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He spun. He was a good-looking kid. Tall, wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. He smiled.
“Hi. Sorry to bother you. I just came to see about borrowing that book.”
Holly’s brows knitted together. “Sorry?” He must have had the wrong house.
He glanced sideways in a look of confusion. “I live next door. I’m Clint’s son—”
“Oh!” Holly’s hand flew to the side of her head. “Yes. Of course.” Sometimes it was hard to pull her mind out of the story she was writing to reenter her present reality. She wondered on occasion if that was why she wrote. “Come in.” She opened the door wide.
The young man’s expression softened. She could see it now—the boy’s resemblance to his father. Same hair, lankier than his dad but a similar build.
“Sorry,” she added when he stepped inside. “I meant to find it for you. I’ve been writing all day. It’s just in a box upstairs.”
“I’m a huge fan of your books. I’ve read them all.The Last Broadcastwas my favorite.”
“Thank you. Me too. That was my first.”
He stood in the entryway when she started up the stairs, looking unsure about stepping farther into the house. Halfway up, she glanced over her shoulder. “Come on up if you’d like. It might take me a few minutes to find it. As long as you don’t mind the mess of a writer’s office.”
A flash of excitement showed on his face. “I won’t mind at all.” He slipped off his Nikes and glanced at the baseball bat leaning against the entryway wall. “You play baseball?”
Holly followed his gaze, slightly embarrassed at the bat Laurie had given her to use as a weapon. “Oh, no. That’s for…um…self-defense.”
“Oh, right,” he said, politely acknowledging her reason as if it were a normal explanation before following her up the steps.
“So, you read a lot of true crime?” she asked when she reached the top of the stairs.
“I read a little of everything. But yeah, I’ve been getting more into true crime the last few months. Aside from your books, I really likedHelter SkelterandThe Onion Field.”
“Then you’re going to loveIn Cold Blood.” She stepped into her office and moved toward one of the two boxes on the floor beside the desk. She opened the first, seeing her stack of notebooks and cassette tapes of countless recorded interviews about Roxy Vega. “It must be in this one.” She moved to the second box, finding the book near the top, along with her dictionary andTheChicago Manual of Style. She stood to give it to him, but the boy wasn’t looking at her.
He stood, open-mouthed, gazing at her office wall.
Holly followed his gaze to the map and the list of suspected Green River Killer victims, organized by the locations where they’d gone missing and where they’d been found, along with the state of their corpses upon discovery. Even though Holly had never been able to prove her theory, she still kept a list titledBUS STOP KILLER?with a small group of women’s photos underneath, including Meg’s. This morning she’d added a newspaper clipping to the growing list of victims she was increasingly worried Jared was responsible for. It featured a photo of Rebecca Lopez, the twenty-five-year-old hairdresser who’d gone missing after leaving the nearby Albertson’s. Therewere also several photos of body dump sites that she’d clipped from newspaper articles over the years, some of which she’d written herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said.How had I not thought about my murder wall before inviting him upstairs?“I forgot I had all of that up.” Her obsession over her sister’s murder had become normal to her. It was only in moments like these that it struck her that it wasn’t—especially to a teenager.
He stepped toward the wall, his eyes wide with fascination. “What’s all this?”
“It’s um…research.” Holly’s theory that there were two serial killers at large—not one—and that one of them killed her sister, seemed like too much to explain.
He turned away from the wall. “I read an article you wrote about your sister’s murder. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Holly cocked her head. The article she’d written for theTribunewhere she’d mentioned Meg’s killing had come out in 1985. “How did you find that?”
His mouth lifted into a half smile. “The library.”
“Ah.” She nodded and held out the book. “Here you go.”
He accepted the book, flipping it over to the back cover.
“This is the first true crime novel ever written.” Holly pointed to the author’s photo. “Truman Capote is credited with creating the genre. This is also the only true crime he ever wrote. Before this, he was known for writingBreakfast at Tiffany’s.” She tapped the back cover. “But this is much better.” She looked up to meet the boy’s gaze. “Have you readTo Kill a Mockingbird?”
He cracked a grin. “Three times.”
“Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood best friends, and she helped him with his research.”
“Cool.” He let the book fall to his side.