“I had the chance to stop this before it started, and I didn’t take it.”
I looked up from my coffee. “What did you say?”
“I could’ve stopped him. I should have. I didn’t.” He went to the window and leaned on the frame, looking out.
“I don’t understand. You knew this was going to happen?”
“No, not this. Not this specifically. But I had my suspicions. I tried to tell Pax he was wrong to follow Smythe around the way he did. I told him we had nothing to worry about, that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to blow his freedom.” He shook his head and snorted in derision. “I was only trying to convince myself, that’s it. Trying to tell myself we had nothing to worry about, even though I worried all the time. I didn’t want to believe it, you know? But in here?” He patted his chest. “I knew he’d do it again. It’s a compulsion with animals like him. They have to do what they do. I bet he spent many, many sleepless nights over the past ten years, just wishing he could have a little girl again.”
I shuddered in disgust.
“I wish I had seen this. I wish I could’ve gotten into his head deep enough to know what he was planning to do. Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I let myself go that deep?”
“You both keep blaming yourself for this, when there’s nothing you could’ve done.”
“I could’ve killed him.”
I gasped, jaw hanging open.
He went on like I hadn’t made a sound. “I had the chance. I could’ve wiped him out and gotten away with it, too, only I didn’t. I pussed out at the last second.”
“What happened? What was this chance?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but he needed to talk about it. I could feel the need radiating from him. Who else could he tell?
It took a long time for him to speak. When he did, he sounded like a man in a trance. “It was around a month or so after he got out. I was trailing him one night. He liked to go to a bar a few blocks from his apartment. He’d go there every night—I think he just wanted the contact with regular people after being inside for so long. And I would follow him and wait in a little sandwich joint across the street. I’d sit there at the counter, by the window, looking straight out at the bar until he walked out again. Then, I’d follow him at a distance back to his building.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “I know it sounds crazy. I knew it was crazy even then. But I did it because I had to do something, didn’t I? I knew we couldn’t trust him. I went deep into his mind when we were hunting him the first time. I found out things about him I’ve never even talked about with another living person outside the case, because I couldn’t bring myself to repeat them. Somebody like him doesn’t just stop what they’re doing. They can’t, because it’s in them. It’s who they are. Even if they want to stop, even if they know it’s wrong, they can’t do it.” His eyes hardened. “Only he doesn’t care that it’s wrong. He knows it is, and he doesn’t care.”
He turned away again. “I’d follow him and wait for the light to go on in the window to his apartment, then I’d go home. That was my routine, just like it was his routine to go to the bar and walk straight home. Only there was one night when he didn’t go right home. Instead of walking straight to the corner, making a left, then walking to the end of the block, he ducked into an alley between two buildings. Why the sudden change? What was he doing? I couldn’t take a chance. I had to follow.”
“What did you find?” I whispered.
“He was taking a piss. Simple as that. Just taking a piss on the wall.”
“But he only lived—”
“I know.” He looked at me again. “He only lived maybe half a block away. There was no reason for him to make that stop.”
“Why did he?”
“Why do you think? Tell me what you think.”
“Because…he knew you were watching him?”
He smirked. “Yeah. He wanted to tempt me. What would I do if I got him alone? And he was alone, too. There was nobody around. I could’ve pulled this out.” He patted the gun in his holster. “I could’ve put him down like a rabid dog and walked away without anybody knowing the difference.”
“They would’ve been able to trace the bullet.”
“Yeah, I know. And so did he, of course. Granted, I could’ve screwed with the results if I wanted to. I could’ve gotten help. There’s a lot of us who wanted him dead and forgotten back in the day. He knew I would be tempted—just like he knew I wouldn’t go through with it, no matter how tempting. Because I’m not like him…or so I told myself at the time.”
“You aren’t, though. You’re nothing like him.”
“I should’ve been like him just then!” he snapped. “I should’ve given up my so-called principles and done what needed to be done. Fuck it, even if I got caught, it would’ve been worth it. I know that now. I was too weak. I didn’t have the balls to do what had to be done. Just like he knew I wouldn’t.” He looked up at the ceiling. “God, he loves playing games. He’s been playing us all for so long. Why didn’t I kill him? Suzanne would still be alive. And Denny.” And Lizzie. He didn’t have to say her name for me to know he was thinking about her. Neither of us wanted to even hint that she might not be alive.
“You didn’t do this. You couldn’t have known.” There I was again, feeling useless. Helpless. Offering up empty words, hoping they would help, hoping I could offer a little comfort but knowing I couldn’t.
“I should have. I forgot how he thinks. I forgot that he would hold such a grudge against Pax. What the hells is wrong with me? What kind of detective am I?”
“One with a heavy case load. One with a life. You couldn’t spend your life focused on this one single person. Look at all the good you’ve done over the years, just since I’ve known you.”
“Funny how none of that matters at a time like this.”
“I’m sure.”
I stood up and he walked out of the office with me, hands jammed in his pockets. It was as silent as a grave in there. I chided myself for even thinking something like that when two people were already dead. At least I didn’t say it out loud. I can take comfort in that, even though it’s not much comfort.
“Where is everybody?” he asked.
“They’re doing their jobs—even though I know none of them wants to. They all want to be working on this with your team.”
“I appreciate that, but Pax will want a profitable business in place when this is all over.” He managed to crack a small smile. “I know it’ll mean a lot to him, you running things the way you are.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the least I can do.” The very least. I feel like a total waste. I should be on the front lines, standing by my man, supporting him and making sure he gets at least a little sleep whenever possible.
Ricardo seems to understand this. His hands close around my arms. “Let me tell you something, and this is something only I know. Okay? So it doesn’t go any further than you and me.”
“Okay.”
“The reason he and Suzanne split up was because of the way he pushed her and everything else aside when we were going after Smythe. It’s just how he is. He’s, I don’t know—incapable of having a good thing in his life when there’s something bad going on. It sounds overly simple but I think that’s what it is.”
I tried to take it all in. “What should I do?”
He shrugged, but smiled kindly. “I wish I knew. Just be here when he comes back. And he will come back. I can promise that much.” Only his smile didn’t reach his eyes, and I wondered if he had the same fear I did—that Pax would never come back from any of it. Even if he got Lizzie back alive, how much of himself would he have to lose in the process?
Chapter Fourteen – Pax
I was drowning. I was drowning in a sea of paper and there was no life raft in existence that could get me out of it.
Not that I would’ve accepted a life raft just then, anyway. I had too much to do. It seemed like no matter how confident I felt that things were turning around and I
was finally on the right track, something would fall through and I’d be back to square one.
We had already gone over Smythe’s financial records with a fine-tooth comb, hoping against hope that he had done something stupid we could trace. Maybe he’d bought a small boat or rented an apartment elsewhere. Maybe he’d taken a bunch of cab or Uber rides to one particular location when he was scouting it out to have somewhere to hide my daughter. Maybe he had done one of any number of things that might help us connect the dots.
He hadn’t, and I already knew he hadn’t because he was too fucking smart and he had too much fucking time to plan his coup de grace. It was his masterpiece, what he was doing to me. Punishing me and having fun at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone. Susie and Denny. It was all so mixed up, them and Lizzie and me and Smythe and how much I hated him and how I had known, hadn’t I, that this would happen. I knew it would but I never thought he would do it to me. There I went, underestimating him and his capacity for evil.
I had a bunch of real estate records to go through next. Ricardo shook his head at how unwilling I was to pore over a computer screen. I wanted print outs. I wanted to touch the records with my own two hands and put them aside if I needed to look at them later. I wanted to be able to piece things together without flipping through open tabs and murdering my eyes in the process—it was always harder for me to spend time staring at a monitor, and I knew there had to be a real, scientific reason for that but I didn’t have time to figure out what that was and damn it, my thoughts were wandering again.
There were moments when I was sure I was dreaming, for real this time. Not like before. Actual dreaming, where in the space of time it took to blink I would be transported to a dream world. I was that tired. My poor, overworked brain was desperate for the chance to shut down. I fought against it every time, pushing the fatigue away and chugging coffee like my life depended on it. Because it did. If I lost my little girl, I would kill myself. There was no reason to live anymore once she was gone.
I couldn’t live with the guilt, either. There was that. If I had to wake up every morning and look at myself in the mirror and know, just know without even having to consciously think about it, that I had caused my daughter’s death? I wouldn’t last a week. Not even a few days. I’d get it all over with the moment I heard she was gone.
That won’t happen. My thoughts were wandering yet again. I wondered if trying to catch even an hour or two of sleep wasn’t a good idea, after all. There was a little couch in the office Ricardo had packed me into, an office that hadn’t been used in years if the amount of dust when I first got there was any indication. I wondered vaguely, in the back of my mind, if they had anybody coming in to clean things up. What did our tax dollars pay for, anyway?
No. No sleep. I had to sack up and keep going. I sat up straighter at the desk, with its chair with one broken wheel that forced me to balance myself carefully for fear of falling over. I told myself it was a good thing I had that broken chair, so I couldn’t get too comfortable. If I got comfortable, I’d pass out. And somehow, some way, Smythe would know I had passed out. And he would do whatever it was he was planning to do to her then, while I was sleeping, because he would know how that would twist the knife in my chest. It was a crazy thing to think, but he was a crazy person—and I had already underestimated how far he would go to punish me. By a long shot.
I was deep into my real estate review when there was a knock at the door. That would be Ricardo, checking on me to be sure I was still breathing. Nobody else had the balls to look me in the face, or maybe they didn’t care. That could’ve been it, too. Maybe they didn’t care whether I was holding it together. Maybe they knew just as well as I did that the entire case was my fault, the murders and the kidnapping, and their precious time was being taken up with looking for my little girl because I was stupid enough not to get her out of town when I had the chance. Or kill Smythe when I saw him in that parole hearing where that piece of shit parole board let him loose on the world.
The first thing I saw was blonde hair, and I knew it wasn’t Ricardo.
“What are you doing here?” Probably not the first thing I should’ve said. Definitely not, judging from the look on her face. Like I had just poured cold water over her.
She held out a cup of coffee and a paper sack. “I thought I would bring you some of this. I’m sure you haven’t been eating, either.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite.”
“Well. Whenever you get even the littlest appetite. You have to keep yourself strong.” She left it on the one corner of the desk without a stack of files threatening to fall off and spill over the floor. I could smell meat and fried onions. She knew how I liked my burger. She was that kind of person, of course, the one who kept things like that in a file drawer in their memory so they could pull it out at just the right time.
“Thanks.” I couldn’t let her distract me. If anything, just the sight of her there pissed me off. I knew that was wrong. I knew it wasn’t her fault that she had a big heart and wanted to make things as easy as she could for me. She was a person of action, too. I couldn’t forget that. Never passive, always wanting to be helpful. There was a reason why I relied so heavily on her at the agency, and it wasn’t just because she had a great ass and a killer smile.
“How are you holding up? I know that’s a stupid question.” It all came out in one breath, in a half-whisper.
“Yeah, maybe it is a little.” I stood up for fear of falling asleep right in front of her and walked around the small office. It didn’t take many steps to get from one end to the other. I rolled my head back and forth on my shoulders, trying to work out the tension a little bit.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I almost barked it like a drill sergeant. She flinched.
“Okay. I won’t.” She looked over the stacks of paper. “At least let me help you with a little of this. I can, I don’t know, get things organized? Maybe look at them with a fresh set of eyes?”
I shook my head hard. “No. I have them in a certain order.” I didn’t. I just didn’t want her getting into things.
“I just wanted to help.” Her chin quivered, but only for a second before she steeled herself. “You don’t know what it’s like, feeling so helpless.”
“I don’t what?” I hissed. She went pale when she realized what a stupid thing that was to say. I could’ve let up on her and let it slide, but I wasn’t in the mood for that. I was hurting. Terrified. Helpless. “I don’t know how it feels? Did you just say that?”
“I was wrong. I’m sorry. Don’t hold it against me.” She reached for me. I backed away.
“No.”
“No?” Her hand fell to her side. “What do you mean, no?”
I had a puppy once, as a kid. He was abused, or so they told me at the time. It was clear from the way he acted around people. He looked wounded all the time. Sad, depressed, hanging around with his head down between his shoulders no matter how nice I was to him or how much I played with him or how many treats I tried to bribe him with. After six months or so, however, he started to come around. He would come to me when I called—I would have to wait a little, but he wouldn’t cower in the corner.
Until one day, when I yelled at him. I forgot what I was even yelling about maybe a minute later. It wasn’t important enough. Maybe he chewed on something I loved or maybe it looked like he was starting to take a squat in the house. Whatever the reason why, I raised my voice at him and he looked at me the way she was looking at me just then.
He never trusted me again.
“I need to get back to what I was working on.” I turned back to the desk before she could see the look on my face, before I had the chance to say anything I couldn’t take back. If she would only be smart and walk away, I thought. It would make life a lot easier for the both of us.
When a person’s hurting, though, the way I hurt her, rational thought doesn’t enter the equation. “I wanted to help you with tha
t! Why don’t you get it?” She approached from behind and stood close enough for me to feel her presence behind me—but this time, she didn’t touch me. Like I had already conditioned her out of that.
“I don’t have to accept your help. I don’t need your help.” I pounded on the desk with the side of my fist and closed my eyes. It felt like a big, strong hand was closing tighter all the time around my heart. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, she made them worse by trying to make them better.
“Maybe I need to help you,” she whispered.
“You get to worry about what you need when you’re not going through something like this,” I reminded her. When I looked over my shoulder into her big, teary eyes, I felt both regret and irritation. She was wasting my time—but I was hurting her, too. She might decide she didn’t care about me anymore, that I was too much for her to love. The way Suzanne had.
I was softening up, but the thought of Suzanne hardened me again. Suzanne’s eyes, wide and staring the way Christa’s were, only Christa’s eyes had life in them. Suzanne’s beautiful blonde hair—not unlike Christa’s, why hadn’t I noticed before how alike they looked? Matted with blood and brains, her brains, all her memories and her sense of humor and the way she had whispered my name in the dark when it was just the two of us. Suzanne who I had loved most of my life, even after she told me she couldn’t be married to me anymore.
“You need to go. Please. Before anything worse can happen.” I turned away again, this time hunching over my work. “Get the hell out of here, Christa.”
And still, she paused—but the energy in the room shifted. “Fine, Paxton. I’ll go. I hope you find Lizzie soon.” Her sharp, quick footsteps rang in my ears long after the slamming of the door. I balled my fists and squeezed tight. There was such a huge part of me that wanted to go after her and beg forgiveness and tell her yes, I did need her. I needed her so much. I had to have some connection with reality again. Some touchstone I could go back to when I needed reminder that the world was still spinning even though my world had stopped.
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