THIRTY-EIGHT
Sebastian goes still. Completely still, and I want to see his face—I desperately want to see his expression—but the light is at his back.
His head drops forward, and his hand rises to shove his hair back as his shoulders slump.
“Shit,” he says, as if I’ve just caught him trying to take an ATV for a joyride.
“Step back,” I say. “Hands up.”
“I—” He pauses. “Right. Okay.”
He lifts his hands lift over his head and backs out of the doorway. I follow. His gaze goes to my hands.
“Yes,” I say, “I do not have my gun. However, if you think that makes me defenseless—”
“I’m not going to—“
“Yep, you’re not. Whatever you had in mind by sneaking up, it’s not happening.”
“I—”
He looks at me, but it’s not quite at me. The hair’s fallen again, and he’s peering through it, as if hiding behind it.
He is in hiding, and he must figure the hair helps disguise him. But even if his picture was out there, he wouldn’t need to hide behind hair to go unrecognized. He is cursed—or, in this case, blessed—with a very average white-boy face. No scars. No marks or freckles. No striking features.
Sebastian puts his hands on his head and lowers himself to the ground, sitting crosslegged. I tense, and then I realize what he’s doing. Taking a non-aggressive position. Like Dalton making offenders assume a downward dog. From there, Sebastian can’t leap up and attack me without signaling his intentions.
“I came out here to talk to you,” he says. “I saw the plane land. I’ve been watching. I was going to ask if I could help carry stuff to town, but really, I just wanted to see how you reacted. Whether you looked me up while you were in Dawson City. Whether you found out who I am.”
“You have your answer.”
He nods. “I do.”
His voice is calm, resigned almost.
“What are you going to do about that?” I ask.
His gaze rises to mine. “I think the question is what you’re going to do.”
“I’m looking for someone who killed a man to solve a problem. I believe you know a little something about that.”
He flinches. It’s not a hard, dramatic flinch, just the barest tightening of his face. Then he nods. “I do, and I understand that you’re going to think I did this. I didn’t. But convincing you of that isn’t my biggest problem right now.”
He’s right. Whatever he’s done, he still hasn’t zoomed to the top of my suspect list. This particular crime doesn’t fit him. I’m still open to the possibility, though, so I say, “Convince me.”
He clears his throat, as if preparing for a rehearsed speech. “Okay, well, if he really is a marshal, that has nothing to do with me. You know my crime. I’ve served my full sentence. Whether justice has been done is another matter, but the court system says I’m free. Also my crimes were committed in Canada, however there’s the possibility he’s not a marshal. I’m sure you investigated that while in Dawson City. Even if he is, that doesn’t mean he was here as a marshal.”
He states this as if it should be obvious. I hope my surprise—and chagrin—doesn’t show.
He continues. “If he’s not here for a fugitive, he’d be here to collect someone for another reason. Are there people who think I shouldn’t be out walking around? Of course. That’s why I’m in Rockton. But if the justice system is done with me, then the only reason to come after me is to either expose me or execute a higher punishment. Plenty of people wanted to expose me. Again, that’s why I’m here. But they’re not going to pay a bounty hunter to drag me back. And the only people I hurt . . .” His gaze shunts to the side. “They’re dead. Nobody . . . No one else gave a damn, except about the money, and there was barely enough of that left to buy my way up here. Anyone who had any claim to it knows it’s gone, and no one else really had a claim.”
He meets my gaze again. “That’s my defense against being this guy’s target. I know he didn’t come for me, so I had no reason to kill him. Even if you don’t believe that, shooting him makes no sense. I’ve been in jail since I was eleven. I got out less than a year ago, and there’s no way in hell anyone would let me take marksmanship lessons or join a gun club. I don’t exactly pass security checks.” His lips quirk in a not-quite smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Our gun laws don’t mean it’s impossible to get access to them. You spent years in juvenile facilities. Enough to make contacts. Enough to pose as a drug-dealing, car-jacking street kid.”
He gives a bitter laugh. “Yeah, and I pulled that off so well. I thought it’d be easy. You’re right—for seven years, I’ve lived with kids like that. When I was told to come up with a story for the sheriff here, I figured I could fake that well enough, as long as I kept my head down.” He shakes his head. “How long did it take you to see through it? Two minutes? I could tell I’d blown my cover, which is why I came out here to see if you’d found me online.”
I say nothing.
He continues. “Yes, I lived with those guys, but as you could tell by my lame story, we weren’t exactly BFFs. Those were kids who sold dope or turned tricks to survive. I was a rich brat who murdered his parents because they wouldn’t let him go to school. I scared them, and not in a good, respectful way. Even if I wanted a gun, none of them would sell me one, not at any price. So I can’t shoot. I barely know which end the bullets came out of. I know you’re going to need to keep me in mind as a suspect, and I’m okay with that. I’m not your killer. My bigger concern is that I am a killer, and you know it. What are we going to do about that?”
“What should I do?”
That direct look again, almost chillingly mature. “Send me back ‘down south’ as you say. If I were you, in charge of keeping people safe, I wouldn’t want me here. But I’m me, and I know what I’m capable of, and I also know what I’m likely to do, and those are two very different things.”
“Are they?”
“I’m not eleven years old anymore, Detective Butler. I could say that I didn’t know what I was doing at that age, but that would be a lie. I can hope I’m not the same person who did those things but . . .” He holds my gaze. “I’ve spent seven years working on not being that person, on overcoming what is missing in here.” He taps his head. “Learning strategies to deal with my condition. I have had help—amazing help—and I’d like to think that your council checked with my therapists before they approved my application, and that they would never let me come up here if they thought I was dangerous.”
“Do you worry that you’re dangerous?”
It takes him a long time to answer that. “Do I worry that I’ll flip out and knife some guy who cuts me off in the coffee line? Absolutely not. Do I worry that if someone knifed me in the coffee line, I’d retaliate with worse? Yes. I murdered my parents. I have not denied it since those first attempts to cover up my crime. I can never undo what I did. I can never promise that, under the right—or wrong—circumstances, I wouldn’t do it again. I know you don’t understand that. You can’t.”
Again, I hope I don’t react. I hope I am as stone-faced as I try to be. If I’m not, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“You’re here to escape that,” I say. “But no one exposed you. You weren’t hiding.”
He lets out a laugh far too bitter for a nineteen-year-old. “I was hiding from the moment they released me. We had to use decoys to get me out. And then I was just . . .” He shrugs. “On my own. I won’t whine about that. As far as most people are concerned, I should still be behind bars, and I don’t disagree. I’m glad I’m not, obviously but . . .”
“Freedom isn’t quite what you expected?”
That harsh laugh, almost choking on it now. “God, I was an idiot. They kept me isolated in there—from what went on with my case. I figured by now, no one cared, and I’d be a real boy, like fucking Pinocchio.” He looks up sharply. “Sorry. I don’t mean to swear.” A long pause, an
d then a hint of that laugh again. “The kid who murdered his parents, apologizing for cursing. Fucking hell.”
He goes quiet, as if collecting himself, and I don’t interrupt. When he’s ready, he says, “I thought once I was out, I could go to school. Yes, I’m still that kid. The boy who wanted to go to school the way other kids wanted to go to Disney World. I have my high school diploma. I graduated with a ninety-eight percent average. Clearly, I would get my dream. I’d go to Western for my undergrad, and then off to law school at Queens. The boy-murderer who became a public prosecutor. A good news story. A story no one, as it turns out, wants to hear. They want the story of the monster, unleashed again on the world and—”
He bites his lip hard enough that blood wells. He looks up at me. “Sorry. That’s whining again. I don’t want to be like that. I try very, very hard not to. No excuses. No feeling sorry for myself.”
There’s a blur of movement behind him, and my head jerks up as Dalton steps from behind a tree. He has his gun, but it’s only half-raised as he assesses the situation.
“We’re fine,” I say.
A look passes through Sebastian’s eye, a flash of hope, as if I’m saying this to him. Then he hears Dalton’s footstep and twists, hands still on his head.
“Got concerned when you didn’t make it to town,” Dalton says.
“Sebastian wanted to speak to us,” I say. “He startled me. So . . .” I wave at his posture. “We’re talking.”
Dalton stays behind Sebastian, off to the side. He’s become adept at hiding his feelings about residents. He has to be. I struggled with that, at first, knowing some of their back stories. I still do. Right now, though, with Sebastian, Dalton is the one who’s struggling, and he’s staying out of sight there until he can hide it.
“Sebastian knows what we found out,” I say. “He figured we’d go looking. That’s why he’s here. To plead his case for why he should be allowed to stay.”
Sebastian nods. Dalton and I exchange a look. It’s not up to us, of course. He will stay. The council let him come, knowing his backstory, and they aren’t going to allow us to kick him out. But if Sebastian thinks Dalton has that power, it makes things easier for us.
“We’ve gone through the whole ‘I’m not a threat’ routine,” I say, with a roll of my eyes.
I actually feel a little bad about that eye roll, seeing Sebastian flush, but this too is something I need to hide. I think about what it would be like, to do a terrible thing at such a young age, to realize there’s a crossed wire in your brain and that no amount of rehabilitation will undo what you’ve done. I know what it’s like to do a terrible thing, without the excuse of youth or mental illness.
If Sebastian had done this during a psychotic break, like from untreated schizophrenia, I would have complete sympathy for him. I have met suspects who’ve done that, and I have witnessed their horror on realizing it later. It is as if they’d been trapped in their own bodies, demon possessed; and now they are forever trapped with the consequences and the memories.
Alternately, I have zero sympathy for someone who murders while high or drunk. You chose to imbibe, and the outcome is on you, the same as shooting Blaine is on me, whatever my emotional state.
So where does Sebastian fall? He knew what he was doing. He was not experiencing a mental break. This is his mental state. I realize that it’s a mental illness, but he is still culpable. I need to think more about it. Research it.
There is also the very real possibility that, duh, Sebastian is lying through his teeth. He’s a sociopath. He shows what I want to see. He knows the role to play. Perhaps it should seem that obviously I wouldn’t believe him. Yet nothing I read in those articles led me to think he was that type of sociopath. Otherwise, why would he have been so quick to plead guilty when caught?
I know better than to believe his seemingly genuine displays of remorse and frustration. I need for him to understand that if this is a front, it’s not fooling me. So I must roll my eyes when I tell Dalton that Sebastian has been insisting he’s not a threat.
“Yeah, that’s a shocker,” Daltons says. “Usually, when we find someone here who committed a crime, they can’t wait to tell us how they’re going to do it again.”
“Sarcasm warranted,” Sebastian says. “But you may do anything—anything—to protect people from me. Put any restrictions you want on me.”
“How about making you take a roommate?” Dalton says. “To watch over you.”
“That’s not why I refused one, sir. It’s the opposite. I . . .” He takes a deep breath. “At the age of eleven, I decided that the only way to escape my parents was to kill them. Not because they were abusive. I had everything . . . except what I wanted. I was a spoiled, rich brat who murdered his parents because they showed him the world when all he wanted was regular school and friends and sports. That’s what you see. What I see? That exact same kid—I’m making no excuses for him. But in my head at the time, it made sense. To that kid, it was a reasonable solution to his problem. Up here”—he taps his forehead—“I can never get rid of that kid. No medication helps me grow a conscience. I needed years of therapy to be able to put myself in someone else’s shoes and say ‘How would I feel if that happened to me?’ You do that naturally. I cannot. I never will. It takes a conscious and—to be bluntly honest—exhausting effort. If you’re in front of me in the morning coffee line, and there’s one muffin left, I immediately think of all the ways I could get that muffin. Not kill you, of course, but only because it’s unnecessary and excessive. Before I trick you into leaving the line, I must stop and remind myself that you have as much right to that muffin as me. I can be trusted never to hurt you for that last muffin. I cannot, at this point, be trusted not to hurt a roommate who really, really pisses me off.”
“So you might smoother a roommate who snores too much?”
“I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, sir, but the answer is ‘I really hope not.’ He looks from Dalton to me. “I will take any room, if it means I’m alone. I don’t care if it’s a tent or a storage closet. Think of me as an alcoholic who doesn’t want to live next door to the bar. I know that sucks for you guys—one more person needing extra supervision—but I will help in any way I can. Speaking of alcohol, I’ll be nineteen in two months, but even when I’m legally allowed to drink, I’ll abstain. I took the chopping job because I wanted to pull my weight, but if you’re concerned about me with a hatchet, put me on sanitation. I have avoided being a ‘joiner’ because, frankly, I was terrified of giving myself away. Now that you know what I am, I would love to join in community stuff . . . unless you’d rather I didn’t. I know Ms Radcliffe was a psychiatrist, so please feel free to give her my full background—my therapy file, too, if you can—and I will see her however often you’d like. Therapy has helped. I’d actually like to continue, if that’s possible.”
“Isabel was a counseling psychologist,” I say. “She has no experience with your issue. We do have someone who does. A psychiatrist who’s an expert in . . . well, killers, actually. Sociopathy and psychopathy, in particular.”
Sebastian’s brows shoot up. “Seriously? Does that mean . . . are there . . . others?” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t ask that, and I guess it’s a bit ironic, a killer worrying if there are other killers around.”
“Our expert is here because his work brought him into danger,” I say. “Not because we have need of his services.”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him, then. I’d love that, actually. A new shrink means new ideas. New techniques. If he’s okay with helping me, then tell him everything. Please.”
“He’s already guessed at your problem.”
His brows rise higher. “Really?” He sounds almost excited. “That’s a good sign. May I ask who it is? Devon in the bakery gives off a therapist vibe.”
“Mathias.”
He blinks. “The . . . scary butcher?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Uh . . .” He gives a shaky la
ugh. “Besides the fact that he’s at the top of my who - else - might - be - a - killer list? Are you, uh, sure he’s what he says he is?”
“We are.”
“Okay, well, then therapy with scary-butcher dude it is. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay.”
“Why?” Dalton asks.
Sebastian looks at him, and Dalton says, “Why is it so important to stay here? No one found you down south. Sure, they were looking, but you’d avoided it, and now you pay to come up here, willing to live under whatever rules we impose, and do the worst jobs we have. Why.”
“When my parents took me out of school—it interfered with their travels—I begged to be allowed to go back. I said I’d do anything. Send me to a military school and leave me there year-round. I just wanted to be a normal kid. Now that I’m free, I thought I could finally have that. Be a normal kid. Go to university. Get a job. I can’t. Not after what I did. I know I can’t hide up here forever, but I paid almost everything I had for these couple of years. A chance to go someplace where no one knows who I am, where I can be just another face in a crowd. Where I can finally experience ‘normal.’ I’ll have to go back. I’ll have to admit who I am and face that and deal with whatever comes from it. I know that. People dream of all the exotic places they could go if they had the money. I had it. I went all those places with my parents, and none of them gave me the one thing I want. This does. It’s my vacation to normal, and I know if I do anything to screw it up, I’m gone. That’s the biggest leverage you have over me. Threaten to send me back. It doesn’t matter what wiring is missing in my brain—I understand that, because it’s about me. Use that, and I guarantee, you’ll never have a moment’s trouble.”
A shout sounds from town. Then a roar, like a wild beast. Someone screams. And we run.
THIRTY-NINE
We leave Sebastian, but he follows right behind us at a run. He catches up and says, “That sounds like Mindy.”
I glance over.
“Mindy,” he says. “One of the, uh . . . I mean, she works in the kitchens.”
Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel Page 28
