by Rae, Nikita
My pulse feels oddly present everywhere, pumping in my lips, feet, fingertips. It’s hard to focus when my body is itching to push away from the counter and get as far away from the file as possible. “What do you mean? How was the way they died an obvious clue?”
“Sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well. The four ways of dying and the four symbols tied in together. See,” he flips forward a couple of pages and plucks up a sheet of paper, which turns out to be a copy of a photograph, in startling Technicolor. A close up of a hand, palm upwards, laying on what looks like wet grass. Blood mottles the pale skin over the wrist, and where the fingers are curled inwards, the nails are shored up with grimy crescents of dirt and blood. In the center of the palm is the first symbol I’d recognized, the sideways figure eight, burned into the skin. The flesh is puckered and angry. I suck in a sharp breath through my mouth, because I swear I’ll be able to smell the story this picture is telling me if I breathe through my nose: burning, coppery, and pungent. Luke turns over the photocopy and points to the scrawled text on the back.
Janie Peterson, March 15th
Decapitation. Found 3 miles outside Rock Springs off the I80
“They figured out the correlation between this symbol and decapitation pretty quick. Seemed like the most popular way for this guy to kill. Nearly half the victims went out that way, and it always seemed like there was a struggle before hand. Most of the officers who worked the case, still working the case, thought the killer let the girls go before he tracked them down.”
“Why? Why would he do that?”
Luke finishes his beer and puts the bottle in the sink. He gets another two out of the fridge and sets one down in front of me. “Sometimes they like the chase,” he says awkwardly. “There was no real way for these girls to escape. He took them out to abandoned areas a couple of miles from the road. It was probably enough to give them a fleeting hope of escape. In truth, they didn’t stand a chance.”
Bile rises at the back of my throat, making my mouth sweat. My mind takes me back to the trailer for Way Out Of Wyoming and the ragged, terrified breathing of the girl who had been running for her life. I don’t need to see the movie to know the poor girl the actress was portraying didn’t make it. My hand shakes when I twist the top off my second beer, closing my eyes as the cold liquid snakes its way down my throat.
“Easy. We don’t want a repeat of last time. If this is too hard for you, I can keep looking and give you the updates if I find anything.” Luke’s trapped with that look of worry again, and I shake my head. There’s no motivation like the thought of having my father’s name cleared to keep pushing me forward.
“I can’t,” I murmur, quickly draining more than half my beer. “This is important. I’m probably gonna have nightmares for the rest of my life but I can’t give up. My dad would never give up on me.” Luke’s laugh startles me. It’s short and sharp and perhaps a little derisive. I bristle and rock back on the stool. “What was that for?”
Luke’s eyes sharpen when he looks at me. “What’s what for?”
“Laughing like that. I can’t do this with you if you think I’m crazy. My dad was a good man, Luke. I’ve spent the past five years defending him to everyone but you. I don’t have the energy to start now. I didn’t think I needed to.” I’m about five seconds from boosting out of my seat and fleeing the apartment, and Luke can see it in my eyes.
“I wasn’t being a jerk, Avery! I was laughing because of how ridiculous this whole thing is. I guess I’m bitter. You don’t have to defend Max to me. I know he was a good man. He wasn’t just my science teacher in high school, y’know. He was my friend. He was the only one who helped me when I needed it.”
I can’t picture that—my dad helping Luke. He’s been gone for so long that I’ve forgotten who he was to the outside world. Every memory that I covet of my father relates to what he meant to me. The side of him that had been a teacher at my school, that had been a volunteer at the local fire station, that mentored young boys in the Breakwater community on his weekends, has been practically forgotten. I hang my head a little and wrap my arms around my body, making myself small. “My dad mentored you?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah.”
I can’t look at Luke. He sounds a little angry. I want to know why, but I can’t ask. The only boys Dad mentored in Breakwater were from broken homes, young men who had suffered in the foster care system, the victims of various forms of abuse and neglect. Luke comes from a good home. His mom and sister are sweet; I’ve known them my whole life. His father and mine were members of the same shooting club for crying out loud. I still remember them going out hunting together on the weekends before Clive Reid was killed—shot by a misfiring rifle when I was just eight. Luke would have been eleven or twelve at the time. If my dad was helping Luke then it was probably because of that—the grief he must have suffered from his own father’s death. And that is probably a wound Luke doesn’t want re-opening. I respect that, know exactly what that’s like. I down the rest of my beer and keep my eyes off him, not sure how to act. Focusing on the file is probably the best thing I can do, even if makes me want to throw up.
“Rock Springs has to be seventy miles away from Breakwater,” I muse, staring down at the photocopied image. The copying process has captured the many fingerprints that rim the picture. It looks like a lot of people have handled the original, probably poured over it, trying to work out what it means. Luke remains silent for a minute. His voice is strained when he speaks.
“Doesn’t matter. Killers like this aren’t afraid to travel with their work.” He collects up my empty beer bottles and discards them in the sink with his, and then rifles in the counter draw, rattling loudly. I know what he’s looking for.
“Since when did you start smoking, anyway?”
He has the pack in his hand when he turns around, and his face looks stormy. “I don’t normally. Casey started a couple of years back. I used to have the occasional one when we were out at a club or something. Since we broke up I’ve probably smoked about four cigarettes. This pack’s over a year old.”
That probably explains why he doesn’t even have a lighter. He ignites his gas cooker and hunches over it so that his t-shirt hikes up a little exposing his lower back. His cigarette’s burning when he turns around. I avert my eyes, worried at how intensely I was staring at that small strip of bare skin. Luke still looks stressed.
My bad temper and I are the reasons for the uneasy tension rAveryting off him. “I’m sorry for snapping at you,” I tell him, finally manning up enough to meet his eyes. He shrugs and takes a drag off his smoke, his jaw muscles ticking.
“It’s okay. You have every reason to be defensive. I’m guessing your dad never mentioned he knew me.”
I shake my head. “Dad never said anything about the people he mentored. He told me when I was little that it was confidential, and that promising to keep a secret was sometimes the only way you could help someone.”
“I loved that about him, Avery. I trusted him. He was kind to me. I was jealous of you for so long.”
My hands still on my beer bottle. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess there were days…” He clears his throat and looks past me out of the window to the city beyond, the lights and the traffic and the masses. “There were days when I wished he was my dad, too.”
Luke’s never said anything like this to me before. He’s never even given me a hint that he knew my dad beyond being in his class at school and finding his dead body. A hard lump forms in my throat. I can’t pick apart my churning emotions long enough to work out how I feel: sad for him; curious; hurt because of that pained look in his eye. The anger I feel is a little confusing and it takes me a second to work out why it’s even present. Luke clearly shared a bond with my father, something strong enough to still devastate him five years after his death. A bond strong enough to make him leap to my dad’s defense even after everything that’s being said about him. This revelation makes things a little
clearer now. Luke actually shares a little of my story—the humiliation and the pain of people slandering someone important to you—and some sick part of me doesn’t want to share it.
“I need another beer,” I tell him, pushing back out of my seat. Instead of asking him to pass me one, I get up and fetch it myself. His eyes follow me around the breakfast bar and into the fridge, burning into the side of my cheek. The pressure of his gaze is unbearable and has my heart pounding in my chest. I look askance to find him poised in an awkward stance, frozen absolutely still. He doesn’t blink.
“D’you want another one?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Thanks,” he whispers. He takes the bottle out of my hand and we both flinch when our fingers touch. I don’t like the electricity that comes with that contact. It makes my head spin in an unwelcome way. The smoke from Luke’s cigarette fills my head and I suddenly realize how close I’ve gotten. I frown and reach past him slowly, and the expression on Luke’s face flickers. I hit the extractor fan button behind him and the whirring sound that sucks the smoke out of the air sucks away the tension with it. Luke gives me a wry smile and takes one last drag on his half smoked cigarette before backing away to repeat the process of running the butt under the tap and throwing it away. I return to my seat, fighting the color threatening to rise in my cheeks. Everything just got mighty confusing in the last five minutes. Everything.
Luke is all business when he turns back around. The conflicted look has disappeared. “So this is probably really unlikely, but did your dad keep a journal?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Do you think your mom would have kept it if he had?”
A scathing laugh escapes my lips. “I have no idea. I doubt it. She got removers to come and pack up her stuff when she moved here so she wouldn’t even have to go through his things. I’m pretty sure everything he owned was left in the house.”
“Wait, she still owns the house in Break?”
I shoot him a wary glance. “I own it now.”
“What?”
I slug back more beer. I know where this is headed. “I inherited it when I turned eighteen. Mom expected me to sell it. She was pretty pissed when I told her I wanted to keep it.” That argument had been one of the nails in the coffin of our dead relationship. I can still remember the disgusted look on her face when she told me I was sick and needed help if I wanted to cling onto a mausoleum where ‘that kind of evil’ had lived. I know Luke is staring at me again, like he expects me to say something else. I don’t.
“We should go search for a diary, then. I can’t believe the place has been sitting there empty all this time,” he mutters.
“Well, it is out of the way from town. You’d never notice it’s been permanently empty all these years. It’s not like you’d ever drive past it on your way somewhere.” I’d always loved how secluded our family home was, how far away from the world I’d felt living there with just my family and crazy old Mrs. Harlow next door. Mrs. Harlow died a year after I’d moved in with Brandon, and now my uncle is the only person who ever goes up there. He makes sure the place is secure and in good repair. Keeps the heating running on low in winter to avoid damp. I used to drive up there when I was feeling particularly crushed by the kids bullying me at school; I’d think about setting it on fire, razing it to the ground, but I’d never had the nerve. “I’m not sure about going back there, Luke. I…I don’t think I can.”
Luke opens his mouth to speak but the loud buzz of the intercom interrupts him. “Food’s here,” he says, heading to the door. He brings the Chinese into the kitchen and dishes up in silence. When he gathers the photo and some other papers that have fallen loose from the file, neatly tucking everything away so we can eat, I’m secretly glad. He doesn’t bring up going back to the house again until we were halfway through our meal.
“You know, if he did keep a journal or a work diary or something we might be able to disprove Colby Bright’s theory. He could have alibis back in Breakwater the days those girls were killed.”
Alibis. It sounds like such a guilty term to use, but he’s right. “Maybe…maybe you could collect the keys from Brandon and go up there next time you’re home?” I ask hopefully. Luke looks uncertain.
“I wouldn’t know where to look for anything, Avery.”
“Brandon could help you.” I’m being such a coward and I know it, but I haven’t been able to pluck up the courage to go into that house since I became its legal owner. I’m still not ready.
“Maybe,” Luke compromises, but I can see the doubt in his eyes. We finish up our food and I wash the dishes while Luke pretends not to watch me. In turn, I pretend not to notice and rinse out our beer bottles and shove them in the recycling.
“Are you still getting a taxi back to SU?” he asks when I’m done. I glance up at the clock on his wall and scowl. It’s almost midnight.
“Yeah, I’d better call one now.”
“Wouldn’t your boyfriend come get you?” he asks, leaning forward onto the counter. My shoulders tense, hearing the odd note in his voice.
“If he had a car he might. He’s not…I’m not really sure if he’s my boyfriend. We’re just hanging out.” Telling Luke that Noah and I are ‘just hanging out’ probably makes me sound slutty, and I find myself stammering over an explanation. “Not that we’re…not that I…we’re not—”
Luke smiles and brushes a hand back through his hair, disturbing it into that ruffled, just fucked look. “It’s okay, Avery. It’s good that you’re with someone. You should be happy.”
I give him a painfully small smile, unsure how to take his comment, and gather up my coat. “You do, too. I know she probably hates me because of my dad, but I’m still glad you’re working stuff out with Casey. You were together for so long. I suppose it’s natural that you’d want to give things another go.”
A fleeting frown flashes across his face. “Casey and I aren’t together, Avery. She was here to pick up some of her things. Oh… oh, it probably looked really bad that I was all…” He doesn’t say it, but I think it: half naked, hair all over the place, looking sexy as hell. He rolls his eyes dramatically and laughs. “No, I got off work early. She said she realized on of her mom’s rings was missing, wanted to check if she’d left it here when she moved out. She just let herself into the apartment thinking I’d be gone, but I was in bed. I nearly smashed her over the head with my baseball bat. We had a massive fight about her doing whatever the hell she pleased, and then you showed up. Probably the worst timing ever.”
For some reason a knot of tension eases in my stomach. “Yeah, she looked like she was going to attack me.”
“She thought…she asked me if I was seeing you,” Luke says. He focuses on the countertop, staring firmly at the swirls in the cool, graphite marble.
“Ha! Wow, she must think you’re crazy.”
“Why d’you say that?”
“Well, there’s the obvious. What did she say? That’s right, “I see you’re still intrigued by the macabre.” I’m a walking freak show to people like her. And then there’s the fact that you’re old.”
Luke splutters, his eyes going round. “I’m not old!”
“Sorry, no of course you’re not. You read Spiderman comics, after all. I meant to say you’re older than me.”
“By three and a half years.” I glance up to find him glaring at me. Another stormy, intense look I’ve never seen him wear before. “Three and half years is nothing once you leave high school, Avery.”
“I guess.” I feel awkward, pinned by the way he’s looking at me. I pull on my jacket and start backing over to the door. “Thanks for dinner, Luke. And thanks for…” I’m not sure if I’m supposed to thank him for sharing the gruesome pictures and information, but I know he could get into a lot of trouble because of it. He stalks across the room and puts his hand on the front door, holding it closed.
“You didn’t call a cab. You’re not standing on the street to hail one.”
; I laugh a little and try to pull his hand away. “This is New York, Luke. There are thousands of cabs out there. I’ll manage to flag one down in seconds.”
His hand doesn’t budge. “This is New York, Avery. There are thousands of psychos out there. You’ll be mugged in seconds, more like.”
“You have a warped view of the populace. Comes with the job,” I tell him. He really has to, doesn’t he? Wouldn’t working as a cop surely must jade even the most optimistic of people? Luke just crooks me a smile and leans his head against the door, still not letting me out.
“You can stay here. Sleep in my bed. I’ll take the couch again, I really don’t mind.”
“Luke.”
“Avery.”
I know he wants to say Iris and that makes my ears burn hotly. He’s too close. I shuffle back an inch and he turns so his back is pressed against the door. He crosses his arms across his chest, highlighting how corded and muscular they are. I look down at my feet and try to think of something to say that will distract me from the inappropriate thoughts flooding my head.
“I’ll only stay if you take me to the hospital in the morning.”
“I can do that,” he whispers.
So he makes himself up a bed on the sofa, and for the second time I fall asleep in Luke Reid’s bed. This time, however, I’m sober enough to smell him on his sheets. Clear-headed enough to acknowledge he is lying twenty feet away on the other side of a door, and weak enough to admit to my traitorous body-wide ache because of the fact.
“WHY ARE my sheets on the floor?” Luke hands me a plate of toast. He’s buttered the slices all the way to the edges as if he somehow knows I won’t eat them otherwise. I shrug sheepishly and accept the plate.
