by Cole Baxter
What if this was it? What if she thought that I was a lost cause and she was trying to kill me?
That was another thought that I often had in the dark of night. If my therapist is trying to kill me, why did I even bother with the rest of my life?
I shook my head, trying to clear the bad thoughts from my head. I was scared of so many things, and I didn't need to be scared of my therapist.
I tried to type a few more things, but I realized that I wasn't typing anything at all. I was just sort of staring at the screen and that wasn't useful at all.
Eventually, I turned off my computer. I stood up and stretched and then started to pace the kitchen floor. I decided that I would call Blake to talk a little bit more. Maybe he had some ideas of what he wanted to do moving forward. He didn't really give me an answer in terms of what he wanted to do now that I had said I wanted to help. He didn't really say much at all, actually, which made things a bit awkward. Was I supposed to call him? Was he supposed to call me back?
I decided to take matters into my own hands and call him. After all, in therapy, they taught me that I was a strong independent woman and all that jazz. I didn't always believe it, but I could at least call him and see what he said.
When I picked up the phone, it rang through a couple of times. I wasn't sure whether he would pick up, and I considered calling back, when all of a sudden, Blake picked up.
I launched into the spiel that I had planned in my head. "Hi, Blake, it's Laurie. I just wanted to know where things stood because I really want to help, and I didn't think we came to any conclusions. I really want to clear my name because I am trying to help people, and I—"
"Laurie," he said and then paused. "Oh, right, Laurie."
I didn't know what to say. Wasn't he in the middle of a murder investigation and I was the prime suspect?
"Sorry," he said. "I should be polite when a pretty girl calls."
It was at that moment that I realized he was probably drunk. I knew that I shouldn't judge. After all, I had been the one to call him drunk yesterday, so what difference did it make? But he was drunk, and I wanted to talk business, so I wondered if this was a bad idea.
The fact that he called me pretty should have bothered me. It should have made me bristle and want to run for the hills. Instead, it made my eyes brighten and my heart soar a little bit. No one had called me pretty in a long time. Even Devon hadn't ever called me pretty. He had called me a lot of things, of course, but pretty wasn't one of them.
"I, uh . . . I just wanted to clear my name," I said. "Is there a better time to talk?"
"No, no," he said. "Now is fine. I'm sorry that you have to be mixed up in all of this."
"So am I," I said. "I know that you don't believe me, but it's completely unbelievable to me that someone would think I did this. Like . . . I'm a good person, Blake."
I knew that it probably wasn't appropriate to have that much emotion when he was drunk and I was trying to talk business, but I also thought that there was a good chance that he wouldn't remember it, so I should just let out all of my emotion at once.
"I know," he said. "I know you are. That's why all of this sucks."
"If you know I am, why are you accusing me?" I asked. "Why would anyone accuse me?"
"Well, Laurie," he said, "sometimes, people do bad things," he said. "Sometimes, bad things happen to good people."
"Look, I'm not saying that I'm a saint or anything like that," I answered. "I'm not even saying that I haven't done a few bad things in my life, because I have. But I didn't do this. Blake, I swear, I never—"
"I know," he said. "I know. At least, I think I know. Sorry, I'm a bit muddled right now."
"Yeah," I said.
He snorted. "Can you tell?"
"A little bit," I answered. "But who am I to judge when I was the one calling you drunk last night?"
"Yeah, why are we doing our drinking apart," he asked, "when we could be doing it together?"
I felt a shiver go down my spine. I knew that this wasn't a good idea. I should not have a drink with an officer who wanted to arrest me.
But was he actually an officer? Was he just a consultant? I had no idea. All I knew was that if someone was trying to frame you for murder, having a crush on them was probably not a good idea.
The fact that I could acknowledge that I had a crush on him was interesting. I didn't actually intend to crush on anyone, but Blake was different.
Why was I doing this to myself? Nothing good would come of it. I needed to move away from this conversation.
"Well," I said, "I think that's all for now."
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "It's good to talk to you, Laurie."
"It's uh . . . good to talk to you too, Blake. So, are we going to work together?"
"I think so," he responded. "I'll call you. Later."
"Yeah . . . thanks."
I hung up the phone feeling even more unsure than when we had started. I had no idea what would happen now, but as far as I knew, I had done my part and that was all I could manage. I couldn't force him to clear my name. All I could do was continue to remain as innocent as possible.
It would also probably help if I continued to go to therapy and also not call him drunk. I was a good person and I was here to help others. I had to remember that. I had to keep going, no matter what he thought of me.
His question about us drinking together made me raise my eyebrows and made my heart patter a little harder. In a different world, in a different life, I would absolutely want to have a drink with him. But the person who would have a drink with him was an entirely different person. That person was someone who wasn't abused and hadn't faked her own death to get out of an abusive situation. That person was brave, and strong, and courageous rather than broken and healing.
Maybe one day, I could be that person. But one day was not this day. One day, hopefully, it would come. And when it did, I would call Blake and let him know that I was ready for that drink.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Blake
When I awoke, it was to a pounding hangover that I wasn't sure I could ever get rid of. I felt worse than I had felt in a long time, and I was sure it was due to the empty bottles of vodka that were sitting beside me.
I didn't remember most of the night. I had a vague memory of pouring my first drink, and that was it, which was a bit usual for me. Normally, I could at least remember getting through the first few. I must have really been pounding it back hard in order to get to this point.
Mind you, I had also been drinking the night before, and when it all tended to build up in mystery, I felt overwhelmed in more ways than one. Lola would be so ashamed of me. Lola would just shake her head and tell me to get my shit together in the most matter of fact way possible.
That was one thing I loved about Lola. Everything with her was black and white. There was no gray area, and there weren't a lot of feelings. She was already able to see the answer as clear as day. I wished I could be like her instead of having my head clouded with judgment and fear and all sorts of ludicrous things. Lola used to say that we were the perfect pair because she thought about things for a second and I thought about things for an hour.
Frankly, I thought we were the perfect pair for a million reasons, and I wished that she were still around for me to tell her. If she were still around, I wouldn't waste a single second.
I managed at last to get out of bed, and I headed toward the shower. Today, I decided to punish myself more than usual, and I turned the shower on freezing cold. When I got in, I didn't even shriek. I wanted to freeze. I wanted my brain to be unable to process any words. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to be here.
Cold showers were painful, but they helped significantly with the hangover. By the time I got out, I felt a bit better.
I knew that I had to work today, but I had no idea what direction to go in. Frankly, my thoughts were still a bit muddled and I was reasonably certain that I could walk into traffic and not notice.
Before I had break
fast, I went to check my phone. I often made myself notes on my phone to check when I was sober. Usually, they were nonsense, but today, I saw something interesting.
There had been a call from Laurie last night when I was pretty hammered. And to my surprise, it had lasted more than a hot minute.
What had we talked about? What had she said?
I hoped that I hadn't said anything creepy, otherwise that would be an expensive lawyer bill. I hoped that I hadn't hit on her. I tended to do that when I was drunk, and it was always embarrassing in the morning.
I considered calling her just to see if everything were normal, but I thought that would be a weird phone call as well. Calling at 8 a.m. to ask her whether I was a creep the night before would almost guarantee that I was a creep and that I should probably be calling a lawyer.
With a sigh, I headed to the kitchen. I didn't particularly want to eat, but I found that it helped with being shitfaced drunk. I poured myself a bowl of cereal, sat at the table, and tried to sort my thoughts out.
If I had been drinking all last night to the extent that I did not remember a phone call from Laurie, then it was likely that I had not done any work. In my mind, that was a good thing because I had not done anything else stupid.
As I ate my cereal, I paged through my case notes and tried to figure out exactly what happened the night before.
I had apparently done some Google research into spouses who had the other spouse killed, but it didn't look like anything significant had come of it. I had gone through the fire reports, but that was something I'd done a million times. Sometimes, when I was unsure about a case, I re-read everything, convinced there were clues in there. I knew that the fire report had probably yelled everything that it could, but that didn't mean that I couldn't read it again. Drunk logic. It was counterproductive and never resulted in anything.
When my cereal was finished, I brought the bowl to the sink and dumped it in. The sink was overflowing with dishes already, and I knew that if I didn't do them, I'd resort to paper plates. That was another thing that had slipped when Lola died. When she was alive, everything was fantastic and squeaky clean. I had no messy things like dishes every night and I made sure my bathroom was clean.
I guess I had lost my purpose. I was at the stage of my life where nothing mattered. Yes, I could function, but functioning was only a small part of each day. Actual thinking meant being productive.
As I looked at my phone again, I saw a text message from Laurie.
I just want to know how you think I could have done it when I could barely function? Please read my medical reports. I know you have them.
I mean, she did have a good point. I had read her medical reports, and that was true. After the accident, or her fake death, or the mugging or whatever the hell they wanted to call it, she was basically incapacitated. She'd needed some pretty intense medical care. She was having seizures left, right, and center. She couldn't walk in a straight line, and for a while, she couldn't even form coherent sentences. She was right. She wouldn't technically be capable of lighting such a fire. And if she were, she wouldn't be capable of being stealthy about it.
But that didn't mean that she wasn't capable of being behind it. Maybe she had accomplished it by hiring someone, or maybe the device was remote or automatic and she had set it a long time before. I didn't know, and it seemed that a lot of the report was vague.
Maybe I was just being paranoid. But usually, if I was this far into a case and still didn't have a lead, I was lost. It had to be Laurie, it just had to. If it wasn't, I was pretty bad detective.
My phone rang while I was looking at it, so I was able to answer it on the first ring.
"Hello?" I asked.
"Blake, it's Sam," he said. "Are you drunk?"
"No," I answered. "Why would you ask that? It's 8 a.m."
Sam sighed, and I knew exactly why he would ask that. It wouldn't be the first time that he had called me at a ridiculous time and found me drunk. This time, though, wasn't like that.
"I wanted to talk to you," he said.
I felt my stomach sink. "Why?" I asked. "Is this because of last time? Because last time, I—"
"No, it's not because of last time," he answered. "But Devon's parents are still pretty mad at you for being so vague."
"Whatever," I said. "They can be mad at me all they want. They don't understand my process and I don't know why they are being so demanding, anyway."
"Sure," he said. "But you could have had a little more . . . I don't know, tact."
"I mean, I could have," I said. "Is this really a phone call to ream me out?"
"No," he said. "We're still talking to the coroner, but I think we're going to go over to the firehouse and talk to some of his colleagues. Do you want to come?"
"That would probably be a good idea," I said. I had been getting two completely different stories from the people who had surrounded Devon. Laurie said that everyone hated him, and his parents said that everyone loved him, except near the end. I really wanted to know the truth.
"Good, we're going around two," he replied.
"Is there any other news? Anything else that you might want to tell me so I could crack this case faster than you?"
Sam chuckled at that.
"I don't think so," he said. "Just that we should probably use some tact at the firehouse because these people did, you know, work with him, and some of them probably liked him."
"Sam, it's like you think I don't know how to lead an investigation or something," I answered. "Don't you remember when we worked together?"
"I remember when we worked together," he said. "Do you remember?"
"Jesus, I am not that far gone," I said.
"Because I remember when everything was great between all of us," Sam said. "And you would smile, and we would—"
"Right, but now our partners are dead," I said. "And we didn't partner up."
"Why didn't we do that?" he asked.
I know he was asking it as if it were a light question, but it was a serious matter to me.
"Uh, because we didn't?" I asked. "We would have killed each other. It wasn't right."
"I don't know," he said. "Might have been good. We could have done it, Blake."
"Yeah, whatever," I said. "Look, I gotta go."
"Sure," he said, knowing when to end a conversation. We hung up the phone and I went back to staring at it.
I hated when Sam acted like everything would be all right. I hated when Sam acted like I might come back to the police force, because that certainly wouldn’t ever be the case. I wasn't going back. I wasn't even going to think about it.
But Sam seemed to have recovered from the loss of his partner, which made me so frustrated. It made me feel weak, like I was half a man or something. It made me feel like I was a loser.
I eventually got up and headed to my room to get dressed. If I went to the firehouse, I needed to look somewhat official. I actually had the utmost respect for our brothers at the firehouse. We were all working in the line of duty, and we all may not come home at night. I had only been there once or twice, but at least if nothing came of it, it would be an interesting place to see.
I decided to wear all black, like I was some sort of cat burglar. I wanted to kind of blend into the background, but I also wanted to make it clear that I wasn't in any kind of uniform. I wasn't one of them. I didn't belong there anymore.
At twenty to one, I headed out the door. I still hadn't dealt with Laurie's text, nor had I called her back. I could only deal with one heavy problem at a time, and this moment wasn't hers.
Maybe the firehouse would lend me an idea that I could run with. Maybe there would be someone who just blatantly hated Devon and it would be an open and shut case. Or maybe I would be as stuck as I was before. Either way, it should be interesting to ask these questions.
Maybe they would let me slide down the pole. And maybe, just maybe if I were lucky, they'd kill me at the bottom. Maybe I'd burn up, like Devon, and disappear. Ther
e was nothing I would want more than to just vanish from this Earth.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Blake
When I got to the firehouse, Sam and the rest of the troop were already there. They had apparently been waiting for me outside, which made me feel like a jerk.
"Sorry," I said as I shook Sam's hand. "Traffic is terrible."
"Sure," Sam said, knowing full well that there was no traffic.
From over his shoulder, Anna waved at me. "Hello," she said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine." I didn't mean to be a jerk to her. It wasn't her fault that she was Sam's partner and I was so screwed up. But I really thought she could be less intrusive about the whole thing and just leave us both out of it. I didn't need to talk to her, and she didn't need to talk to me.
Sam raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything about it.
"The boys are already waiting for us inside," was the only thing he said, and then he led us through the doors.
There was a fireman, dressed in his casual uniform, waiting for us as promised, and he shook each of our hands.
"Thank you for coming," he said. "I know this has been a pretty complicated investigation."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Sam said, and the fireman shrugged.
"To be honest . . . I'm not sure that you will find many people who are sad about Devon around here."
"We won't?" I asked.
The man shook his head. "No," he said. "But I'll leave the rest of the questions up to you. I don't have personal experience with him, so I only heard the stories."
"Were you not here when he was here?" I asked. "And what's your name?"
"I'm Steve," he said. "And I was on the shift right after him. So, I would hear the stories of what happened, but we only crossed paths a few times."
"Right," I said as I took notes. Sam was taking notes too, and I was relieved to see that half the boys had drifted off to question other people. Only Anna remained at Sam's side, which was expected. I didn't know why I was so annoyed by it.
