Page 27

God, I want to steal it all. It’d be better off with me. Tucked away between my mattress and my box spring, or hidden underneath the loose board of a dresser. Neatly labeled and archived for my catalog, piece after piece. As it should be.

There’s no chance I could get away with it, though. Not if I take all of it. The resentment is bitter as I flip through the documents instead—looking for something, anything, that might put me on the right path. There’s stacks of stenographer’s records, partially redacted with swaths of black ink. Indictments, affidavits, warrants.

At the bottom sit two manila envelopes labeled EVIDENCE, and inside each one is a whole lot of photos.

Yes. Yes, yes. This is it.

Only a handful of photos made it out of the courtroom and into public view. A few pictures of Dad’s penthouse, the bedroom specifically, and screenshots from the apartment building’s security cameras. Body cam footage that has the corpse on the floor blurred to the point of uselessness.

But not these. These are the photos. The blood, the guts, the gore, the pictures that everyone on that damn forum is so desperate to find. Two decades of autopsies, and Dad’s hard drive.

It’s been years since I’ve seen these. Dad’s trophy collection is in the first envelope: from his time as the Charlottesville Strangler to the high-quality camera work of his final active years. Every single picture of every girl. Alive and dead. Open wounds lashed across backs, broken bones, a jaw stuck permanently to the left.

In the second envelope, we have the autopsy collection—any body that was found and eventually identified as one of Dad’s victims. Old records, shoddy records, but records nonetheless. The names are written in sharp script in the white borders. Avery Hutchins. Lucy Levine. So many of them. Recognized, claimed, properly mourned.

And at the bottom of the pile, there she is. Jane Doe.

I pull her photos free.

These were taken by investigators because Dad never had the chance to take any of his own. Jane Doe on the living room floor, turning the carpet black. Jane Doe on the autopsy table, the coroner documenting every cut and contusion for the record. Jane Doe’s dull, dry eyes staring directly into the camera, pretty brown irises haloed by burst blood vessels from choking to death.

She was beautiful.

I only have a moment to look at her, to take in the soft curves of her face and the dark, gaping wounds, before I hear footsteps on the stairs.

Shit. I jam the photos into my jacket.

I have her, and it feels like holding a forbidden key. She’s here. There has to be something I can use.

Warren’s almost home, and Leah—two hundred dollars richer and blessedly able to keep a secret—insisted on dessert, so we’re all downstairs while she scoops mint chocolate chip ice cream from a freezer-burned tub. The lights have been turned down low. There’s only the dull yellow glow above the stove and a streetlamp coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Alyssa studies me from across the kitchen.

“What?” I say, a little more forcefully than I intended.

“I …” she starts, but can’t figure out where the sentence is supposed to go. I nod for her to come out with it, but she doesn’t.

Fuck it. “You think I broke in anyway? You want to search me?”

Alyssa recoils. “No. I don’t—no.”

“Seriously. Have more faith in me than that.”

“I do,” she says.

This happens every now and then. She hangs out with some other girls for a bit, gets snippy, decides she knows better than me on some topic or another. But she’ll need something, like she always does, help with Leah or her makeup or dealing with another one of her dad’s transphobic remarks, and she’ll come back to me. She’ll apologize for what she said and, this time, she’ll agree to help. She always does.

As long as she doesn’t see the blood on my hands.

I pick at my nails like I’m trying to get viscera out from under them again.

When Warren Hanover comes home—that old man with graying hair, probably smelling of wine and seafood, the kind of bags under his eyes that stack another decade onto his face—Leah abandons her ice cream to throw her arms around him, but he barely remembers to return the hug. He stops halfway into the kitchen, looking at me.

I raise my chin in acknowledgment.

“Hi, Dad,” Alyssa says. “Did you have fun?”

He doesn’t respond to her.