The Sun Down Motel(44)

He did it quick, she thought. Victoria was running, angry. She wasn’t sweet or pliant. He’d have to physically jump her, grab her, stop her. Get her on the ground. Get her quiet. His hand over her mouth, on her throat. Maybe he had a knife or a gun.

Would Victoria have fought? She could have at least tried to scream—there were houses not far away, including her own. There was a good chance there were people in hearing range. All it would have taken was one scream.

But if the man who grabbed her was her boyfriend, someone familiar, would she have screamed?

Viv turned in a circle, the thoughts going inescapably through her mind: What would I have done? Because this could have been her, storming out of the house at eighteen after a fight with her mother. Or leaving work. Doing what women did every day.

It could still be her now. It could be her tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. It could be Marnie, it could be Helen. It could be Viv’s sister back home in Illinois. This was the reality: It wasn’t just these girls. It could always, always be her or someone she knew.

She looked back at the path. Would I scream? She didn’t think so. She would have been so terrified, so horribly afraid, that she would have done whatever the man said. Don’t speak. Don’t make a sound. Come over here. Lie down. And when he heard someone coming and put his hands on her neck, it would all be over.

“You think the boyfriend didn’t do it?” Marnie called to her from the path.

“I don’t know,” Viv answered honestly. “It’s like you said. If he did it, then there’s more than one killer in Fell.”

“You’re ignoring the possibility that he did Betty Graham and Cathy Caldwell. Maybe it’s Victoria’s boyfriend who is the serial killer.”

Viv closed her eyes as water dripped through the trees. It was possible, she had to admit. The timeline worked. “So he started with strange women, then killed his girlfriend.”

“And he hasn’t killed anyone since. Because the cops caught the right man.”

The rain was cold on Viv’s skin, but she welcomed it. She felt hot, her blood pumping hard. “Victoria was eighteen when she was killed. Was her boyfriend older?”

“He was twenty.”

“Still, it puts him in high school when Betty was killed. He would have had to pull off posing as a salesman.”

“If the salesman actually did it. Which no one knows.”

It was possible. Victoria’s boyfriend could have spent years as a monster in secret, killing a teacher and a young mother before he was twenty. Viv kept her eyes closed. “You don’t think that’s true,” she said to Marnie. “If you did, you wouldn’t have brought me to all of these places. You think there’s a killer still on the loose.”

Marnie was quiet for a minute. “All I know is I’d like to leave this damn jogging path. It’s giving me the creeps.”

Viv opened her eyes again and walked farther into the brush. It was true—this was likely a fool’s errand. Victoria’s killer was in prison. There was no mystery here. Except there was. How did Victoria’s boyfriend know where she was? She wasn’t an athlete or even a habitual runner. Why had he come here to this place? If he jumped her at the beginning of the path, was he waiting for her? If so, how did he know where she would go?

She kept walking until she hit the edge of the trees. She looked out onto a rain-soaked stretch of scrub with fences and houses beyond it. These were the same houses that Marnie had pointed out as being Victoria’s street.

She peered through the rain. The stretch of backyard fences was broken in only one place: a narrow laneway, a shortcut from the street, so that people didn’t have to walk all the way to the end of the street and around if they didn’t want to. Viv pressed forward, leaving the trees and heading for the laneway.

She heard footsteps behind her, Marnie’s voice. “Hey! Where are you going? It’s wet out here.”

The laneway was a dirt path leading between two yards. Weedy but well used. A shortcut the locals took when they wanted to come to the jogging path.

And from it, while she stood out of sight, she could see the street. A short suburban lane, maybe fifteen houses packed in a row.

Viv was still staring at the street when Marnie caught up to her and stood at her shoulder. “What the hell?” she said.

“Look,” Viv said.

Marnie was quiet.

“Which house is Victoria’s?” Viv asked her.

“I don’t know.”

“I bet it was one of these,” Viv said, pointing to the row of houses in view. “I bet that’s how he knew when she left the house, where she was going. He stood right where we are now. And if she went around the end of the street and back . . .”

“Then he could take this shortcut and beat her there,” Marnie said.

Maybe. Maybe. So many maybes. But if Victoria’s boyfriend had killed her, then he must have had a way to head her off at the jogging path.

And if her boyfriend could have stood here and watched the house, then so could a stranger.

Viv pulled her notebook from her pocket and made notes, bowing over the page so the letters wouldn’t get wet. She wrote addresses, names. She made a map. She made a list of what she had to do next, because she knew. Marnie waited, no longer complaining about the rain.

When she finished, Viv put the notebook away and turned to Marnie again. “Okay, I’m finished. Can we look at your pictures now?”