A long dormant part of George Silvero awakened one Tuesday afternoon in his Forensic Psychology class. He’d been teaching at the community college for thirty-five years, and nothing surprised him anymore. But the quiet girl who always sat in the corner hiding behind her brown hair spoke up that Tuesday.

   He was standing at the podium, his eyes looking but not focusing on the thirty or so students in the stuffy classroom. As usual they all looked bored; half of them were actively not paying attention—drawing elaborate doodles or staring out the window at the drab November foliage. One young man was sleeping on his open textbook, a thin string of drool about to hit the page. He barely heard his own voice reciting a list of term paper topics, memorized from the past ten times he’d taught this class.

   "Competency evaluations, children as witnesses, the insanity plea…" The monotony of his voice and the constant low vibrations in his throat could put him to sleep. He didn’t know how only one of his students was actually sleeping.

   At some point toward the end of his list he noticed the girl in the corner with her hand raised. It halted him mid-word. "Yes?"

   "Could I do a report on a specific serial killer?"

   He must have read off the serial killer topic, although he had no memory of doing so. His reply barely missed a beat. "Sure. Who were you thinking of?"

   A student interested in serial killers did not surprise George Silvero, especially in his Forensic Psychology class. Most students were bored by most of the class’s material and only perked up once he started the brief unit on serial killers. He’d read multiple reports on Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Charles Manson. He could be an expert on serial killers from the number of reports he’d read alone.

   "Well, this killer wasn’t ever caught," the girl said. Her eyes were a flat brown. "Have you ever heard of the Warner Beach Killer?"

****

   George smoked his pipe sitting in his leather armchair, staring blankly at the 6:00 news flickering across the TV screen. He hadn’t reacted well to that, not at all. Something this big he couldn’t merely hope no one would notice. He had hesitated too long, then practically choked on his short reply.

   His wife Rosalie finally brought in dinner, and he forced his mind out of its black hole to help set up the TV tables. It used to be every night they ate in the dining room, with candles and wine. Once the kids went off to college, however, he and Rosalie had become more comfortable, lazier.

   Things were the same as every night except for the memories running through his head. As George watched a news clip about the latest big murder trial, he could remember that tightness in his throat almost forty years ago as he had wondered, "Do they have a suspect yet?" For the first few years after the Warner Beach murders he had fought to maintain a calm composure whenever the topic came up. But it was so long ago! The police hadn’t been able to find a suspect back then; even a few years ago when they found another body, the new DNA technology hadn’t done any good — the girl had been decomposing under the sand for at least twenty-five years. Some mousy little girl fresh out of her teens wouldn’t be able to find enough evidence to convict him, if she could find any evidence at all.

   That cocky sociopath’s voice had ruled him all those years ago, until it almost got him caught. But now even the strictly rational part of his brain told him he was safe.

****

   Over the next couple of days, between teaching and his small caseload of rich neurotics at the clinic, he tried to find out more about the brown-haired girl in his class. He couldn’t pick her name out of the student roster, so he asked his class to write a one-page proposal for their final paper.

   Her name was Clare Jeffries, and her proposal was short and to the point. "Using scholarly psychological sources as well as the public police reports of the murders, I will profile the Warner Beach Killer. The profile will include physical and psychological attributes of the killer as well as proposed motives for the crimes." These two sentences did little to quell George’s fears. For all he knew he would be reading a paper about himself on December sixteenth.

   George flipped through his grade book and found the name Clare Jeffries in his own handwriting. All of her test scores had been 95 or above. Just like me in college, George thought. But he had never been bold enough to write a paper on serial killers.

   He opted to eat his lunch in his office with the door closed and locked, so he could use his computer to find information about Clare on the internet.

   He found her home address and campus email almost immediately, but she didn’t seem to be in any of the clubs or sports at the college, according to the school’s web page. Maybe she was just some honor student trying to go above and beyond with a great term paper. After three weeks had gone by and she still stared at him during his lectures with her flat brown eyes lacking any glint of suspicion, that overconfident voice convinced him it was nothing. He would still tread carefully around this girl and her term paper.

****

   George was zoning during one of his manic-depressive’s sessions (fifty minutes of "I hate myself" and "I hate my life" always put him to sleep) when Lucy’s face flashed into his memory.

   He blinked and looked up at his patient, a thirty-five-year-old housewife. Her illness had been mostly wiped out by Lithium, but she still insisted on therapy three times a week, earning her an Axis II diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Mrs. Janet Granger barely noticed his look of surprise as she continued talking about her huge life problems, which included her husband making an off-hand comment about her cooking two weeks ago. Lucy’s face could never have been triggered by Janet’s — Janet was made up to the hilt, her hair carefully colored a sandy blond, the complete opposite of Lucy’s pale, innocent face and long black hair. Ignoring Mrs. Janet Garner but keeping up the pretense of taking notes on her words, George allowed himself to remember exactly when he had seen Lucy’s face exactly that way.

   She had given him that look, that horrified and disgusted look, as he had been telling her he loved her. His words echoed in his ears, so tangible he glanced to see if Mrs. Janet Garner had heard them. "…you are so beautiful I could never look at another girl. I love you even though we’ve never dated…"

   His face heated at his teenage naivete. He supposed hers was the only reaction possible to those words, given the circumstances. Lucy had been his cousin, after all. But they had grown up together, best friends. He thought he knew her. He thought she would be able to look past their common family to see that they were in love. Unfortunately, Lucy, who had been sleeping with the class president the entire spring of their junior year, hadn’t thought of George as her best friend since fifth grade. The ballpoint pen in George’s right hand suddenly cracked in half. Ink oozed over his hand like black blood. "Oh, dear," Mrs. Janet Garner said indifferently as George scrambled to clean up the mess. "Was it something I said?"

   He rescheduled the rest of his patients and drove home in his silver Lexus. Rosalie was still working at the town library and wouldn’t be home for a few more hours. He let himself into the house and popped the cork of a bottle of Chardonnay.

   After he had moved out of that suffocating New England town and started college, George found that he could be charming, even popular, with girls. This had been a surprising revelation, because his hometown of Oakridge, MA in the 1950’s was small, closed-minded, and had a very good memory. They remembered that George had lusted after his own cousin. They couldn’t convict George of her murder, but they wouldn’t forget that he was a suspect.

   George had gone to college as far away from Oakridge as possible. The University of Oregon. At college there were plenty of girls, smart pretty girls, smarter and prettier than Lucy. And after that whole Warner Beach thing, he decided to marry Rosalie. He hadn’t even thought of Lucy in decades. Why now? Why in the middle of a counseling session?

   It was all Clare Jeffries’ fault that these memories were escaping, that he felt ready to crack. He wondered how her report was coming.

****

   December 16th arrived far too quickly. George could hardly eat the breakfast of eggs, toast, and sausage Rosalie cooked for him. As he eased the Lexus into a parking space at the college, he saw his hands shaking on the steering wheel.

   This was the day of the final exam, as well as the due date for the term paper. George slowly gathered up a stack of tests and Scantron sheets and slipped them into his leather briefcase. He fumbled with the clasps, then hurried off to the classroom.

   Most of the students were already present when he entered, and he didn’t bother seeking out Clare Jeffries in her usual corner. He simply passed out the tests and collected the papers, then left the proctor to do his job. George managed to go back to his office, spend two hours cleaning it out for the winter break, and drop off the tests for his Introduction to Psychology class, and drive back to his house twenty minutes away before frantically searching through his briefcase for a paper titled, "The Warner Beach Killer."

   The paper in one hand, his briefcase in the other, he ran up the stairs two at a time to his office. He locked the door behind him. Rosalie would be home at four, in about an hour. He didn’t need her to come home and find him obsessively reading a paper on a series of murders they would both rather forget. He flipped the cover sheet over to the first page.

   "The girls murdered by the so-called Warner Beach Killer, twenty-three" Twenty-three? "known, had commonalties, the most obvious of these being their physical appearance, the most important being the man who killed them. The choice of victims and the method of murder so closely links the killer’s personality that a psychological profile, physical attributes, and even personal history, can be intuited. This information has been compiled into a profile, which will be examined in this paper."

   Twenty-three. George could not get past that number. Hadn’t he only killed twenty-two? Even forty years and numerous attempts at self-hypnotic repression could not erase a murder. Twenty-two. The age he’d been when he stopped. The number was branded in his memory. "Here’s to our new life together," he’d said to Rosalie, raising his wine glass in celebration of his graduation from college.

   "Here’s to a new life," Rosalie had replied, swallowing blood red wine through her sorrow. George had attempted to drown his own guilt that night.

   His fault for Rosalie’s sadness. But her sister, Diana, had tempted him with her long black hair, the pale skin that bruised so easily. He had at least managed to not flirt with her in any way until that night he killed her. She would be the last. He had Rosalie to make sure of it.

   "…serial killers typically have antisocial personality disorder, not that they are antisocial in any way. They are usually quite charming, although their motives are always for self, not society. How does a person develop an antisocial personality? Generally the father is also an antisocial personality…"

   George’s mind leapt from Diana to one of his earliest memories.

   "Flowers for you." From a low vantage point, he could see his strikingly handsome father lean over to kiss his mother. His mother’s limp dark hair hid her bruised face. Her hands shook as he stood. "Honey, you know I didn’t mean it. I was drunk and I had a bad day at work. I feel awful about this, more awful than you could ever know…"

   The paper possessed George with its ability to bring back a flood of memories as he read.

   "Three behaviors often premeditate an adult serial killer:

    bedwetting—"

   "You stupid little shit! It smells like a fucking bathroom in here!"

   "—killing small animals—"

   "Georgie, have you seen Mrs. Patterson’s cat? She says she let it out yesterday after noon and it never came back…"

   "—and small acts of arson—"

   "How many times have I told you to stop playing with those fireworks?!"

   George thought of all those small things he’d done as a child, and all the punishments. Could someone have predicted that George Silvero, at age eleven, would become a serial killer? If Rosalie knew more about his childhood than the lies and half-truths he told her, would she know he had killed her sister?

   "Each victim was killed by a single knife-slash to the throat, which was stitched-up post-mortem. This shows that the killer, in his own way, loved each victim. The fact that there were twenty-three—" That number again! "—victims over a period of four years makes it hard to believe that the killer had loved each individually, for different reasons. More likely, the similar physical attributes (fair skin, black hair, a tendency to be quiet or shy) and the post-mortem care points to an incident in the killer’s past, where a girl of the description knowingly or unknowingly hurt or humiliated the killer. Whether or not the girl’s infraction led to her early death cannot be said, since in all likelihood the killer’s first murder occurred years before Warner Beach, in a place far removed from Warner Beach, and has not yet been connected to the grouping known as ‘The Warner Beach murders’…"

   George still could not get over that number. Twenty-three. Even with Lucy, who he had been counting all along, it would still be twenty-two. All police reports would say twenty-one. Twenty-three. Where had she found that number? Where had she gone for her information? Who would have told her there was not one, but two more? She said she didn’t know about Lucy. How could she know the number?

   "The choice of a beach as a burial site for his victims is a unique one. Many serial killers do not even bother with burial; instead they opt to merely hide the bodies. The Warner Beach Killer’s need to not only bury the bodies but also to preserve them in some way further indicates the love he felt for the collective individual of his victims…"

   The thud of the front door closing downstairs jerked George away from Clare Jeffries’ final paper. He shoved it in his briefcase among the other papers, and escaped into the bathroom before Rosalie got upstairs. He looked at his white face in the mirror, noticed the dark half circles under his eyes. His hands were gripping the rim of the porcelain sink to keep them from shaking. Somehow he had to get himself together before Rosalie saw him like this.

   He splashed some water on his face, urinated, and went downstairs.

****

   By the time George went to bed, Rosalie was already asleep. He hadn’t allowed himself to finish the paper, and in the darkness that last paragraph he’d read unfurled. Reading about his own actions allowed decades-old memories to surface.

   How many nights, in how many seasons, had he been out on that beach? It was always a cold breeze blowing off the Pacific, the moon in each of its phases glinting off the black water. His college roommate thought he was an insomniac. He had no idea of the extent of George’s nightly activities.

   After Diana, he hadn’t been able to go back. He knew all too well where he had buried her, while the other locations he had let wash away with the tide. They’d all been dug up now, anyway. Even Diana.

   The memory of tides washed into the surface of a black pond. His anger ebbing away as the floating tendrils of black hair sank lower and lower, and he finally rowed home. They never found Lucy, she never got a gravestone. The police thought she ran away.

   Suddenly George had to get up and read the rest of that paper. He slipped out of bed without Rosalie even stirring in her sleep.

   George found his way to his office in the dark, and turned on the small lamp on his desk. The circle of light illuminated the term paper, waiting for him neatly centered on the desk blotter, "The Warner Beach Killer," an accusation in twelve-point Times New Roman centered on the title page as neatly. But hadn’t he hidden it in his briefcase?

   He stood staring down at this omen, one hand reaching for it without his will. It flipped to the last page, the concluding paragraph.

   "As you may have noticed, Dr. Silvero, there is information in this paper that is not from any scholarly source or police report. This information has not been cited, as there is no need to cite information that both you and I know is true. You know it is true, Dr. Silvero, because you are the Warner Beach Killer."

   The crisp white page crumpled beneath his heavy hands. And he knew in that instant that Clare Jeffries must die.

****

   It seemed like only seconds had passed since that epiphany and his present consciousness of being in his car, speeding along heavily wooded state highways to Clare’s home address. He knew it by heart from his information - gathering back in November. He had found the address in his street map of western Oregon. A month later, it was still memorized from that one glance. Clare would be at home now, because it was the last day of the fall semester and all students were required to leave the dorms.

   Eventually the dark forests gave way to the small town of Molalla. The headlights of his Lexus cut through the town’s cover of darkness. His was the only car on the road. One o’clock on a Friday night and George felt like he was the only person awake in the world.

   He parked a block away from Clare’s home, walked onto the wooded property. The house was dark, but no shades were drawn in the back. George located Clare’s bedroom, and let himself quietly into the conveniently unlocked back door.

   In her open doorway he could see her face, peacefully sleeping despite the sliver of moonlight across her eyes. The thick carpet silenced his footsteps, as he crossed the room. He stood over her for a moment, forgetting that he was almost 60 years old, the memories of his murders suddenly crowding into his mind, all twenty-two of them.

   In the same moment he forced a forearm onto Clare’s throat and sealed her mouth with the opposite hand. Her flat brown eyes fluttered wide open. In the moonlight they gleamed golden, promising truth.

   "Who was the twenty-third?" George growled.

   Her eyes slipped over his face. Instead of answering, she struggled to breathe.

   With the initial surprise out of the way, George removed his forearm and smoothed his wild gray hair back. Now in her eyes flashed recognition.

   "You scream, I’ll kill you," he said, his voice low but not whispering. "Who was number twenty-three?"

   He removed the hand from her mouth, but positioned his forearm against her throat as precaution.

   "Dr. Silvero? What are you talking about?" Her voice was guttural, her breath minty. She spasmed to cough, but he caught it in his hand.

   "Come with me," he said.

   Even as she shook her head no, moving her arms up to fend him off, he was shoving the thick down comforter on her bed over her mouth. He laid his body on top of hers until her struggling stopped. The glowing red light of her digital clock blinked away three minutes.

   He carried her over his shoulder, out to his car. He was barely aware of his erection, of the voice in his head whispering, "Someone might be looking…" He dumped Clare Jeffries into the passenger seat and drove away, toward the beach.

****

   The first thing Clare became aware of was the vibration of tires on pavement, and classical music. Without opening her eyes she could feel a seatbelt tightly strapped across her chest and waist, and a tight pain in her neck.

   The events previous to her unconsciousness were stark in her memory, and she cracked her eyelids to see where she was. Obviously she was in Dr. Silvero’s car. From what she could see it was still night, although they must have been driving for a couple of hours — a green sign for Rocky Point Beach flashed by her window. She let her eyes close again, until a bumpy road jarred her neck and she rolled her head back against the seat. She tried to swallow, and that hurt too. The car slammed to a stop, and the seatbelt cut into her chest. She couldn’t stop a sob from escaping.

   A door opened and shut, letting in a blast of cold air, then the door opened beside her. The damp ocean wind cut right through her flannel pajamas. "Get up. I know you’re awake." The voice belonged to Dr. Silvero, but she barely recognized it from the monotone he used to give lectures.

   She opened her eyes and looked at him. "What are we doing here?"

   "You know what we’re doing. Get out."

   But Clare didn’t know. "I don’t know what you want! What are you talking about, the twenty-third? I can’t tell you what you want to know if you don’t explain it!"

   Dr. Silvero looked at her with his intense blue eyes, a far cry from the boring, perpetually tired professor she had seen every other day for the past four months. He grabbed her arm and attempted to drag her out of the car. She stuck, and as Dr. Silvero continue to jerk at her arm, she fumbled to unlock the seatbelt. He waited, then yanked her out of the Lexus and onto the pavement of the beach’s parking area. It was cold, wet, and painfully hard against her bare feet.

   He had parked near a dock, and he pulled her through rocky sand toward it. Under the dock, the sound of crashing waves nearly drowned out his words.

   "You said there were twenty-three! You wrote there were twenty-three!"

   Spit sprayed her face like saltwater as he spoke. "Who told you? Who was the twenty-third?"

   "Twenty-three what?" she asked, tears mingling with saliva and water. "I don’t understand!"

   "Murders! Twenty-three murders! Who was the twenty-third?"

   She looked away from him, at the moonlit landscape of the beach. "Are you talking about my final paper?" she asked, quietly, almost to herself.

****

   "Yes! Yes!" he screamed. "Of course I’m talking about your goddamned paper! Tell me who it was!"

   She stared at him, the flatness in her eyes a cover for all the knowledge she had about him. He could have slapped her then, for acting like she had no idea what he was talking about, for making him scream until his voice was about ready to give out.

   "I don’t remember there being twenty-three. I thought I wrote twenty-one. All my sources said twenty-one. Maybe it was a typo."

   Her overly calm, analytical reply was too much. He slapped her so hard he saw a spray of blood emit from her nose.

   "You know, you stupid bitch! You know you wrote twenty-three, you know you did! You know even more about these murders than I do! You know I’m the fucking Warner Beach Killer when no one else does! Don’t stand there and lie to me!"

   His words seemed to knock the air out of her. She crossed her arms protectively over her stomach and backed away. "No, no, I never wrote that!" Her voice shrieked high into the wind. "I didn’t know! Check the paper!"

   But George had his knife out already.

****

   By the time Rosalie woke up the next morning, George had cleaned up and made breakfast for his wife. He felt strangely energized and alive, as he hadn’t felt in almost forty years.

   "What’s the occasion?" she asked suspiciously. He shrugged and saw her off to work. His job, she knew, was waiting upstairs in his briefcase.

   He took out the report. He stared at the title page. Clare Jeffries.

   Then he opened to the last page.

   "In conclusion, the Warner Beach Killer is not your typical antisocial personality. Although it appears similar to other serial killers in the quiet building of tension and act of murder, this serial killer may have had the ability to reform, given the depth of his emotion toward the original girl on whom all his twenty-one victims are based. As this killer hasn’t been caught, it can be assumed he has either blended into the population and reformed himself, or is murdering in a different area…"

   There it was, in black and white.

   Twenty-one.

   No accusation.

   But Clare had been number twenty-three, and she had known in the end who he really was… Now, of course, her body would rot under the steady Pacific tides.