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Sam at last looks up from the phone, hand still at her mouth, the nail of her ring finger grasped between her teeth.“What?”
“When?” Coop says, concern burning bright in his eyes.
“The night she died. About an hour before, to be exact.”
“Tell me what it said,” he says. “Every word.”
I tell them everything. The contents of the email. When I received it. When I actually read it. I even try to explain why I waited so long to tell anyone but Jeff about it, although Coop doesn’t really care why. His only focus is the fact he didn’t know about it sooner.
“You should have told me the second you got it, Quincy.”
“I know,” I say.
“This could have changed things.”
“Iknowthat, Coop.”
It could have given the police a reason for doing a better search of Lisa’s house, leading them to sooner conclude that she was murdered. It might have even yielded an important clue into who killed her. I know all of this, and the guilt it spawns makes me angry. At myself. At Lisa’s killer. Even at Lisa, for thrusting me into this position. The anger fizzes through me, overtaking my heartbreak and surprise.
“It still doesn’t mean you or Samantha are in danger,” Nancy says.
“It might not mean anything at all,” Coop adds.
“Or it could mean that she thought someone was targeting us,” I say.
“Who would want to do that?” Coop asks.
“Lots of people,” I say. “Crazy people. You’ve looked at those crime websites. You’ve seen how many freaks out there are obsessed with us.”
“That’s because they admire you,” Coop says. “They’re in awe of what you went through. What you managed to survive. Not many people could have done it, Quincy. But you did.”
“Then explain that letter.”
There’s no need to clarify. Coop knows exactly which letter I’m talking about. The threatening one. The scary one. It unnerved him as much as it did me.
YØU SHØULDN’T BE ALIVE.
YØU SHØULD HAVE DIED IN THAT CABIN.
IT WAS YØUR DESTINY TØ BE SACRIFICED.
Whoever wrote it had used a typewriter. The keys had been struck so hard that, on the page, the letters looked like burn marks searedinto leather. Everyowas actually a zero, meaning that key was likely broken. Coop said this hint could possibly lead authorities to discover who wrote it. That was two years ago. I’m not holding my breath, especially since every other means of identifying its author have already been exhausted. There were no fingerprints on the paper or on the envelope, which had been sealed not with saliva but a sponge and water. The same goes for the stamp. As for the postmark, it was traced to a public mailbox in a town called Quincy, Illinois.
That wasn’t a coincidence.
Jeff and I had been living together only a month when it arrived. It was his first real taste of what life with me would be like. I was, of course, hysterical to the point of insisting we had to move immediately. Preferably overseas. Jeff talked me out of it, saying the letter was a very sick but ultimately harmless prank.
Coop took it more seriously because, well, he’s Coop and that’s how he rolls. By that point, our relationship had dwindled to a text or two every few months. We hadn’t actually seen each other in more than a year.
The letter changed all that. When I’d told him about it, he drove into the city to comfort me. Over coffee and tea at our usual place, he swore that he’d never let something bad happen to me, insisting on a face-to-face meeting at least every six months. The rest is history.
“That letter was sent by a deranged man,” Coop says. “A sick man. But that was a long time ago, Quincy. Nothing came of it.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Nothing ever happened to the psycho creep who sent it. He’s still out there, Coop. And maybe he wrote to Lisa or to Sam. Maybe he decided to finally take action.”
I look to Sam, who’s reverting by the minute back into her old self. Her hair has fallen from behind her ears and now covers most of her face like a protective veil.
“Have you received any death threats?”