Page 42

“Yeah. She’d sleep while we were in school. Mostly. Sometimes she was so tired, she slept through dinner. I knew how to work the microwave though, and we always had something on hand I could pop in for me and Dean on those nights. It was best not to wake her up anyway. She was rarely in a good mood between shifts, and we’d get in trouble for every little thing. I did my best to keep everything running smoothly—Dean helped—but it was never enough. There just wasn’t time for everything. Meals, bathing, homework. Cleaning was tough because she never wanted to throw anything away. Things just accumulated.” He laughed humorlessly. “The stress accumulated. So no, there were no friends or neighbors. Just her.”

Noah rubbed at the moisture that now glistened on his stubbled cheeks. “When you were growing up, until the first attack on your mom, you lived in Paoli. Did she belong to a church there?”

“Not until we were older,” Carter said. “She didn’t have time for it when we were little. It was called United Methodist, I think.”

Josie tucked the name away to check out later.

Carter tried to smooth out his ballcap but the brim was mangled. “I can’t believe this is happening. If she had just come to stay with us like I told her… Shit! I should have gone over there. I texted her that morning to see how she was feeling because I knew that reporter was coming over but I should have just gone to see her. Molly woke up sick, really early. Throwing up. We weren’t going to services that day. We wanted to make sure whatever Mols had wasn’t contagious before we went and infected the whole church. I was on puke patrol. She always wants me when she gets sick and she’s really clingy. That’s why I didn’t go see Mom, but I should have. I should have checked on her, not just sent a text.”

“Did you think she was in danger?” asked Noah.

“I don’t know. I guess. I just— It was like by giving that interview, she exposed herself, you know? It made her vulnerable. I know it hasn’t even aired yet but so many people knew she was doing it. I probably don’t need to tell you guys, but people can be unhinged. I just had this feeling that something bad was going to happen.”

“What made you think something bad was going to happen?” Josie asked.

Carter glanced over his shoulder toward the doors but didn’t answer.

“Mr. West,” Josie coaxed. “What made you think something bad was going to happen? Did you see something? Did your mother tell you something?”

He made a face like he was in great pain. “Dean doesn’t know. No one does. Mom swore me to secrecy even though she said it didn’t mean anything.”

“What didn’t mean anything?” Noah said.

Carter lowered his voice even though the sliding glass doors were closed. “Three years ago, I stopped by her house to put in a new hot water heater and there was this lipstick on her front steps. It was in the crack of the next-to-last step before the door. I thought she dropped it so I picked it up and took it in with me. I handed it to her, said I found it out front.”

Josie’s pulse quickened. “What did she say?”

“Nothing. She just stared at it. Got real pale, started to shake. I asked her what was wrong and she said she hadn’t been feeling well all day. It never even occurred to me that the lipstick set her off. I told her to go upstairs and lie down for a bit, so she did. I took her up some ginger ale and crackers. She seemed fine when I left but then later on, I started thinking about it.” Carter set his hat on the step beside him and picked up his beer again, taking a long gulp. “Mom never got nauseated. Not even while she was working at the daycare. You know little kids. They get everything and pass it along to everyone around them. The more I thought about what happened, her reaction, I realized it had to do with the lipstick. I went back the next day and confronted her.”

“You thought it had to do with the Last Kiss Killer,” Josie clarified.

“I thought that something about it had triggered her reaction. Like it gave her a memory or something. I didn’t get it at first, you know? Why she was so freaked out about a lipstick. The attack, the Last Kiss Killer, that was all off-limits to me and Dean. She never talked about it. I only knew the Last Kiss Killer’s MO because I looked it up on the internet after he attacked her. It took me a while to connect the dots. Like I said, I figured it was just bringing back some traumatic stuff, but when I went back to see her the next day, she said every year around the time she was attacked by the Last Kiss Killer, she found a lipstick. Sometimes on the front step, just out of range of the home security cameras, and sometimes on her windshield.”

Josie felt a shiver work its way up her spine just as the mist from next door cut off. “The one you found, what did it look like?”

“Don’t they all look the same? It was black with that clear tube over the lipstick.”

Definitely not Luxe Glimmer’s Devil Divine. If the Last Kiss Killer had meant to taunt Sylvia, wouldn’t he have left his signature lipstick? Or would he have assumed she’d go to the police and not want to tip them off to his lipstick of choice? The fact that the brand and shade had been identified had never been made public. From what Josie had gathered from the interview Trinity had conducted, Sylvia’s living room had been dark at the time of the attack and she had been too disoriented to notice anything about the lipstick. It was possible that it hadn’t been the Last Kiss Killer leaving the lipsticks for her. Someone else could have been doing it. Someone who had found out about her attack and got off on scaring her.

“Did she go to the police?” asked Noah.

“She wouldn’t. I tried to get her to go but she refused.”

Josie couldn’t recall having met Sylvia before, or coming across any reports having to do with lipsticks or the Last Kiss Killer. They wouldn’t have been able to do much other than document where she’d found the lipsticks, but Josie was a firm believer in leaving a paper trail, even when it seemed silly to do so.

Carter hung his head. “She said she’d already thrown it away. I started to look through her trash, but she wasn’t having any of that. Put me in my place. Told me it was none of my business and to drop it.”

“She never filed a report about any of them?” Noah said.

“Not even once,” Carter replied. “I told her maybe you guys could have pulled prints from one of them or something. I mean come on, those lipsticks appearing around the anniversary of her attack? Not a coincidence. She was adamant that the police couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything and that she would be better off trying to catch the guy when he left it, maybe get a picture of him or something. She never did see him though. He knew to stay out of range of the camera near the front door.”

“You didn’t press the issue?” Noah asked. “Knowing this guy knew where she lived? Been taunting her all those years?”

“Of course I did. Many times.” Carter dug his thumbnail under the bottle label. “She convinced me that there would be no point in going to the police, especially when she never had before and the lipsticks were gone. Then she threatened me.”

“Threatened you how?” Josie said.

He looked back toward the house again. “She told me that if I didn’t shut up and leave it alone, she’d tell Erin about the money I’d lost gambling. It was almost our entire savings. She knew about it because I’d borrowed money from her to put it back into the account before Erin noticed. This was years ago. Molly wasn’t even born yet.”