Viv picked at the French fries she’d bought from a fast-food counter on her way here. Vaguely, she realized that she didn’t eat real meals anymore; she snacked on crackers and coffee during the day and ate bologna sandwiches at night. She couldn’t remember when she’d last slept eight hours.
“You look terrible,” Marnie said, reading her mind.
Viv shrugged. “I feel fine.” It was the truth. She had pushed past tiredness some time ago and now existed on a plane of exhaustion that floated her through the day.
Marnie did not look terrible. She looked great. She wore khaki pants with a pleated waist and a navy blue blouse beneath her wool pea coat, and she had a matching navy knit cap on her head. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and a few of the people passing through the park looked twice at the black woman and the white woman sitting together.
“Okay, I came to tell you two things,” Marnie said, leaning back on the bench next to Viv. “The first is that I had some downtime today, so I followed your salesman. He’s in Plainsview again.”
Viv straightened. Plainsview, where she’d seen him watching the girl. “Right now?”
“Yes, right now. I followed him to the exit, and then I kept going. Because if I follow him too close and too often, he’ll see me. Which leads me to the other thing I want to say. I quit.”
“What do you mean, you quit?”
“All of this,” Marnie said, waving between the two of them. “The intrigue we have going on. I’m quitting. I’m done. I’m not following this man anymore. I’m not even sure he’s a murderer.”
Viv blinked at her. “There was a salesman from Westlake Lock Systems going door-to-door on Victoria Lee’s street the month she was killed. And Cathy Caldwell and her husband bought locks from a Westlake salesman before she was killed, too.”
Marnie’s lips parted. She looked like someone had slapped her. “Oh, honey,” she said in a rough voice, and Viv thought she was going to say You’re crazy or It doesn’t prove anything, but instead she said, “You need to stop before you get yourself killed.”
“He doesn’t know I’m investigating him,” Viv said.
“The hell he doesn’t. A man does crimes like this, he’s looking over his shoulder. Covering his tracks. Waiting for someone to come up behind him.”
Viv thought of the name erased from the Westlake schedule book and didn’t reply.
“You’re going to get hurt,” Marnie said. “I know you think you won’t, but you will. If he can hurt those girls, then he can hurt you. You need to talk to the police and tell them what you’ve found.”
Viv licked her dry, chapped lips and ate a cold French fry.
“Promise me,” Marnie said. “You owe me, Vivian. Promise me you’ll talk to the police. That you’ll try.”
Viv forced the words out. “I promise.” She didn’t want to, but she meant it. She promised it to Marnie, and she would do it. “Please don’t quit.”
Marnie shook her head. “Sorry, but I am. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s too dangerous. I have a man I’m seeing, and he says he wants to marry me. I can get married and start a family instead of doing this. I’m done.”
“But you’re the one who showed me everything,” Viv said. “You’re the one who took the photos and took me to the murder sites.”
“I was trying to help you, because you were a clueless girl working in the middle of the night. I was trying to show you that there are predators out there. That you have to be careful.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Looks like it backfired on me. How was I supposed to know you’d start hunting the hunter?”
“Maybe you were trying to help, but you knew all about the murders. It interested you, too.”
“Maybe. Yes, okay. But I wasn’t interested like you are now.” Marnie leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, and looked Viv in the eye. “I’m all about survival. That’s how I work. Knowing about the girls getting killed in this town was a part of that survival. Following a killer around is not.” She pressed her lips together and sighed. “I like you. I do. But I have more to lose than you do. I’m not jeopardizing everything I have, everything I’ve worked for, my life, for something I can’t prove, that no one will believe. I’m not willing to do that and I never was. Do you understand me?”
Viv dropped her gaze to her fries and nodded.
There was a second of silence. “You’re going to Plainsview, aren’t you?” Marnie said.
Viv nodded, still staring at her fries.
“I know I can’t stop you, and you have some serious spine. But be careful, for God’s sake. At least be ready to defend yourself. Don’t be alone with him. All right?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Damn it,” Marnie said. “If I read about you in the papers, I’m going to be so damn mad at myself.”
But she still rose from the bench, picked up her purse, and walked away.
* * *
• • •
The trail had gone cold in Plainsview. Viv circled the streets, looking for Hess’s car. She started with the neighborhood she’d last seen him in, then widened out to the next neighborhood and the next. Plainsview wasn’t a very big place, and soon she’d covered it pretty thoroughly.
She ended up at the town’s only high school, Plainsview High. It was a new building, and even though it was dinnertime, the parking lot was full of cars, the lights on in all the windows. Viv saw a handmade sign that said, CHOIR NIGHT TONIGHT!!
She parked on the street and scanned the cars in her view. The girl she’d seen on her bicycle was high school age, which meant she might be here, or her hunter might come to this place. After a minute she got out of the car and looked up and down the street. He wouldn’t park in the lot, but nearby. That was what she would do.
She shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat and walked toward the school. Nothing moved; choir night was still happening. But when she stepped on the edge of the school’s concrete tarmac, the school doors opened and parents and students began to file out. The performance was finished.
There was the sound of a motor, and a car pulled away in the edge of Viv’s vision. She turned and squinted. It was the same make and model as Hess’s car, but at this angle she couldn’t see the driver. She took a step forward as the car receded, trying to read the license plate, but she could only catch a nine and a seven before the car disappeared.
Simon Hess’s license plate had a nine and a seven.
She walked through the small crowd. She looked like someone’s big sister, or maybe even a senior, so she blended in. Moving against the flow of people leaving, she walked through the school’s open doors. On a folding table was the night’s program, now over. She picked it up.