Lisa Unger - The Stranger Inside

Finally, she just gave up on sleep. Who needs it when there’s coffee?

She extracted herself from the warmth of her husband’s arms and left the bedroom. She checked on Lily, then went to the room she and Greg used as an office, sat at her desk and checked her email. Nothing from Henry. She sent him a message, knowing him to be a chronic insomniac, and definitely not one to complain about 3 a.m. missives. Just a subject line: Did you forget about me?

She hesitated before going down the rabbit hole of social media. Did she really want to open that browser and get sucked into the vortex of Everyone Else—all the pretty lies, half-truths, curated moments, bravado, faux-humble braggadocio. Had she ever emerged from a social media romp with her self-esteem intact? No.

But she went anyway, wading through the lives of old school friends on whom, but for social media, she’d never have laid eyes again, colleagues who were doing (way, way) better than she was—or so it seemed, former editors she’d never really liked, distant cousins she hadn’t seen in a decade. The cavalcade of filtered images—trips to Venice, recipes for a Tuesday night, pots prettily bubbling on stoves, perfectly decorated rooms, pictures of children in all manner of comic mischief.

Rain’s own picture of Lily covered in sweet potatoes had earned her 250 thumbs up, hearts and laughing emojis. She was pathetically pleased, started scrolling through the comments. A note from her old friend, journalist Sarah Wright: What a cutie! Motherhood is the most important job in the world! The heart-eyed emoji! Rain clicked on Sarah’s page.

Honored and stunned that my feature on the opioid epidemic has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Am I dreaming?

Rain already knew about the nomination, of course. It was everywhere. And Sarah deserved it. She’d been working her ass off for decades. So, how was it possible to be happy for someone—because Sarah was a great person and a stellar journalist, and her series was, simply put, brilliant—and yet still feel a dump of despair so total that you almost needed to lie down. Sarah’s kids had been more or less raised by nannies and by Sarah’s mother—a fact over which Sarah herself had voiced poignant regret and had even written about. According to Gillian—who knew everything about everyone—Sarah’s daughter had just dropped out of Princeton and was living in Sarah’s basement. Sarah’s son, according to Gillian, didn’t even speak to her.

Women make choices, said Gillian, single and childless, by choice. We must. Do you want a Pulitzer Prize? Or do you want a happy kid? Men don’t have to make those decisions. There aren’t as many judging eyes on them.

Rain was ashamed to admit that she wanted both. Why couldn’t she have both? Wasn’t it just giving in to think you couldn’t do or have it all?

Anyway, Rain wasn’t online to bring forth her daily—or nightly—existential crisis.

She clicked on Gillian’s Twitter feed.

Why isn’t there more information on Steve Markham’s murder? read Gillian’s tweet. The Feds aren’t talking. What gives?

Her post had earned nearly a thousand likes and even more retweets.

Indeed, thought Rain. What gives?

She searched, scrolled through old articles about Markham that she’d read a thousand times. Old news from the investigation, the trial, his acquittal, his book deal, media appearances. Chatter online—women in love with him, feminists decrying the injustice of his acquittal, profiles on the crime blogs, and those sites dedicated to murder and murderers. Then the cursory stories about the recent discovery of his body. Nothing new, no threads to pull. Like Greg said, the sad end to an unjust story. Unless.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, then she entered a name into the search bar. She clicked on the first link:

The Boston Boogeyman Wayne Garret Smith, youth counselor, beloved in his community as an advocate for underprivileged boys. He ran an after-school sports program at the local recreation center for nearly twenty years. Smith received awards, grants, was featured in area papers for his tireless work on behalf of young men just like he had been. Orphaned at ten, he was raised as a ward of the state, never adopted, emancipated from the system at eighteen. He joined the army, went to college, married, had two young girls. He was an American success story, someone from the twisted beginnings of abuse who came through to thrive and help other young men, too.

Rain scrolled through newspaper articles, images from the trial, pictures of the three boys who went missing over a five-year period in the Boston area. (It was suspected that there were many more, but their bodies were never found. He had access to boys—his center a place where runaways could seek shelter for the night, get a hot meal, come for clothes or a shower.)

When the police brought Smith in, they had a rock-solid case: damning physical evidence in the form of trophies—a Spider-Man watch, a tattered old bear—not to mention the graphic photos Smith had taken himself. But Smith claimed his civil rights had been violated—that any admissions he’d made had been coerced, that he’d been brutalized by police, that the arresting officer had failed to Mirandize him, evidence had been planted.

After a lengthy trial, Smith’s high-profile attorney managed to establish enough reasonable doubt that he was acquitted. It was a travesty of epic proportions, the kind of case that haunted cops, crime beat reporters and prosecutors alike.

A year later, after an anonymous tip, Smith’s body was found in an abandoned barn deep in the woods on the outskirts of Boston. He died the way his young victims did—bound, in mortal terror, tortured, violated and humiliated. No physical evidence, no witnesses, suspects or leads. The killer was never found.

A little red 1 appeared over her mail icon. She clicked on it and there was a message from Henry. Subject line: For Your Eyes Only.

A burst of adrenaline. She clicked on the email and saw a slew of attachments: police reports from the Smith and Markham murders, crime scene photos, civilian security camera images.

There’s not a whole heck of a lot to go on, he wrote. But this is everything I have on the Boogeyman, and the Markham murder, gleaned from inside contacts, and other moles like me—those of us watching from the shadows, the invisible.

As a writer herself, Rain appreciated his flair for drama.

He went on: Some of the civilian cams are interesting. You know how everyone has those doorbells now, the in-home cameras, doggy watchers?

Yes, she knew them well.

An image was captured, he wrote. Useless for identification but compelling nonetheless.

Finally: Nothing on Kreskey, of course. Those files are too old to be digital. You’ll have to go back to Detective Harper for those details.

Detective Harper. Another name that moved through her like a shiver.

What did you find today?

Nothing much, she lied.

She’d put the red crystal heart in the back of her underwear drawer, wrapped in a piece of silk. She’d been puzzling over it. The police would have found it when they searched the place. No way they could have missed it. Which meant that someone put it there after the technicians had left. She briefly toyed with the idea that Henry might be fucking with her. But then she dismissed it. It was one of those things that no one knew about her—almost no one. She could barely bring herself to think about it, what it might mean, the only person who could have put it there. How could he have known that she’d be there to find it? She locked it all up tight, in the box where she locked all the other memories on which she didn’t want to dwell.