Twisted by Hannah Jayne(33)
“I don’t…I don’t even know how I would go about finding him or”—she made air quotes—“‘drawing him out’ like you said. I don’t really know that much about him.”
It pained her to admit that she knew little about her father beyond the few memories she had of him. Anything personal—anything more than the old truck, the Black Bear Diner, and that he always called her “Bethy”—had been forgotten or blotted out by newspaper headlines and what the attorneys and reporters called “cold, hard facts” about him. He was as charming as he was ruthless. He was a pathological liar. He had an inability to feel. He hunted his prey before making a move.
“Besides, if he’s trying to keep out of jail, he’s probably not going to be sending up rescue flares. Even if he does know where I am, he probably won’t come knocking on my door, right?” Another torrent of emotions surged through Bex. Would he come to her door? Would he want to see her at all?
Detective Schuster seemed undeterred, but there was a careful edge to his voice. “How aware are you of your father’s crimes, Bex?”
She gaped, rage overtaking her. “I know what my father is accused of, Detective Schuster. I don’t need a needlepoint to hang over my bed.”
He didn’t look at her, and for that, Bex was glad. She didn’t want him to hang on the word “accused.” She didn’t want to have to defend her father, especially when she wasn’t really certain how she felt.
“I’m sorry, Bex. I didn’t mean anything by that.” Detective Schuster paused and raked a hand through his brushed-back hair. “Your dad probably won’t have an email address or a website, but there are lots of websites about him. Did you know that?”
Bex dug her thumbnail into the layers of veneer on the table. “I knew that.”
The truth was that Bex—Beth Anne—had had a debilitating need to know exactly what her father was accused of. Once the files became available on the Internet, she had nearly lost an entire summer poring through the documents—the testimony, the crime-scene photos, the autopsy reports. Somewhere in her mind she thought that maybe the clue was there, something that the police had missed that would vindicate her father, that would vindicate her for attempting to send him to prison. The clue to absolution wasn’t there. A preponderance of evidence linked her father to the sadistic, horrifying murders of young women all over the county—including the one who Bex remembered getting into her father’s car and another who tucked her number into his hand.
She had run across the other websites accidentally, but then her curiosity drew her in. The sites were horrible. One showed a grinning photo of Bex’s father—she remembered the shot and had herself been cropped out. The webmaster had made red flames flash across the picture with the words “The Wife Collector Should Burn in Hell.” Another site rooted for her father with photographs and court documents and was populated by sickos who thought the Wife Collector was “the greatest,” listing his body count and even some of their “favorite kills.” Bex wasn’t sure which site was worse.
“People who run these sites have followers, and while we’re not one hundred percent sure, there’s a really good chance that your father could be one of those followers.”
The sites were bad enough. The idea that perhaps her father visited or even followed the sites made Bex’s stomach turn.
“Okay…” she said slowly.
“There are forums where”—Schuster grimaced—“fans can get together and talk, like chat rooms. We think your father might frequent one or more of the chat rooms under an alias.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I think that if you post to one of the sites, your father might respond.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, doing her best to smother her nerves with anger. “You think he might respond? You want me to cyber hang out with a bunch of serial-killer groupies in case my dad decides to drop in? No”—she shook her head—“I’m not going to do that.”
“You wouldn’t be ‘hanging out’ with them per se.”
“Well, whatever you call it, the answer is still no. How am I supposed to do that anyway? Why would he talk to me? Let me guess… You want me to use the screen name ‘Hey, Dad, it’s me?’”
Detective Schuster stared at Bex, his lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. “I think you should go public with your identity.”
Nineteen
Someone hit Bex in the chest with a sledgehammer. That was what must have happened; that was why Bex’s lungs felt as if they had collapsed. That was why her heart was struggling to beat.
“You want me to do what?”
“If you come out with who you really are and publicly announce that you’d like to talk to your father, to get to know him, I think that would draw him out.”
Bex’s body started to shake. She gritted her teeth to avoid the clack-clack-clack of them banging together. Detective Schuster wanted her to make contact with her father. Ridiculous visions of the two of them relaxing at the kitchen table, sipping tea, flashed through her mind, only to be crashed by the thought of her father looming huge and turning into a monster, his hands morphing into talons that closed around her throat.