12.

"What?" Alice managed to ask, her heart beating faster than she had ever thought possible.

"Yes, she said the same thing. I guess it's alright to tell you these things Alice since I am going to kill you." Mark replied. "Of course I never planned to tell you until you started to meddle in my life. I wasn't going to ever hurt anyone again-I wanted to live happily and forget my past and my mistakes!"

"You won't hurt my Mom will you?" Alice asked, scared.

"No! I happen to love your Mom, and I get the feeling she is really going to need the support of a nice loving man in the near future. Especially when she finds out about how her daughter died after deciding to walk home. For my part I plan to feel guilty about letting you walk home, but you insisted because of my migraine and all. I might call your Mom to let her know you're on your way home and tell her that I offered to drive you, but since I had taken tablets for my migraine you decided it would be safer to walk. Then she will wonder where you are, and the police will eventually be called and then discover your body. I'll be devastated of course. How much death and tragedy can one man have to endure in his life I'll ask tearfully!" Mark explained.

"You killed Katy. Why?" Alice demanded.

"I killed her for the same reason as I am going to kill you. She got to close to the truth. Like you she was nosy!" Mark explained.

"I don't know what you mean!" Alice insisted.

"When I came home after you babysat last I found the telephone book open at the page where the Simmons' were listed. This aroused my curiosity, and then I noticed that my desk draw seemed slightly open. This could all be a coincidence of course, until today when picking my son up the teacher told me that she found James' new babysitter very caring. She mentioned that she wanted to know all about my wife and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. She assumed it was because you thought you should know being James' babysitter and thought it was very conscientious. I knew better of course! I then called my mother-in-law and asked whether or not she had any strange phone calls lately, and she denied it, but I could hear in her voice she was lying..." Mark shook his head. "I knew you were on to me!"

"What about the prank calls? Were they all you?" Alice asked, wondering whether it was possible to stall him. She glanced at the clock. It was still almost an hour before someone would come to pick her up. There was no way she could stall him that long.

"Yes. Sometimes I was just checking to make sure everything was alright here. Then the others...well I've always had a sense of humor so in part they were jokes. They were also intended in scaring you a little, making you think that there was some weirdo about so then you would stop thinking about me. I knew from the very first time I met you that you didn't seem to like me. At first I assumed it was because of your Mom and I dating. Then, however, I began to think by the way you looked at me, that it was something else. Luckily I worked out all the clues, wasn't it?" He said.

"Yeah, real lucky." Alice muttered.

"You were right about me killing Katy. She was asking me questions about Alicia, and there was that same look on her face which alerted me to you. The final straw for her was that I found out that she had been asking around town all about me and my marriage. Then I knew that she suspected something. She wasn't very smart, so she probably would never have actually worked out what had happened, but I wasn't about to give her the chance to work it out, that's for sure." Mark sighed. "So I arrived home early, and offered to give her a lift home. She seemed a little nervous about it, but she knew me, so she decided that it was alright. And of course she had no idea I was on to her little investigation. I killed her, and I drove down the highway to dump her body. First, though, I forced her to call home and say that she was leaving my place now, and that she had called for a cab. They believed that, and then later on, I told them that she told me that she'd called then and told them she was walking home and they said that was fine!"

"And what about Alicia?" Alice asked. Part of her didn't want to hear it, but the other part of her was curious about the woman in the photo.

"Alicia told me she wanted a divorce. I was shocked. We had been putting up a good front for everyone, and nobody knew that our marriage was in trouble. Even her closest friends thought that we only had our little problems. She'd been giving me trouble for awhile, and I had begun to suspect that there was someone else in her life who was more important to her than James and me. I hit her one night, trying to get it out of her, but she kept telling me she had no idea what I was speaking about..I hit her a few times after that, but I always felt bad about it. And then she mentioned the divorce again, pretty much insisting on it. Even though I had told her that it wasn't going to happen. It was then that I decided. I forced her to write a note saying she was leaving, and she did it even though she was crying the whole time pleading with me. I killed her in the middle of the night, and then I put her in the trunk of her car, with her money, purse and a few other things she might have taken. I drove to a lake and I got out, and put the car in neutral, and then I let it run down and into the lake, where it sunk, along with her body. So yes, I did kill her, just like I am about to kill you!"

Alice didn't know what to say.

"So, what do you think about taking a little drive now?" Mark asked.