Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

  Her mouth gaping, she shook her head at him. She couldn’t find words.

  He set the beers on the counter and used his lighter to pop the tops off. Then he handed her a bottle.

  She took it. “How can you ask me something like that? It’s like you don’t even know me.”

  He laughed. “Is that what it’s like? Really? Well, how interesting.”

  She scoffed. “If this is some passive aggressive move so that I can see what it’s like to feel accused—”

  “I’m serious, little bird,” he said, and he looked serious. Deadly serious. “You didn’t want to press charges against him. You acted breezy about it. And then he ended up dead. You knew the original case inside and out, so I’m sure you could have set him up any way you wanted. Don’t tell me that you’re so high and mighty that you wouldn’t seek vengeance. I know you better than that. And don’t forget that it was my arms you crawled into after the last time you killed a man.”

  She sputtered. “That—that’s not the same thing at all. Come on, Hawk. You know I would never…” She swallowed hard. “I mean, okay, maybe I can kind of see how you might think that.”

  “But you didn’t do it,” said Hawk.

  “No,” she said.

  “You can tell me if you did,” said Hawk. “I would protect you. I would do whatever necessary to help you hide it, if you needed me. You don’t have to hide anything from me.”

  “No, I’m not hiding anything,” she said.

  “Okay.” He took a swig of his beer. “Okay. I believe you.”

  “Well, thank you.” She glared at him. “I’m not going to bother asking if you did it.”

  “No?” he said. “Well, is that because you don’t think I’m guilty or for some other reason?”

  “It’s because if you did do it, you’d lie. If you did do it, you’ve been lying to me all along.”

  “I didn’t do it,” he said, holding her gaze, looking deep into her eyes.

  She gazed back for several long, long moments, but eventually, there was something too naked and penetrating about his eyes looking into hers, and she had to break contact. She took a drink of the beer he’d given her. “You, uh, you asked Reilly for a job?”

  “Yeah, that was a stupid idea.” He leaned against the counter, surveying his beer.

  “Since when do you want to work in law enforcement?”

  “I don’t know,” said Reilly. “I went out into the field with him, you know? We talked to people. I started to realize that I might have a little bit of talent for getting people to talk. I never thought anything that I learned from Vivian would be useful, but there it was. Like, maybe I could do something good for once.”

  “Well, if you want to do that, you don’t need Reilly,” she said. “You could join a police academy. But you would need to get your GED.”

  “I was planning on that,” said Hawk, taking a drink of beer. “I just thought that maybe while I was getting it all squared away, maybe I could help you and Reilly out some more.”

  She chewed on her lip.

  “Look,” said Hawk. “I’m in love with you, little bird. You know I am. I also know you’re not in love with me.”

  “Hawk—”

  “And you’re right not to be. You should have more than what I can offer you right now. To be the kind of man that you could love, I need to change. I just… I want to change. I really do.”

  She licked her lips. She watched him.

  He looked up at her, and his eyes were vulnerable and gray and piercing.

  She closed the distance between them, taking his beer bottle away, setting it on the counter. She ran her fingers over his neck and his shoulder and then dragged them down his chest. She kissed him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Reilly knocked on the door of what used to be his house, but was now Janessa’s house. He didn’t come here often, but Janessa had called and asked if he could come over one day after work. She said she had something to tell him, and she’d sounded excited.

  He’d agreed warily. The last time Janessa had news, it was that she was pregnant and getting married to another man. Reilly still wasn’t completely pleased about that development, but he’d managed to quell his crazy behavior over it. When she’d told him, at first, he’d been angry, and he’d set about trying to prove that she’d been having an affair while they were married. But then he discovered the reason for her getting married so quickly was that she was pregnant. Then he’d been angry about that too.

  He realized now, though, that none of it had to do with Janessa.

  Well, maybe he’d been helped to realize this by the shrink he’d had to go see. He’d been supposed to be talking to the shrink about how he was dealing with the fact that he’d shot Kyler Morris. But he hadn’t shot Morris. Wren had done it. So, he hadn’t had much to say about the act, and somehow the session had transitioned into talking about his divorce.

  Anyway, he now realized that it all had to do with himself. He didn’t want Janessa to get married and have another baby, because she got another chance to be happy. Reilly wanted that chance, too, but he was ashamed of himself for wanting it, for not having been satisfied with his family the way it was. He felt guilty for not loving Janessa enough, but he felt even guiltier because he wasn’t sure he’d loved Timmy enough either.

  The shrink said it was normal for parents to feel disappointed in their children. It happened all the time. That was why people were always dealing with disapproving parents. She said that there was no problem with his disappointment as long as he owned it and recognized it as his problem, not as his child’s. As long as Reilly was aware that the shortcoming was his own, he was ahead of the game. Reilly could change himself, but trying to change his kid would be painful and next to impossible.

  Anyway, Reilly was feeling very Zen about it all. So, he agreed to come by when Janessa asked him to.

  She opened the door. “Caius, you’re here.”

  “I’m here,” he said, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  “Come with me,” she said, leading him into the living room, which looked so similar to when he used to live there as to be disturbing. When he moved out, his entire world changed. But for Janessa, only one thing changed. He wasn’t there anymore.

  He sat down on the couch he’d helped pick out, the one he’d paid for in three installment payments because they couldn’t afford to buy it outright.

  Timmy was sitting on the floor, building a track for his trains. He was babbling to himself as usual. Timmy was delayed in speech. He spoke, but he only repeated things that he had heard. He had very little spontaneous, meaningful language.

  “Okay,” said Janessa, sitting down next to him. She had a big paperback book in her arms and she thrust it at Reilly.

  He took it and furrowed his brow. “Obtaining Language Naturally on the Autism Spectrum,” he read. He turned to her sharply. “You’ve fought an autism diagnosis his whole life.”

  “I know,” said Janessa. “Because I didn’t want to give up on him. I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh, he’s autistic,’ and decide there was nothing else they could do. But even without the diagnosis, that’s what we all did, Caius.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but then he didn’t. She was right, in way. They had all given up on Timmy in various ways. He still had a hard time accepting that this was all his son would ever be, but he didn’t know how to reach him. Timmy didn’t seem to want to be reached.

  “You have to read the book,” she said. “There’s a boy in there, older than Timmy when he started the therapy, and he can talk now.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I mean, he doesn’t sound ‘normal,’ you know? It’s not a miracle, but… we could communicate with him. We can, in fact. He’s trying to talk to us, Caius. He’s trying.”

  “What do you mean?” said Reilly, looking at her, and now his heart was starting to pick up speed.

  “Do you ever notice how sometimes, when he does one of his quotes it seems…”

 
; “Oddly appropriate?” said Reilly.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Like, uh, one day I tried to give him a hug, and he pushed me away and said, ‘The island of Sodor is surrounded by water on all sides.’”

  Janessa brightened. “Exactly like that. He was trying to tell you that… that…”

  “That he wanted to be an island,” said Reilly. “He didn’t want a hug. I knew it. I knew he was saying it, but I talked myself out of it.”

  Janessa touched her chest. “I’ve done that too. I thought that it was wishful thinking on my part, that I wanted him to be in there so badly that I was projecting.”

  “Me too,” said Reilly, and now he was starting to feel excited. “Why didn’t we ever talk about this before?”

  “Oh, Caius, we haven’t been very good at talking to each other in a long time.”

  He looked away. She was right. He licked his lips. “Okay, so, uh, what’s this book all about?”

  “Well, it’s a little hard to explain,” she said. “But basically, the general thesis is that Timmy is a gestalt learner, meaning that he doesn’t understand that language is made of smaller units that are put together. He’s memorizing every single utterance he hears. He needs to learn to break them down, to see that they’re made up of building blocks. Other kids, normal kids, they get that, but he doesn’t. And he’s not alone. There are other kids out there who are the same as him. There are stories in this book, case studies. I read them and bawled.” Her eyes were shining.

  “Really?” He turned the book over. “Okay, this seems cool. I’ll look at it. So, what do we do? How do we help him break stuff down?”

  “Um, the first step is just to repeat back to him what he’s saying.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s amazing, Caius. Try it, you’ll see. He’s spent years of his life thinking that nothing he says is important. No one ever responds to what he says. He has a few gestalts he can use, like ‘yes,’ or ‘no,’ but otherwise, we don’t acknowledge anything he says.”

  “Right, because we don’t think he’s saying anything.”

  “When you start showing that you hear him, and that you’re listening, he lights up.” Tears started spill out of her eyes and she dashed them away. She pointed. “Try it.”

  Reilly hesitated. “Just repeat back what he’s saying? Really?”

  Janessa nodded.

  Reilly took a deep breath and then he got down on the floor and crawled over to sit with Timmy. “Hey, Timmy.”

  Timmy looked up. “Hi. I’m Thomas,” he chirped.

  Reilly licked his lips. “Hi. I’m Thomas,” he repeated.

  Timmy grinned, a huge grin that Reilly had to admit he never saw on the kid. “I’m going to beep-beep at Percy.” He lifted his chin. “Beep-beep!”

  Reilly chuckled. “Beep-beep!”

  “Beep-beep!” said Timmy again, delighted. He was making eye contact with his dad, and he was there. He was in there.

  “Beep-beep!” said Reilly again, only his voice cracked.

  “I’m going to beep-beep at Percy. Beep-beep!”

  “I’m going to beep-beep at Timmy,” said Reilly.

  Timmy let out a peal of laughter, as if Reilly had just said the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. “Beep-beep at Timmy! Beep-beep at Timmy!”

  Reilly laughed too, but his chest was tight. Timmy had repeated what he’d said back to him. That was immediate echolalia, something Timmy used to do, but had stopped a long time ago. Now, Reilly realized it was because he must have decided it was pointless, since no one had ever responded well to it. Reilly used to hate it, but now, hearing his son say back his words, he was overjoyed, because it meant Timmy was hearing him, that he was in this moment with Reilly.

  For so long, he’d thought that his son was lost in another world, an impenetrable world. But all along, he’d been right there, waiting. Reilly, seized with emotion, wrapped his arms around Timmy.

  Timmy squawked. “No! No! My doctor has forbidden me to push.” He slithered out of Reilly’s arm and hopped over to his trains, where he began to play with them on his own, making them talk to each other. He yammered out Thomas dialogue back and forth, but he looked up to see if Reilly was watching.

  Reilly was.

  “You see?” said Janessa softly, and she was on the floor next to him.

  “Yeah,” said Reilly.

  Her eyes were red, and she had a tissue, wiping at her tears. Janessa raised her voice and repeated one of Timmy’s lines back to him.

  He beamed at her, pleased. He brought his trains over to his parents and showed off his toys. Reilly didn’t think he’d ever done that before. He used to be so jealous of parents at parks, their children yelling, “Look at me, Daddy,” because Timmy never seemed to care if he was looking at him.

  Timmy cared.

  Timmy was in there.

  Reilly snatched a tissue out of Janessa’s tissue box.

  * * *

  Wren looked up. Reilly was at the door to her office with his coffee cup. “Thanks for picking this up for me.”

  “Is it cold?” she said. “I thought you’d be in earlier.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I can pop it in the microwave if I need to.”

  She wrinkled up her nose. “That’s coffee abuse.”

  He laughed. “Well, lukewarm coffee is an affront to all that’s good in the universe, so I’ll do what I have to do.”

  She eyed him. “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Uh, I guess,” said Reilly. “I found out some good news about my son yesterday.”

  “Oh, really?” Wren knew that Reilly’s son was basically nonverbal, and that he was pretty torn up over it. “What happened?”

  “Janessa found this therapy for echolalia,” he said. “We don’t know how far Timmy will be able to advance, but what’s important is that he’s actually trying to interact with his environment, he’s not just stuck in his own little world. He just doesn’t have the tools to understand how to form his own language, so we’re going to try this thing to help him.”

  “Wow, that’s cool,” she said. “You think it’ll work?”

  “I don’t know,” said Reilly. “But the first step, it was pretty amazing. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him engage with anyone else like that before. Last night, for the first time in my life, I played with my son.”

  Wren grinned. “That’s amazing.”

  “I mean, to anyone else, it wouldn’t have looked like playing, and he’s still only repeating stuff, you know? But it was communication, like, two-way communication. You could tell he’s been starving for it.” Reilly looked away, his voice thick.

  “So have you,” said Wren.

  He laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So, how’s it work?”

  “I don’t even know exactly. I have a book to read that Janessa got for me. But I guess that basically, we have to help him break down the things he’s saying and realize they all have words in them and then put the words together himself. He’s older, so he may be past the plasticity stage, he may never be able to talk completely normally, but he should be able to communicate more than just repetition. Janessa and I both think he can make progress.”

  “Oh, wow, Reilly, that’s so great. I’m so happy for you.” She smiled at him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Uh, what are you doing in here so early?”

  “I’m, um, trying to work on a copycat profile.”

  He arched his eyebrows. “I thought you were coming down pretty hard on the idea that Oliver’s murder was isolated.”

  “Well, that’s still a possibility. And it’s also possible that Major didn’t do it, that Hawk did. Or that someone else did all of it. Or that Major did it, and this is a copycat. We need to investigate all the possibilities.”

  “Okay,” said Reilly. “I agree. So, how’s your profile coming?”

  “Well, it’s tough to profile someone from a copycat crime scene, because whatever they’v
e done is the work of a different mind. But there are two major theories about why people commit copycat crimes. One is that by taking on the identity of someone else, the killer is able to depersonalize. It’s no longer him committing the crime, but instead it’s another killer. This way, he’s not bound by his own inhibitions. The other theory is that the killer craves the spotlight. If another killer has already had media attention, the killer might copy his crimes so that he can have that notoriety as well.”

  “Which do we think is more likely here?”

  “Well, it really could be either,” she said. “But we’ve got no indication that the killer is interested in fame here. If so, it seems like he might have left his own personal mark on the crime scene. But he copied exactly what Major did. So, that means it’s likely the case of taking on a persona in order to have the ability to carry out the crime. Which means that we’re probably looking for someone somewhat timid. He’d be shy, unassuming. He may still live with his mother or with an overbearing female replacement for the mother—”

  “Why mother?”

  “It’s an infantilized relationship,” she said.

  “Okay,” said Reilly. “Go ahead.”

  “He may have finished high school, but probably doesn’t have a college education. He’s probably unemployed or employed in a profession that shames him, like as a custodian or a garbage collector. He has an intense fantasy life. He probably is a massive fan of real serial killers, also of violent horror movies and graphic video games.”

  “All right,” said Reilly. “Sounds good. Age range?”

  “I’d say mid-twenties to late thirties,” she said. “Old enough to have given up hope that life will get better, but not so old as to have given up entirely.”

  “This is all great stuff, Wren.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ve got the uniforms looking into the entertainment angle, asking local shops if they have anyone who fits the profile and buys a lot of movies or games. Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to find him that way, because it’s likely he doesn’t shop locally. He probably just illegally torrents everything online.”