I smile. “Not that kind of shopping.” I place my phone in front of her, with a picture of A. Parson on the front.
“Oh,” Millicent says. She zooms in on the picture and squints at it. “What kind of uniform is that?”
“Meter maid.”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind getting a little revenge on one of those.”
“Me neither.” We laugh together. “And she fits Owen’s profile.”
“Indeed she does.” Millicent closes her computer and turns her whole body to me. “Nice work.”
“Thank you.”
We kiss, and all our budget problems melt away.
Fourteen
At first, nothing about it was sexy. It was petrifying.
Holly was supposed to be the end, not the beginning. The day after she was released from the hospital, Millicent opened the front door to find Holly on the porch. She slammed the door in her sister’s face.
Holly wrote a letter and put it in our mailbox. Millicent did not answer it.
She called. Millicent stopped answering the phone.
When I contacted the psychiatric hospital, they wouldn’t tell me anything.
Holly started showing up in public, staying at least a hundred feet away, but she was everywhere. At the grocery store when Millicent went shopping. In the parking lot at the mall. Across the street when we when out to dinner.
She never stayed anywhere long enough for us to call the police. And every time we tried to take Holly’s picture for proof, she turned, walked away, or moved to create a blur.
Millicent would not tell her mother. The Alzheimer’s was already making her forget who Holly was, and Millicent wanted to keep it that way.
Online, I researched the stalker laws and made a list of every time Holly had showed up so far. When I showed it to Millicent, she told me it was useless.
“That won’t help,” she said.
“But if we—”
“I know the stalker laws. She hasn’t broken them, and she won’t. Holly is too smart for that.”
“We have to do something,” I said.
Millicent stared at my notebook and shook her head. “I don’t think you understand. She made my childhood hell.”
“I know she did.”
“Then you should know a list isn’t going to help.”
I wanted to go to the police and tell them what was happening to us, but the only physical evidence we had was the letter Holly put in the mailbox. It was not threatening. As Millicent said, Holly was too smart for that.
M,
Don’t you think we should talk? I do.
H.
Instead of going to the police, I went to see Holly. I told her to leave Millicent and my family alone.
She didn’t. The next time I saw her, she was in my house.
It was on a Tuesday, around lunchtime, and I was at the club finishing up a lesson and thinking about what to eat. My phone dinged three times in a row, all texts from Millicent.
911
Get home NOW
Holly
This was less than a week after I paid Holly a visit.
I didn’t pause to text Millicent back. When I arrived home, Millicent met at the door. Her eyes were wet, tears threatening to slide down her cheek. My wife does not cry over every little thing.
“What the hell—”
Before I could finish, she grabbed my hand and led me into the family room. Holly was at the far end, sitting on the couch. As soon as she saw me, she stood up.
“Holly was here when I got home,” Millicent said. Her voice shook.
“What?” Holly said.
“Right here, right in our family room.”
“No, it wasn’t like that—”
“I forgot my camera,” Millicent said. “I was supposed to photograph the Sullivan place today, so I came home and she was just here.”
“Wait—”
“I found her sitting on our couch.” The tears finally came, in force, and Millicent covered her face with her hands. I put my arm around her.
Holly looked like a normal thirtysomething woman dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals. Her short red hair had been slicked back, and she wore bright lipstick. Holly took a deep breath and held up both hands as if to show me they were empty. “Hold on. That’s not—”
“Stop lying,” Millicent screamed. “You’re always lying.”
“I’m not lying!”
“Wait,” I said, stepping forward. “Let’s all just calm down.”
“Yes,” Holly said. “Let’s do that.”
“No, I’m not going to calm down.” Millicent pointed to the window in the corner, facing the side of the house. The curtain was pulled shut, but glass was scattered on the floor. “That’s how she got in. She broke a window to get into our home.”
“I did not!”
“Then how did you get in?”
“I didn’t—”
“Holly, stop. Just stop. You’re not going to fool my husband the way you fooled Mom and Dad.”
Millicent was right about that.
“Oh my god,” Holly said. She clasped her hands on her head and closed her eyes, as if trying to block out the world. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”
Millicent took a step back.
I stepped forward. “Holly,” I said. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t stop. It was like she couldn’t even hear me. When she smacked the side of her head with an open hand, I glanced back at Millicent. She was staring at Holly and looked too scared to move. Millicent had frozen.
I raised my voice. “Holly.”
Her head jerked up.
She dropped her hands.
Holly’s face had contorted into something angry, something almost feral. It felt like I was seeing what Millicent was so afraid of.
“You should have died in that accident,” she said to Millicent. It sounded like a growl.
Millicent moved closer, using me as a shield, and she gripped my arm. I half turned to tell her to call the police, but she spoke first. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Thank god the kids aren’t here to see this.”
The kids. A picture of them flashed in my mind. I saw Rory and Jenna in the room instead of us. I felt their fear as this insane woman confronted them.
“Holly,” I said.
She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear anyone. Her eyes were fixed on Millicent, who was trying to hide behind me.
“You bitch,” Holly said.
She lunged toward me.
Toward Millicent.
In that moment, I did not make a decision. I did not run through the options in my mind, weighing the pros and cons, using logic to arrive at the best possible course of action. If I had gone through all that, Holly would still be alive.
Instead, I did not think, did not decide. What I did next came from somewhere much deeper. It was biology, self-preservation. Instinct.
Holly was a threat to my family, so she was a threat to me. I reached for the closest thing. It was right next to me, leaning against the wall.
A tennis racket.
Fifteen
A few days pass before someone on TV asks about Owen Oliver Riley.
Josh, my earnest, young Josh, brought up the serial killer’s name during a press conference. Ever since Lindsay was found, the police have been holding press conferences at least every other day. They are held in the late afternoon so the highlights can be replayed on the evening news.
Josh’s question will be today’s highlight.
“Has it occurred to you that Owen Oliver Riley is back?”
The lead detective, a balding man in his fifties, did not look surprised at the question.
Josh is far too young to remember any details about Owen Oliver, but he is an intelligent, ambitious reporter, capable of surfing the Internet at light speed. He just needed someone to give him a starting point.
For this, I went back to some of the most famous serial killers. Several communicated with the press, sometimes even the police, and that was long before e-mail was invented. But given how easy it was to track anything electronic, I decided against using e-mail. I went old-school.
Owen never wrote letters to anyone, so all I had to do was create something just plausible enough to be real. After several attempts, from long to short, poetic to rambling, I ended up with a single line:
It’s good to be home.
—Owen
I wore surgical gloves while handling the paper, envelope, and stamp. When it was sealed and ready to go, I spritzed the envelope with a cheap drugstore cologne. It smelled like a musky cowboy.