Robert Browne - Kill Her Again

A small cry.

The cry of a kitten.

Climbing out of bed, she moved to the window, parted the curtains, and looked out. A small, malnourished gray tabby stood on the walkway outside, tearing at a discarded burger wrapper.

Another orphan, she thought.

Worthington’s wall full of cats came to mind and she smiled. Nothing to get excited about here, folks. Everybody’s safe.

For the moment at least.

But then she remembered the photographs. All those poor, butchered women, who had shared her soul. A soul that this monster seemed to want.

But why hers? Why had she been singled out? And why was he killing her again and again and again?

Would it ever end?

If he were to kill her on the spot, to gut her right where she stood, would she move on to yet another life, only to be hunted down and killed again?

Chavi, he’d called her.

Chavi.

Who was this girl? What did she mean to him?

Was she the young gypsy from the locket? Had it all started with her? Another past life that had been snuffed out by this freak?

Anna turned from the window, feeling helpless and alone. She looked across at the gentle rise and fall of Pope’s chest and thought about his kisses, his touch, the way their bodies had fit together so naturally as they made love.

He wanted to help her. Protect her. But for all of his good intentions, what could he really do?

Would he be there in the next life? And the next?

Had he been there before?

A husband? A lover? A friend?

If so, he hadn’t been able to protect her then. So what made this life any different? How could he protect her now?

Perhaps the only glimmer of hope in this mess was Red Cap’s ability to bleed. To feel pain. If he could be slowed down by a bullet, maybe he could be stopped by one, too.

The trick, of course, was finding him before he found her again. But his apparent ability to appear and vanish at will would make that a difficult task.

An impossible one.

But then she shouldn’t be thinking about possible, right? Isn’t that what she’d told Worthington?

Maybe Susan had the answer to all of this. Maybe somewhere in that notebook of hers, that private obsession, she had discovered the truth about what drove this man.

And maybe that truth would help Anna.

Before he killed her again.

Cracking Susan’s code took about three minutes.

The actual translation, however, took nearly an hour and a half.

Anna discovered that Susan had used a primitive form of cryptography called a Caesar cypher, which substituted one letter of the alphabet for another. If an A equaled a D, then a D would equal a G, and so forth down the line. The name Anna McBride, for example, would read: Dqqd PfEulgh.

Why Susan had felt the need to encrypt her writing was a mystery all its own. Most of it had little to do with the so-called bogeyman, but was, instead, a tribute to her friendship with Jillian. A chronicle of how they’d met and time they’d spent together.

Their neighborhood adventures. Their days at school. Their favorite teachers. Friends. Enemies. Crushes.

Through it all, however, Anna sensed an undercurrent of both envy and worship in Susan’s words. Jillian was the pretty one, the popular one. Susan, the hanger-on. Yet despite that trace of envy, there was no malice intended. It was clear to Anna that Susan loved her friend.

And as she read, Anna was surprised to find that she remembered some of the events and people Susan wrote about. Only vague glimpses here and there, but enough to fill her with a profound sense of loss.

Jillian had been taken away so young.

What would have happened if she had lived? What kind of life would she have had?

When Anna reached the passages chronicling those terrible moments in the alley and the discovery of Jillian’s body in Foster Park, she had trouble breathing.

Susan’s pain was so raw that all Anna could think about was how this one incident had led to so much heartache. A trail of devastation that could be traced forward to this very moment in time.

She looked across at Pope, still fast asleep. How different would his life be, if Susan had never suffered such a blow? Would they still be happily married, raising a beautiful son?

As she continued to read, Anna noticed a change of tone in the narrative. A darkness that had settled into Susan’s words. This was where the passages became less coherent. A rambling screed against Red Cap. Part rant, part analysis, with detailed, but often confusing, commentary on the newspaper clippings and photographs.

She wrote of the failed police investigation. When the Rambler was found abandoned in the parking lot of Big Mountain-the same place from which it had been stolen-the police expanded their investigation to Allenwood, questioning neighbors near the amusement park. But none of them had seen the man young Suzie had described.

He was a phantom. A mystery.

But the police’s failure to find this mystery man didn’t stop Susan. As the years went by, and Susan got older, she spent hours in libraries, sitting behind microfiche machines, searching through decades-old newspaper articles, always looking for the same thing. Always hunting for that symbol of Red Cap’s broken soul:

The gypsy wheel.

From what Anna could decipher, Susan’s take on all of the material she’d gathered was much the same as hers and Pope’s and Worthington’s. The past lives, the chain of killings-all linked by that simple, circular symbol…

But then the notebook abruptly ended.

No further conclusions, no new observations, nothing.

A dead end.

Disappointed, Anna looked across at Pope again and thought she knew the reason. This had to have been the moment that Pope had entered Susan’s life. The moment she became the center of attention, the focus of his world.

And for many years, she had managed to fake it, to repress her pain and play the loving, devoted wife. When her son was born, their household was undoubtedly filled with joy — until Ben started to overshadow Susan, getting most of his father’s attention. Then old insecurities had surfaced, and coupled with the damage Jillian’s death had done to her, Susan’s illness could no longer be contained, morphing into something different now. Something deadly.

This was pure speculation on Anna’s part, of course. A semi-educated guess. But she had a strong feeling she was right.

Unfortunately, none of it brought her any closer to finding Red Cap.

Depressed, she started to close the notebook when she spotted something. Inside the back cover was a small built-in pocket, normally used to store extra paper. Protruding slightly above the fold was the edge of what looked like a photograph.

Anna pulled it out, feeling a slight kick in her gut as she looked at it.

It was a photo of the young gypsy girl, staring solemnly at the camera. She looked about seventeen, with flawless dark skin, curly black hair, and defiant, almost hypnotic eyes. A regal beauty in a long, patterned skirt, and a stark white blouse, a shawl draped over her shoulders.

Chavi.

It was Chavi.

But where, Anna wondered, had Susan gotten this? None of her writings made any reference to it.

Turning the photo over, she read the caption in the upper left hand corner: Roma Vjestica by Jonathan O’Keefe.

Just below this was a slightly smudged stamp that read:

POWELL UNIVERSITY HISTORICAL ARCHIVES-DO NOT REMOVE.

Stolen, apparently. Which meant it must have been very important to Susan.

Near the center was a question mark, scribbled in blue ink, and next to this were thirteen letters, written in Susan’s precise handwriting:

YLMXM WZAIE MXX

Another Caesar cypher.

But this time, Susan had changed the key, and it took Anna a moment to decipher the code. When she was done, it translated to: