My Lovely Wife(18)

I get back to the reason we are sitting in the car. “You must have known Lindsay would be found—”

“I did.”

“But why? Why would you want her to be found?”

She looks out the car window to the stacks of plastic tubs filled with old toys and Christmas decorations. When she turns back to me, her head is cocked to the side and she is half smiling. “Because it’s our anniversary.”

“Our anniversary was five months ago.”

“Not that one.”

I think, not wanting to screw this up, because I’m supposed to know. I’m supposed to remember these things.

All at once, I do. “We picked Lindsay a year ago. We decided.”

Millicent beams. “Yes. A year to the day that she was found.”

I stare at her. It still doesn’t make sense. “Why would you want—”

“Have you heard of Owen Riley?” she says.

“What?”

“Owen Riley. Do you know who he is?”

The name is not familiar at first. Then I remember. “You mean Owen Oliver? The serial killer?”

“That’s what you called him?”

“Owen Oliver Riley. We used to just say Owen Oliver.”

“So you know what he did?”

“Of course I know. You couldn’t live here and not know.”

She smiles at me, and, as sometimes happens, I am lost. “It’s not just our anniversary—it’s Owen’s,” she says.

I think back, scouring my mind for events that happened when I was barely an adult. Owen Oliver showed up the summer after I graduated from high school. No one paid attention when one woman disappeared, and no one paid attention when the second woman disappeared. They noticed when one was found dead.

I remember being in a bar with a fake ID, surrounded by friends the same age. We drank cheap beer and cheaper liquor as we watched the first body being uncovered. Nothing ever happened in Woodview. Certainly nothing like the murder of a nice woman named Callie who worked as a clothing store manager. She was found inside an abandoned rest stop off the interstate. A trucker found her body.

At first, it was just the gruesome murder of one woman. I spent that summer watching, riveted, as the news and the police and the community tried to come up with a motive.

“A drifter” became the acceptable answer. Everyone felt better believing the killer wasn’t a resident, even if it meant this outsider kidnapped Callie and kept her alive for months before killing her. We believed it anyway. Even I did.

When it happened a second time, we all felt betrayed. It had to be one of us.

No one knew it was Owen Oliver Riley. Not yet. We just called him the Woodview Killer.

Nine dead women later, he was caught. Owen Oliver Riley was a thirtysomething man with strawlike blond hair, blue eyes, and the beginning of a paunch around the middle. He drove a silver sedan, hung out at a sports bar, and volunteered at his church. People knew him, had spoken to him, had sold him goods and services, and waved to him as he passed. I stared at his picture on the TV, thinking that couldn’t be him. He looked so normal. And he was, except that he had killed nine women.

Owen Oliver was initially charged with one murder; the rest of the charges were pending, due to lack of evidence. Bail was denied. Owen Oliver stayed in jail for three weeks, right up until he was released on a technicality. The warrant for his DNA sample had not been signed at the time the police swabbed the inside of his cheek. Even his court-appointed lawyer could drive a truck through that discrepancy. And he did.

With the DNA thrown out, the police had nothing. They were still scrambling for evidence when Owen Oliver walked out of jail. He was so normal-looking he blended right back in with society and disappeared.

When he went free, I was overseas and I still heard about it. That was one of the few times I heard from my parents before they died. When they did, I returned home but had no plans to stay, until I met Millicent. Back when she first agreed to go out with me, I assumed it was because she was new and didn’t know anyone else.

Sometimes, I still think that.

By then, Owen Oliver was long gone. But every year, on the anniversary of the day he was released, his face is back on the news. Over the years, Owen grew to be our local monster, boogeyman, serial killer. Eventually he became a myth, too large for life.

“It must be seventeen years since he last killed someone,” I say.

“Eighteen, actually. Eighteen years ago this month, his last victim disappeared.”

I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together in my head. As always, Millicent does it for me.

“Remember when Lindsay first disappeared? When people were looking for her?” she says.

“Of course.”

“So what do you think will happen when another one goes missing? Like one of the women on our list.”

One by one, the loose ends start to come together. If another woman disappears, the police will start to think we have a serial killer. Millicent has resurrected Owen to blame our work on him.

She is setting up our future.

“That’s why you kept Lindsay alive for so long,” I say. “You were copying him.”

Millicent nods. “Yes.”

“And he strangled his victims, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

I exhale. It is both physical and psychological. “It was all a setup.”