Chapter 8

I tried to move on with my life.

With the killer caught, the forum died down and slowly I returned to my regular internet usage. I was empty without the urgency. I went to work. I tried a new group class at the gym. I got a sourdough starter from a friend and made two loaves before I forgot about it in the fridge. I started knitting a blanket and gave up after I made too many mistakes to possibly fix. I took a cooking class with a friend and spent a week thinking that I should quit my job to become a chef and changed my mind after getting food poisoning from undercooked fish. I completed three days of a thirty-day clean-eating challenge. I lost five pounds and gained it back again. I sent Meghan text messages inviting her to happy hour and she responded, Maybe next week! so many times in a row that I gave up.

Moving on, unfortunately, had never been my forte. Max still lingered in my brain in times of loneliness, which were many and frequent. Though I knew better, I wanted to see the Instagram posts that he'd blocked me from seeing on my personal account, a masochistic gesture. During our lunch break, Carole helped me create a fake account. We picked out a picture to use on my profile of a pretty punk girl, someone who looked like they might be friends with Max.

"That one," Carole said.

She was bored too. The nonprofit had recently filled the associate director position, the job that was supposed to be mine, with a man who looked and acted like a rat. He made a habit of standing over our shoulders and making sure that we stayed on task.

"I'm an adult, for Pete's sake," I heard Carole mumble one day after he walked away.

The fake Instagram account was about more than Max. There was pleasure in our defiance, in the creation of a punk girl who could challenge societal expectations in ways that we never could.

I wanted to find Max heartbroken. His band broken up, his relationship with Reese dissolved. Instead, the Screaming Seals were booking an increasing number of gigs and Reese was officially his "girlfriend," a word Max treated as poison when we were sleeping together. He'd posted pictures of them at the park, his arm around her shoulders. The two of them on a holiday weekend, out to dinner, trying out a new bar. Every picture stung anew and I couldn't pull myself away from the phone screen.

I didn't notice that the new associate director was standing behind me in the break room until he spoke.

"Hannah, let's get back to work," he said.

"Sure thing." I smiled at him and seethed over the comment in my head for the rest of the workday.

I hated that Max still had the power to hurt me. I hated the new associate director for taking my job. I hated William for killing those women and I hated him for getting caught and leaving me without purpose. I wasn't allowed to comment on Max's pictures, nor was I allowed to talk back to the associate director, who was technically my superior, though I'd been at the nonprofit for years longer than he had, and so I wrote to William.

The letter started as an abstract thing, a composition inside my head that I revised repeatedly throughout the day.

You're a monster. I hope you know that,I thought as I prepared slides for an upcoming presentation.

You deserve whatever it is that you have coming,I composed as I wandered the aisles of the grocery store.

You are the scourge of the earth and even though I don't believe in the death penalty, I hope that you die,I told him as I boiled water for boxed macaroni and cheese.

When my food was ready, I sat down at the table with a spiral-bound notebook to get the words that ruminated through my head on paper. I was always buying notebooks and never using them. It seemed like I was waiting for the perfect purpose to present itself to me before I soiled any of the pages. William, it turned out, was the purpose.

It impacted me greatly when Anna Leigh died. Do you know what it's like to walk through the world knowing that you're never truly safe? I bet you met each other at work. She was so beautiful. I assume that you lusted after her and she rejected your advances. It's always dangerous for a woman to say no.

You're a man who has everything. You're rich, you're educated, you have a full head of hair. I guess the conundrum is where you go from there. Some men like you decide to climb Mount Everest or run a marathon. Jill was your personal trainer, so presumably you had some sort of physical aspiration. Other people volunteer or get a job. You decided to kill women.

I live my life with a quiet rage inside of me and the worst thing that I do is drink too much. There must be something that you get out of killing. Is it sexual arousal or something else? Maybe it's revenge on someone who hurt you, an ex-girlfriend or your mother.

Guess what? Everyone hurts, William. Only monsters become murderers.

It's unfair that the worst people on this earth get the most attention. I try my best and that trying only serves to make me more invisible. More than anything, I'm afraid of ending up like Kimberly. How rotted would my corpse become before someone realized I was missing? Your name was trending for hours after your arrest and it sickened me. I hope everyone remembers the names of your victims as much as they remember you.

I have been in Emma's position. I didn't die, of course, but I know what it's like to put your hopes and dreams into a date with someone. It all could've gone differently. You could've gone on a date with her and then another. You could've fallen in love, gotten married, had children. Moved out of your condo and bought a nice house somewhere. Was killing her better than all of that?

Sometimes I feel like we're split between people who are promised a life that they'll never be able to achieve and people who are living the promised life and don't want it. Then again, it's possible that this is what you wanted all along. You're famous now. Everyone, forever, will know the name William Thompson. Who do you want to play you in your movie? Someone handsome, no doubt. You just better hope that you live to see the ending.

I want you to listen when I tell you that I'll never be able to go on a date again without thinking of you. Every moment I will wonder whether he wants to love me or murder me. What kind of relationship can come from that?

If there is any karma in this world, you will suffer the way that you've made others suffer.

I wrote until my hand cramped up and my bowl of macaroni and cheese was empty. It was the way that I'd always longed to write. I liked to think of myself as an aspiring novelist who was restricted by the forty-hour workweek and the lack of inspiration around me. William provided inspiration where before there was none. He allowed me to reverse my normally myopic gaze onto things outside myself, and that was what enabled the words to finally flow.

I didn't think I would send the letter, not really. I figured I would stuff it in a drawer, forget about it, find it again when I moved apartments, and laugh at my younger self who was so stupid as to write a letter to an accused serial killer. But then, at work the next day, I got into researching where and how to send a letter to someone in jail and I thought, Why not? What was the very worst that could happen?

I sent the letter the same way that I sent Max strings of unanswered text messages long after it was clear that he was done with me. I didn't send it for the recipient. I sent it for me because I wanted to. Because there was something that I needed to get off my chest, even if I never heard back.

Sending the letter felt good, like kissing a stranger that I knew I would never see again at a bar. I thought it was closure to the whole William Thompson thing. I even logged out of the forum on my work computer and phone. But as I said before, I was never good at moving on.