Page 61 of Crawl
If I know he’s committing crimes, is it my duty to stop him?
“Remedy?” Peter asks.
I startle, jumping in my seat. “Yes?”
“Do you want me to take you back to work?” he asks. “These kinds of questionings can be shocking. I completely understand that. I can escort you back to the estate and make sure Winstone doesn’t try anything.”
Peter is sweet, and in a way, I’m grateful that he’s offering. But no one can be trusted. Especially not someone like him.
So why do I trust Cash?
“I’m fine. But thank you,” I say. “I just want to get back to work.”
Peter nods. “Please call me if you think of anything.”
As I walk out of the room toward the front of the station, I try to mentally block out the noise. The copy machines whirring. The chatter between employees. The phones ringing. I need to think straight, and none of this is helping. A man in a police uniform looks up from his desk and stares at me. Another officer gawks, and it’s like every pair of eyes in the entire building is staring at me, but I don’t know why. I rush toward the door, but the clerk at the front desk increases the volume on the television and I hear:More on the Key West Killer.
I stop in my tracks. Then I face the screen, flattening my fingers on my sides.
The reporter sits with her feet inside of a hatch to a crawl space, her expression neutral. Her platinum blond hair is perfectly styled, and it seems like she’s the kind of person who will never be touched by these crimes.Investigators now believe that the Key West Killer, now dubbed ‘the Crawler,’ is linked to over thirty known murders across the US. We spoke with Veronica Long, a professor of criminology and a longtime profiler in Miami, who believes the Crawler to be in his late thirties, early forties, with a knowledge of construction—
A ringing fills my ears. On the screen, the investigators clear out each crime scene while the profiler dissects the Crawler. Chunks of white insulation foam. A broken painting. White paint and dried red blood. I swallow a dry breath. None of the victims are my stepdad. There’s no reason to be upset. But I can feel police officers’ eyes burning into me. I’m going to explode.
I swing around to give the officers a dirty look, but everyone is busy. No one seems to notice me.
Am I being paranoid?
I stagger toward my car, bile bubbling in my throat. The reporter’s words flash in my mind:thirty known murders.
Thirty people are dead.
That’s what they know. There may be more.
If I know something—if I knowanything,is it my job to tell the police? To make sure that no one else dies?
I slip into my car, tapping my fingers nervously against the steering wheel. What do I know? I know Cash abducted my stepdad. I knowIkilled my stepdad. Cash, according to my knowledge, hasn’t killed anyone.
But as I drive back to the estate, that sinking feeling threatens to take over. Right now, Cash is at the hardware store, picking up and dropping off an item for one of his newer developments. I have time to process this before he returns. But that stops me.
He knows about construction. He fixed my door. He even knows the people at the hardware store.
But heshouldknow them. He’s a real estate developer. It’s his job to build things.
And yet I can’t shake that he’s connected to these murders somehow. I drive back to the estate, chills running through me. No matter what I tell myself, I can’t get rid of these feelings.
So I force myself into his downstairs office, where I killed my stepdad the night before. I pick through his desk drawers. Pens. Paperclips. A pair of reading glasses. But I can’t stop searching. I try his computer again, but no matter what password I try, nothing works.
Bones jumps in my lap, circling until she finds a comfortable position. My breath catches in my throat, and I try her name. It doesn’t work. But for the hell of it, I try my own password:Bones1934, a reference to the tattoo on my back and the year Bonnie and Clyde were killed. The password prompt disappears, and video files fill the screen. I recognize myself in the thumbnails, so I double-click one.
In the video, I’m sitting on a computer chair. From the expression on my face, I’m intrigued by whatever I’m watching. I almost exit the video—there are surveillance cameras everywhere in the estate—but then I see my unmade bed in the background.
This video isn’t from the Winstone Estate. It’s from my bedroom.
Did Cash hack into my laptop?
I quickly log out of the computer. It frightens me, but it doesn’t mean anything. It means he’s a voyeur, or even a stalker. But it doesn’t mean he’s the Crawler.
I shift my focus to the back of the room, in the closet, where he keeps his safe. I try a few different combinations on the lock, but each time, red letters blink back at me:Access Denied!Finally, I try my own birthdate, and it opens. My stomach does a belly flop. It’s like hewantsme to find what’s inside. And that scares me.
