“In July, in Shreveport, a woman in her early twenties was seen for the last time walking her dog around the playground of her apartment complex. The dog was found roaming, still on his leash, unharmed. She’d vanished.”
He glanced over at the long folding table where he permanently kept a laptop. He was tempted to boot it up and research those cases, but he was also afraid of being drawn farther in. The less he knew, the easier it was to remain detached.
“They’re regional,” Beth said.
“That’s a stretch.” But not that much of one. He ran a rough calculation in his head. You could drive the distances between those points in one day or less.
She said, “I think 2018 was when he started.”
John came out of his chair, picked up his empty mug, and headed for the kitchen. When he got there, he realized he didn’t want a refill of coffee. Instead, he took a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet. The lip of the bottle clinked against the drinking glass as he poured a shot. He hesitated, then poured a bit more. “Want one?”
“No thank you.”
He took a swallow, then another, loving the burn, the bite, the rush of relief that was too damned temporary. He returned to the living area but prowled around the room, swirling the liquor in his glass.
“What makes you think that’s when he started?” he asked. “What about three and a half years earlier and those two blood moons?”
“I didn’t find any accounts of missing women that coincided with those dates. And—”
“Jesus, there’s an and?”
“And the two 2018 eclipses were particularly significant.”
“I can hardly wait. Why were they particularly significant?”
He could tell she didn’t approve of his sarcasm, but she let it pass. “The one on January thirty-first was also a blue moon.”
“I forgot what that means.”
“The second full moon within a month.”
“Right,” he mumbled into his glass as he took a drink from it.
“They called that January thirty-first eclipse a super blue moon blood moon. Super moon for short.”
He whistled as though impressed.
Then, with annoyance, “Are you getting drunk?”
“Maybe. What of it?”
She thumped her coffee mug down on the end table and placed her hands on the arms of the chair as though to pull herself up.
Instantly, he said, “Stay where you are. We’ve got to talk this out.”
“Not if you’re going to be obnoxious.”
“I apologize.”
She settled back into her chair. He walked over to the dining table and set down his glass of whiskey, which was still half full. Then he covered his face with both hands and whispered into his palms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Why are you so upset, John?”
“Because I don’t want to hear this. Not any of it.” He took a moment to get a grip, then lowered his hands, turned back to her, and, in spite of his denial, asked, “Why was the one in July of that year special?”
Observing him closely, she spoke softly, almost warily. “The total eclipse lasted for one hundred and three minutes. It will be the longest lasting blood moon of the twenty-first century.”
“How do you know all that?”
“The internet. Anybody could know it. When you researched blood moons, you had to have seen how much information is available.”
“Then our unidentified suspect doesn’t have to be an astronomer, an astronaut, a physicist. Just some whack job who went out to howl at the super blue whatever moon on January thirty-first of 2018, grabbed a girl, and liked it, and celebrated the next blood moon in the same way. Poor sucker had to wait till ’22 for his next fix.”
“You’re being obnoxious.”
“I’m not running for Mister Congeniality.” He plopped into the chair, laid his head back, and closed his eyes.
Beth broke a drawn-out silence. “Do you think the theory of serial abductions is so far-fetched? Do you think I’m fanciful? Crazy?”
“No.”
“Then—”
He opened his eyes and held up his hand, stopping her. “My aversion to this topic has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I won’t go through it again. As compelling as your observations are—and they are, Beth. Everything you’ve told me rouses my interest, but I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t.”