Viv

Fell, New York

November 1982

VIV

Viv sat at her kitchen table again with the telephone and the phone book. Next to her—beside the box of Ritz crackers and the jar of cheese—was her notebook. It was open to the pages with the information she’d mapped out last night. She’d sat in the office at the Sun Down for her long, dark shift and made a list of dates.

Betty Graham: November 1978.

Cathy Caldwell: December 1980.

Victoria Lee: August 1981.

Viv tapped the end of her pencil against the table and went over the list again. If Simon Hess did all of these murders—and Vivian was personally sure he had—then there were gaps. Between Betty and Cathy. Between Victoria and now. Unless there were other dead girls she didn’t know about.

She pulled out the sheet of paper from Simon Hess’s scheduling office that she’d stolen from his car. She took a deep breath, got into character, and dialed the number at the top.

“Westlake Scheduling,” a woman answered.

“Good afternoon,” Viv said, lowering her voice to the right tone and letting the words roll. “I’m calling from the Fell Police Department.”

The woman gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’re having me on, right? There aren’t any women police.”

“I assure you, ma’am, that there are,” Viv said. “At least, there’s one, and that’s me. My name is Officer Alma Trent, and I really am a police officer.”

It was the best impression she’d ever done. She sounded competent and older than her years. She put her shoulders back and her chin up to make the sound coming from her throat deeper and rounder.

“Oh, well,” the woman on the other end of the line said, “I had no idea. I’ve never had a call from a police officer before.”

“That’s okay, ma’am. I hear it all the time. I’m looking into a small matter here at the station, and I wonder if you could help me.”

“Certainly, Officer.”

She felt a little kick at that. It must be fun to be Alma sometimes. “We’ve had a few break-ins on Peacemaker Avenue,” Viv said, naming the street that Victoria Lee had lived on. “Nothing too bad, just people breaking windows and jimmying locks. Trying to grab some cash. The thing is that some of these break-ins happened during the day, and one person mentioned seeing one of your salesmen on his street.”

“Oh.” The woman gave a nervous, defensive titter. “You don’t think one of our men would do that, do you? We hire professionals.”

“No, ma’am, I do not think that,” Viv said with the straight seriousness that Alma would give the words. “But I would like to know, if one of your men was in the area, if there’s anything he remembers seeing. Strangers or suspicious folks hanging around, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, sure, I get it.” Viv heard the rustle of papers. “Did you say Peacemaker Avenue? We keep records of which salesman covered which territory. It’s important to keep it straight so they aren’t overlapping and the commissions are paid right.”

“I’m sure you keep good records, ma’am, and I appreciate anything you can tell me.”

There was more rustling of papers, the sound of pages turning in a scheduling book. “Here it is. You say someone saw one of our salesmen there?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t know what they were talking about. We haven’t had a salesman cover Peacemaker Avenue since August of last year.”

Viv was silent, her blood singing in her ears, her head light. Victoria Lee, who lived on Peacemaker Avenue, had been killed in August of ’81.

She had just connected the traveling salesman with Victoria Lee—whose boyfriend was in prison for the murder.

“Hello?” the woman on the other end said. “Are you still there?”

Think, Viv.“Yes, sorry,” she said, channeling Alma again. “Can you let me know which of your salesmen that was? I’d still like to talk to him. Maybe he’s been back to the area and it isn’t in the schedule.”

“That’s true,” the woman said to Viv’s relief. “He may have made a follow-up call. That wouldn’t be in the book.” There was a pause. “Well, darn. We do the schedule in pencil because there are so many changes, but someone’s gone and erased the name right out of the book.”

“Really?” Checkmate, Simon Hess, she thought. “That’s strange.”

“It sure is. Maybe two of our men were going to trade and the new names didn’t get written in.”

Viv thanked the woman and hung up. So Simon Hess was covering his tracks. But it was something. She was closing in. She wrote a checkmark next to Victoria’s name.

She flipped to another phone number she’d pulled from the phone book. It was time to put Simon Hess and Cathy Caldwell together.

“Hello?” an older woman’s voice said when Viv had dialed the number.

She didn’t use Alma’s voice this time. Instead, she used the voice she’d just heard at Westlake Lock Systems. “Hello, is this Mrs. Caldwell?”

“No, I’m not Mrs. Caldwell. I’m her mother. Mrs. Caldwell is dead.”

Viv’s throat closed. Stupid, so stupid. She’d assumed that Cathy’s mother would also be Mrs. Caldwell, though of course Caldwell was Cathy’s married name. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry,” she managed.

The woman sighed wearily. “What are you selling?”

“I’m not—” She had to get a grip. “I’m, um, calling from Westlake Lock Systems. I wanted to know if you’re satisfied with the locks you bought two years ago.”

It was a long shot. But all the woman had to say was I don’t know what you’re talking about and the conversation would be over. I wish I really were a police officer, she thought. It would be so much easier to get people to answer questions.

But the woman replied with, “I suppose they’re fine. I remember when Andrew and Cathy bought them. They didn’t want to spend the money, but your salesman convinced them. With Andrew gone so much, they thought it would make Cathy safer. It didn’t work.”

Viv’s hand was shaking as she put a checkmark next to Cathy’s name. “Ma’am, I think—”

“You’re one of those ghouls, aren’t you?” the woman said. “You aren’t from the lock company at all. Then again, I wonder how you knew about the locks Cathy put in. You’re likely not going to tell me. So let me tell you something instead.”

“Ma’am?” Viv said.

“You think we haven’t had dozens of phone calls at this house? Hundreds? I moved in after Cathy died because my grandson was left without a mother. Andrew is deployed again so it’s just my boy and me. And I’m the one who answers the damn phone calls. They’ve tapered off over the past two years, but we still get them. I can tell a ghoul from the first minute I answer the phone.”

Viv was silent.

The woman didn’t need an answer. “I’ve heard everything,” she continued. “Cathy was a slut, Cathy was a saint. Cathy was targeted by Communists or Satanists. Cathy was killed by a black man, a Mexican. Cathy was having a lesbian affair. Cathy got what she deserved because she had left the path of God. I’ve told Andrew to unlist the number, but he won’t do it. You ghouls have all the answers, except one: You can’t tell me who the hell killed my daughter.”

The woman’s voice was raw with pain and anger. It came through the phone line like a miasma. Viv still couldn’t speak.

“It’s never going to happen,” the woman said. “Finding him. Arresting him. Letting me watch him fry. I thought for a long time that I would get that chance. But it’s been two years, and they still don’t know who took my girl. Who stripped her, put a knife in her, and dumped her. A sweet girl who wanted to earn her next paycheck and raise her baby. Do you know who killed her? Can you end this for me?”

The words were right there. Sitting in her throat. His name is Simon Hess. But something stopped her; maybe it was the knowledge that saying it wouldn’t end this woman’s pain. “I—”

“Of course you don’t know,” Cathy’s mother said. She sounded angry and tired, so tired. “None of you people ever know.”

“He won’t get away forever.” Viv’s voice was hoarse with her own emotion—anger and a different kind of exhaustion. She was tired, too, though she couldn’t imagine how tired Cathy’s mother must be. “He can’t. He’ll make a mistake. He’ll come into the light. There will be justice, I swear.”

“No,” Cathy’s mother said. “There won’t. I’m going to die not knowing who killed my baby. He’s going to walk free.”

There was a click as she hung up.

Viv sat silent for a long time after she put the phone down. She wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then she got up to get dressed.

---

•   •   •“Thank you for meeting me,” Marnie said to Viv the next day as they sat on a bench in a park in downtown Fell. “During the day, no less.”

Viv picked at the French fries she’d bought from a fast-food counter on her way here. Vaguely, she realized that she didn’t eat real meals anymore; she snacked on crackers and coffee during the day and ate bologna sandwiches at night. She couldn’t remember when she’d last slept eight hours.

“You look terrible,” Marnie said, reading her mind.

Viv shrugged. “I feel fine.” It was the truth. She had pushed past tiredness some time ago and now existed on a plane of exhaustion that floated her through the day.

Marnie did not look terrible. She looked great. She wore khaki pants with a pleated waist and a navy blue blouse beneath her wool pea coat, and she had a matching navy knit cap on her head. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and a few of the people passing through the park looked twice at the black woman and the white woman sitting together.

“Okay, I came to tell you two things,” Marnie said, leaning back on the bench next to Viv. “The first is that I had some downtime today, so I followed your salesman. He’s in Plainsview again.”

Viv straightened. Plainsview, where she’d seen him watching the girl. “Right now?”

“Yes, right now. I followed him to the exit, and then I kept going. Because if I follow him too close and too often, he’ll see me. Which leads me to the other thing I want to say. I quit.”

“What do you mean, you quit?”

“All of this,” Marnie said, waving between the two of them. “The intrigue we have going on. I’m quitting. I’m done. I’m not following this man anymore. I’m not even sure he’s a murderer.”

Viv blinked at her. “There was a salesman from Westlake Lock Systems going door-to-door on Victoria Lee’s street the month she was killed. And Cathy Caldwell and her husband bought locks from a Westlake salesman before she was killed, too.”

Marnie’s lips parted. She looked like someone had slapped her. “Oh, honey,” she said in a rough voice, and Viv thought she was going to say You’re crazy or It doesn’t prove anything, but instead she said, “You need to stop before you get yourself killed.”

“He doesn’t know I’m investigating him,” Viv said.

“The hell he doesn’t. A man does crimes like this, he’s looking over his shoulder. Covering his tracks. Waiting for someone to come up behind him.”

Viv thought of the name erased from the Westlake schedule book and didn’t reply.

“You’re going to get hurt,” Marnie said. “I know you think you won’t, but you will. If he can hurt those girls, then he can hurt you. You need to talk to the police and tell them what you’ve found.”

Viv licked her dry, chapped lips and ate a cold French fry.

“Promise me,” Marnie said. “You owe me, Vivian. Promise me you’ll talk to the police. That you’ll try.”

Viv forced the words out. “I promise.” She didn’t want to, but she meant it. She promised it to Marnie, and she would do it. “Please don’t quit.”

Marnie shook her head. “Sorry, but I am. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s too dangerous. I have a man I’m seeing, and he says he wants to marry me. I can get married and start a family instead of doing this. I’m done.”

“But you’re the one who showed me everything,” Viv said. “You’re the one who took the photos and took me to the murder sites.”

“I was trying to help you, because you were a clueless girl working in the middle of the night. I was trying to show you that there are predators out there. That you have to be careful.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Looks like it backfired on me. How was I supposed to know you’d start hunting the hunter?”

“Maybe you were trying to help, but you knew all about the murders. It interested you, too.”

“Maybe. Yes, okay. But I wasn’t interested like you are now.” Marnie leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, and looked Viv in the eye. “I’m all about survival. That’s how I work. Knowing about the girls getting killed in this town was a part of that survival. Following a killer around is not.” She pressed her lips together and sighed. “I like you. I do. But I have more to lose than you do. I’m not jeopardizing everything I have, everything I’ve worked for, my life, for something I can’t prove, that no one will believe. I’m not willing to do that and I never was. Do you understand me?”

Viv dropped her gaze to her fries and nodded.

There was a second of silence. “You’re going to Plainsview, aren’t you?” Marnie said.

Viv nodded, still staring at her fries.

“I know I can’t stop you, and you have some serious spine. But be careful, for God’s sake. At least be ready to defend yourself. Don’t be alone with him. All right?”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Damn it,” Marnie said. “If I read about you in the papers, I’m going to be so damn mad at myself.”

But she still rose from the bench, picked up her purse, and walked away.

---

•   •   •The trail had gone cold in Plainsview. Viv circled the streets, looking for Hess’s car. She started with the neighborhood she’d last seen him in, then widened out to the next neighborhood and the next. Plainsview wasn’t a very big place, and soon she’d covered it pretty thoroughly.

She ended up at the town’s only high school, Plainsview High. It was a new building, and even though it was dinnertime, the parking lot was full of cars, the lights on in all the windows. Viv saw a handmade sign that said, CHOIR NIGHT TONIGHT!!

She parked on the street and scanned the cars in her view. The girl she’d seen on her bicycle was high school age, which meant she might be here, or her hunter might come to this place. After a minute she got out of the car and looked up and down the street. He wouldn’t park in the lot, but nearby. That was what she would do.

She shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat and walked toward the school. Nothing moved; choir night was still happening. But when she stepped on the edge of the school’s concrete tarmac, the school doors opened and parents and students began to file out. The performance was finished.

There was the sound of a motor, and a car pulled away in the edge of Viv’s vision. She turned and squinted. It was the same make and model as Hess’s car, but at this angle she couldn’t see the driver. She took a step forward as the car receded, trying to read the license plate, but she could only catch a nine and a seven before the car disappeared.

Simon Hess’s license plate had a nine and a seven.

She walked through the small crowd. She looked like someone’s big sister, or maybe even a senior, so she blended in. Moving against the flow of people leaving, she walked through the school’s open doors. On a folding table was the night’s program, now over. She picked it up.

On the front was a list of the songs in tonight’s performance. On the back was a list of the members of the Plainsview High School Choir. There were fifteen girls.

She folded the page in her pocket and wandered farther down the hall, passing teachers and parents chatting in knots. The school was small, and the crowd was rapidly dispersing. There were other folding tables here, advertising other things: the football team, the science fair. One of the tables had a handmade sign that said ORDER YOUR 1982–83 YEARBOOK NOW! Next to it was a copy of the 1981–82 yearbook on display.

This is so easy, Viv thought as she picked up the yearbook, slid it in her coat, and walked back out the door with the rest of the crowd.

---

•   •   •Downtown Plainsview was closing, but a hardware store was still open.

Viv went in, thinking of that car driving away tonight. Thinking of Marnie’s advice: At least be ready to defend yourself. And that stupid news item on safety tips for teens: Use a buddy system. Never get into a stranger’s vehicle. Consider carrying a whistle or a flashlight.

Viv walked up one aisle of the small store, then down the other. A whistle was not much use at the Sun Down, where there was no one around for miles. If she ever used it, she’d be whistling into the wind. As for a flashlight, she pictured shining one into the traveling salesman’s face. That wouldn’t do much, either.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Viv turned to see a boy of about eighteen standing at the end of the aisle. He had pimples on his cheeks and a red apron on. He gave her a smile that was friendly and a little embarrassed. “We’re closing now,” he said.

“Oh,” Viv said, looking around. “I was just—”

“Is there something I can help you find?”

“Maybe.” She smiled back at him. “I was just thinking that I should carry something to defend myself. Because I work nights.”

“Jeez, sure,” the guy said. “We don’t carry Mace, though. You’d be surprised how often we get asked for it.”

“Right.” Viv had never actually thought about how to defend herself. Could she punch someone, kick them? Growing up in suburban Grisham, the idea was absurd. Now she glanced at the darkening windows outside and wondered exactly what she would do.

What would you do if you ever saw real trouble?her mother had said.

“There’s a baton thing you can carry,” the hardware guy told her. “It gives a good whack, I think. But it’s big and heavy for carrying around every day.” He turned the corner to the next aisle, and Viv followed him. “Personally, if I were a girl and I wanted to defend myself, I’d carry this.” He reached onto a shelf and put a thick leather holder into her hand.

Viv pulled the handle. It was a knife—not the retractable switchblade kind, but a regular knife with a wooden handle and a wicked silver blade. The blade itself was about three inches long and looked like it could cut glass.

“Wow,” Viv said.

“I told you, we get asked a lot,” the guy replied. “This is a hunting knife, but it works for what you want. Small enough to fit in a purse. Sharp enough that you mean business.” She looked up to see that he was smiling at her. “You can even take it jogging in the park. Some pervert comes up to flash you—boom! At least, if I were a girl, that’s what I would do.”

She blinked up at him, and she smiled at him. She watched him blush.

“I’ll take it,” she said.