by Meg Gardiner
“How so?” His tone remained concerned, but definitely curious.
“After his breakdown . . .”
Keep it vague. But she remembered coming home from school and finding police cars out front. Running inside, feeling terror pierce her when she saw the uniformed officers in the kitchen with her mother. Begging, Dad—where’s Dad? Is he okay?
She’d thought he was dead, cut to ribbons in an alley. But it was his partner who died at the hands of a serial killer. Mack had reached the scene too late to prevent it.
Hours later, he drove off a bridge.
When firefighters pulled her father from the river, he raved, punching, screaming at them. He spent the next six months in a locked psychiatric ward.
“He was never the same,” she said.
“And you think his poison runs in your veins.”
The words struck like lightning. Though the room was dark, her entire field of vision seemed to blanch white.
“Yes.” A crack caught the end of the word.
“You sound so afraid, Rose.”
Lock it down. She tried, and couldn’t.
“I’m terrified,” she said. “I know the tendency to depression can be inherited. And that how you grow up influences how you handle the world. Nature and nurture. And you’re right, I’m like him. So goddamn much.” She tried to breathe. “What if the urge to commit suicide is embedded in me too? What if trying to kill yourself is a flaw in your life—like an aneurysm, that can fail at any time and take you down?”
Over the line came the sound of Detrick drawing a long breath. He took a beat. When he spoke, his voice was intense—not rough, but intimate.
“Have you ever contemplated suicide?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Have you thought about how you would do it?”
“Many times.”
“Have you considered a particular method?”
On the surface, it sounded ghoulish. But she knew from experience that this was one of the most important parts of a volunteer’s script. Detrick remained level and empathetic. His steady compassion was almost irresistibly alluring.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve thought about how I’d do it.”
“How, Rose?”
She felt the subtle pull of his voice, a tone that begged to be trusted. Resist.
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Doing what?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Why do you volunteer at a crisis hotline? What do you get out of it?”
“We should talk about you,” he said.
“No, I want to know.”
He took what seemed a thoughtful pause. “Everybody deserves a friend, and to talk to somebody who can help. And right now, that means hearing about what’s upsetting you.”
She played his game: She let the silence hang. It was an interrogator’s technique. A journalist’s technique. The shrink’s technique, to give a patient breathing room. Create silence, and people want to fill it. And, she thought: It was the trick behind knowing that if you ask a narcissist about himself, he’ll be helpless to keep quiet.
She could hear him breathing over the line.
Then, in the background, she heard the other volunteer on a call. “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it. You take care. Bye.” And the other phone clacked back into its cradle. A chair squeaked. A door opened, and closed.
A few more seconds passed. She realized: Detrick was now alone in the office.
She spoke quietly. “Why do you spend your time talking to suicidal people?” A rage she’d thought was extinguished heated, red and sharp. “Why do you care? What do you get out of it?”
“That’s a hard attitude. Who are you so angry with?”
“You get off on hearing people suffer? Does that make you feel superior?”
“You’ve got some fight in you. I can hear it. That’s good.”
He was a fencer—skilled at deflection. But she wanted him to attack. She remembered how, when she’d called the crisis hotline in the East Bay, she had been full to the brim with fuck you. She had torn into the woman who took her call, until she’d spent all her emotional ammo and was left disarmed, forced to face herself without defenses.
It had been terrifying. She’d felt out of control. Hated that. In the end, she hung up on the volunteer. That had been a mistake. A week later, she cut herself too angrily and ended up in the ER.
“You want to get mad?” Detrick said. “Get mad. Go on. But please, Rose. This is important. How would you do it?”
Her head was thumping. Her mouth felt parched. She was clutching her knees, her feet cold on the hotel room floor. She felt very small.
“I’d cut my wrists.”
He kept quiet.
She looked at the scars on her arms. “I’d cut at an angle, along the length of the artery. A bunch of times.” Her pulse pounded in her forehead. “And I’d slip under the surface of a warm bath. Into floating darkness. It would be like . . .” Her voice grew soft. “Like falling through a field of stars, into the black nowhere.”
The silence on the phone line stretched. She felt a sob welling up.
She’d never told anybody that before. But it was true. It had been true since she was fourteen. In the deepest empty nights, the lure sometimes called to her.
Detrick inhaled. “That’s beautiful. But I want you alive.”
For a second, it seemed that a jagged bolt of lightning had shot through the room. She was staring out the window. The stars came into focus.
“I want you to keep talking, Rose. Pour it out. What kind of blade would you use? Tell me how you’d feel, every second of the way down. I want you to keep talking.” Another pause. “Did you hear me? I want you alive.”
That word, I.
That word shoved her back from the brink. That, and a tone in Detrick’s voice that seemed like more than curiosity.
The pull she’d felt ebbed. She stood up.
She thought: Is it all about him?
She put a fist over her mouth.
Under the low light of the desk lamp, her reflection wavered darkly in the wall mirror. Inside her head came a sound like a lightbulb exploding.
Control.
Well, wasn’t this just goddamn great. Control was what they’d been talking about all along. Control and possession were the killer’s driving goals. Control was what she’d been clawing for since she was a child. Control over herself and her life. The quest for control was what had led her to become a cutter.
Perfect control was impossible. But she could damn well control one thing—she knew she couldn’t lose control ever again, not even to catch a killer.
“Rose?” Detrick said.
His voice was pleading. Jesus God, his sway had felt so strong and immediate. Fear washed over her like icy water. She hung up.
She stood in the dark, chest heaving. She whispered, “Oh, my God.”
She couldn’t see straight. She turned in circles, paced, and ran her fingers through her hair. What had she done?
Her nerves were crawling. She had to get out of the room.
She yanked off her hoodie. She changed into running gear and took the stairs to the ground floor. Outside, she pounded the frontage road along I-35 for five hard miles. The scars on her arms throbbed. When she came back through the doors of the hotel, there were lines where the tears had run down her cheeks.
27
The breakfast lounge at the hotel was busy at seven thirty A.M., full of business travelers fueling up before hitting the interstate. The white sun slanted across the floor. The room smelled of shampoo and aftershave and sugar. Caitlin strode in, poured a large cup of coffee, and joined Rainey at a table by the window, apart from the other diners.
Rainey looked up from her phone. “Those four hundred fifty-two tips called in
to the sheriff’s office? I’ve been searching them for descriptions that could match Detrick. A dozen possibles.” She scrolled down the screen. “This one—girl named Madison. ‘Man watching me outside my apartment building.’ Caucasian, tall, dark hair, dressed like a banker. ‘Thought he was a cop but he split when my mom appeared.’ She lives a quarter mile off I-35.”
“Definitely.”
Rainey shifted her attention. She evaluated Caitlin’s crisp white button-down blouse and the black suit she’d bought on sale at T.J.Maxx. “You look particularly fed-like today.”
Caitlin smoothed her hair. She’d pulled it back into a tight French twist. She blew on her coffee.
Emmerich set a plate and cutlery on the table. “I got Detrick’s cell records.”
On his plate was a waffle cooked in the shape of Texas.
“And you think street food is bad for you?” Caitlin said.
“When in Rome.”
As usual, Emmerich’s suit was impeccable, but creases were showing at the elbows. His glance assessed her appearance in a heartbeat. He didn’t comment but seemed to file it away.
He took out his phone and thumbed to a download. “The records show that on the nights when women disappeared, Detrick’s phone never left his neighborhood.”
Caitlin set down her coffee cup. “Seriously?”
She and Rainey exchanged a glance.
Emmerich said, “I have a year’s worth of call records, data usage, and cell tower registration logs. We’ll correlate those to his work schedule, but from a cursory review, he’s wedded to that phone. It’s always with him, always on the move. Except.”
He eyed the bottle of syrup on the table but couldn’t make himself cross that line. He cut a bite of the waffle and ate it dry.
He looked up, eyes canny. “Except, on the six nights when victims disappeared, his phone pinged the tower two hundred meters from his house.”
Excitement began to heat in Caitlin’s chest. It nudged aside the vague shame and sense of unbalance she’d felt since the unsanctioned call to the crisis hotline.
That’s beautiful.
Bleeding to death. Her description had brought out Detrick’s poetic side. But I want you alive.
She blinked away his hovering presence. “Detrick’s phone was at home all six nights. But . . .”
“He gave us alibis for those nights,” Rainey said.
“He said he attended a Longhorns basketball game. Real estate seminar. A concert.”
Emmerich shook his head. “The phone didn’t.”
Rainey said, “So either Detrick left it home, or his alibis are lies.”
Emmerich nodded. “Detrick wanted to make sure no evidence could place him near the abduction sites.”
It wasn’t proof. Not even close. But it went to Detrick’s credibility.
“Where I come from, we call that consciousness of guilt,” Caitlin said.
As the word left her mouth, her throat went dry. She drank her coffee. Guilt. Yeah. The kind you feel after making stupid mistakes. Like calling the suspect under false pretenses.
She felt reckless for opening herself up to Detrick on the hotline. Yet she couldn’t shake the truth that he understood her. He saw her. If she’d been in true crisis, he could have pulled her from the void.
Whatever he was doing, he was a master at it.
She stood. “Ready to go?”
Rainey was finishing her coffee. “What put the bee in your bonnet this morning?”
“The phone records should help move the needle with the detectives here.”
“Should.” Emmerich’s eyes were narrow in the sharp sun coming through the windows. “You have something else to help move that needle into the red zone?”
Go for it. She nodded.
“We’re gathering evidence on Detrick, but it’s highly circumstantial. We don’t have enough for a search warrant, or to obtain DNA.”
“Not yet.”
“And Saturday night is approaching.” She leaned on the table. “I have a plan. I want to surveil Detrick.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“Openly.”
Emmerich set down his fork. Raised an eyebrow.
“Give me the chance to follow him in plain sight. I want to dog him,” she said.
“Tip our hand.”
“If he’s innocent, great. If not, I’ll force him to be on his best behavior.”
Emmerich thought about it. “If he’s the UNSUB, you’d be applying pressure as his urge to kill is building. He’d only be on his best behavior for so long before he acts out in response.”
“We profiled him as believing he’ll outsmart us. I can turn that against him.”
“It’s a risk.”
“I know.”
He didn’t move, but his gaze retreated as he thought about it. “I’ll give you seventy-two hours.”
She clenched her fists. “Thank you, sir.”
Her stomach was already tying in knots. But the feeling that overcame her was excitement.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She nodded at Emmerich and headed for the door. She was pumped.
When she looked at her phone, her mood grew even better. Sean had texted her. It was his flight itinerary, with the message Virginia is for . . .
She texted back: Fed love.
For the first time in a week, she genuinely smiled. Grabbing the keys to the SUV, she headed outside.
• • •
At the wooded house outside the city, he lay in bed and listened to the car back out of the drive. Emma was taking Ashley to school, then going to work. It was unusual for them to stay over on a weeknight, but a power outage at her apartment complex had emboldened her to ask if he’d mind. The night had turned into an adventure for Ashley. They built a fort in the living room from sheets and sofa cushions, and the little girl slept inside with her books and Disney princess doll and a flashlight. It reminded him of his own childhood, his grandparents’ house, crawling beneath the dining room table when the angry voices became too loud.
The engine faded. Quiet descended. He waited, listening, ensuring Emma was gone. The only sound he heard was birds shrieking in the trees.
He stretched and got up. He had appointments later in the morning, but right now had a good half hour before he needed to shave and shower. He opened the closet and pressed on the false wall in the back. It opened with a muffled click.
The corkboard with his collection swung into view. The sun reflected off the photos. A warmth filled his chest.
Shana Kerber was there now. She’d been a wildcat, that one—with that little cheerleader body, those frosty eyes, ready to lunge at him when he wouldn’t hand over her squalling baby.
But she had been mentally disarmed by his appearance.
It always worked. Long enough for them to hesitate. And hesitation—like an initial faltering, superficial cut across a vein—did no good.
So Baby Mama now sang with the unearthly choir on his wall. In the first photo, her eyes were riven with terror. With knowledge. She stood bolt upright, against a wall, her hand raised to keep him back. That was always a brilliant moment, and it was rare to capture it—when disbelief crumbled, and reality set in. Her situation. Him. He ran his fingers across the surface of the photo, savoring it. His breathing quickened.
The second photo was Baby Mama, after. Baby Mama, taken. He’d snapped it mere moments after the change. Her eyes still gleamed, but saw nothing. Her lips—her red, full lips—were softly parted. Her flesh was still at 98.6 degrees. The white nightgown draped her figure like cling wrap.
The heat in his chest spread, and descended. His bare feet were cold on the floor. His jeans were unbuttoned.
Beside Baby Mama was Debbie Does Dallas. The look on that one’s face was the one he loved most. Truth. She had understood where
she was, and that she had no say, no choice, no way out.
That was the look he’d always sought. Since her. He stared at the photo of Dallas, but saw her face. Heard her voice. Felt her yield beneath him. He cried out and sagged against the closet door.
Dallas had been a brilliant moment. But it had been five days. Sometimes they lasted two weeks or longer before they gave it up. Before he got to see their epiphany, and submission.
But now he felt the hunger again, the need, the want.
He hoisted his jeans. He had a busy schedule planned, full workdays the rest of the week. Saturday . . .
Shithead cops. It was better when he could simply fade into the background—when the women merely went away. Why would anyone miss them? This nation was full of women. They fell out of sight all the time. Runaways, prostitutes, mothers bolting on their kids. There shouldn’t have been such a fuss, not in this crowded, teeming stretch of Texas. Nobody should have wondered where they went.
That was the lesson he’d learned, last summer, on the phone call.
Why do you care? she’d said. Why help women like that? Losers, beggars, hanging on to you. Crying, sucking their thumbs, wanting you to make it all better. Why? Who’d miss them? Most women who disappear are never even reported missing.
It had been a bolt of electricity. Her nasty, excoriating voice, lashing him. But with illumination.
You listen to women, she said. Why not give them what they want?
What they deserved.
Tell me you don’t picture them dead. That you don’t secretly hope for it.
He had been breathing so hard by then, he thought he might use up all the oxygen in the room. I do, he thought. I do, I do, I do. And for every one he listened to, why not take another?
What are they doing, except using up your life? the caller had said.
Too damned right.
And they did want it. He knew; he’d known since the day he was five and opened the bathroom door and saw his mom in the bathtub, floating, head back, submerged, her naked flesh poking above the surface of the water, gleaming, wet . . .
He stepped back from the closet wall. The photos were beautiful. Always Polaroids. Never on your phone, never on your computer. Never, ever, in any form where it could be uploaded to the eternal cloud. Simple was best. Old-school.
