15 Amityville Horrible by Kelley Armstrong

says you can’t be a feminist and embrace your femininity. Or, if there is, I missed the memo.
    So I let Mike blather on about how they were going to keep this tasteful, no graphic re-enactments of the alleged murders. When he was done, I said, “Good. And I’ll hold you to that. But it isn’t actually what I wanted to talk about.”
    He paused, then cursed under his breath as he realized he may have sacrificed viewers, jumping the gun to placate his star. That dismay lasted about five seconds—as long as it probably took him to realize he’d only promised no re-enactments on the show . DVD extras were a whole other matter.
    “I’ve checked all our correspondence on this show,” I said. “And there was no mention of these girls or their murders. There was certainly no suggestion that we were focusing on a specific crime connected to this house.”
    “That’s the idea. You and Gregor knew nothing about the crimes until today, which means you had no time to prepare. Anything you say, then, will be an honest communication with their spirits.” He winked. “Or with your Internet connection in the next twelve hours.”
    “Which brings me to point number two. Obviously I did my research on the house as soon as I got the address this morning. There was no mention of anything more than a domestic disturbance call in the Seventies. If Polly Watson was living there when she went missing, I’d have found out about it.”
    “Er, well, she wasn’t actually living there at the time…”
    “When did she live there?”
    “The summer she was seventeen. She had some disagreements with her parents and went to stay with her aunt and uncle for a few weeks.”
    I stifled the urge to comment. Of course, it was a ridiculous stretch, but it didn’t matter to me. Even if I’d been planning to contact the girl—which I’d never do mid-show anyway—she was no more likely to respond if I was in a place where she’d lived her entire life than if I used a place she’d spent a single summer. It doesn’t work like that.
    “Gregor’s script said these girls vanished, never to be found. So what’s this about them being murdered? Some letter? I did a Google search after the taping and there was nothing online about that letter.”
    He leaned back with a smug smile. “Because it’s a closely-guarded town secret. One that we are about to expose.”
    “Uh-huh.” I beckoned for details.
    He moved forward. “When we were planning the show, we were looking for some crime or scandal at any of the properties we were considering. We sent emails to local historians, reporters, bloggers. Finally, we got the Polly Watson link. That seemed the best we could do, so we bought the house, got things underway and then, a month ago, we get an anonymous tip from someone who used to work at the Amityville Record . He said a journalist there received a letter after each of those three girls went missing. A letter from their killer, confessing to the deed.”
    “And what does the Record say?”
    “It denies all knowledge of the letters. Threatens legal action if we accuse them on air.” He rolled his eyes. “Our lawyers are already on it. We just need to be careful what we say before we can prove a cover-up. Until then, the story is that we’ve been told someone at the paper received them—we don’t claim it went beyond that person.”
    “What does our informant say?”
    “Nothing. He sent copies of the letters and disappeared into cyberspace.”
    “Maybe because he’s the one who received the letters. Or he’s a relative.”
    Mike’s eyes gleamed. “You’re right. Driven by a conscience plagued with guilt—”
    “Save it for the voice-over. Tell me more about the letters.”
    As Gregor’s script said, they contained details about the victims only their killer could know—birthmarks, underwear and so on. A handwriting analyst confirmed all three were penned by the same person. Given the time span, that opened a whole lot of