I assured him. If anything, the attack had made us closer. We might have grown up and grown apart naturally, drifting off into our disparate interests. But after the attack, we lived in one world, and everyone else lived in another. We’d barely spent a day apart until college.
“So you’re still close.”
“We don’t see each other as much as we used to, but yeah. I mean, I was a mess before I almost got murdered. I was a disaster after. Still am, in fact. But once Cass sets her mind to something, you can’t talk her out of it—and she decided we were best friends when we were five years old. So here we are.” Anyone else would have done the smart thing and ditched me a long time ago.
“What about Liv?” he asked.
I dropped my eyes to my bottle. “We don’t get to see each other much, but we talk all the time.” I didn’t mention how many of those calls came at odd hours of the night. Or just how complicated that friendship had become.
My bottle was empty; I’d hardly noticed how fast I was drinking. Cody flagged Butterfly for a replacement. Then his phone rang. “Sorry—I have to take this. It’s a work thing,” he said. “I’ll be right back?”
I waved him off. He walked out past the bathrooms toward the back lot to take the call. I shook my head in wonder. I’d adored Cody, but there was no denying he was the resident bad boy. State representative? Some things did change around here after all.
“Naomi Cunningham?”
I yelped, slopping my beer over my hand. The man standing at the end of the table looked chagrined and took a step back, holding up his hands.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
My heart hammered. I swallowed hard. “You’re fine,” I said curtly.
With my adrenaline settling, I got a better look at him. He was youngish—early thirties, I guessed, with black hair and a Mediterranean complexion. Italian, maybe. He had the kind of boyish good looks that probably led to a lot of dates and not a lot of being taken seriously, with a wide mouth and big eyes designed to look earnest. He’d called me by my new name, and there were a couple interesting things about that.
“Let me guess. You have a podcast?” I asked.
“How’d you know?”
“You’re not a local, and those shoes wouldn’t know what a hiking trail was if it bit them,” I said. “You called me Naomi Cunningham and you recognized me in a dim bar, so that narrows it down to either a casual murder fan or a professional, and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Plus Cassidy warned me.”
“Yep, you caught me,” he said with a disarming smile. “My name’s Ethan Schreiber. I’m working on a podcast about Alan Michael Stahl. Well, not just about him—it’s actually about three serial killers from the Pacific Northwest, but Stahl is a big part of it and so obviously you are, too. I was actually planning on getting in touch with you later, but then I spotted you across the room.”
“I don’t do interviews,” I said. I shifted to put my shoulder to him and took a pointed sip of beer.
“That seems to be the theme of the week,” Schreiber said. “Cassidy Green said the same thing. Your friend Olivia was a little more forthcoming.”
“Olivia talked to you?” I asked, surprised. “What did she say?” If she’d told him about Persephone—
But, no. She wouldn’t have. Not until she’d talked to us.
“Oh, I see. You’re allowed to ask questions, but I’m not,” he said, giving me an exaggeratedly skeptical look. “Tell you what. I’ll trade you. An answer for an answer.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
He shrugged. “If I don’t get anything from you, I’m going to have to restructure the whole episode, and that’s going to be a pain in the ass. So I’m willing to be a bit of a dick for a usable statement.”
“An admirable dedication to your work,” I said dryly, and sighed. “Fine.” I needed to know what Olivia had told him. Last week I would have said it was impossible that she would break the silence that had kept Persephone our secret for so long, but now?
Surely I could come up with some pat sound bite for him. Something about being so grateful I’m still alive, how Stahl’s death brought up complicated feelings. Lying by omission wasn’t really lying.
“Excellent.” He sat down across from me and pulled a digital recorder out of his pocket. I eyed it suspiciously. “It is a podcast,” he said. “A traditionally auditory medium.”
“Fine,” I said again. “When did you talk to Olivia?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” he said.
“What did she tell you?”
“Nope, my turn,” he said. He turned on the recorder. “Naomi Cunningham, aka Naomi Shaw. You were Alan Michael Stahl’s last victim.”
“Yes. Now can you answer my question?”
He raised a finger. “That wasn’t a question, just a statement. How did you feel when you learned that Stahl had died?”
It was the question I’d expected. “Good.” I glanced toward the back door. No sign of Cody returning.
Schreiber raised an eyebrow. “You can’t give me a little bit more?”
“It’s an answer,” I told him.
He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Look. I know you don’t do interviews, and I understand why. When I saw you here I was hoping that face-to-face, I could charm you. Obviously, I was wrong. But I really need this. You and your friends are the heart of this story. You’re the part of it that isn’t about reveling in evil. If none of you speak up, the story is all about Stahl. The victims get lost. And I don’t want that.”
“He had other victims,” I pointed out. “No one talks about them, you know. Six young women. Six. And few people can even name them—even the people who know every detail of his MO and can recite my entire biography. If you want to do Stahl’s victims justice, you should be focusing on the girls who didn’t get away.”
“Lia Kemp, Tori Martin, Maria Luiselli, Hannah Faber, Ashlynn Raybourn, and Rosario Rivera,” Schreiber said, leaning forward intently. “Lia was the youngest. She was sixteen, a runaway. She was a sex worker; Stahl apparently picked her up at a truck stop. No one ever reported her missing, and she wasn’t identified for three years after her body was found by hikers. Maria was the oldest—thirty-five. She had three kids. She’d struggled with drug addiction but was clean when it’s believed that she met Stahl while hitching home from work. Her shift ended after the buses stopped. She’d walk the four miles or she’d hitch a ride when she was lucky. She knew it was dangerous. She carried a knife in her purse, but it didn’t save her. I can keep going.”
I sat back in my seat, mouth dry. I hadn’t even known all of that. I had never been able to bring myself to read about Stahl. I couldn’t even have recited their names like he did. And I’d never heard anyone talk about them like that—like he wasn’t just cataloging facts. Like they mattered to him.