My Life with Death

20266 Riverside Bridge, Maryland

January 26, 2019, 8:21 p.m.

"It sounds like a silly game. It's like some bad comedy, but it's a fact. It is a true story thoroughly devoured by death. This is your life, and I will be the director of your end."

- You know who

January 26, 2019, 10:10 p.m.

"Good job. It's your story, your life! But ruining your health like this. Although the end awaits you too, the sweet death, I want to be the poison. Don't let alcohol get the better of you. Try for a little while longer. Try to get closer. Find your perpetrator. But don't worry, when the time comes. I'll take care of that end. I'll manipulate you your whole life, and I'll manipulate your death, too.''

- You know who

 January 27, 2019

6:44 a.m.

I got up early. Samantha was still sleeping, and I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the rising sun over the forest landscape, over the river bubbling around the cabin. There was silence everywhere, and the purity of the simplicity of the beauty before me was indescribable.

I have experienced similar feelings only a few times in my entire life. I have traveled all over the world, and in every single place, I found a moment like this when I sat in front of the rising sun, whether it was Egypt and the Nile River, the African savannah, or my beloved Vegas and the lunar blue desert. The world around me never stopped surprising me. As a scientist, I am fascinated by its power and perfection.

I was sitting on the threshold of the terrace. My legs were folded under me, and a checkered blanket draped over my shoulders. Three oak stairs led from the wooden base of the house, which ended at the place where nature began. The white layer hiding autumn leaves and spring flowers conjured up a winter kingdom in the entire vast area. The frozen surface crunched every time a hungry animal's paw touched it.

I have been thinking about one thing for many years. About the thing that's been bothering me since the day I got shot in Vegas. Since that day, someone has been texting me on my cell phone at various intervals. And nothing helped. I changed my phone number, and the messages kept coming; I changed my phone, and nothing changed. It initially scared me, but I got used to it after all these years. I thought these were the jokes of some teenager or one of my friends and colleagues. But now I started to notice it more, and it began to worry me again as the intensity of the messages and the words the messages contained escalated. The messages were more and more aggressive and personal. It scared me. I was worried. It didn't feel like a kid's joke anymore as information about the cases started appearing in the news. So I began to believe that the so far anonymous messages have a genuine sender, who is, among other things, the killer I am looking for, and more than that, he is also the Jane Doe Killer, whom I - I thought - caught ten years ago.

"How does he know where I am? How does he know how to contact me? That's not possible. I thought it was over. I thought I had already beaten him, but I was wrong. He's still following me every step of the way," I thought aloud. "I wanted to shoot myself and end this suffering, but I couldn't. I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The magazine was empty. It had to be Kent. He had to take out my cartridges when..."

"Is something wrong?" Samantha said from behind me.

I freaked out.

"You scared me," I replied.

I was so thoughtful that I stopped perceiving my surroundings, and it was as if I practically turned off all my senses and didn't hear, see, or feel anything.

"No, no. Nothing happens. I'm just thinking out loud," I added distractedly. I lied. I wasn't honest with her.

12:06 p.m.

"You will die... I promise, but I won't tell you how. I want to know for myself if you can endure the pain of a failing organism if I let you kill me or if you kill yourself. If I want to, I'll make you do it; you won't know how. I almost succeeded once before. I know you remember."

- You know who

12:15 p.m.

"You do not believe me. Do you think it's just a game? That someone is making fun of you? Do you want proof that it's me? I'm the man who killed your mother in a masked car accident. I'm the man who killed your friends with a booby-trapped explosive device. I am the man who shot you three times in the heart, in the left leg and the side. And I'm also a man who can kill anyone you care about, and you won't stop me! NEVER!"

- You know who

12:34 p.m.

"It never occurred to you to suspect just me? So I felt disappointed. I thought you were smarter."

- You know who

12:41 p.m.

"Did I interest you? So listen to me carefully. On Highway 2 near Bennsville is an abandoned John Hopkins Bart's warehouse. Be there at 19:00 if you want to know the truth..."

- You know who

12:57 p.m.

"We're going to start playing... because she hasn't performed anything so far, and I'm getting pretty bored."

- You know who

The last few posts have scared me to death. What the hell does that mean? All my suspicions turned out to be justified. The truth was that the man responsible for the murders of Jack Bencker, Cody McBenning, and Todd Sparks is the same murderer who killed thirteen women, Charlotte Ferris, Samuel Bell, and my mother, known as the Jane Doe Killer, whose crimes Mark was convicted and sentenced for Jacksony Jr. And I was supposed to meet this person in five hours in an abandoned warehouse. However, I struggled much more with the dilemma of whether to tell Agent Finlay, as the only person I trust, or lie to her, leave, and thereby lose the trust of the last person who could help me. I didn't want to endanger her, and it would logically be a risk for me to go after the killer with an FBI agent. I could get the information and finally find out the whole truth. Still, a federal agent walking by would take advantage of the situation and arrest him before he could tell me anything, and then I wouldn't be able to get to him again.

I had known for some time that Jackson was not a murderer. It was written in one of the messages from the natural killer. He wrote it to me just after Jacksony was sentenced to death. I never told anyone. No one knew about it. Kent didn't know about it; nobody at the FBI knew about it. Only I knew it, and I had to live with it. I don't know why I didn't tell Kent about this. Years ago, when we worked on the Jane Doe Killer case, and it came out that he killed my mother too, I couldn't talk to Kent. Since her death, I didn't want to discuss this sensitive topic with anyone, let alone expose it to everyone in the murder investigation. So, it was only logical that I didn't want to do anything that could disrupt my attempt to solve the biggest mystery of my life.

I chose betrayal and lies. Without saying a word, I left the cottage in Samantha's car for a forest road near where I was supposed to meet the killer that evening. I wanted to prepare. I used all her field equipment – cameras, radios, and weapons.