Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(28)

But welcome to the world of being a survivor. You make it out alive, and yet you spend the rest of your life wondering woulda, coulda, shoulda. I swore I would never look back. Samuel has advised me not to second-guess decisions that can never be changed.

Yet here I am.

—

KEITH EDGAR FIRST contacted me six years ago. I’d barely returned to my mother’s farm, was still trying to get used to the textures and smells of a childhood home that now felt totally alien to me. Keith initially reached out through the Facebook page my brother had set up during my abduction. When that got him nothing, he turned to snail mail. Back in those days, our local postman would deliver mail by the boxload. My mother would stack up all the plastic bins in the kitchen. She never expected me to go through them—no one expected me to do anything but heal, rest, recover. Every night, though, I’d see her sitting at the kitchen table, opening each envelope, skimming the contents, sorting them into piles.

Many of the envelopes contained money. Small checks. Five dollars, ten, twenty. Donations from total strangers who were moved by my story and wanted to help. My mother established a savings account in my name. All deposits went into it. She’d give me updates I refused to hear. I didn’t want the donations; they felt like blood money to me. And I definitely didn’t want everyone’s pity.

My mom wrote a lot of thank-you notes. Diligently, religiously, night after night. My mom is good that way.

But not all letters were nice. Some writers wanted to forgive me. As if getting kidnapped and raped was somehow my fault. In the beginning, my mom dashed off hasty words to correct their misunderstanding. But over time, those notes earned a bin of their own—the trash can. “Can’t change narrow minds,” she’d mutter.

Forgiveness. My mom is good like that, too.

Then came the other letters. Fan mail, I’d guess you call it. From predominantly male writers. Many with marriage proposals. Some wanted to save me. After all I’d been through, they wanted to sweep me off my feet, promising me I would never suffer again. My mom would set those letters down gingerly. Like she didn’t know what to make of such madness, wrapped in good intentions. Pretty soon, they joined the trash pile, too.

Then came the less subtle notes. Men, who having followed every detail of my ordeal, had decided that I’d be perfect for them. Submissive. Pretrained. With tastes as depraved as their own.

My mother didn’t throw away those letters. She burned them.

I learned about the various correspondence piles because I didn’t sleep much in those days. Meaning that after my mom went to bed, I would take up her position at the table. Driven by morbid curiosity more than anything. Why would any of these strangers want to write to me? What about my terrible story spoke to them? Turns out the answers to those questions are many and varied.

Which brings us to the last category: the Keith Edgars of the world. True-crime buffs. They wrote to request personal interviews. Maybe one-on-one, maybe with their entire Sherlock Holmes geek squad. They wanted to learn from me. Have the opportunity to hear firsthand what a serial predator was really like. The notes were earnest. But again, they essentially wanted me to turn myself inside out, relive my own victimization, so they could indulge their clinical fascination and boost their own stature within the true-crime community. Some offered financial compensation. Some promised to provide me with information in return.

They didn’t stop with one letter. They wrote and wrote and wrote. Keith Edgar still delivers a note probably every six months, even though I’ve never responded. I did look him up. He runs a whole true-crime blog. The group meets in Boston to study a case of the month. Keith lists himself as a specialist in sexual-sadist predators. In fact, according to his blog, even without my help he has managed to become the foremost expert on Jacob Ness.

Why you’d want to be an expert in such a thing, I have no idea. But this is what Keith Edgar supposedly does in his free time. Which makes me wonder just what kind of cave dweller I’m going to meet as I get off the T, make my way up the street to the address I found online. There are no photos of Keith on the site, which I find suspicious in this age of selfies.

My best guess? I’m about to meet a pale, moon-faced geek still living in his parents’ basement. Someone who spends all his time hunched in the glow of his computer monitor, surfing crime/horror websites, while chugging Red Bull and plowing through bags of Doritos. Is it really fascination with criminal minds that keeps someone like him coming back for more? Or do the images and stories of such violent acts serve as their own kind of stimulation? I’m suspicious. True-crime geeks can claim all they want that they’re attracted to puzzles and driven by the need to find the truth; I still don’t believe them.

I climb up the stairs to the Boston brownstone. It’s in a nicer neighborhood than I would’ve thought. A street of well-tended town houses, all nestled shoulder to shoulder with matching wrought-iron railings and freshly painted white-or black-trimmed windows. Wreaths hang on front doors. Many of the porches are decorated with festive ribbons and fresh holiday garlands.

Keith’s parents, I decide, must be very successful.

I climb the four steps to the dark-green door, where a huge Christmas wreath encircles an impressive brass knocker.

What the hell. I knock.

It takes a bit before I hear footsteps. Fair enough. I didn’t call first. I’m running on adrenaline and shock, same emotional state I’ve been in since I turned on the news and saw the dead husband’s face. I don’t want anything like rational thought slowing me down now.