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Curious, I knelt down next to the bowl and reached around. Taped to the back of the toilet in a little nest was a thick file folder. Without thinking, I grabbed it and pulled it out.
It was heavy and full of images. Written on the tab were the words “The Fingerless Killer” in black ink.
I sat on the toilet and opened the folder.
The writing was in his handwriting. It was Easton’s, obviously from back when he’d worked for the FBI. The first page was a field report, really dry at first until I got to the crime scene description.
Dead girl, fingers missing, possible sexual assault. No DNA or any other evidence found.
I blinked, suddenly remembering the day Easton had come and checked on me. That had happened right after he’d read a story about a woman that had had her fingers cut off.
It had to be a coincidence. But then again, why was he hiding a file from me?
Nervous, I turned on the water in the sink to mask any sounds I made. I knew I should just put it back, not read it at all, but I couldn’t help myself. This might even be the reason he had been so angry at me for going through his files when I’d first started.
It was like the holy grail. The right thing to do was to put it back and pretend like I had never seen it. But sometimes the wrong thing seemed so much better.
I began to read, skimming through it. There were pictures, horrible pictures of crime scenes and bodies, and I tried to skip over those. But what disturbed me more and more was the narrative that began to cohere.
Lester Seed was a serial killer working out of the Dallas area. He had a lot of victims, at least ten that I noticed as I skimmed, probably more. Some of the cases dated back a pretty long time, and it looked like the farther back I went through the file, the more the handwriting all changed.
It had clearly been worked by a few different people. But Easton and his partner were the most recent two names that I kept seeing come up again and again.
Lester Seed. He’d been caught by a freak accident almost. Apparently they found an old victim, extremely old, and got a piece of his DNA from her body. Maybe he had been sloppy early on, Easton speculated in some field notes. Maybe he wanted to be caught one day.
Easton and his partner, Martin, found Lester when his DNA matched a database of blood donors. They had staked him out, followed him around, taken countless hours of observations.
And then something had happened.
My eyes widened as I read the last field report, the grisly details becoming clear.
Slowly it dawned on me exactly why Easton had left the FBI, and why he was drinking so much.
Easton had become convinced that Lester was about to kill again. He had pushed for the bureau to do something, but they didn’t feel that they had enough evidence and wanted to continue to observe. Going against orders, Easton followed Lester Seed to his home and confronted him.
Seed turned violent. In the ensuing struggle and chase, Martin Rodriguez was stabbed in the neck and eventually died of his wounds in the hospital. Easton shot Seed four times in the chest, killing him instantly.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Easton’s partner had been murdered, and Easton had killed a man. All in a single moment. All in some freak accident.
Then there was a knock at the door.
I almost jumped out of my pants.
My heart was pounding and my mind was stuck imagining that night. Lester running through his house and then popping out from behind a door, stabbing Martin in the neck. I could only guess at the fear and the emotions Easton felt, then and now.
“You okay in there?” I heard him say.
“Yeah, fine,” I said quickly. I closed the folder and dropped to my knees, gently placing it back into the little taped holder he had made.
“You fall in?”
“I didn’t fall in,” I said, annoyed.
I quickly got up and grabbed some toilet paper and began to dab at my pants. I opened the door after a second.
He grinned in at me. “Crazy, huh?”
“Totally insane,” I said.
But I couldn’t help but see the person who was hiding behind his gaze, the person who had lost his partner. The person who had gotten too close to a case and had lost everything.
“That’s not even the worst I’ve seen,” he said.
“Is she gone?”
He nodded. “We won’t see her again.” He paused, and I saw him quickly glance at the toilet. I held my breath, but he looked back at me and smirked. “Paid pretty well, though.”
“Oh good,” I said and began to dab at my pants again.
“Need a hand with that?” he asked.
“I think I can handle it myself.”
“Good. I’m only good at getting you wet, anyway.”
I gave him a withering look. “How about a little privacy.”
