Twisted by Hannah Jayne(41)
But Darla… Bex’s mind kept humming even as she tried to stamp out the voice and concentrate on the ringing phone. On the fourth ring, a series of chimes and an automated voice came on to tell Bex that the number had been disconnected. The disembodied voice suggested she check the number and call again. Bex did just that, only to be greeted with the same message. She frowned at the phone, then swiped on her browser, groaning when an emoticon frowny face popped up telling her that she was out of Internet service range.
When the bell rang, Bex jogged to chemistry class, arriving out of breath.
“Hey,” Trevor said. “I was beginning to think you changed schools again.”
Bex offered him a weak smile. “No, I’m just…super busy with an assignment.” She saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes but turned away anyway. “Mr. Ponterra, I’m really behind on my assignment. Can I go to the computer lab and finish up?”
Mr. Ponterra nodded and scribbled off a pass.
Bex was the only person in the ancient computer lab. She fired up one of the machines and tapped her fingernails on the desktop, waiting for the thing to load and connect to the Internet.
“Come on, come on,” she groaned.
Finally, she pulled up a search engine and typed in Dr. Gold’s information, desperate to find a new phone number for the office. The old machine seemed to practically chug and spit out smoke, taking way too long to pop up Bex’s results. But when the page started to load, Bex wished that it never had.
Social Psychologist Elliot Gold Found Murdered near Wake County Home
Social psychologist Dr. Elliot Gold, who had been reported missing two weeks ago, was found dead on the banks of Harris Lake on Sunday afternoon. Her body was discovered by two Raleigh-area residents who had gone fishing.
“We nearly couldn’t recognize what it—what she—was at first,” said Tucker Spayeth, one of the fishermen.
Gold suffered antemortem blunt-force trauma, but authorities say that she was killed by asphyxiation, strangled by a scarf that the murderer left tied around her neck. Her left ring finger was removed. Though that is the signature of North Carolina’s infamous Wife Collector, whose case Gold was closely involved in before he went missing ten years ago, the work was likely that of a copycat’s.
Bex felt her lower lip tremble as tears burned in her eyes.
“Why did he do this?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to consider them.
When authorities went to search Dr. Gold’s place of work, they found that her office had been ransacked, her personal files upended and unorganized. Missing files lead police to believe that Gold’s killer was likely a disgruntled patient.
Bex shook her head, the words on the screen blurring. “He wasn’t a patient,” she mumbled to herself. “He was searching for one.”
“Um, hello?”
Bex jumped, her thighs slamming against the underside of her desk.
Zach blanched.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You were just talking”—he scanned the room—“to yourself, I guess. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Bex frantically wiped at her face and sniffed. “No, sorry,” she said, trying to exit the newspaper site. The fan on the old machine spun as an icon whirled around, telling her to wait. She saw Zach’s eyes drift to the page on her screen, then back to Bex.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was just…coughing…and my eyes were watering.” She stood, shouldered her backpack, and clicked off the computer. “I’m done here if you needed this machine or something.”
She stomped out of the room, head held high, hoping that her facade wouldn’t crack. Once she was out of the building, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. The phone didn’t even finish a full ring before it was answered.
“How do I do this?”
“What’s that now?”
“I want to find him,” Bex said. “How do I… There are so many websites. How am I supposed to be sure which one he’ll go to?”
There was a long pause before Detective Schuster answered. “Thank you for doing this, Bex. I know it can’t be easy—”
“Just tell me, please. Before I change my mind.”
“Do you have a pen and paper handy?”
? ? ?
Bex stared at the blinking cursor on her screen, then at the torn-off piece of notebook paper in her hand. She had carefully written down everything the detective told her, then folded the paper and put it in her jeans pocket. She had touched it throughout the day, certain that if she were to lose it, it would somehow be linked back to her. Every hour or so she had smoothed it between her fingers, rolling it in her palm so much that now it almost felt like cloth. The blue lines had started to bleed their color, the red to run. The black ink from her ballpoint pen didn’t smear though, and the websites looked permanent and menacing, like black tattoos across the white paper:
WifeCollectorFanatic, FreeWTC, SerialLover/WifeCollector
She slowly typed the first entry into the search bar, studiously checking each letter against the paper, then hovering her finger over the Search button.
She didn’t really want to know…but soon the guilt was consuming her—guilt for Darla, guilt for her father, guilt for bringing her hideous, warped world to Kill Devil Hills. She hit Search.