Sarah Harrington and the Storm Killer: A Case Study

The news report hit like a jolt to the chest. Something was oddly familiar about it.

Sarah Harrington. Twenty-seven. Raped. Strangled. Dumped near Eldon Hill.

I remembered her. She’d modelled for me once. Not long ago. A brief shoot—nothing remarkable—except now, everything about it was.

I sat in the living room, watching the broadcast, trying not to breathe.

Another one. Another storm. Another body. The newscaster mentioned two others—Sherie Saunders and Charlene Foley. A pattern was forming. The public dubbed him the Storm Killer.

The police weren’t confirming it. The media didn’t care.

They wanted blood.

The public wanted a monster.

But no one asked the real questions: Who were these women? What did they mean to the killer?

I stared at Sarah’s face on the screen and thought, She knew me.

I hadn’t touched her. But still, she knew me.

The tension between guilt and innocence—between knowing and proving—was so thin now it barely existed. I sipped cold coffee and wondered if I should’ve deleted her number, wiped her images, burned the negatives. Instead, I’d catalogued her. Filed her away. Like the others.

They called him the Storm Killer because thunder masked the screams. Because lightning erased the trail.

Because the weather offered what people never could:

An alibi that couldn’t speak.

[from SEETHINGS, downloadable and free for a limited time].