Laura bit her lip at the sound of Garth’s concern. She hadn’t meant to worry him quite so much—but given that their last call had been about her sobriety, maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry,” she said, quickly. “I actually just wanted to pick your brain about something. Get a second opinion.”
“Oh,” Garth said, breathing a literal sigh of relief. “Well, shoot then.”
Laura smiled to herself. He always came through, even when she didn’t really deserve it. He was probably on his own lunch break, and he didn’t care about letting her use his time. “It’s this case. It’s… targeted at me.”
“What do you mean, at you?”
“The victims.” Laura took a deep breath. “He’s choosing the victims in order to send me a personal message.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely sure. The third one last night confirmed it.” Laura bit her fingernail as she waited for his response. She didn’t want to mention the fact that Nate had had his doubts. Even if he did, she didn’t entertain them herself.
“Well, damn.” Garth paused. “There’s no wonder you’re feeling like you’re teetering on the edge. Now is the time when you have to stay more committed to your sobriety than ever. It’s these moments that catch us out. Stay strong, Laura. Don’t let it drag you to the bottle.”
“It’s not that,” Laura said, waving a dismissive hand even though Garth couldn’t see it. “We’ve arrested someone. I just don’t know if we have the right guy. All the signs seem to fit, and yet… I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t seem right. But then again, it all fits. And I just keep going round and round in circles in my head.”
Garth digested her words for a long moment. Just when she was about to speak up to prompt him to say something, he did. “Well,” he said, taking his time over the words. “You know you’re looking for someone who wanted to send you a message. But now you’re not sure if you have the right guy. Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Laura said, impatiently.
“Do you remember step number nine?”
There was no question as to which step he was referring to. It wasn’t as though there were any other steps that really mattered in an alcoholic’s life. He was talking about the steps of AA, how addicts were supposed to progress toward healing.
“Of course,” Laura said, mildly annoyed that he would question her memory. “That we have to make direct amends with those we have wronged.”
“So?”
Laura thought for a moment, trying to dig into what Garth was trying to say. “You’re talking about the killings—that whoever is doing this was wronged by me. But that doesn’t make any sense, Garth. They all deserved to be put away. They were criminals. They broke the law. I’ve never put away a single suspect that I didn’t feel absolutely sure was guilty.”
Of course, he couldn’t know why she was so sure. That she had seen each of them with her own eyes, breaking the law, red-handed. Sometimes she’d seen things she really wished she hadn’t, and she included Dockhand in that. He deserved to be in prison. The fact that he’d been released was concerning, frankly; she wished he could have been inside for longer.
“That’s not the point,” Garth told her. “You’re not the one doing the killings. What you feel doesn’t make a lick of difference.”
What he was trying to say slowly dawned on her. “You’re saying that the killer—he feels that I wronged him.”
“Right. Nobody goes ahead and takes revenge on someone they don’t think did them wrong. It’s not like antagonizing you would take away the past. It’s pure hate that drives something like this. They want you to suffer. That’s not the actions of a man who knows he was caught dead to rights.”
“It would be someone who doesn’t think they deserved to be put away,” Laura thought out loud. “Someone who feels that I interrupted their grand plan, maybe, or that they weren’t to blame for their actions. Or even that they did nothing wrong.”
“Does your suspect seem to feel that way?” Garth asked.
Laura sighed. “No,” she admitted. “If anything, it’s the opposite. He told us that he’s been trying to be a better person, that he knows he did wrong in the past. He wasn’t even angry when we arrested him. He said he totally understood. And I believe him. I’ve been on the job long enough that I can usually tell when someone’s trying to play me, but I don’t get that impression from him.”
“That doesn’t sound like the right guy to me,” Garth said, with confidence. “So, you’ve got to take a real look at yourself now. Look at your past. You’ve got to find someone who would feel that you wronged them, from their perspective—not from your own.”
“I get it,” Laura said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers against her forehead for a moment. She was going to have to start again, and it was going to be a lot. “Than
ks, Garth.”
“No problemo, Laur. You just give me a call again if you waver, okay?”
“Okay,” she promised, before hanging up the phone and staring off into the distance, not seeing a thing.
Someone who had been wronged.