Page 13

“We’re hoping you could speak to us about a series of notes your town has been receiving,” Goldie explained and turned to me.

“The Watcher,” I continued for her.

The detective didn’t react… well, he mostly didn’t react. His hands clenched ever so slightly, his jaw tensing just a hair. “How do you two know about those?”

I leaned over the table with a slow, heavy sigh. “So, you’re saying they’re real?”

The detective didn’t speak for a moment, realizing his blunder. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Yes. But how do you know about them? We’ve kept a tight lid on them for years.”

Goldie reached into her bag and pulled out a printout of the online article highlighting the town. She slid it across the table to the detective. “It was online. Barely any information was revealed, but it made us curious about what was really happening here.”

The detective scanned the document briefly, his eyes flitting across the page.

“Damn… who leaked this?” he asked himself.

“Was this information you didn’t want to get out?” I asked, intrigued by his reaction. We knew the notes weren’t public knowledge, but we weren’t expecting the secrecy surrounding them. From what we could tell, it was a public investigation, and I couldn’t understand why he was acting so cagey about our questions.

The detective jumped at my question, having momentarily forgotten we were there. “It’s… fuck… is there any chance if I send you away, you will leave this town, pretend you never read this, and act as though you know nothing of the Watcher?”

Goldie raised a challenging brow. “After that? No way.”

The detective sighed again. “Look, we don’t know a lot about these notes. We don’t know who they come from, we don’t know why they go where they do—most are nonsensical, anyway.”

“But you know why they’re being sent?” I asked, reading between the lines.

The detective ran his tongue across his teeth, and after a beat, he stood and moved the chalkboard, revealing the board yet again. “This is why.”

Goldie stood and wandered over to the board, standing next to the detective. “And what is this, exactly?”

“You’re looking at twenty breaking and entering cases, forty murder cases, nineteen abduction cases, and eighteen additional murders—but kids this time. Every single one is unsolved,” he explained wearily. “It’s why I work here. I was brought in to solve—” he motioned to the board “—this.”

“Serial killer?” Goldie asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Detective Ransom nodded. “We think so. We haven’t had any DNA, fingerprints, or physical evidence to officially tie them together. But they all have the same MO.”

I stood and glanced at the board, reviewing it all slowly, when a pattern jumped out: victims' photos organized in trios. “They’re families, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Twenty families. The forty murders are the parents; the nineteen abductions were their kids. We found eighteen of their bodies afterward.” He spoke of the cases, the sheer exhaustion in his voice making it clear how heavily they sat on his shoulders.

Goldie continued to stare, silently but resolutely. I could see her eyes flying across it all.

My heart was in my stomach thinking of all the deaths… of those kids now lost. “What happened to kid number nineteen?”

Detective Ransom raised a brow in question.

“You said nineteen kids went missing, eighteen were found. What about nineteen?”

He reached out, pointing to a photo of a young boy with black hair and grey eyes. “Silas Graves. We never found his body, but I assume it’s out there somewhere.”

"What do the notes have to do with all of this?" Goldie asked as her professional armor slid back into place.

“Some notes have their names.” He motioned to the board. “They come after the initial murders and abductions. Sometimes it will name where the… bodies are. Sometimes it has information about the crime itself. It’s usually something we’re missing.”

“Do you think it’s the unsub?” I asked.

His hesitation was brief, instantly overtaken by a sudden, cold urgency. He seemed desperate for help on the case, any help. “The public doesn't know the information on some of the notes. We didn't even know some of this. Whoever is behind these notes is either the killer playing a game with us or an eyewitness holding all the cards."

“Can we see them?" Goldie asked. “The notes, I mean.”