The Acadia Killer

Chapter 9

Michelle had an urgent meeting with a client come up and she'd rushed out of the beach house not long after our talk. Finding myself alone in the house with only my computer to distract me from my nagging worries, part of me was wishing I'd never come to Maine – or at least that I'd chosen to start my park photography journey in Maine rather than on the west coast. Maybe then I wouldn't be looking over my shoulder every time a bird made a noise or the wind blew through the trees outside. I would've crossed Acadia off the list at the very beginning – before the Acadia Killer existed.

Pulling up my promotional stats on social media, I glossed over the numbers that my advertisements had drummed up. I'd reached over one-hundred-eighty-thousand people on Instagram in the last month and paying for ad space in people's timelines seemed to be doing the trick. I hoped Worldwide Magazine would be happy with my relatively small following compared to other similar photographers. Then again, maybe they didn't care how large my base was, and surely, if they chose to take me on next month, my following would grow quite a bit from the exposure of working with them. At least, that's what I hoped would happen. I wasn't one of those people who cared about having a lot of followers on social media, but I knew that if I wanted to draw attention from brands I hoped to collaborate with and organizations that I wanted to sell my photos to, I needed to have a decent sized base because those people did care about numbers.

My phone buzzing on the couch cushion behind me startled me and I nearly fumbled my computer off my lap. When I realized it was the magazine calling, I hurried to answer.

"Hello?" I greeted whoever in my most cheery voice, despite feeling like a dead walrus.

"Good morning, Miss Vega. This is Krista Hall with Worldwide Magazine. How are you today?"

Stammering for a second, I recovered quickly and cleared my throat. "I'm great, Krista. How are you? It's great to hear from you."

I was surprised at myself sounding so... normal. I hadn't realized I could keep it together and sound so professional when I was so stressed out. Then again, I'd also not made it a prior habit to get myself involved in nefarious situations and then try to act like everything was cool.

"Good! The reason I'm calling is I know you're shooting Acadia right now, and I've been watching this crazy situation on the news about a serial killer in the park. I wanted to see if you would be willing to do some crime scene photography around the park for our magazine to do a special article with the photos," Krista explained. "I'll take care of contacting the local authorities to get permissions, but since you're right there, it would be perfect. We're looking for an exciting story to bring to our readers in the twentieth anniversary edition and a murder scandal in a national park may just be the thing."

Speechless was the best I could describe my feelings at that moment. The editor-in-chief of the magazine I was crossing my fingers to get hired on with was asking me – potentially someone being stalked by this lunatic – to go take photos of the murder locations.

I supposed I couldn't be upset with Krista for her suggestion. After all, she had no idea that I was already involved and scared half to death of this nut ball finding me. She was just doing her job, trying to get the scoop on something crazy happening in a national park for her magazine. It made sense. I'm sure it would be a riveting story for Worldwide's readers. And of course, it's pretty hard to properly publish an article like that without any photos. But did it have to be crime scene photos? Couldn't they just use some of my standard park photography?

"Um... Krista... the thing is..." I mumbled incoherently, trying to find the right words to turn down a request from someone who could very well base a hiring decision on this moment. "The thing is, I'm already involved in this situation in Acadia. Since you've watched it on the news, you've probably seen a photo of a guy in all black in the woods-"