AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My mom cried when she learned that Detective Andrews, who would be replacing Detective Kittleson on all cases for the foreseeable future, told her that my murder would be added to the charges against the “MatchStrike Killer.”
All of us—Brecia, Meghan, and I—were there when he told her. We’d been staying with my mom instead of with April or Domanska.
I hoped the best for April and the girls, but I didn’t feel quite the same way about them as Brecia did. I was glad we’d helped her, of course. But I didn’t want to see her horror or her tears as she learned the details of what her husband had done.
I didn’t blame her for what he’d done; however, I was pretty sure I’d still be alive if she’d looked at her husband just a little bit harder, instead of looking away.
* * *
We visited James, who was being held without bond on three murder charges, in jail.
It was my idea.
I wanted to say a proper goodbye. All of us did.
He looked truly pathetic. His beard had already begun its descent into a nasty bird’s nest, and he was wearing a dirty orange jumpsuit that was too short at the ankles.
Confined to a tiny cell with a rangy giant of a man coming down off meth, while awaiting a possible death sentence, he was finally as fearful and powerless as he deserved to be.
We spent a full three days with him.
Each time he fell asleep, we drew close and composed our magnum opus of nightmares.
April, telling the police everything she knew. The steel in her eyes when she told a reporter that the death penalty did not seem excessive.
Women, contacting the news in Idaho and Utah and Colorado to say that they, too, had brushed paths with him.
Elle’s eyes flashing as she talked about what he’d done to her and how disgusting he actually was.
Nicole’s relieved, mirthless laughter as she shared the texts she’d sent to a friend to get out of her date, leaving him alone in the restaurant with the bill.
Marjorie, selling her side of the story to a tabloid. “My Step-Son the Serial Killer.”
His coworkers from Colorado and Utah and Idaho telling the press that he wasn’t nearly as smart as he pretended to be at work.
The nightmares had exactly the desired effect.
He awoke screaming and panting after a few minutes every time, babbling about “bitches” and “lies.”
He started trying to stay awake, just to avoid the nightmares he knew were waiting for him anytime he drifted off. It made him increasingly touchy, mean, and delirious as the days wore on.
His cellmate, the meth head, didn’t appreciate any of this.
On day three, at two in the morning, Meth Head had finally had enough. As James awoke with a pathetic howl, he threw off his bedding on the lower bunk and hauled James off the top bunk in one swift motion.
James hit the floor with a sick thud and scrambled to the corner of the cell, darting his eyes around and trying to orient himself to what was happening. He favored his right arm, which hung at an odd angle.
Meth Head advanced.
James screamed for help.
The lights in the jail stayed off.
As his frantic screams echoed through the cell block, the three of us walked down the hallway and into the moonlight beyond the barbed wire and bars. We didn’t look back. He’d taken enough from us in life—and in death, too.
There was no pleasure to be found in whatever happened next. Only justice.
* * *
