“Am I in trouble?” I croak.
“Why would you think that?” He looks at me, intrigue alight in his brown eyes.
“I’m not a child anymore, Detective. I know you leaving me is what you do to criminals when you want them to sweat.”
Holding my gaze, he offers a half-smile. “That’s not what I’m doing with you. I was honestly gathering facts and information. I’m sorry you were left waiting.”
Silence.
“Where’s Charlotte?”
Looking to the door, he says, “She’s here too, helping us with our investigation.”
I rub a finger over my scars as the cold rinses through my body, settling like an iceberg in my chest. “Did you find him inside?”
“Who?” he steeples his fingers, and I want to reach across the table and slap him.
“The person who killed that man,” I choke out, pissed off I have to clarify. Games, testing me—why?
“We believe he may have fallen. There was no one in your apartment.”
The words hit me like he’s struck out and slapped me. How can they think that? We saw someone in the apartment.
“What about Charlotte’s date?”
Nodding his head, he flicks through a folder. “Trey Royce. We located him. He left your apartment just after the two of you. He went to meet up with someone.”
Shaking my head to try and clear the jumbled thoughts, I ask, “What about the note on the window?”
Shifting through some bags, he scoots a clear evidence bag across the table, a small sliver of paper sitting inside, one word written in what looks like blood. Polo!
“We’re having it tested.” My lungs seize, I reach for the cup to wash the lump expanding in my throat. Thud. Thud. Thud. “Everything okay? Does this mean something to you?”
“It’s…” I try to breathe, to get my throat to open. “It’s what Jack and I played.”
He jots the information down. “Would anyone else know that?”
Shaking my head, my mother forms in my brain, then pops like a bubble being poked. No. No one alive.
This is a targeted attack. That man was murdered because he was with us—me. “But you’re saying the guy fell?” I scoff.
Drumming his fingers on the folder, he jerks his head. “We go by the evidence presented, and there was no one else in the building at the time of his death apart from you and Miss...”
“Charlotte.”
“Yes. Miss Mead.”
How would they know that? Whoever was in there had plenty of time to slip out into the crowd before the police even got there. A thunderstorm builds in his eyes. He knows there’s so much more to this. Fate thickens the air, my past rushing into my present. He knows it. I know it.
“Is this him? Willis? Did he kill Abigail? That’s why you’re involved, right?” I clench my jaw. Abandoning the coffee, I fold my arms.
Silence. Our eyes clash, holding, daring.
“I’m going to level with you,” he finally says, letting out an exasperated sigh. “There are similarities to Willis’s MO, so I’m here to make sure we cover everything and catch whoever is doing this.”
Opening his folder, he pulls out a plastic bag with some paper clippings inside, blood coating the paper. “Do you recognize these?” he asks, sliding them over to me.
My eyes bleed with the ink. Newspaper clippings—the ones I kept and read over and over. He tips them onto the table, and they scatter, static pinning them to the wood. I finger through them, my heart racing, eyes burning.May 31st, 2003
Breaking story
Prison BreakConvicted serial killer Willis Langford, known as the Hollywell Slayer, is believed to be amongst the three escapees of a prison bus that crashed earlier today. A prison bus, transporting thirteen convicts to a new secure prison, Ironport, collided with an oncoming truck, killing three and injuring eleven. Amongst the wounded were four correctional officers who were on board at the time of the incident.
A manhunt is underway to apprehend the men at large.I tap my finger on the old clipping. “This is your fault.” Resentment overcomes me. “Why? Why not have more patrol cars following the transfer? Have a better secure way to transfer criminals of his magnitude?” I almost choke on the words, anger manifesting the fear and sorrow into rage, disappointment, and resentment.
“You’re right. We failed you and the rest of his victims by allowing him to escape custody.” Terror for what those poor girls went through burrows deep into the marrow of my bones, growing roots, binding us forever. Six victims’ bodies found, one still alive, but they believe he could have killed up to ten. “But it’s too late for that. I can’t go back in time,” he adds.
What would he do differently?
I thumb through more reports. I can state most of these articles from memory. I’ve researched them over and over. Obsessed.
Willis took a deal for a confession. The government didn’t want to put the victims’ families through a trial. He received ninety-nine consecutive years for each case without the possibility of parole.