don’t have any answers. And Sparks. He doesn’t even care. And his lawyer had the nerve to bring up the Dateline thing and People magazine, as if I had done any of that for myself.”
Media interest in her father had briefly landed Ellie in the national spotlight. Back in Wichita, Jerry Hatcher spent the better part of his career as a detective—close to fifteen years—hunting the infamous College Hill Strangler. When he was found dead behind the wheel of his Mercury Sable on a country road north of town, the department labeled it a suicide, but Ellie had spent the length of her father’s search and then some convinced it was not. The media became momentarily fascinated with Ellie when the Wichita Police Department finally captured the killer, nearly thirty years after his first murder. Ellie thought the attention would pressure the WPD to honor her father’s pension.
That was all in the past. Six months ago, she had begun to accept the truth about her father’s death. Sometimes fathers killed themselves. Ernest Hemingway. Kurt Cobain. Jerry Hatcher. She’d never understand it, but she had finally stopped fighting. But then Sam Sparks’s lawyer tried to use it all against her in court.
“I let him get to me,” she said. “I hate him. I hate him, and I let it show. I let him get to me.”
She felt her brother’s arm around her shoulder and saw him throw crumpled bills from the front pocket of his jeans onto the bar. He managed to shuffle her out of Plug Uglies, away from the view of her fellow officers, before she began to cry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
8:15 A.M.
E ight-fifteen a.m. on Friday.
Two days had passed since Megan Gunther had discovered that hideous Web site, Campus Juice. Day one had been spent reading and rereading the posts, trying to digest the fact that someone out there apparently despised her. Day two had brought her parents and a trip to the police station, but nothing had changed. She wondered whether day three might finally be the end of it.
She laid belly-down on her double bed, kicking alternating calves against the bedspread while she read her next biochemistry assignment and listened to Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod. With a neon pink highlighting marker, she traced a sentence in her textbook about the biosynthesis of membrane liquids. She had an exam in a week and was going to have to set the curve to have any shot at an A after missing lab yesterday.
She had e-mailed her lab TA with a polite explanation for the absence, but had not received a reply—at least not when she’d last checked her e-mail twenty minutes ago. She thought about logging in again but didn’t want to go online. She didn’t want thetemptation of reading those horrible messages about herself again. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that there could be newer postings.
As impossible as it seemed, she was trying to follow Courtney’s advice to ignore the Web site altogether. She and Courtney had practically grown up together in New Jersey. When they had both accepted college admissions in the city—Courtney at Columbia, Megan at NYU—they had celebrated the fact that going off to school was not going to separate them. But now they were sophomores, and the reality was that the six miles between Courtney’s Morningside Heights apartment and Megan’s Greenwich Village place may as well have been a train ride between Chicago and Philly. Between classes, homework, and making new friends at their respective schools, they were lucky to see each other once a month.
But Courtney had dropped everything when Megan had called her yesterday. And Courtney had proved more helpful than either Megan’s parents or the police. Courtney was a volunteer at a domestic violence hotline and had some experience dealing with stalking—or at least its victims.
According to Courtney, Megan would be best off ignoring what had been written about her on the Web site. They were merely words in
Media interest in her father had briefly landed Ellie in the national spotlight. Back in Wichita, Jerry Hatcher spent the better part of his career as a detective—close to fifteen years—hunting the infamous College Hill Strangler. When he was found dead behind the wheel of his Mercury Sable on a country road north of town, the department labeled it a suicide, but Ellie had spent the length of her father’s search and then some convinced it was not. The media became momentarily fascinated with Ellie when the Wichita Police Department finally captured the killer, nearly thirty years after his first murder. Ellie thought the attention would pressure the WPD to honor her father’s pension.
That was all in the past. Six months ago, she had begun to accept the truth about her father’s death. Sometimes fathers killed themselves. Ernest Hemingway. Kurt Cobain. Jerry Hatcher. She’d never understand it, but she had finally stopped fighting. But then Sam Sparks’s lawyer tried to use it all against her in court.
“I let him get to me,” she said. “I hate him. I hate him, and I let it show. I let him get to me.”
She felt her brother’s arm around her shoulder and saw him throw crumpled bills from the front pocket of his jeans onto the bar. He managed to shuffle her out of Plug Uglies, away from the view of her fellow officers, before she began to cry.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26
8:15 A.M.
E ight-fifteen a.m. on Friday.
Two days had passed since Megan Gunther had discovered that hideous Web site, Campus Juice. Day one had been spent reading and rereading the posts, trying to digest the fact that someone out there apparently despised her. Day two had brought her parents and a trip to the police station, but nothing had changed. She wondered whether day three might finally be the end of it.
She laid belly-down on her double bed, kicking alternating calves against the bedspread while she read her next biochemistry assignment and listened to Death Cab for Cutie on her iPod. With a neon pink highlighting marker, she traced a sentence in her textbook about the biosynthesis of membrane liquids. She had an exam in a week and was going to have to set the curve to have any shot at an A after missing lab yesterday.
She had e-mailed her lab TA with a polite explanation for the absence, but had not received a reply—at least not when she’d last checked her e-mail twenty minutes ago. She thought about logging in again but didn’t want to go online. She didn’t want thetemptation of reading those horrible messages about herself again. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that there could be newer postings.
As impossible as it seemed, she was trying to follow Courtney’s advice to ignore the Web site altogether. She and Courtney had practically grown up together in New Jersey. When they had both accepted college admissions in the city—Courtney at Columbia, Megan at NYU—they had celebrated the fact that going off to school was not going to separate them. But now they were sophomores, and the reality was that the six miles between Courtney’s Morningside Heights apartment and Megan’s Greenwich Village place may as well have been a train ride between Chicago and Philly. Between classes, homework, and making new friends at their respective schools, they were lucky to see each other once a month.
But Courtney had dropped everything when Megan had called her yesterday. And Courtney had proved more helpful than either Megan’s parents or the police. Courtney was a volunteer at a domestic violence hotline and had some experience dealing with stalking—or at least its victims.
According to Courtney, Megan would be best off ignoring what had been written about her on the Web site. They were merely words in
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