Page 110 of Secrets Along the Shore

My belly stirs.

Have we done enough? Proved enough? If we’ve failed…if I’ve failed…

Three women are dead at Kurt Fogerty’s hands. Strangled and left to rot.

Aria Benner was his first victim, discovered two years ago by boys playing in a creek along U.S. Highway 174, the east-west corridor running through Mitchell County and past the town of Riverview—the county seat, and where I sit now.

The place I’ve called home for the past ten years.

Riverview is a small town on Willow Peak, a modest mountain—actually more like a plateau than a traditional mountain—at the tail end of the Appalachian Plateau, about twenty miles south of Huntsville, Alabama. This tight community overlooking the south side of the Tennessee River is self-sufficient, compassionate, and shut-down-school isolated when sleet or the rare snowfall makes our roads impassable. It’s home to sweet tea, fireflies, a surprisingly sophisticated art scene, and the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

It is not—usually—home to murder.

Aria was one of Riverview’s own. A bright, nineteen-year-old, straight-A, University of Alabama sophomore. She disappeared while driving home for summer break. Her murder devastated our entire community, slashing a gaping wound into its heart that still hasn’t healed.

And how could it, when the monster responsible was still out there?

For a year, every potential lead led nowhere. Truth be told, there wasn’t much to go on. The most critical clue was a message written onthe inside of Aria’s arm in ink from a black Sharpie—“Not a Perfect Princess Now.”

Despite our efforts to avoid it, that bit of information was leaked, spawning the horrid nickname for the murder.

Fortunately, there were other details—other specifics—that weren’t leaked. Other details that ultimately helped us catch the six-foot, forty-three-year-old, heavyset, thin-haired, bearded devil sitting twelve feet away. But not before another woman’s body was discovered a year after Aria was found.

Hailey Peterson wasn’t from Riverview. She wasn’t even from Mitchell County. She was a Rhodes College freshman passing through on her way to Marietta, Georgia, for spring break. Her Nissan was found abandoned in a gas station parking lot on I-65. Her body was found in a shallow embankment three miles east of where Aria’s remains were discovered, the same cruel message written on Hailey’s forearm.

Given the location of the bodies, the particular stretch of highway, a fortuitous slice of video from a rest stop not far from the I-65 turnoff for US-174, and a single text from Hailey to her roommate that “some trucker” was following her, we eventually narrowed our suspect list down to Kurt Fogerty.

And that’s where it ended. Armed with only circumstantial evidence and a gut feeling, we couldn’t prove Fogerty’s involvement. For six months we tried to build a case that would hold up, but never got there, leaving us to collectively beat our heads against the wall—me, the D.A.’s office, the sheriff’s department—our hands tied by the lack of proof that would rise to the level of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” We all knew it was Fogerty. We just couldn’t make it stick.

So we lived with the terrible knowledge that if something didn’t change, one day soon, Fogerty would strike again. Another woman would die.

And she did. Six months ago, while driving his kids around in his Gator, a poultry farmer found twenty-five-year-old Teresa Anders buried in the woods on his property. Like the deposit sites, this one was in Mitchell County off US-174, though a little farther from the road. And the body wrapped in a tarp.

Fogerty was getting smarter.

Teresa was an Auburn grad student—young and bright-eyed, or at least she was in pictures I saw—a perfect match for Fogerty’s victim profile. She also had the egregious taunt written on her forearm. But this time, Fogerty made a mistake.

The coroner found two hairs caught beneath the nails of the pointer and middle finger of Teresa’s right hand. Two hairs that belonged to Kurt Fogerty. Somehow, she had been able to do what the others hadn’t, and in whatever fight she put up, managed to take a bit of Fogerty with her before she left this world.

It was enough for a warrant for his truck, and the trailer he shares with his mother one county over when he’s not on the road. That was where they found photos of each of the women printed from their social media accounts, and trophies Fogerty kept—a ring from Aria, an earring from Hailey, and an earring from Teresa.

We weren’t able to save Teresa Anders, and I know I’m not the only one who loses sleep over that. But Teresa Anders saved who knows how many women because of her fight, her bravery, her refusal to go quietly.

Assistant District Attorney Tasha Clay, sitting second chair next to D.A. Lincoln March, is dressed impeccably in a navy suit and silver stud earrings, her straightened black hair gathered in a low bun. Somehow my best friend manages to simultaneously radiate elegance, a woman-of-the-people vibe, and the heart of a legal warrior ready to take on whatever societal demon the system throws her way.

That might be my bias at play, but I doubt it.

I’m sitting a few feet behind her and, though her back is to me, the nervous foot tapping of her three-inch heels on the tile floor tells me she is as anxious as I am.

She doesn’t know which way the jury is going to go, either.

The idea that we could lose, that Fogerty might walk, pierces my heart like a blade through my chest. So many people are counting on the right outcome—the onlyjustoutcome—and not only those of us tasked with the mission of slaying this monster.

Justice won’t bring these women back, but it might restore a modicum of sense to a world gone mad.

I scan the jurors’ faces again, praying silently, as Judge Mary Ortiz finally looks up from whatever papers she’s been shuffling. Through the red cat-eye glasses perched on her face, curtained by the curly black locks matching her robe, she calls the defense attorney and D.A. March to the bench. Tasha’s boss—tall, slender, and bearing a full head of salt-and-pepper hair—strides to the front of the courtroom alongside Fogerty’s attorney. The three have a brief discussion I can’t make out, followed by a series of nods, then potent silence as both men return to their chairs.

Tension pulses through the room, as Judge Ortiz turns to the jury and clears her throat. “Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”