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Snow
frosted the stiff grass over Angel's grave. Toni shivered, seeing in her
imagination the white roses that had been there every time she came to the
cemetery, until her parents couldn't take the pain, the cruel, silent taunting
from the unidentified killer, and moved them to Indiana. Shaking, she crouched
and leaned against the simple cross that held Angel's name, and her dates of
birth and death. She had a hole in the index finger of her driving glove, but
she ignored the wet and cold to clear out the engraved letters in the gray and
pink granite.
There
were no roses on Angel's grave. She supposed she should be grateful. How long
had the roses continued? Until he found a new true love to haunt with notes and
roses and demands for eternal loyalty?
"He's
doing it again," she whispered, and her throat tried to close up.
Toni
blinked away tears that felt as if they had been building up for years, just
waiting to burst out. Her head ached from the pressure. She rubbed the tears
away with the back of her fist. Now wasn't the time for crying. Not yet. When
the White Rose was caught, exposed, and punished, then she could cry. Then she
could finally ask her parents to forgive her for keeping Angel's secrets from
them. Why hadn't she tattled on her sister? Their parents wouldn't have
approved if they found out Angel had a boyfriend. They would have made her
break up with him. She wouldn't have gone to the park to meet her boyfriend.
She wouldn't have died, strangled by fencing wire and left lying in the dirt.
Tabor
Heights still felt small, quiet, and safe. Just like it had when Toni, Angel
and their parents had moved here. She had liked her small classes in school and
the quiet, tree-shaded streets. She had felt safe going anywhere she wanted.
Toni
hadn't felt safe since Curt Mehdlang went to the park to look for Angel and
came back with the police, pale-faced and red-eyed from crying.
She had
to get that job at the Picayune. She
needed a job, and working for the local newspaper would give her all the
information she needed, immediately. People expected reporters to ask
questions.
"Please,
God, if You're listening to me anymore, I have to have that job. I have to do
it for Angel."
Standing,
feeling a little wobbly in her knees, Toni stepped backward from the grave. She
wondered where the other murdered girl was buried. She wondered what the
current target of the White Rose Killer was doing right that moment. Did she
feel curious about the man who wrote her those demanding, frightening love
notes? Did she feel angry?
Toni thought about contacting the police, to ask to talk to the girl. Would they believe her, if she told them about Angel and her theories about the White Rose? Would they think she was a crackpot, capitalizing on someone's terror? Would it do any good to tell anyone?
Bottom line: she had to do something. Even if she had to do it alone.
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