“Anna… this girl was sexually assaulted,” I said.
“What?”
“Look, it’s right here.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Anna frowned. “The other girl committed suicide, this girl was raped and then murdered. Where’s the connection?”
I shrugged. We punched in the next name, and then the next.
Aside from Tina, all of the reports were the same. Women murdered, presence of semen and pattern of wounds indicating sexual assault.
“This doesn’t make any sense!” My frustration was growing. “These girls were all brutalized, all except for Tina. What makes her different?” I asked.
Anna was quiet for a moment. “Maybe she’s the same,” she said.
“What?”
“Think about it. She killed herself for seemingly no reason at all. Maybe that’s why she did it?” Anna reasoned.
The pieces started to click together. “But what about her boyfriend? And what about the boys in the pictures? They’re all dead, too, but their names aren’t saved.”
That’s right. If whoever was doing this was raping and murdering these girls, then what about the boys? Why did they die in the first place? And why didn’t their deaths warrant saving?
Anna and I were still puzzling over it when the phone lit up between us.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
I was beginning to hate that sound. I looked at it nervously.
“Put it on speaker,” Anna suggested.
I took a deep breath and answered the phone, doing as Anna said and pressing the speakerphone option.
“Who is this?” I asked.
Nothing but silence. Silence that was slowly breaking down my sanity.
My voice broke as I asked, “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”….
“Stay away from him.”
Click.
Who the fuck was she talking about?
Wait… Mr. Bad Boy. He was in the picture that I received.
A picture started to form in my mind. Whoever was doing this was coming for me, to rape me, to leave me dead. But where did Anna’s friend (Derek was his name) fit into this?
As I was pondering this question, I heard Anna gasp next to me.
“The pictures,” she said.
“What?”
She pulled up the phone again. “Look at the pictures of the guys.” I looked. The first guy through his windshield, the second hanging from the rafters, the third with his wrists split open, the fourth with a gunshot to the head…
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