Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

line of work, no one risks bleeding to death if your blade misses the mark now and then. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Elle laughed, but there was a layer of sadness underneath as she watched her husband interact with Natalie. It was hard not to wonder what kind of father Martín would have been. Sash and Elle met during the time that Elle and Martín were trying hardest to get pregnant, when they had moved into the new house across the street to make space for what they were sure would be at least a couple children. All the dewy, fertile girls Elle went to high school with seemed to get pregnant just by thinking about it, so it was a relief when Sash was so transparent about her own experience with IVF. She’d never been interested in sex or romance, but she always wanted to be a parent, so she had gone the test tubes and injections route. When Elle told her about her own fertility treatments, they commiserated about the anxious nightmare of trying to get pregnant through science (although Sash liked to joke that the idea of getting pregnant the other way was much more anxiety-inducing for her).

After years of trying, though, Elle couldn’t keep putting her body through the stress and hormones anymore. She and Martín finally agreed they weren’t meant to be parents, but by that time, they were so close to Natalie that it eased the ache of that decision—at least a little.

“You know you’re going to have to do a lot of science to be a medical examiner, right, sweet?” Sash said. “And you might need to get over your fear of needles.”

Natalie lifted her chin. “I can do that.”

Elle took a bite of food to hide her smile. Natalie was the kind of kid who was always getting excited about something new. Six months ago, she was into animal rights—she found a video on YouTube and swore off eating meat for the rest of her life. Not a day went by that she wasn’t talking about cages or cattle prods. And then one day, Elle went over to her house and she was eating a hamburger and ranting about climate change. Most of the time, she moved on after a few months or so, but one of the things she’d stuck with was religion. Natalie’s school friend gave her a Bible a couple years ago, and since then the girls had been going to church together almost every Sunday. To Sash’s credit, she never tried to convince Natalie to stay home, even though she had no interest in religion herself.

Elle loved the girl’s passion. She knew better than anyone: the thing that pisses you off the most in life can make a pretty good career. Natalie was still too young to settle on one thing yet, but she would. Elle had been only a year older than Natalie when her life was set on fire, blazing an unmistakable path in front of her.

That thought reminded her of the faces on her studio wall upstairs, all those young futures that had been snuffed out, and suddenly Elle sat back in her chair, blinking hard against the images branded on her mind. Taking a sip of wine, she glanced around the table. Sash and Natalie didn’t seem to have noticed, but Martín was watching her, one eyebrow raised in a silent question. She nodded once and picked up her fork again.

When they finished eating, Sash stood and started to pick up the empty plates.

“Oh, Sash, you don’t have to do that.” Martín got up too, trying to take the dishes from her.

“Relax, Martín, I’m not going to wash them or anything. Natalie can do that—consider it payment for the gas money you spend carting her around everywhere while I’m at work.”

“Hey, the pleasure of my company is payment enough,” Natalie said as she tossed a braid over her shoulder.

Martín burst out laughing, and Sash hollered her daughter’s name from the kitchen. Pushing aside the pictures in her head, Elle chuckled too.

As she stood to help Sash clean up, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Elle stepped into the hall and looked at the screen. There were dozens of email notifications from her show account. She ignored the alerts on her social media; she’d deal with those later. Most of the subject lines were the standard fare, but one jumped out like a typo on a billboard:

I know who he is.

3

Justice Delayed podcast

December 5, 2019

Transcript: Season 5, Episode 1

Elle:

What happened after the press went wild with the TCK moniker?

Sykes:

We had almost nothing to go on, no physical evidence. You didn’t have shows like CSI or Law & Order: SVU back then, so the awareness of what could be done with DNA wasn’t there for most people. Yet somehow, this guy avoided leaving any trace of himself behind. Which led us to think he might have some sort of science or medical training.

Elle:

Or that he was a cop.

Sykes:

That was also an option, yes. Either way, we weren’t able to find anything that could help us stop the inevitable from happening. Within hours of connecting Isabelle’s murder to the 1996 killings, we figured out who his next victim likely was: a seventeen-year-old girl, Vanessa Childs, who’d gone missing three days prior while taking out the trash at her fast food job. When we told her parents our suspicions, they were understandably distraught.

Elle voice-over:

There is a special kind of helplessness, waiting for someone to turn up dead. Vanessa’s family hoped police were wrong about the connection, but the timing was so precise. And then, late in the afternoon on the day Isabelle’s body was found, another girl went missing. Sixteen-year-old Tamera Smith, a promising basketball player and straight-A student, vanished on the short walk between her school and the gym.

Detectives continued to search for suspects. Lab results were rushed, but no male DNA was found on Isabelle’s body. They had nothing to go on.