Because of me, she has accepted her nature.
The only surety is that once you commit the act of murder, it’s in your blood. You have a taste for the kill. You crave it like an alcoholic craves the next drink.
One is never enough.
The late-night sky over Rockland is black with a dusting of city lights casting a hazy glow across the horizon. I’m in Larry’s car—the one he had parked at the Blue Clover. Larry is in the trunk.
I’m breaking one of my rules to only use public transportation while in Maine. Some of the most careful and meticulous criminals have been brought down by senseless traffic violations. Bundy. Kraft. Son of Sam. But right now, it’s a necessary risk.
I don’t construct a trap after the fact. It’s much harder to build a story, to link pieces together and create a design, once a kill is complete. You’re left with limited options. And mistakes.
It’s like working backward. Designing in reverse. But London and I are fashioning something new—something messy and brilliant all at once. It will have to be formed and realized as our story unfolds.
I admi
t, despite my nature to be meticulous, this excites me.
The way she lit up when she spoke… How can I deny her this? Even if I know the chances for success are low. I’ve calculated the odds. If we fail—which we most likely will—it will still be a spectacular finale.
Her ingenious plan? Bring the copycat to us.
To do so, we need a big enough lure. A bright and shiny baited hook that he can’t resist.
Larry’s glittering metallic shirt is a nice touch of irony.
I pull into the densest part of a wooded park. It’s too late for anyone to be around, but you never know when a group of teens or a pair of drunk lovers will decide to take advantage of the same privacy.
I have ten minutes to stage the scene.
Remove Larry from the trunk. Prop him against a bench. Wearing a pair of Latex gloves, scrawl RAPIST across his chest with his own congealed blood. Curl his hand into a claw and scrape his nails down my arm. This has to be done now, before rigger sets in. Then drive the car onto the gravel and backtrack to remove footprints and tread marks.
There is no lust in setting a scene; it’s business. Heightened emotion can’t be involved. There’s no room for error.
I take Larry’s car into downtown, where I park five blocks from the nightlife scene. It’s not much of one, but even a small coastal city has a watering hole. I now have twenty minutes. I locate a bar with no cameras. Wearing Larry’s obnoxious metallic shirt, I mingle with a group of women in the club, making derogatory comments they’re sure to remember. Then I order a round of drinks for the women and myself, placing the order on Larry’s credit card. I close out the tab and leave the card there before I exit the bar.
The moment Larry paid with cash at the Blue Clover, he made this possible.
Within thirty minutes, I’ve planted Larry’s whereabouts. Witnesses will describe my facial features and the metallic shirt—getting the two interwoven. This is fine; eye witness accounts are often unreliable. The police will assume it’s a combination of alcohol and seeing two men at the same place. They’ll put two and two together, and ta-da. How smart they are, linking the suspect and victim together.
I typically don’t return to the scene of the crime, but again, a necessary risk. I need the police to make this connection. I discard Larry’s shirt into a trash bin, then I abandon the car on the other side of the park.
The police will speculate that Larry was murdered in another location and brought to the park—a body dump. That’s fine, too. As long as they don’t speculate he was killed anywhere near London. She’s an hour and a half away from Rockland.
The police will also assume that given Larry’s criminal record, he was targeting women outside of his own city, hoping to misdirect authorities of his crimes.
But the big fish we want to catch—the reason I’m going through all this trouble—is the imitator himself. The copycat needs to know I’m here.
The bus ride to Portland takes longer than I want, and the little girl sitting opposite me won’t stop staring. She’s tiny, with shiny black hair and dewy porcelain skin—like a small China doll. Her mother wears a grungy waitress uniform and is slouched on the seat, sleeping off a late-night shift. Needle marks dot her forearm.
“Did that hurt?”
The little girl’s voice tinkles, barely audible over the roar of the bus engine.
I glance down at my hand and notice the raised white scar protruding from beneath the hoodie sleeve. I tug the cuff over my wrist. “Yes,” I answer her honestly.
She tilts her head, curious. “Did your mommy make it better?”
I look at her mother, oblivious to her daughter striking up a conversation with a stranger. Then I look at the girl. She can’t be more than five. “My mommy made it worse,” I say, and crouch closer to her in the isle. “You shouldn’t be talking to people you don’t know.”