Makani used to shave her arms for diving. Now, her arm hair stood on end as she remembered a laminated ID badge. Kurtzman. The kindhearted nurse who’d given her blueberry yogurt and watched over her was Katie’s mother.
“She couldn’t have known.” Chris sounded shaken. Maybe he was picturing himself in her place. “I doubt that she actually expected to find something wrong.”
The rain ticked staccato against the roof of the car. Perhaps sensing that his brother needed to think about something else, Ollie asked him to repeat his knowledge of David’s whereabouts.
After attacking them yesterday at Makani’s house, David had traveled upriver instead of down, which the police hadn’t predicted. Under the cover of night, he’d crept back into town and hidden inside the back room at Greeley’s, correctly guessing that everyone would be searching for him out in the countryside.
He’d been right under their noses the whole time.
At first, the police were flummoxed as to how he’d broken in, because none of the doors or windows had been damaged. But then Caleb’s uncle, the owner, recalled having to cut a new key for Caleb a few months back. His uncle had found this odd, because Caleb wasn’t usually forgetful or careless. The police speculated that David had stolen the key and entered the store as if he belonged there. It probably wasn’t the first time that he’d broken in. And the key probably wasn’t the only thing he’d stolen.
Several members of the marching band, including Alex, reported that Caleb had practiced his speech inside the store, and then when he returned from delivering it to the crowd, he’d claimed that his hat plume was missing. It seemed possible that David had stolen it while Caleb was practicing and then used it to lure him back.
“It’s still not clear why he didn’t kill Caleb before the memorial,” Chris said, keeping his eyes on the two-lane road. “Maybe because people would have looked for Caleb sooner? And we also don’t know—” But he cut himself off, with a glance in the rearview mirror at his brother.
“Know what?” Ollie asked.
Chris looked like he didn’t want to answer. “We also don’t know if David had more than one target inside the store.”
Ollie’s tense expression showed Makani that the thought had already crossed his mind.
“We do know that he stole a sweatshirt,” Chris said, trying to hurry past it, “which he left behind at Katie’s before jacking her 2011 Ford Fiesta. The sweatshirt was covered in blood and paint from her basement. We don’t know what he’s wearing now. We still haven’t found his hoodie, and no one noticed him leave her neighborhood. Everyone was looking for someone on foot.”
“So, he’s leaving town.” Makani wasn’t sure if she believed it. And even if it were true, it wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to know exactly where David was. Until he was captured, she would never feel at ease again.
A pair of headlights loomed through the rain in the distance.
“What color was the car?” Ollie asked.
“Blue,” Chris said quietly.
The headlights grew closer. Makani’s heartbeat spiked, and Chris’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. It was impossible to tell anything about the car, except that it was small. Everyone held their breath until the car passed.
Red. A Ford Focus.
They exhaled. A minute later, there was a new pair of headlights, and their lungs tightened again. And then released. Tightened. Released.
It was like that for the remainder of the drive.
Grandma Young was asleep, heavily sedated. Makani and Ollie tried to sleep, too, taking turns on the comfortable recliner, but their brains were wired. As the night droned on, they watched the cars in the parking lot below and stared at the flickering television screen. It wasn’t a heavy storm, but it was enough to mess with the signal.
The TV was set on the lowest volume above mute. For hours, CNN cycled between an airstrike in Syria, a group of missing hikers in North Carolina, and the latest murders in Osborne.
Caleb Randolph Greeley Jr.
Katie Teresa Kurtzman.
Their full names were spoken aloud by strangers. The same atrocious clips of the same panicked citizens were replayed. The victims were turning into numbers, statistics that were being used to compare David with other notable serial killers. He’d obliterated two people within a three-hour gap and with a crowd nearby. It wasn’t just Makani; the entire Midwest had the crawling sensation that he was standing right behind them.
But here, inside the hospital, it was even worse. Katie and her mom were the subject of every low-spoken conversation. It was impossible not to overhear the muffled crying coming from the nurses’ station. The choked sobs. The noses blowing into tissues.
It was nearly daybreak before the talking heads had something to report. “Breaking news in the hunt for the Osborne Slayer,” a woman’s voice said.
Makani’s and Ollie’s bleary eyes sprang open as the Latina news anchor continued, “You’re looking at footage from a truck stop near Boys Town, Nebraska, just outside of Omaha, at eleven o’clock last night. An unidentified driver called 911 after spotting a blue Ford Fiesta ditched on an embankment near the truck stop. When the police pulled the surveillance video, this is what they discovered.”
Black-and-white footage showed a figure in a long coat walk up to a semi and speak to the driver through the window. Even though the outdated cameras made his movements jerky and pixelated, Makani could tell that the grainy figure was David. A nauseated chill washed over her. David climbed inside the truck, and it drove away.
“As you can see,” the news anchor said, “the truck makes a right turn before traveling out of frame. It looks like the driver is headed back toward Osborne.”
Makani glanced at Ollie. His face was a perfect reflection of her fear.
“At this time, the police have not revealed the driver’s name, only that his tags were from Indiana. It is not yet known if he was aware of the hitchhiker’s identity.”
That was it. The news rehashed the story from the top. David kept climbing into the truck, and it kept making a right turn.
The killer kept going home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was the eve of All Hallows’ Eve. The rain had stopped, but the asphalt was still slick with water and oil. A lurid sunrise—worthy of Hawaii—illuminated the sky. It was such an obscene contrast to the overhanging dread that it felt like they were being mocked.