Page 29 of Zen's Crash

As Lexi talks about the stories her mother told her of her grandmother, I gaze down into the box totally dumbfounded. Interrupting her, I say, “Lexi, I think we may have found something.”

She leans over to look inside the small hat box. “Why would my parents have kept flash drives?”

“I don’t know but I think we should take a look at what’s on the drives. They could be full of family pictures or contain something that relates to the case.”

“I agree,” she says, digging each flash drive out of the box and handing them to me. “Follow me. I’ll take you to my personal space downstairs.”

When we approach her safe room, I see she wasn’t joking about using it for her living quarters. She’s got a staggeringly good setup. Much like me, she has a super-nice chair and multiple monitors. Lexi literally jumps into her chair and slides the first drive into her computer. I stand behind her, looking over her shoulder. Lexi laughs, “Looks like it’s all my mom’s old recipes.”

She pulls it out, tosses it onto her desk, and puts another in. “You called it earlier. This one is all family photos. Didn’t realize we had so many.”

The next one is full of her dad’s favorite literature and poems. There’s one filled with information on plumbing. Another on electrical wiring. A couple filled with information on generalized carpentry and home maintenance.

Then we started getting to the good stuff. “This looks like tons of information on home security, living off the grid, hiding in plain sight.”

“I’m assuming this one was your father’s?”

“I agree.”

Pulling that one out and discarding it she puts in a couple of more before we find what we’re looking for. When she clicks the file open, we see images of her mother. She’s bruised and battered, sitting in a hospital bed.

Lexi gasps. “That’s my mom!”

“I know. Don’t freak out. Let’s try to figure out what happened to her.”

She clicks on a document and when it opens, we see the title is ‘Medical Discharge Report’. I squat down beside Lexi and put my arm around her. We silently read the document together. It talks about how she was attacked in the parking lot of the local college by an unknown assailant who abandoned the attack when her husband, who she came to pick up, approached the vehicle. The report says her injuries were superficial, but referred her for follow-up with a therapist.

Lexi’s hand comes up to cover her mouth. “So it’s true that my mom had a crisis event during that time period. Do you think it was the same man who attacked the co-ed and killed her?”

“We can’t know. Let’s keep looking through the files on his flash drives.”

She glances up at me for a brief second before clicking open the next folder in the row. It was an official police report of the crime. We kept looking through the files, but it didn’t appear that her attacker was ever arrested or that the police had suspected it may be linked to the co-ed murder. “Either there were two men attacking women at your father’s campus, or this is the same man,” I tell her.

“I can’t believe my mother lived with that secret every day of my life and I never knew.” The hurt in Lexi voice tears at my heart.

“Your mother probably liked her privacy, and your father supported her by doing whatever it took to help her move past this horrific event.”

“I keep thinking it’s the same guy,” she admits.

“Most killers don’t start out murdering someone. The work their way up to it by committing smaller crimes. There are serial killers out there that started this way and were never caught,” I explain.

“That’s a chilling thought,” she whispers as she stares at one of the images of her mother.

I reach over and pull the flash drive from her computer. “This explains why your father was so paranoid and security conscious. He had it in his mind that if he kept moving this guy would never find your mother again.”

“That makes sense,” she murmurs. Lexi looks a little shell-shocked at discovering her mother had been attacked possibly by the same individual who ended up killing another woman.

I see the exhaustion on her face and wonder if she actually got any sleep last night. I ask, “Do you want to lie down and rest? I could stay here with you.” Pulling my black leather rucksack off my back I add, “I brought my laptop. I can go through all the flash drives more thoroughly while you catch some z’s.” There was quite a mix of stuff on those flash drives, I don’t know how tech-minded Lexi’s father was, but I want to check the metadata in case some of the photos are hiding stuff.

She nods and climbs from her chair to her bed, and burrows down under her blankets. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, she admits. “Maybe just a short rest.”

I leave Lexi’s computer active because I don’t know if she’s working on downloads or updating her games. Instead I edge her keyboard out of the way to make space for my computer and start with the flash drive that contains details of her mother’s attack. I realize rather quickly that she was lucky it wasn’t damn sight worse. Her husband interrupted the attack in time to save her from being raped or killed. The look on his face in some of the hospital pictures is just downright tragic. I can tell he really loved his wife and was devastated to see her injured.

I put in one of the last few flash drives that we didn’t look at and make a shocking discovery. There are maps and handwritten notes scanned into a digital file relating to five more dead women strung across three states. It takes me only a moment to realize that her father wasn’t hiding from the man who attacked his wife and killed the co-ed, he was trying to track down the guy. From the looks of it, his wife was helping him. It seems like every time they caught up with him, it was too late.

Shit, this explains why he was so anally retentive about security. It wasn’t because he feared the killer would find them. It was because he was worried that he’d get the drop on the killer, and he’d retaliate. What was this man thinking of playing a cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer with his wife and kid in tow?

I glance over at Lexi’s now sleeping face. Her expression is so relaxed and innocent. I literally cannot fathom putting her at risk this way. Poor Lexi was raised by a crazy man. He just wasn’t crazy in the way we thought he was.

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