by David Beers
His voice speaking now gave only weight to her thesis. She wasn’t surprised to hear him, wouldn’t be surprised if Abel opened the goddamn door and walked right in. Not anymore.
Get out of here, she thought. Stand up and excuse yourself, then go in there and ask Hartwell to be removed from this case—this division if need be. Do anything to get away from this man, because he’s not right. Something is wrong even if no one else feels it.
Emi didn’t move. She listened to the drone of the two voices speaking, and didn’t once think about opening her own mouth. She wasn’t here to learn anything about this man; she was here to keep up appearances—
Demsworth’s eyes flashed upward, catching her own. His face didn’t change in the slightest, still showing that same grave concern bordering on infinite sadness. Yet, Emi would have sworn before God’s ancient and stony face that his eyes paused on hers.
Hello, Emi.
“Excuse me?” Emi said, her first words.
Both men looked over at her, neither speaking. Emi glanced to Brett. His eyebrows were raised, though he quickly got hold of himself, returning to normal.
“Please repeat that, Mr. Demsworth,” he said, turning to the interviewee.
“I said that she’d mentioned the murders to me, but that she didn’t seem overly concerned. Just … you know, she thought it was weird.”
Emi opened her mouth, but shut it quickly.
Brett looked over to her. Emi nodded, barely, knowing something was expected from her even if not exactly what.
Demsworth stared at her, both men watching her now, and she saw his lip peak just a bit—the slightest hint of a grin.
Emi jerked back.
Emi, Emi, Emi, Emi, Emi—her name rushed through her head, but it wasn’t her voice or Abel’s. It wasn’t Demsworth’s or Brett’s. It was something else entirely.
Emi, Emi, Emi, we’re going to have fun, me and you, you and I, yes, yes, yes.
She stood up, unable to control her legs.
“Emi?” Brett asked, standing up too, all decorum lost.
Emi stared at Demsworth’s face; he was grinning now, wide open and without fear of being noticed. He was smiling wide like a goddamn jackal, and—
Don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave Emi Emi EMI EMI EMIEMIEMI
She felt her back hit the wall hard, having no idea she was even retreating.
Brett snapped into action, turning back to Demsworth. “Excuse us for a second.”
He reached for Emi’s arm, but she jerked it away and looked at him.
Demsworth was leaning back in his chair now, his smile like a carnival clown’s.
“Don’t you see him?” Emi asked. “Don’t you see how he’s looking?”
“We need to go outside,” Brett said, not so much as glancing at the man across the room.
Emi blinked, seeing the concern on his face. The room was quiet. She heard no voice rushing through her head.
She turned to Demsworth, expecting to see him stretched out in his chair and grinning.
He was leaning forward on the desk, his face almost as concerned as Brett’s. There was confusion—and fear—on it, too. He didn’t know what was going on.
Emi shook her head, a short quick thing. She looked back to Brett, but only for a second.
She jettisoned from the room as quickly as her feet would take her.
Emi didn’t stop in the hallway. She didn’t stop when she got to the door at the end of the hallway, either. Not even as she heard Brett yelling at her and then his feet pounding after her. She blew through the doors, and then found herself at the stairs. She took them two at a time, not thinking, only sure that she had to get the hell out of here. She didn’t see people staring at her, nor hear Brett open the door above her and start down after.
She simply fled.
Only when she hit the first floor, bolting through it and into the open air, did she finally stop.
Emi bent over, hands on her knees, air blasting in and out of her mouth. She started dry heaving above the pavement—that only lasted a second, though, because Emi reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the flask. Without looking around, she turned it up and drained the rest of the blazing liquid into her body.
She bent back over, not hearing the door open behind her, nor Brett walk onto the sidewalk.
It was only after a few seconds of standing there, bent over, that she realized she wasn’t alone.
Emi didn’t straighten, but only turned slightly to look behind her.
“What was that?” he whispered.
She looked forward, and then down between her feet. Her chest was still sucking air in huge gulps, but she wasn’t heaving anymore. Somehow the vodka had settled her stomach, coating it like acid.
“Did you see him?”
“Demsworth?”
Emi nodded, her words coming in between breaths. “Yes. Him. Did … Did you see him?”
“Of course I saw him. I was in the room with you, Emi. He was normal.”
Emi shook her head. “No. He wasn’t normal at all. He was … smiling, Brett. He was laughing at me. At us. And he was saying something ….” Yet, that’s where Emi lost her train of thought, because she didn’t know if it was true.
She had heard something, but now she couldn’t remember if it was in her head or in the actual room.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brett said. His voice was flat. Uncaring. “I’ve got to back upstairs. I’m going to try my best to handle Hartwell, but I don’t know if that’ll be possible at this point. You’re going to have to talk to him, Emi, and explain whatever the hell that was. Right now, just go home.”
Brett didn’t move and neither did Emi.
“I’m not going to tell him about the drinking, but you either get it under control or I’ll have to say something. Hell, people might have just seen you with that flask, so it might be too late.”
Another few seconds passed and Emi listened as Brett turned from her. He returned to the office she’d just fled.
Emi remained with her hands on her knees for another few minutes, her body finally regaining some control of itself. Eventually she straightened and turned so that she faced the FBI building.
Don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave Emi Emi EMI EMI EMIEMIEMI.
The words flowed through her head, remembered this time and not spoken.
Something in there had spoken to her though, whether it be Demsworth or—
Or what, Emi? Or what?
Emi didn’t hesitate as she left. She walked around the building to the parking lot, got in her car, and continued fleeing.
Emi Laurens ran because she didn’t know what else to do.
Brett went back inside the building, climbing the stairs quickly until he was on the correct floor. He first went to Hartwell, but the man only said, “Later. We’ve got a job to do.”
And the rest of the day had been spent doing said job. Brett tried to shove Emi from his mind, heading back in to finish the interview with Demsworth. He didn’t know what Emi was talking about, not the slightest clue. To Brett, the man looked on the verge of a breakdown, and not because he was a serial killer—but because his employee had just been skinned alive and then hung from a parking deck elevator.
The man hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, and Brett knew the recording would show the same.
He was scared about that, though, because it would show Emi acting irrationally. It would confirm exactly what everyone thought they saw. For Hartwell too.
The interviews were over and the sun below the horizon now. Hartwell had debriefed with all the agents as a group. Brett would spend the rest of the night going through the information they’d gathered. Detective work wasn’t like you saw in the movies. It wasn’t breaking someone down in an interrogation room, watching them cry and admit to doing some heinous deed.
That happened, yes, but most of the time the real work was done behind the scenes.
Combing through the details of multiple interviews, and comparing people’s words with physical evidence found at the scene. A lot of thinking, which eventually built up to action.
And Brett would be doing it alone tonight, because Emi hadn’t left a single message. Not for him or their boss, and now he and Hartwell sat in Brett’s office. Hartwell was stationed out of DC, managing six agents placed across the country. When the Exceptional Crimes Unit had been first instituted, there’d only been two agents. Luke Titan and Tommy Phillips. Now there were six, and a layer between the FBI Director and the agents. The Bureau wanted less focus on this division, especially after everything that had happened before.
Brett sat behind his desk, his boss on the other side. Brett knew why they were here; Hartwell wasn’t going to dig into the data they’d collected today—neither qualitative nor quantitative. That was Brett’s job, apparently solo now. They were here to talk about Emi.
“What’s she been like the past couple of weeks?” Hartwell asked, not even mentioning her name. There was no need to.
And now Brett was faced with a decision he didn’t want to make, not with any FBI agent, but especially not Emi.
Lie or tell the truth.
“This case is wearing on her,” he said, keeping his eyes on his boss and trying to thread a delicate needle through the truth and the lie. He’d thought about what to do for much of the day, and this had been the decision made. An idiotic one that would most likely do Emi and him both harm.
Still, he couldn’t rat on her.
But he wouldn’t completely lie either—because who’d believe him?
“Why?” Hartwell asked. “This isn’t the first gruesome case you two have worked.”
“I … I can’t say, sir. She hasn’t come out and actually spoken with me about it. I’ve just been able to see it from the side. The first murder didn’t do too much to her, but the second, and then this last one … They both hit her hard.”
“Someone told me they saw her drinking a flask after she left. Down at the bottom of the building. Did you see anything like that when you got down there?” Hartwell’s eyes were hard, his face granite. The man had most likely never wanted this cursed division, and Brett knew Hartwell wouldn’t let one of his agents lose their mind … ruining his career like the last director had.
“No,” Brett said. “She wasn’t drinking and I would have seen it.”
Lie Number One.
Capitalized, because of the damned importance.
“What did she say when she was down there?”
“Not a lot, sir,” Brett answered. “I told her she should take the day off and come in tomorrow.”
“She had to say something.”
“She apologized and said she didn’t know what had happened.” Brett knew he wasn’t giving enough, but the conversation simply hadn’t been long. He was actually withholding conversations that took place long before Emi ran from the building like it was on fire.
Hartwell finally looked away, to the wall on his right. Pictures and a diploma hung on it. Brett didn’t have the type of pictures Hartwell did—no one famous, no bigwigs inside the Bureau. Maybe one day he would … if Emi didn’t fuck this up for him.
“You know the rumors as well as I do. These types of crimes grate on people. That’s what they say happened to … Well, you know their names.” Hartwell looked at him. “Do you think that’s true?”
“No, sir. I think that’s just gossip. You have six agents and you’ve had them for two years. There hasn’t been a single instance of someone losing it.”
“Until now,” Hartwell said, looking to the wall again. He was quiet and Brett didn’t know exactly what to say. Brett had worked under him for the past two years, but the two never had a close relationship. It wasn’t a bad one, just strictly professional. That’s the way Hartwell operated with everyone.
After a minute of that awkward silence, Hartwell said, “I saw what happened in there as well as you did. I think she saw something, though I can’t be sure. I watched the recording before I came in your office. She said, ‘Excuse me?’, then basically ran backward into the wall. I think she was delusional in there.” Again, Hartwell’s sphinx like face turned to Brett. “What do you think happened? Do you think she’s mentally fit?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Brett answered honestly for the first time. He wasn’t going to lie about that, because to do so would put lives at risk.
“Me either. I called and left a message. I want you to call her too. Tell her I want to see her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir,” Brett said.
“You did good work today. I was impressed,” Hartwell said. “Especially given the conditions thrust upon you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hartwell stood up. “I have to report this to the director and there’s going to be media inquiries in the morning. There’s a lot of work to do for everyone. I’d say go get some sleep, but we both know that’s not going to be possible for a while. Let me know what you find first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, sir,” Brett said.
Hartwell, an imposing figure who stood 6’4, left his office and walked down the long hallway to the makeshift office designated for him. Brett didn’t see him the rest of the night.
The calls came and went, but Emi didn’t answer any of them. She didn’t check her voicemails. She didn’t even look at the phone. She left it on only so that she would have a record of people to call back … when she decided she was done ruining her life.
Emi’s apartment was small. A bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. That was it.
“It’s shit,” Brett had told her when she first said she was renting it.
Emi liked it, but her favorite part was the window looking out from the living room. Atlanta wasn’t New York, wasn’t even New Orleans, but it had a certain beauty to it all the same. Her window stretched the length of her living room, floor to ceiling, and when she had the time, she loved to simply look out at the city surrounding her.
It was nearing midnight and that’s what Emi found herself doing. Standing in her dark living room with the blinds pulled back. A glass of vodka rested in her hand, hanging just below her hip.
She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, looking at the city. A while. Maybe longer than a while.
Emi didn’t know how long she would stand there, either. Maybe the entire night. Maybe the next day as well.
Two things were happening in her mind at the same time, and the polarizing differences between them felt like they might pull her apart.
Emi couldn’t believe what she’d done today. She kept replaying it over and over in her mind. An endless reel in which she got to the end and it simply started again. Showing her how stupid she’d been, how horrible of a mistake she’d made.
“Excuse me?”
She’d asked that question, and the look on Brett’s face immediately after showed her everything she needed to know. He thought she was crazy. Emi didn’t even want to know what Hartwell had looked like, standing behind the one way mirror, watching her with his large, brown eyes. She imagined he’d remained emotionless, just like he was every time she saw him. Watching her meltdown as if it’d all been expected.
And then what had she gone and done? Christ Almighty, she’d stood up and practically knocked herself out backing into the wall. She’d pulled away from Brett and nearly screamed—“Don’t you see him?”
But Brett hadn’t seen what she did. Her partner had seen something entirely different.
And then what did ol’ Emi decide to do?
Flee the fucking building. Even now, hours later, she couldn’t believe she’d done that. Her boss, someone that reported directly to the FBI Director, had watched her run from the room and then heard Brett hollering as he chased after her.
Emi had ended her career today, and to sit here and think anything else would be delusional.
She couldn’t believe it. Fifteen years
of dedication, all of it set aflame.
And that’s when the second thing happening in her mind came into play. Emi understood the facts of what she’d done, and the consequences that would extend from them, but the why was just as important.
Because now, vodka being the only calories she’d consumed in 48 hours, she still couldn’t deny what had happened. Brett didn’t see it, and probably Hartwell hadn’t either. The damned recording wouldn’t pick it up, because only Emi had seen Demsworth smiling. Only Emi had heard him talking.
That endless whisper.
Emi fled because to stay there was to lose one’s mind, and she held no doubt about it. Her career was over, but that whisper would have bored into her brain like infinite screws, filling her with holes where the whispered words would echo forever.
Emi took a drink of her vodka, not realizing she was doing it. She didn’t feel her feet hurting, either. She’d been standing for too long and her body was trying to tell her to sit down.
“Emi ….”
The word came from behind her, from her bedroom.
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it tonight. It started maybe … but, she didn’t know when it’d started, because she didn’t know how long she’d been standing here.
Sporadically, it was seductively whispering, asking her to venture back and just see. Emi hadn’t turned around yet, not before and not now.
Instead, the sound caused her to look down at her glass. Empty. She grabbed the bottle on her right, filling her glass with more of its clear liquid. She turned back to the window and took a sip.
You’re hearing things, Emi. You’re hearing a fucking voice in the back room and here you are, acting like you’re not. Drinking until you might actually give yourself alcohol poisoning. But you won’t leave the apartment and you won’t go back there to see what you hear. So what are you going to do?
You’re coming undone, Emi.
And she was, yet she did nothing but continue drinking. Because the past is heavy and we carry its weight for long, long miles, refusing even to look back at it. We’d rather carry that weight than actually face what is strapped to our backs.
