Chapter Seven

Two months had passed since the police found my body, there was no news on the investigation. What they knew was that it was the work of a serial killer who’d been active since last year. As far as they knew he’d killed two people before me and dumped the body in East River. The police used to have suspects but they all checked out. The killer had never left any traces. He prepared; he was thorough. The police didn’t want to name him he was just a killer who had to be stopped. However, the news called him ‘The Carver’because he always carved a message on victims’ body with a pocket knife.

Mine said; Catch me.

He challenged the authorities, he was bold and clever. No one knew who he was. No one accept me. 

            Three weeks ago, I tried to contact Detective Carhart when August and I had to collect a soul of a boy who got hit by a car while he was riding a bicycle, turned out it was in the detective’s neighbourhood.

            Carhart lived in a single-storey house with his girlfriend; she was probably younger than him, around my age. She was the one who saw the accident and call 911 for the ambulance. The boy died on his way to the hospital, August was with him.

            I remained at the scene, gave my word to August that I wasn’t going to do anything. Detective Carhart talked to the driver, he didn’t run away and stopped the car to see the boy. He was panic but understood the situation and cooperated with the detective.The police took him to the station. Carhart didn’t go because it was off-shift hours.     

            I followed him to his house, he was having dinner with the girlfriend. I didn’t bother to stay in the dining room and looked around the house. However, I could hear their conversation, the girlfriend was concern about his work. He wanted to change the subject. I couldn’t help but look.

            “I’m not going to discuss about the case with you, Caroline. We aren’t going to talk about work in this house.”

            “But you carry work with you, Ian, all the time. You spend days and nights, or whenever you’re here, in your study. You even lock the door.”

            “You shouldn’t see what’s inside.”

            “I know you’re trying to protect me from those hideous cases,” she reached out her hand, caressing hisbackhanded on the table. “But you need to rest, you need to spend your time elsewhere. I’m not telling you to stop working. You want justice for those girls, and you’re not going to stop until you find that person. I understand and that’s why I love you. But I don’t want to lose you.”

            They were holding hands, fingers intertwined. It was my cue to leave them alone. I went to the study room Caroline was talking about. It was the only room that the door had been shut.I didn’t need to open the door to get in, I could just walk straight into the room.

            I realised what concern his girlfriend and why Carhart had to lock the door. The room filled with boxes and files. One thing that caught my attention was a huge board on the wall. It covered with crime scene photos, and notes with his handwriting, connected with red thread. 

            My mugshot was there; it was the photo I took for my resume, the only photo on the board that actually looked like me. Others were part of the autopsy, the white sheet and ropes. At the centre of everything, there was a note with question mark on it. 

            The other two girls were on the board before me. They resembled to me; long brunette hair, similar height, and around the same age. Though it was only two days since I’d moved to New York City, I wasn’t a random choice. I fit his profile. Carhart knew that too, he’d written those three significant things I’d pointed out on the notes, attached to the board. He believed this person either lived in the city or worked near East River. 

            The photo of my stomach was pinned to the board, catch me, was carved by the knife. I was curious what other messages he’d left behind on victims’ body; Jessy and Kate.

            Carhart believed Jessy was his first. She was discovered last winter. The message on her body said ‘mine’, the letters weren’t as neat as he did to me or Kate. She was sexual assaulted and strangled. Carhart’s handwriting indicated that her earrings were gone.

            Kate was found on 30^thJuly this year. The MO was the same, but they couldn’t track down the murder scene. What made they believed it was the same killer was the message on her stomach; I’m back. Her necklace was gone. 

            At that moment I was certain, he was going to kill again sooner or later. He challenged the detective, he wanted to be recognised. I was part of his collection, his piece of art. 

            I looked around the room and found post-it and pen on the table. I could remember his licenceplate like it was my birthday. I should leave a note for the detective, led him to the killer. It wasn’t like I helped him or did any harm directly.

It should be fine, but August disagreed. He appeared at the time I was going to pick up the pen.

            “You’re doing great so far. Don’t make it worse.”

            “I just…” 

            August shut my mouth with his sharp eyes.

He found the board behind me and something had changed in his eyes. Part of me wanted to push him, told him that was why I wanted to find the killer, but I knew it wasn’t going to work. He wouldn’t like someone told him what to do. August had to come to the realisationthat the killer had to be stopped. I knew it became personal to him when his eyes kept staring at my photo on the board.

His mouth opened slightly, he tried to say something, but changed his mind.

“Let’s go.”

We travelled back to Jericho, that was the last time I saw Detective Carhart.

I spent my days riding an artificialhorse on the carousel, pedaling a pedal boat on the lake, shooting targets with August, or chatting with Mandy. She and I rode a roller coaster together once, and one time was enough for both of us.

“Is there anything else we can do here?”

“Bored already? You’ve been here less than three months and you’re bored already. Girl are you gonna survive here?”

She sounded like an old woman despite that she was way younger than me.

“Do we have television? Or DVD? Or something?”

“Well, we’ve something.”

“What is it?”

“Books. We’ve library here.” She lowered her voice as if someone could hear our conversation. “We aren’t supposed to carry things from the living side back to Jericho, but our courage comrades, bless their souls and their generosities, smuggled one or two books from time to time when they were out there collecting soul and brought them back to the library. They were from the deceases.”

“Where’s the library?”

“Inside a place no one wants to enter.”

“The haunted house?”

She grinned at me.

“Not every grim reaper knows about the library. You’re lucky to be my friend and I like you, so I’m gonna take you in.”

“But there’s a man outside that place, he keeps asking everyone; would you like to meet my friends? It’s creepy.”

“Oh, that’s Alex. He’s our gatekeeper. He’s a good man. He’s…”

The words hung in the air for seconds, but Mandy didn’t give me further explanation.

Alex smiled when he saw Mandy and I walked to the haunted house.

“Mandy! Would you like to meet my friends?”

“No, Alex. I’m here to show my friend the you-know-what-we-are-talking-about.”

“Ah! Excellent! You’re going to love it.” Alex turned his face towards me, smiling.

Once I saw his face up-close I noticed his scar on the left temple, a deep cut by a knife. There was no way he could do that to himself. 

“Come on in, Lilith.”

I nodded at Alex and followed Mandy inside the mouth of Dracula.

The interior was magnificent, completely opposite from the exterior. I felt like walking into a castle where everything looked gold and shiny. The elegant entryway chandelier was made of crystal and the shades were stunning. The stairs split off in the middle and two smaller flights went to opposite directions. The handrails were gold and the steps covered with red carpet.

We didn’t go upstairs though, Mandy took me to the door behind the stairs led us to the library. It wasn’t like any library, more like an enormous greenhouse garden where you could see plants and flowers, but also can read books. Only three grim reapers were here, one of them was August. I didn’t imagine he was a bookworm.

“What kind of books do we have?”

I explored the white shelves nearby, the spines showed me various kind of them. They weren’t in alphabetical order.

“We’ve fiction, non-fiction, some comic books, textbooks, we also have children’s book with colourfulpictures. You might find something interesting here,” Mandy picked one of the books from the shelf. It was a children’s book with a lion and a rat on the cover. “Kids’ book is entertaining and lovely. You’re gonna need this kind of story when you’re here. I think we’ve giraffes somewhere, it’s hard to keep them on track when reapers didn’t return books to the same shelf. Feel free to pick one or two, but you can’t take them with you. They have to stay inside; otherwise, this place won’t be a secret.”

“Okay.”

“Great. Have fun, Lilith. I’ve got work to do.”

Mandy waved at one of the grim reapers sat by the door on her way out.

I strolled around bookshelves, library would be the best place to pass time in Jericho while waiting for names from Death. If I’d known we had this secret place, I would had picked a few books from my shelf when I went to my own funeral. There were so many books I hadn’t finished reading.

Since the shelves had no tag or label indicated genres in each section, I randomly selected a book or two by the spine. If the cover or title was interesting enough, I would take it with me, if not I would put it back. When the time I realisedI had been walking for too long, I had two children’s book and one comic book with me. I should grab a seat and started reading them.

Long wood table and benches was set in the middle, no one sat there. August sat on a cream-colouredgarden chair by the window. He was drawn to a book he was reading; didn’t notice I was there. It was quite pleasant to see him calm and relax, more importantly showed his interest in something. I wondered what kind of book he liked, what story could penetrate his cold heart.