Two for Joy

by Louise Collins

  “Even though I care for Chad—”

  “You don’t care for him, if you did, you’d let him go.”

  Romeo snorted. “I still root for my team over his. I’m on the killer’s side, and I hope this new countdown killer triumphs where I failed.”

  The DI tore his gaze from Romeo, rewound the folder on his desk, then got to his feet.

  “You really are a monster.”

  “You say it like an insult, but all I hear is a compliment.”

  ****

  The Copycat had claimed number three, was one away from leveling Romeo’s score. He would’ve been happy, had it not been for the magpie feathers. Someone other than Chad had found out the significance of the magpie, had used it to convince him Chad was sending him messages.

  The only people other than Chad that knew about the magpie were his parents, and they were dead. He hadn’t shared that moment with anyone but Chad, which meant Chad must’ve told someone.

  Romeo laid in bed, drumming his fingers on his chin. He couldn’t have told his colleagues, and as far as Romeo was aware, his colleagues were his friends, Chad didn’t have anyone else.

  “Therapist.” Romeo whispered.

  He must’ve let slip to his therapist, who could’ve noted it down on file. Romeo’s frown deepened with his self-thought explanation. It would mean someone was watching Chad a bit too closely for his liking.

  Unless…

  Romeo’s heart picked up pace, and he stared unblinking at the ceiling. The monstrous part of his mind had sat bolt upright at his new explanation.

  Chad was the killer.

  He’d taken the good out of Chad and turned him into a killer. The thought was both exciting and alarming. The monster in Romeo’s mind was purring, happy with the thought of breeding its darkness into someone else.

  Romeo closed his eyes and rolled onto his side. “Impossible.”

  He had a whole week to speculate before he’d be face to face with Chad again.

  Chapter Nine

  When the door to the visiting room finally opened, Romeo stared unblinkingly at Chad.

  Chad, darting his eyes, bowing his head and acting all sheepish. He sat down opposite Romeo, swallowed hard, then looked Romeo head on.

  “Concealer sucks.”

  The hot bubble of anger rose up in Romeo’s stomach. He could only look at Chad’s eye, the purple eye, the swollen flesh. It looked as if he had tried to dab concealer onto the bruise, but it hadn’t helped. It looked like someone had stuck a plum to his eye, then squashed it.

  “It looks worse than it is.”

  “Who the hell did that?”

  Chad exhaled through his nose. “Gareth…”

  “He punched you in the face?”

  Chad gave him a grim smile. “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’ve now picked my number one…”

  “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “For once, I’m not joking, Chad.”

  “Look, I deserved it. I hit him first.”

  Romeo leaned as far as he could over the table. “And I hope he’s got an equally messed up eye.”

  “Split his lip actually.”

  Romeo’s bottom lip tingled. He remembered Chad’s mean right hook.

  “Splitting lips a specialty of yours?”

  “It’s on my CV and everything.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a fight.”

  “Chad?”

  Chad gave him a pointed look, then whispered, “You … kinda. This—this whole situation.”

  “And you hit him first?”

  “He wanted me to stop visiting.”

  “They all do, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, but Gareth… It’s been building for months, and we came to blows yesterday.”

  “He thinks he’s looking out for your best interests … he’s worried about you. People do odd things when they’re worried.”

  Chad snorted, shaking his head. “You know it started out like that, worry, concern, but then it turned to fear. People fear what they don’t understand. It unsettles them, riles them up, frustrates them, and frustration builds into irritation, then anger. He made a comment, and I snapped.”

  “What did he say that made you hit him?”

  Chad looked at Fred, then Paul, then the camera. He couldn’t tell Romeo what their argument had been about, and that was enough of an answer. They’d come to blows over the copycat case.

  Once Romeo could see beyond Chad’s sore eye, he did a double take at what he was wearing. Not his shirt and tie like he’d driven straight there after work, but a loose grey hoodie, and sat with his hands under the table.

  “Why aren’t you in your suit?”

  Chad shook his head and spoke as if Romeo hadn’t said anything. “I knew that people wouldn’t understand why I like visiting you, but I never knew it would be this hard. Walking into work, the hostile atmosphere, the whispers, the looks. It’s just—it’s shit.”

  “You’ve got me, you know that, right? I get you.”

  “But you’re in here, Romeo. I’m on my own out there, and it feels like the walls are closing in on me. I’m trying to hold it together, but why? What’s the point? Why do I even get up in the morning, why do I even go to work?”

  “Because you’re a bloody good detective.”

  “A detective that fell for a serial killer. A detective whose only reason for living is to see him once a week through a sheet of plastic. A detective who just got…”

  “Got what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re under a lot of stress at the moment, things will get better.”

  “They’re only gonna get worse as the weeks go by.”

  “Stop talking like this.”

  Paul cleared his throat. “No, better than that, stop visiting him.”

  “Shut up,” Romeo growled at Paul behind him.

  “But it’s true. You want your life to go back to normal, you want your colleagues to respect you again, you want the looks and whispers to stop. You want the public to trust you, then all you’ve got to do is admit you’re ill, and stop coming to this prison.”

  “Ill?” Chad said.

  “Yeah, this is some fucked up Stockholm syndrome.”

  “I’m not ill.”

  “Visiting a serial killer, one that almost murdered you. The only reason he didn’t was because your colleagues saved you. They got to that farmhouse and got him off of you.”

  “That’s not how it was.”

  “Maybe it’s not just Romeo who needs to be locked up.”

  Romeo turned around. “I’m gonna headbutt you in a minute.”

  “That a threat?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  Paul stepped forward, but Fred pressed a palm to his chest to stop him. Romeo gave him a very obvious death glare, then turned back to Chad.

  “I don’t agree with what you did.” Chad said to Romeo. “Killing those people … its unforgiveable. I’m not okay with it like people think. I think of you as two people just to handle it, the countdown killer, and Romeo.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done it.” He looked up blinking back tears. “Why do you have to be a killer, Romeo?”

  “I told you, it’s in my head, my biology.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “I don’t know. The universe wanted to play its biggest joke.”

  “I can’t stop visiting, because if I do, then I’d have nothing. I don’t feel alone when I’m with you … and it was so easy to shut down the killer part of you, ignore it was there, all until this case.” Chad stopped and shook his head.

  “You’re tired, you’re hurt, stressed—”

  “Sometimes I wish you killed me in that farmhouse.”

  Romeo’s mind blanked, he gawped, his eyes started to burn. He didn’t know what the emotion was, but he didn’t like it. His heartrate soared, his chest tightened, and his stomach cramped unt
il he was nauseated.

  “Don’t say that. You being alive means everything to me.”

  “This isn’t living, though. It feels like waiting, but I have no idea what I’m waiting for…” He paused, then whispered. “I need you.”

  Romeo couldn’t tear his eyes from Chad. He saw the plea, the desperation. The detective was gone, and it was Chad begging for him to get out of there. To escape. Tears welled in his eyes, and his lip wobbled, and Romeo wanted to reach for him so badly, but couldn’t.

  “Hang in there, Chad.”

  “I feel like everything is spiraling out of control, and I don’t know how to slow it down, let alone stop it.”

  “I need to know something.” Romeo said carefully.

  “What?”

  “Have you and your therapist ever discussed the birds and the bees?”

  Chad frowned, then slowly shook his head. “No, we haven’t.”

  “Never mentioned anything to do with that?”

  “No, never.”

  “Okay. I—I need to know if you’re…”

  “I’m what?”

  Romeo lifted his eyebrows, and left it unfinished, but he knew Chad understood the question when his good eye widened, and he threw himself back in his chair

  “What?”

  Romeo saw the heartbreak in his expression and knew in the instant Chad wasn’t the copycat.

  “I’m only asking—”

  “How could you think that? You keep saying you know me!”

  “I do.”

  “Then why would you even…” Chad stood up, wiping his eyes.

  “I’ve only got time to kill in here and it was a thought, only a thought, but in here you can’t do anything except sit, and think.”

  “Was it a nice thought?”

  Romeo swallowed, and didn’t answer. The more he’d thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

  “I’m not like you.” Chad snapped. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I know you’re not. You could never disappoint me.”

  “Is that what you’ve been hoping for all this time? Are you still playing games with me, one where you try to turn me, change me?”

  “Finally,” Paul laughed. “You’ve seen the light.”

  Romeo shook his head. “I’m not playing a game.”

  “Really? Life’s just a game, that’s what you said the last time I was here.”

  “It is.”

  “Whose rules are we playing by? Is it always you that’s in control, that knows what’s going on? That knows how to win? Because I’m lost Romeo, and I’m on my own.”

  “Chad…”

  He backed away. “Look, I’ve had a long stressful day, I need to sort my head out.”

  Romeo’s heart squeezed hard in his chest.

  “Don’t worry,” Chad said. “I’ll be back same time next week.”

  He left the room, closing the door softly behind himself.

  “I’m so fucking confused.” Fred mumbled.

  Paul laughed. “If he’s got any sense, he won’t come back again.”

  Romeo waited ten seconds, then jumped up from his chair, and charged at Paul. He managed to headbutt him, but only on his shoulder, then Fred was on him, beating him with a baton.

  It had been worth the beating to see the second of fear in Paul’s eyes.

  ****

  Hell was supposed to be warm, bright, with fire, and screaming. Romeo was in hell, and it was the complete opposite. Solitary confinement. Grey, cold concrete. The only light came through a slit that posed as a window. It was silent. So silent, he could hear his own heart beating. They’d stripped his clothes and hadn’t even given him a blanket.

  He was in hell, but it was cold, dead, like being buried underground. He clawed at the walls, but his nails left no marks, he couldn’t dig himself out of the situation. He couldn’t do anything but lie on his side and wait.

  He’d done it to Chad.

  Left him on a slab of concrete for hours while he was warm in the farmhouse. He’d fallen asleep, and the mistake had almost been fatal. Chad’s skin was like ice when Romeo rescued him from the barn and laid him down in front of the fire.

  Romeo almost killed him by accident.

  He released a long sigh, then closed his eyes. There were no books, no TV, no mementos of his crime, pictures of Chad, or feathers to distract himself. Sleep was the only thing he could do, but when he closed his eyes, he only had nightmares for company.

  Romeo dreamed of the magpie.

  He screamed at it, chased it, threw stones, and in his anger, he released the last stone too early, and it didn’t land anywhere near the magpie, it hit the roof. One of the square slates slipped and hurtled towards the unaware magpie.

  Romeo’s mouth opened in shock, he couldn’t do anything, he’d seen this moment played out before, over and over, and every time he felt it right in his chest.

  But this time it was different.

  The magpie moved at the last second.

  It skipped out of the way, made its mocking call, then flew away. Romeo’s heart didn’t break beneath his ribs. He didn’t shiver as a cold realization that he’d always be a monster set in. It was a good feeling.

  He hadn’t killed it, and it had listened, it had left him.

  His good deed was complete.

  He touched the smile on his face, so alien because it was real. He wasn’t faking it to please others or grinning because it was expected. He actually felt happy, more than happy, he felt proud. he’d done something good, something he could be proud of, and his first thought was telling his mother.

  He wanted her to smile at him, to praise him, to congratulate him for turning his back on his messed-up biology and doing what anyone else would’ve done. He’d done something normal when his heart and mind were telling him to do the opposite. He ran to the front door, knew his mother was in the kitchen, but then he heard the squawking, the chattering, and froze. He’d learned to identify his magpie’s call, and that wasn’t from his one.

  It wasn’t the call of one magpie, but dozens. He could hear them behind the house. Somewhere in the trees. Not mocking laughter, but angry, sinister. The other magpies sounded more like machine guns, violent, cruel. Romeo ran around the house, heading towards the trees.

  He got close enough to see them, so many, swooping down at something on the ground, then returning to the trees. They took turns, they pecked, poked, stabbed, in a frenzy.

  He waved his hands, yelled till his diaphragm ached, and unlike his magpie, the rest flew away from him, leaving only one. One torn apart on the ground, twitching, still alive, but in agony. He knew he couldn’t save it, knew it was going to die in his hands and he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  He saw the tree in the distance, the dozens of magpies all watching him, blood on their beaks, chattering to each other.

  They hadn’t accepted Romeo’s magpie as one of them.

  They knew it had changed, couldn’t understand it, and without understanding came fear, and fear led to frustration, then anger, before finally violence. It died in the same hands that once saved it.

  Abandoned by Romeo, then rejected by its own species.

  Romeo woke covered in sweat. His hip ached from the position he’d been lying in, and he quickly sat up, leaning against the wall. His breathing came in pants, but he couldn’t get enough, his chest felt tight with the need to breathe.

  Both him and Chad weren’t coping with their new lives post-countdown, and there was only one solution.

  He needed to get out of there.

  He needed to reunite the monster with the magpie.

  Chapter Ten

  Romeo left the concrete coffin and was marched back to his cell. There were bruises on his ribs from the beating Fred had given him. He’d barely noticed the pain in solitary, blamed his aching on the cold, and concrete, but in the light, he saw the angry marks on his flesh.

  His TV had been taken, and he was told his visits had been suspended for
two weeks. Two weeks without seeing Chad. He thought solitary had been bad…

  Will tried talking to him, but Romeo wasn’t interested. He lay on the bed and tried to work out how to escape a prison where he was always handcuffed and followed everywhere by two guards. Then there were the locks, the gates, the walls with razor wire, the electrified fences. The more he thought about it, the more desperate he felt, and when he closed his eyes the desperation was still there when he slept.

  He dreamed about the magpie. It didn’t matter if the bird died when the slate landed on it, or when it was attacked by the other magpies. The message was still the same, the magpie still died.

  Romeo hated the nightmares.

  He remembered Chad had nightmares in the farmhouse.

  Romeo had enjoyed picking apart Chad’s messed up dreams, trying to understand them, to see them through Chad’s big bright eyes instead of his own dark ones.

  Chad hadn’t loved his mother, and he didn’t love his fiancé. Both were okay, understandable, even justified, but in Chad’s mind, that absent love made him heartless, it made him wrong.

  Chad loved the companionship he had with his dog, Toby. Toby meant more to him than his mother, or any other person for that matter, and in Chad’s mind, that love wasn’t normal, wasn’t accepted, it made him … wrong.

  Chad had a functioning mind, full of emotions, and morals, and goodness, but permanently felt wrong. Romeo had few emotions, no morals, and no goodness, and he felt wrong, too.

  Two wrongs definitely made a right.

  Romeo walked up to his bars and hung his arms through. “Will, you there?”

  “Can’t be anywhere else, can I? What’s on your mind?”

  “I need to get out of here.”

  Will laughed. “Everyone needs to get out of here.”

  He pressed his face into the bars. “But there’s got to be a way.”

  “You could try to jump Paul and Fred again.”

  “That didn’t end well last time.”

  “You should’ve asked Justin for tips.”

  “Justin who despises me? And even if I could knock them out, I wouldn’t get through the doors.”

  “You could try tunneling through the wall. I saw that in a movie once.”

  “Exactly, you saw it in a movie…”