What Lies in the Woods(18)

“What did she tell you?”

“Nope, my turn,” he said. He turned on the recorder. “Naomi Cunningham, aka Naomi Shaw. You were Alan Michael Stahl’s last victim.”

“Yes. Now can you answer my question?”

He raised a finger. “That wasn’t a question, just a statement. How did you feel when you learned that Stahl had died?”

It was the question I’d expected. “Good.” I glanced toward the back door. No sign of Cody returning.

Schreiber raised an eyebrow. “You can’t give me a little bit more?”

“It’s an answer,” I told him.

He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Look. I know you don’t do interviews, and I understand why. When I saw you here I was hoping that face-to-face, I could charm you. Obviously, I was wrong. But I really need this. You and your friends are the heart of this story. You’re the part of it that isn’t about reveling in evil. If none of you speak up, the story is all about Stahl. The victims get lost. And I don’t want that.”

“He had other victims,” I pointed out. “No one talks about them, you know. Six young women. Six. And few people can even name them—even the people who know every detail of his MO and can recite my entire biography. If you want to do Stahl’s victims justice, you should be focusing on the girls who didn’t get away.”

“Lia Kemp, Tori Martin, Maria Luiselli, Hannah Faber, Ashlynn Raybourn, and Rosario Rivera,” Schreiber said, leaning forward intently. “Lia was the youngest. She was sixteen, a runaway. She was a sex worker; Stahl apparently picked her up at a truck stop. No one ever reported her missing, and she wasn’t identified for three years after her body was found by hikers. Maria was the oldest—thirty-five. She had three kids. She’d struggled with drug addiction but was clean when it’s believed that she met Stahl while hitching home from work. Her shift ended after the buses stopped. She’d walk the four miles or she’d hitch a ride when she was lucky. She knew it was dangerous. She carried a knife in her purse, but it didn’t save her. I can keep going.”

I sat back in my seat, mouth dry. I hadn’t even known all of that. I had never been able to bring myself to read about Stahl. I couldn’t even have recited their names like he did. And I’d never heard anyone talk about them like that—like he wasn’t just cataloging facts. Like they mattered to him.

“Stahl never faced justice for what he did to those women,” Schreiber went on. His voice was rough, and he looked into my eyes as if searching for something. “There wasn’t enough evidence to link him to a single one of those murders. Without you, he isn’t arrested. He doesn’t go to trial. He doesn’t spend the rest of his life behind bars. Without you, more girls die. I’ve done the work, Ms. Cunningham, but without you, there’s no ending to this story.”

“It doesn’t feel like an ending,” I said. I stared at the blinking light on the digital recorder, imagining my voice played back. Imagining the people who would hear it, hungry for narrative, the sense of story to make random violence make sense. “You want to know what I feel, hearing he’s dead? I feel numb. I feel relieved, because he won’t ever get the chance to kill me, like he promised to if he ever got out. And I feel guilty.”

“Guilty?” he repeated, surprised.

I shouldn’t have told him that. Too late now. “A man died in prison because of my testimony. It’s a lot to put on a child. I know he was a horrible person. If anyone deserved it, he did. But it happened because of me, and that’s more power than I ever wanted to have. It shouldn’t have been up to me.”

“Not just you. Cassidy was the one who first identified Stahl, while you were unconscious,” he said.

“You really have done your homework.” I folded my hands on top of my laptop. I was talking too much. I needed to get my answers and shut him down. “What did Olivia say to you?”

He considered. “Not a lot. She said that she was interested in talking to me, but there were some things that she needed to deal with first. It’s funny—she told me something similar, about the victims. That what I was doing was good, because the dead shouldn’t be forgotten.”

We owe it to her. “That’s all?”

“Pretty much,” he confirmed. “But she wanted to check in with you and Cassidy first—she preferred to have your blessing.”

Preferred. Not needed. She was going to tell, with or without us.

This is a good thing, I thought. We should come clean. With Stahl dead, the only thing keeping us silent was shame and selfishness. Liv was the only one brave enough to admit that.

“Well, then,” I said. “We’re done. Cheers.” I lifted my bottle to him.

“I’ve got more questions.”

“But I don’t,” I replied with a shrug. “Sorry.”

“One more,” he pressed. “And then I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

I sighed and swigged my beer. The hops made my nose itch. “Fine. One more.”

Schreiber gave me a considering look, his finger tapping on the table. “Stahl’s youngest known victim was sixteen. He targeted women who were alone and lured his victims into his truck under false pretenses. He transported them in his truck to the location where he assaulted and killed them.”