Somehow I’m still managing to bang out words without feeling like it’s a struggle. I know from past NaNo experience that it’s to be expected. Week 1, we’re riding high. Our characters are doing what they’re supposed to and everything is making sense. But then week 2, where you start hitting the middle of the book, or as it’s sometime referred to, the muddle, is where things may start to come undone. We’ll see if that holds true for this. But in the meantime, the next 1,012 words. Coming up on 10K!
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And I had no nightmares.
My usual morning routine felt more vibrant than usual. It’s amazing what can happen to a person with a renewed sense of purpose. I found myself actually humming as I poured my coffee. As the enticing aroma hit my nostrils, I took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation. I closed my eyes and I began to think about my next steps in this investigation. Check the photos. Read over the case from seven years ago. Go back to the motel and see if there was anything further I could glean from the site. Why had Jack chosen it? Twice? I did have a pretty good idea on that one. If one were to go looking for streetwalkers, one did not have a better area to choose from than that one.
Cat ate and drank contentedly from his bowls, and I drank contentedly from my mug of coffee. I went back into the living room and opened the laptop. I could start my investigation even before I hit the station by looking up articles from the previous murder.
The information was sparse. The victim was a young girl as well. Marla Walters. Eighteen years old. The murderer had slit her throat, which was the first thing that set me on the path to thinking this was Jack. That was his usual mode. Then he had gone to work, surgically removing body parts, another of his standard practices. To this day, I had not understood the reason for that. It was the most gruesome thing to happen in this town, and made national news. That was how I came to find out about it.
But shortly after I got here, an arrest was made. A local doctor, Harold Carter, was pegged as the killer. It was an airtight case. His DNA had been found at the scene. Bloody tools were discovered in his garage. He claimed he was innocent, but the evidence declaring otherwise had been overwhelming. The trial was over in days, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Considering the killings had stopped after he was arrested, everyone was certain justice had been served and the right man had been put away. But now, now we have a similar killing, in the same location. And Carter is still behind bars. This definitely put new light on the case, maybe even enough to exonerate Carter and implicate Jack. I added talking to Carter on my list of things to do.
I arrived at the station, and just like Ernie promised, copies of the photos were sitting on my desk. He wasn’t here, so I made a mental note to thank him later. I sat and started sifting through the photos. I made piles of similar shots, trying my best to place them in context, but it’s not easy to sort one day from another when, for the last seven years, every day has been pretty much like every other. I noticed there were many pictures of me entering my house, even some of me sitting on my sofa, Cat on my lap. Those were the most infuriating. Someone had invaded my privacy in a way that brooked no excuse, and I would find out who this was. Those were all from the same angle at different times, and I tried to create a mental image of the view outside my window, imagining where the photographer might be. There was an apartment building across the street, and these pictures were taken from above. I would check out the building later and compare those photos to the view from each apartment.
Other photos were taken of me entering the precinct, boarding buses, and performing other ordinary tasks. I could date some back years, based on clothing I was wearing at the time. Why would Jack have surveilled me all this time and not done anything during these years? I knew I was missing something, but I didn’t know what I was missing yet.
I grabbed the photos, threw them into a file folder, and placed the folder on my desk. I’d pick the folder up on my way out, but next stop would be the evidence room. I had to see if there was anything in the official records that didn’t make it to the stories online.
We still were far from entering the digital age of record keeping. As I’d mentioned before, this station was not on the cutting edge of technology. There were boxes and boxes of papers and files. Even with the reference number, I knew it would take me a while to find.
I finally found the section the reference number led me to and pulled down a box filled to overflowing with papers. I set it down on the floor and riffled through the files, looking for case number 45-237984.
45-237979. 7980. 81. 82. 83…85.
I checked further ahead and backtracked to see if maybe it had been misfiled. Nothing. I started pulling out files and placing them in piles all around me. I completely emptied the box. No trace of the file. As if things couldn’t get any stranger.
I spent the next few minutes reorganizing the box, double-checking the files again as I replaced them. That file was well and truly gone. As I had said before, I didn’t believe in coincidence. Something was going on here, and I would get to the bottom of it. But for now, I would move on to the next item on my list.
It was time to pay Carter a visit.
It was a long taxi ride to the prison. It gave me time to examine the photos more closely, but they revealed very little. Other than the apartment building across the street from me, I had no solid vision of where the shutterbug could have been perched. So, for now, I would table that and prepare for my interview with Carter.
I paid the taxi driver and included a generous tip. I stood outside the wide, tall gate, waiting to be let in.