Our Sick Inheritance (editing)

Chapter 24 - Who's Jolene?

Kyle felt he was getting close. He could almost taste it in the sour metallic sweetness of the thought. He sighed in anticipation and said a quick prayer to find the secret clue to tell the whole story as he always did before opening the covers of the folders sitting on his desk. Though he had gone over each one of the West Coast Runaways' files personally and privately a thousand times, Kyle felt he was missing something. He studied these cases together and listed the similarities then the differences. He knew sometimes the obvious stole the attention from the more significant smaller clues that often gets overlooked until it feels too late. It's not just the straight common facts about each case but a progression of telltale signs to follow in each murder that lead to the key answers. And often that takes a while to search for and figure out.

The long day took a toll and the glass of wine he drank only half of was making him tired. A memory of Jolene's face pictured in his mind before he forced himself to blink her away. The attempt was futile. He hated looking at her pictures, but he had to. He noticed that even in her frozen pose, a full story was told. The fear and pain in Jolene's expressions demonstrated her killer's feelings and it was more horrifying than Kyle could normally handle. Through her killer's anger, it was safe to say it was the passion that he gave everything he had of his attitude and he didn't spare Jolene from anything less. Kyle couldn't wait to get this killer off the streets, away from his daughter, and away from his wife, especially now that he was in their local area.

Kyle's mind went again to Stacy and compared her to Jolene. He had never done that before. His daughter was alive, Jolene wasn't. The similarity to Stacy scared him so much that the thought wouldn't leave his brain. He remembered seeing Jolene in the upstairs window at her house where she was killed. That her spirit could have been downstairs in his basement felt personally intrusive. Kyle sucked back in his panic as if he didn't want the events to be life changing but mere hiccups in his day.

With the pull apart of every second he had lived in the last ten hours, and after agonizing the possibilities, Kyle couldn't even be sure if it was Jolene he saw in her window anymore. Was she really in his basement? The lights weren't working so most of what was down there were shadows that took on strange forms. He had been working overtime so maybe it was easier to question if he was imagining things or not. The logic side of his mind which spoke under its breath more than shouted in these situations whispered that experience always told him differently. His logical side always won. But ghosts where the last thing he needed right now, Kyle thought. He rubbed his eyes and looked at a few of the pictures he took of Jolene again. Jolene looked so much like his Stacy they could be sisters. Kyle was obsessing, he could feel it.

All seven murders still did not produce a viable suspect. Kyle just couldn't get over that. He scratched at the tingling from his tired scalp. His brain felt heavy as if begging to be released to sleep. However, Kyle wasn't ready to. The killer could be just a block away from their home and he wouldn't know it. His team hoped the killer wouldn't cross over to Canada and make it harder to find him. Kyle was sure everyone who was ever involved in any of the cases, was hoping Washington was going to be his last stop. The details of the murders scanned through his eyes like a computer language.

How was the serial killer meeting these girls, and where was their first contact? The girls looked like they worked the streets but in classier areas. Their hair was colored and styled. Their clothes in their suitcases were nice so it could have been anywhere. Upon research they discovered some of the girls had been arrested at some point for prostitution. Jolene was the only one that didn't have a record. She also had a job and didn't fit the profile at all. It was the positions the girls were found in, they way they were killed and the blood in the eyes that connected them most. Even Jolene.