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

The story was all over the news by then, and sales of mace and handguns shot up. Everyone was waiting for the next girl to disappear; everyone was determined not to be that girl. The mayor of Minneapolis reportedly considered instating a curfew, but was told it would send the wrong message that the women were to blame.

Vanessa’s family organized searches in the parks and wooded areas around the suburb of Roseville, where she was last seen, but it was fruitless. Three days later, a week after she had been taken, her body was found in some shrubs on the shore of Bde Maka Ska. There was barely time for the city to breathe before Tamera’s parents went to the media, convinced their daughter would be next and the police weren’t doing enough to stop it.

[SOUND BREAK: A phone ringing three times.]

Anonymous:

Hello?

Elle:

Hello, is this [redaction tone]?

Anonymous:

Who’s calling?

Elle:

Hi, my name is Elle Castillo, and I’m an investigator looking into the Countdown Killer case. I was hoping I could talk to you about—

Anonymous:

Are you a detective?

Elle:

No.

Anonymous:

I don’t talk to you journalists.

Elle:

Well, I’m not really a journalist either.

Anonymous:

Then who the hell are you?

Elle:

I’m an independent investigator specializing in cold cases of crimes against children. I share my work on a podcast.

Anonymous:

A what?

Elle voice-over:

It took some time to explain the concept of a podcast, especially an investigative podcast, but eventually I got her to come around. I’m keeping her anonymous, because it was clear she didn’t want to be associated with this case. For the purposes of clarity, I asked if I could call her Susan, and she agreed.

Elle:

So, can you tell me how you came to be involved with the Countdown Killer case?

Susan:

I came to be involved by sticking my nose where it didn’t belong, and I have regretted that decision for about twenty years.

Elle:

Can you explain what you mean by that?

Susan:

It was in 1997, after the second girl turned up dead. For days, I’d noticed my husband acting strangely: coming home disheveled and skittish hours after I expected him. At first, I thought it was an affair, but that didn’t explain the dirt.

Elle:

Dirt?

Susan:

Yes, his pants were filthy, like he’d been kneeling in a garden or something, only it was the dead of winter. It took me two washes to get his jeans clean. Then one night we were watching TV together, and they were talking about this serial killer on the news, how they thought he had killed two girls the year before, and now it seemed like he was back. And Jimmy, he’d been half asleep, but as soon as that segment came on, he sat up like he’d just been shocked by a bad outlet. He didn’t say anything, just stared at the TV until they moved on. It made my hair stand on end.

So that night, I started thinking and looking at my old calendar, and I realized that Jimmy had told me he was on a work trip a year before. Right at the same time those poor girls got killed. I just couldn’t shake the feeling it could be him.

Elle:

What did you do?

Susan:

If you can believe it, at first I considered not saying anything. I mean, I was only twenty-three. My husband was twenty-seven. We were young, and I was in love. I didn’t think he could do something like that, but the timing was just . . . uncanny. So eventually, I put all my notes together and visited the detective who was running the case.

Elle voice-over:

Detective Sykes was in that blurry stage of having too many leads and not enough time, so when Susan walked in with all the reasons why the killer had to be her husband, he initially brushed her off. She was halfway to her car by the time he scanned her notes and ran after her into the parking lot. Susan’s husband, Jimmy, became the first major suspect Detective Sykes had—a solid lead, after all this time.

Sykes:

You know in Greek mythology when they talk about the sirens, those beautiful women that lure sailors to the rocks and kill them? Well, [redaction tone] was a nice girl, but deep down, I think she had some siren in her. Of course, it’s mostly my fault. By the time Tamera went missing, I was so desperate to have something to tell these girls’ parents that I wanted to listen to her. And she wasn’t wrong—the timeframe of the murders did line up with her husband’s unexplained absences. But that was it. So, I got together a detail to follow this guy 24/7 for the next two days, to see if he would lead us to wherever the girl was being kept. We figured TCK visited his victims during the seven days he held them. He may even have kept them in his home—there was evidence on Isabelle’s and Vanessa’s bodies that they had been forced to do some domestic labor while they were held captive.

Elle voice-over:

This was an escalation. Beverly and Isabelle showed no physical signs of abuse other than the effects of poison and lashes on their backs, but TCK’s triad of victims in 1997 was different. Their hands were dried and cracking, and harsh cleaning chemicals were found on their skin. Their knees were bruised and their palms blistered. In addition to the lashings, TCK had clearly forced them to clean, probably for hours on end, but it was impossible to know what or where. Or, more importantly, why.

Also, while I think Detective Sykes is entitled to his view of her as a siren, nothing about my interview with Susan led me to believe she was being intentionally manipulative or distracting when she accused her husband. Even though she later divorced him, she clearly loved him at the time and agonized over the decision to come forward. And she wasn’t completely off base. The tail Detective Sykes put on Jimmy turned up a reasonable explanation for his odd behavior—although not an innocent one.

Elle:

Tell me about what you found out after surveilling Jimmy.

Sykes:

She