The Bullet Theory

by Sonya Jesus

  Frank’s voice distracts me from the alluring scent. “Right on the steps of the fucking five-star hotel. The shooter, Coralee Mitchell, pulled a gun in the middle of the street, aimed, and shot him six times until someone wrestled the gun away from her.”

  “Is he dead?” Kace asks.

  “Lady’s a dead aim. Six bullets to the chest. Made sure she shot the fucker straight in the heart.” Frank chuckles against the sound of the crackling radio.

  “Where is she now?”

  “They’re picking her up. She didn’t even want a lawyer; she confessed on television.”

  “What?” I mouth.

  Kace points to the TV in the corner, so I turn it on and change to the local news channel.

  “She’s all over TV, talking about how this guy killed her daughter and the hotel covered it up.”

  “Mitchell?” Kace repeats. “Oh shit. The human trafficking ring the Feds were asking about?”

  “You mean the excuse they used to tag on to the Bullet Man case? Yeah, but officially, not ring-related. Just some fucking perv, who likes to shoot women up their sensitive areas with lead.”

  My eyes shot up at Frank’s callousness. Sensitivity training is lost on most of us.

  Frank continues, “Mitchell’s saying she’d do it again and again if she could. But at least the Feds are gone and out of our hair.”

  “Did she mention a bullet?”

  “Yes. We’re going to search her house for it in an hour, if you’re up for it?”

  My eyebrows scrunch as I peek over my shoulder.

  Kace stares at me, battling with a sense of duty to the job and a sense of duty to me. We just slept together, twice. I guess I could wait to ruin his good mood a little while longer.

  “Go,” I say softly, nestling myself between the covers. That way, we both won’t do something we’ll regret later.

  “I’ll be there in thirty.” He hangs the phone up and turns to me, his eyes carrying a gleam of mirth despite another victim. “The date is coming up,” he says as he fastens his belt, his eyes locked on me instead of threading the prong through the leather. “You don’t have to say anything.”

  I bury my head in the pillow, peeking up at him and his muscular torso.

  “I was trying to tell you before…” He threads his arm through a white T-shirt, ending the view. “I called everyone on the guest list and postponed due to past events.”

  My eyebrows arch in surprise, and I prop myself up on my eyebrows. “When?” Last my parents checked in, the wedding had not been canceled yet.

  “Two days ago. Frank helped me get through the list.” He grabs his badge and pops it into his back pocket. “When you were at therapy, I got a message about gifts coming in.”

  “Oh.” I sit up, tucking the sheet between my arms and securing it in place with my bent knees.

  He nods curtly with a tight jaw. It didn’t take a behaviorist to know it’s hard for him. “The guests asked about the date … I told them we still had a lot of healing to do as individuals and even more as a couple.”

  When swallowed, the ball of guilt in my throat anchors in my stomach. “Thank you.”

  He clears his throat and turns toward the dresser. “I don’t want to pressure you, but we have to figure out what we’re doing with our lives.”

  “Right now?”

  “No, babe.” He comes to the edge of the bed, places both hands on the mattress, and leans in to kiss me. “I don’t want to pressure you. I’m happy we’ve been getting better. These past three months have been difficult for both of us. I even told Frank I thought we were over.”

  We basically were.

  “I haven’t felt this good in months.”

  “Neither have I.” The words cue the remorse.

  “When you feel ready, we can talk about the future.”

  “What if I’m not ready?”

  “Then, last night wouldn’t have happened.” He smirks. “Or this morning.”

  “It was a mistake,” I quip back unconvincingly.

  “No, it wasn’t. You don’t make the same mistake twice.”

  I open my mouth to provide contrary evidence, but Kace shakes his head and points at me. “You,” he emphasizes. “I knew you were going to say something like that because you can’t let yourself be happy.”

  “Maybe if we close the case …”

  He cuts his gaze to my mouth, devoted to my suggestion. “Is that the only thing?”

  “I know it has to do with that stupid Pregnancy Center somehow and the doctor.”

  “Me too,” Kace agrees and sits on the bed with socks in his hand. “But he has an alibi. He was in the center.”

  “He has a phone. Did you trace his calls?”

  “He could’ve used a private message or the call center. Over three hundred calls came in between the time you were there and the time you got shot, and more than that before you went. There’s no way to know which one of those numbers are associates, at least not without warrants.”

  “Then let’s get a warrant.”

  “We have no evidence, and the law isn’t on our side here, babe.” He slides his shoes from underneath the bed and slips his feet into the boots, one at a time while explaining, “I’m not giving up.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  “Don’t say that!” he growls, teetering on the verge of anger. “Doing my job and abiding the law is not giving up.”

  No, it’s just postponing.

  “No matter what I do or how fast I solve Tyler’s case, the truth is, I can’t bring him back to life, and it feels like that’s what you want sometimes,” he snaps. “Let me make it clear: I can’t turn back time, I can’t revive him, and I can’t fast forward to the day where all of this hurts less.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “Good, because I can help save innocent people from this killer.”

  “Innocent?”

  “They wouldn’t be dead if the proxy killer wasn’t involved.”

  Or they would if the police did their job.

  “More importantly, I want to help you. Us. Because nothing else matters as much as you do.”

  “You want to help me?” I ask, as my brain prickles with ideas.

  “I’d do anything for you.” He gets up and drops a kiss to the top of my head. “Anything, baby.”

  Like, let me talk to the Bullet Man?

  “I’m going to find out what happened to Tyler, but it’s hard to do things when bodies keep popping up. There are still four open cases, and we aren’t sure if they are tied to this Bullet Man or are random murders. The influx in bodies is hard to keep up with.”

  I roll my head, pinning the ideas to the back of my mind. We had gone over this a few times. The bodies in question were connected to unsolved cases, but not all of them were gruesome or brutal murders. “If you are looking for the killers the Bullet Man tagged, go through the unsolved cases, look for the person who lost the most. He’s your killer.”

  “Where’s the evidence?”

  I throw my hands in the air. “Always looking for evidence.”

  “A confession would suffice.” He gets up and cocks his head. “Want to come interview the suspects with me? It’s always easier with you guiding the questioning.”

  I scoff and tie my hair up in a messy bun. “Active. Crime. Scene,” I spit out to remind him.

  “You didn’t hear it from me, but Nolan sent Cap a progress report.”

  What the fuck? I scrunch my eyebrows in confusion. “Like a report card? Isn’t doctor-patient confidentiality a thing?”

  From the nightstand, Kace grabs me a copy of the papers we signed on our first session with Nolan. “You didn’t even read them, did you?”

  I grimace and throw myself back on the pillow, holding the papers in the air above my eyes to shield them from the overhead light. “I could barely breathe, Kace. Reading wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.”

  He stands on the side of the bed near me and snatches the papers
from my hand, turning them to the last page. “Good thing I read them then. It’s nothing important, just logistics and release of information.”

  Oh, my God. I could care less what’s on these papers. “Cap asked for an update because he’s considering reinstating me?”

  “Yes.” Kace smiles. “I might have been a little convincing. The unofficial tagging along was a test run.” He holds two fingers up, squeezing the air between them. “I’d say you owe me a little bit, but I’d settle for a kiss.” He taps on the side of his cheek.

  I’m so ecstatic, I throw the covers off and wrap my hands around his neck. “You are amazing!” I plant quick, soft kisses all over his cheek.

  His low chuckle warms me as he wraps his arms around my waist, picking me up and setting me down on the floor.

  “I like being amazing.” His hands roam lower, over the curves of my butt. “I prefer being amazing in bed, but I’ll take amazing all the time.”

  “Need some more helium?”

  He whispers seductively, “Not my ego that’s inflated, Elle.”

  I’ll have access to the Bullet Man and to the crime scenes. Kace will always be with me, though, and maybe he can see things the way I do. Maybe if he wants to find Tyler’s killer, he’ll help me.

  He stares at my naked body, his eyes zoning in on my breasts. “You should get showered and dressed.” He clears his throat and hesitantly steps back. “Before neither of us makes it to work.”

  On my way to the bathroom, I swivel on my heel and lean against the doorframe. “Kace?” I ask before I lose the nerve.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you really mean what you said about doing anything for me?”

  He smirks devilishly. “Anything that makes you feel good.” On a mission, he charges for me, but the screaming woman on the TV stalls him halfway. “Shit… If I get in the shower with you, we’re never going to make it to work.”

  I chew on the inside of my lip. “Well, Nolan made me realize that we have to be flexible with each other.”

  Kace cocks his head. “I don’t know if I like where this is going.”

  “Have you ever wondered how the Bullet Man does what he does?”

  He grabs his gun from the nightstand on the opposite side of the room. “What do you mean? How he finds his targets?”

  I pop my shoulder. “Yeah, but also how he solves the cases.”

  He checks the cartridge and looks up at me. “No, I don’t know. If I did, we’d be on our way to interrogate him and not the people he sent to kill.”

  “He gives these people a bullet with a name on it. And from what you’ve said, none of them have been wrong, right?”

  “There may be other bullets out there with wrong names. These people don’t usually use the bullets given. He must be working with them, and they just refuse to give him up. Cause of death has been anywhere from poisoning to bar fights to an explosive device. It makes victimology very hard.”

  “Why don’t you start treating your suspects as the victims?” Because that’s what they are—indirect victims of hideous and traumatic crimes.

  “We are.” Kind of—that’s what the right twitch in his cheek tells me.

  “But maybe there are more people. More unsolved crimes and more bullets with names on them that are sitting in some drawer.”

  “You want me to go through all the open cases?”

  “Just the ones from two to three years ago. I can help you narrow down the searches. He finds people who are aimed at retribution. The victim’s family or someone close to them. Maybe if we interview them, we can figure out how he finds these people.”

  “That’s a lot of work, Elle.”

  “I want to find and talk to him.” Shit. I regret it the second the words leave my lips.

  “WHAT?” he bellows, going stiffer than the erection he had this morning.

  I flinch at the tone of his voice.

  “You’re joking?” He stands perfectly still, but the vein in his neck pumps wildly.

  I’m afraid to say I’m not, but I need his help. “Maybe he has resources we don’t have, Kace. He can—”

  “You want to work with a killer to find a killer?”

  “Nolan studies criminal minds, and he says—”

  “I don’t fucking care what your therapist does or says. I care about what the woman I want to spend my life with does.” He throws his hands in the air and flicks his gaze to the ceiling, shaking his head before he straightens and glares at me. “I knew this was all too good to be true. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. No one gets better this quickly.”

  “Kace, I’m honestly better—”

  “Better?” he spits back at me with disgust. “This is not better, Eleanor. This is—this isn’t you… Actually, you know what? Your therapist was right about something.”

  I’m halted in my steps. He finally realized I had changed, and by the look on his face, he doesn’t like the change.

  “The woman I fell in love with wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. She wouldn’t want to chase down a murderer, so she could ask him for help. This is insane, and I’m not going to let you do it.”

  Why he thinks he has any say over my actions is beyond me. I respect his opinion but fuck him. “Fine, then I’ll find him myself. Without you.” I enunciate those two words, purposely excluding him from my life with them. They are the ammo, and his ego is my target.

  I never miss.

  “Not at the precinct. You are not stepping foot in there and ruining everything the team has worked for.” He swipes is hand in the air before pointing at me. “Do not even think about calling Cap and weaseling your way in.”

  “You can’t stop me from going inside.” He can’t stop me from doing anything, just like I can’t. Whatever the decision, the choice is mine alone. But it stings to know that despite knowing that we’re in a gray area with how far the law could help us, he doesn’t want to help me solve our case.

  “After Cap finds about your plan, yes, I can.” He grabs his bag from the closet and hoists it over his shoulder—the same bag he made himself for when the baby was born and he had planned on staying with me at the hospital.

  “Where are you going?” It hurts a lot more than I had expected. Before therapy with Nolan, I’d be dazed out—numb. It would hurt less.

  “I think it’s time we took some space from each other.” His words land on my ears like stones, beating and bruising my skin.

  “You’re leaving?” My hand flies to the dip of my neck, my finger hooking through the gold chain and curling around it.

  He hangs his head low and massages the back of his neck, pacifying his discomfort. Either he’s not comfortable with the situation or the thoughts mulling around in his head stress him out. He nods his head, framing the answer before it comes out. “Maybe I should’ve left a long time ago. I don’t know what we’re doing anymore.”

  I swallow and shield my eyes from him, because the more I try to read his expressions, the worse it feels. “Me neither.”

  “Guess you were right…” I hear him open the bedroom door, but I don’t ask him about what.

  A mistake was made.

  And I made it. I crumble to the floor and rest my back against the wall, bowing my head to my knees. Then I listen for the sound of the door shutting, and I wait and wait and wait. And he doesn’t come back.

  Maybe I should go after him.

  10

  On the Verge

  Nolan Mills

  “Morning, Doctor. You have four voicemails from Eleanor Devero, and two from her fiancé,” Cara informs me about three minutes after I come inside.

  “Thank you,” I say after she spits off the rest of my messages. “Can you transfer me to Detective Dalton, please?” Women tend to be more long-winded and emotional than men, but men offer a better view of the timeline.

  On the second ring, Kace picks up.

  “Hello?” he answers with a strained voice.

  Purposely, I wait a few seconds to test his p
atience threshold.

  “Hello!” he clips, this time at a louder pitch, solidifying my ‘trouble-in-paradise’ theory.

  “Hello, this is Dr. Nolan Mills. I’m returning your calls.”

  “Oh…” He pauses, and due to the decrease in background noise, I assume, heads to a quieter place. “Sorry about that, Dr. Mills.”

  “It’s all right. What can I help you with?”

  “I need to schedule a session with you. Or maybe couple’s therapy … I don’t know. Your homework isn’t working.”

  “Something happened,” I affirm and take a seat at my desk, extending my second drawer and removing one of the neatly stacked note cards.

  “Yes, something fucking happened. Elle’s not getting better, or she was and she … she’s not ready to come back to work,” he says with finality.

  “Detective Dalton, I’ve already sent in my recommendation to your captain.” I balance the receiver between my chin and shoulder and reach for one of the many identical, black ballpoint pens in the holder.

  “I know, but I talked to her this morning, and she’s not ready.”

  Twice. At the right-hand side of the page, I add a date and then a quick session summary while I listen to Kace’s labored breaths. “Can you explain to me why you believe your fiancée isn’t ready to return to work with you?”

  “It’s not with me,” he clarifies. “It’s in general. She’s not ready to be here, at least not until things settle down on our end.”

  I presume he’s speaking of my case. “Your captain tells me you need extra help with the investigation you’ve been working on, and her particular skill set can be useful. He said you had some suspects.”

  “We can do it without her.” He grunts and slams something. “I don’t want her here interrogating anyone.”

  “Perhaps we share the same concern.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I did communicate my concerns with your captain. I’m not sure she’s fully capable of using her behavior interpretation abilities.”

  “Why do you say that?” His tone adjusts, and his voice returns to the standard decibel, infused with concern.