The Letters

The air feels thick, and my head is swimming as I look at the letter in front of me. It’s in the same crude envelope as the ones from each time before. I must get a least three of them each week since I did that interview. Tucker Jones, a serial killer known for stalking his victims prior to their demise as a way to psychologically torture them. I was presented with the chance to interview him in prison after submitting my name for consideration. I thought it would be my big break, you don’t pass up an opportunity like that. I bite my lip until I taste the copper of blood in my mouth. There was a picture of me in this letter. A picture taken from outside my window with me sitting on the couch, three days ago.

I try to bottle up my terror as I pace around the living room, making sure the front door is locked and my blinds are closed. He’s in prison, he’s in a maximum-security prison, how could he have even taken this picture. I want desperately to think it’s some kind of prank that one of my friends could be pulling on me, but I know it’s him. Somehow it’s him. I keep checking the news to make sure there isn’t any new information on an escaped prisoner in the area, I even called the prison after the last letter came. I didn’t know what to say when I called, and just asked if Mr. Jones had been transferred or released. The man I spoke to audibly laughed. Saying that there’s no way they’d ever consider releasing him and it’s too much of a risk to transfer him. I begged him to just please check and make sure he was still there. He put down the phone for what must’ve been 2 seconds, before picking back up to tell me he was.

I know I must’ve sounded crazy, rambling about letters from an inmate and asking how it could be possible. The guard didn’t care to entertain my fear and insisted that somebody was pulling one over on me. The letters weren’t really menacing when they first started. The first one I received must’ve been two days after the interview and I remember the envelope was a tan color, but not an intentional tan, more like it had been exposed to the sun or discolored by tea. The paper felt rough against my fingertips, a sort of texture I couldn’t place. Scrawled inside were just the words, “It was nice meeting you. -T.J.” There was a poorly drawn smiley face, and I had flipped it over in my hands to see if there was more, but there wasn’t. I brushed it off. I threw it away and figured they’d let him write me a thank you note.

The second one came a few more days later. I grabbed the mail on my way inside after going to the gym and was just flipping through each one when I saw it, that same tan discolored envelope. Inside was the same paper with the same handwriting. This time it said, “I’ve been thinking about the lavender smell of your hair for days. – T.J.” This one sent a chill down my spine, and I threw it away quicker than I throw away junk mail. I ran upstairs to look at the shampoo I use, I always just grab whatever is cheapest off the shelf and don’t think much about the scent, but my uneasy feeling only intensified when I saw the purple label with the scroll of text that said lavender on the bottle. I’d been using it for the last two weeks.

There was something else that unsettled me, so I went back downstairs that day to look at my notes from the interview and when I found nothing I opened my computer and looked for the audio file from out interview. I popped my headphones in and listened intently. Twenty-three minutes in I can hear his deep inhale before he says, “You smell lovely, like a flower in the spring. Is that shampoo or perfume?” I shudder at the sound of his voice. The grate of it is like nails on a chalkboard and I can almost feel his eyes looking me up and down once more. If I had known the things he would say and the way he would act in that interview, I would’ve never gone. Maybe I shouldn’t have been naïve enough to think it would have been any different.

The interview was something of nightmares, even though he was chained to the table, and I was reassured there was nothing to worry about. It was his eyes and the way they peered at me. How he slowly gazed at me up and down and smiled as if he knew something I didn’t. He would lean is as I spoke and cock his head to the side, amused with my questions. I tried to just stay composed and professional, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sitting in the room with pure evil ready to pounce. I would ask him a question and he would only respond with comments about me, licking his lips with every sentence. The only question I had that even piqued his interest regarding my interview was when I asked him about the letters.

“Why did you send the woman you murdered letters?” I kept my voice steady.

“Because I wanted them to know.” He breathed out as he spoke, leaning in.

“Know what?” The hair on my neck was standing but I didn’t dare let him notice.

“I wanted them to know that I was coming for them. That I was watching them. That no-matter what they did or where they went, I would be there, waiting.” He smiled.

“Weren’t you concerned about these woman going to the police?” His smile widened.

“Jenny, can you tell me how many of those woman are still alive?”

My name is his mouth was sickening, but I still replied, “None of them.”

“That’s right,” his lips curled up at the edges, “Not one of those woman escaped me.”

I swallowed and closed my notebook, “I think that’s all Mr. Jones, thank you for your time.” I stood; the metal legs of the chair shrill as they scraped across the cement floor.

“You look like you’d put up a good fight though, wouldn’t you, Jenny?”

I didn’t answer and just kept facing forward as I pressed the buzzer to let the guard know I was ready to leave. His hoarse laugh echoed behind me as I was escorted out.

That was two weeks ago, and I’ve received a letter every two days since then. First the one about meeting me, the second about the smell of my hair, the third asked me why I hadn’t written him back. The fourth told me the guards wouldn’t be able to help me and that I should give up calling the prison. I tossed them all. I told myself over and over that there was no way he could get to me, even if he was able to send those letters. They were just letters, that’s all they were and all they would ever be. Still, the way he said “none of them” bounces around in my mind like a pinball. Fifteen women. He stalked and killed fifteen women and all of them received letters like these before they died. He met them at random and when he found a target he started the process. He was arrested three years ago after a security camera was able to secure that he had been at two workplaces of the victims.

After that, the police on the case were able to get a warrant to search his house and found unsent letters with the addresses of three more women, and some personal items of the victims that even included locks of their hair. It was a victory for the city after young women had been walking around terrified for so many months. We walked in pairs, didn’t stay out after a certain time, and if you received a mysterious letter you were told to report to the police immediately. Somehow he still managed to evade the police with copycat letters and teenage pranks, it was a scattered effort until they finally caught a break with the security footage.

I collapse onto my couch and look back down at the letter on my coffee table. The picture of me is so clear it could be a professional taking it. In the same pencil handwriting on the letter inside, it asks, “Where’s that fight we talked about? Do you think you’ll be the one to get away, Jenny? -T.J.” I called the police, but they said with him in prison there was nothing they could do. His laugh echoes in my mind. This is what he wants. He wants me afraid.