“Talk to her about this,” Mr. Bowling says. “She can’t be—you know. Just talk to her.”
“I will,” Ella says. She holds up the bag. “I’m happy to pay.”
Bowling shakes his head. “It’s on me.”
CHAPTER 18
KELLER
Keller lies in bed, mind churning. Even before she was pregnant, she had trouble leaving work at the office. Tonight, her thoughts swirl with the photos of four teenage girls pinned to Atticus Singh’s crime wall; Rusty Whitaker sucking on chicken wings at a dreary strip club; and the three pools of dried blood staining the carpet of the Dairy Creamery.
Bob rolls onto his side, facing her.
“Go back to sleep, sweetie,” Keller says.
He stares at her in that way he does. He knows her so well. “I’ll go back to sleep if you do.”
She frowns.
“If you’re gonna work through something, it will be faster if you have help.”
He often stays up with her during her bouts of insomnia from the pregnancy, usually watching old movies or bingeing on Netflix.
“Where are you going?” Keller asks as Bob lumbers out of bed and shuffles to the hallway.
“We need every G-man’s secret weapon for investigations.”
“What’s that?”
“Ben and Jerry’s.”
Twenty minutes later, in the twilight glow of the muted television, Keller and her husband sit on their bed, empty bowls with smears of Cherry Garcia gracing the nightstand.
Keller starts by explaining the eerily similar crimes. Night shift employees attacked with a knife, in each case, a lone survivor. “And then the weirdest thing happened…”
Bob looks at her, eager. The goon loves weird.
“The killer whispered the same thing to both surviving girls.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, he said, ‘Good night, pretty girl.’”
“Then it’s gotta be the same guy, right?”
“Yes, unless that’s what the killer wants us to think. Vince Whitaker has dropped off the face of the earth for fifteen years. We’re checking but it’s hard to imagine he had anything to do with the ice cream store killings.”
“So, a copycat?”
“Well, that’s the problem. The survivor from Blockbuster, she swears she never told anyone what the killer said. She said it came back to her later and she wasn’t clear whether it was real or a false memory. She says she never told anyone … until the new survivor told her what the killer said.”
Bob scratches his chin. “It had to be crazy traumatic, is she sure?”
“She’s a therapist now. I believe her.”
“So it’s either the same killer, or she told someone she doesn’t remember telling, or it’s a weird coincidence.”
Before Keller responds, Bob asks, “There’s no DNA or video or cell phone pings or—？”
“For Blockbuster, no. It was 1999. People were starting to carry cell phones then—remember those Nokias?—but it’s not like today. The file is pretty thin. They got a customer who reported seeing someone arguing with a Blockbuster employee in the parking lot earlier that night, but they didn’t get a good look at the guy. An anonymous caller reported seeing Vince Whitaker’s car in the lot at closing around the time of the murders. And police found his print on the break room door. After he fled, they found the murder weapon in his locker at the school.”
“Sounds like enough.”
Keller nods. “For the ice cream store, we’re checking cell records. The perp took all the phones. They’re trying to find any businesses or ATMs nearby that might have footage, but they’ve got nothing so far. Maybe the crime scene unit will find something, but it’s not like TV.”
Bob thinks for a moment. “Let’s say the first survivor—”
“Ella,” Keller says.
“Let’s say Ella told someone what the killer said to her but she doesn’t remember. Who would she have likely told?”
The same question has floated around in Keller’s head all night, but she’s avoided facing it. Now, it dawns on her.
“The investigators,” Keller tells her husband. “She would’ve told a cop.”
CHAPTER 19
ELLA
In the Target parking lot, a concrete field speckled with lamplight, Ella faces Jesse Duvall.
The teenager’s scowl has turned to a gaze of admiration. As if Jesse’s thinking that Ella not only got her out of the jam, but also got her the merch.