Chapter 1
It was a Tuesday morning when I discovered my fiancé was a serial killer. A Tuesday at 10:59
a.m. to be exact. How do I know the exact time? Or were you wondering how I came to be
engaged to a serial killer in the first place? Both good questions! Let’s start with the second
question first. Obviously I didn’t know my fiancé was a serial killer when I accepted his marriage
proposal. Or maybe not obviously. I mean, you don’t know me. Maybe I’m one of those crazy
women who write fan letters to men in prison and then marry them. I’m not, by the way, but
you’ll have to take my word for it.
Or maybe I’m just an idiot. To be honest, I’ve been feeling pretty stupid lately. Although by most
people’s standards I don’t think I’d qualify as a total moron. I’m a Harvard-educated lawyer. I
may be real-world stupid but I’m book smart.
Am I merely naïve? Perhaps. In denial? For sure. But crazy? No. Or at least no more crazy than
any other woman trying to raise a child on her own while building a career.
Back to the first question. How do I know the exact time I learned my fiancé was a serial killer?
Because I’d rushed my son Daniel to the pediatrician’s office early that morning after he’d
developed a rash overnight. The rash turned out to be a minor skin irritation, but since I didn’t
know that at the time, and since we didn’t have an appointment, we waited over an hour until
his pediatrician could squeeze us in. Which meant by the time I pulled onto the Southeast
Expressway, I was already running very late for work. Then an accident reduced four lanes of
traffic down to two, adding another half hour to my already long commute.
Not for the first time did I regret my decision to move from my Back Bay apartment to a rental
house in Milton. Then I remembered what it was like traveling on the T with an infant in a
stroller and it reminded me that I’d made the right decision, even if I did routinely curse Boston
traffic. But I grew up in Northern California. Sitting in traffic was second nature to me.
After circling the parking garage twice before I finally found an empty space, I raced the two
blocks to the Moakley Courthouse with my briefcase in one hand and my two-and-a-half-year-
old’s mitten-clad hand in the other. We passed through the metal detector, screened our bags,
then dashed down the hall to the daycare center located on the first floor of the building.
I smothered Daniel with kisses before handing him off to Jeanine, his favorite caregiver, then
sprinted to the elevators and incessantly pushed the UP button while I checked email on my
phone. It was 10:54 a.m. I had six minutes to get to the ninth floor conference room before the
start of the weekly staff meeting.
Before I’d had a child, when I worked out five days a week and routinely slept seven hours a
night, I might’ve taken the stairs. But now that uninterrupted sleep was a luxury and I used my
treadmill as a dumping ground for discarded clothes, I didn’t think I could jog up eight flights of
steps without risking a heart attack.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts in Boston was housed on the ninth
floor of the Moakley Courthouse building. My boss required all of the attorneys and paralegals
in the criminal division to attend weekly staff meetings. The only excuse for non-attendance was
if you were in court or at a deposition. Otherwise you were expected to appear in the ninth
floor conference room at 11 a.m. every Tuesday, in person and on time.
My boss was a stickler for punctuality. He was a stickler for lots of things. But this was my dream
job and I’d worked hard to get it, so I’d be damned if I’d give it up just because my boss was a
jerk.
When the elevator finally arrived I blew out a long, slow breath. You got this, I told myself as I
stepped into the empty car. Just breathe. It was 10:55 a.m. If I hurried I might even have time to
stop in the ladies room to pee before the meeting started. And I desperately needed to pee.
Why hadn’t I peed before we left the pediatrician’s office? God, I was such an idiot sometimes. I
pushed the button for the ninth floor and felt calm for all of twenty seconds before the elevator
dinged and jerked to a stop on the second floor. Six people joined me, each one sporting a
bright yellow “JUROR” badge. One of the jurors pressed the button for the fourth floor, and
another pressed the button for the fifth floor.
I jammed my finger into the close door button to get the elevator moving again and checked my
phone. 10:56 a.m. Breathe, Stella. Just breathe. We’d barely begun to ascend when the elevator
dinged and jerked to a stop again, this time on the third floor. Two more people joined us, a
man and a woman both dressed in tailored suits. Attorneys, I assumed. I’d initially thought they
were co-counsel until the woman pressed the button for the sixth floor and the man pressed
the button for the seventh floor. Are you fucking kidding me?
By the time I got off on nine, the elevator had stopped at every floor. Every single floor. I
scanned my ID card to unlock the heavy double doors and checked my phone as I raced inside.
10:59 a.m. Forget a bathroom break. I didn’t even have time to dump my briefcase and coat in
my office.
I scanned my ID card again to get past the next locked door then sprinted down the hallway to
the conference room. I was surprised to find a crowd of people spilling out into the hall. I slid
past two assistants and maneuvered my way inside. Everyone was staring up at the TV monitor
bolted to the far wall so I did too. I was too far away from the screen to read the chyron
scrolling across the bottom, but I recognized a perp walk when I saw one.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Lyndsey, the paralegal who worked in the windowless office
across from mine. Since I was an attorney my office had a window, but it faced a brick wall.
“They caught the Lady Killer,” Lyndsey whispered back.
The Lady Killer was the moniker the press had given to the person who’d been terrorizing
Boston for the last six months since all of his victims—we assumed the Lady Killer was a
male—were attractive young women.
“Thank god,” I said and craned my neck to get a better look at the monitor. The perp was
surrounded by a handful of Boston police officers, but his head was down so that his face wasn’t
visible. Then the cops walked the perp past a group of reporters who all shouted questions at
once and he briefly looked up. And that’s when I discovered the perp was my fiancé.
