“It’s fine. Believe me. You don’t want him anywhere near people you love.” It’s why he tried with all his might to keep him away from the fucking town. That day two years ago, maybe even longer now, at the diner, he should’ve told Robin to go somewhere else. To be nowhere near him.
“What exactly am I looking for?” Billy asked.
“You have some kind of database that allows you to look for possible clues or tracks of murder or homicide.”
“You do realize how many of them happen per day, right? Some of them are cold cases. Some of them are suspected and are not always homicide cases.”
“You’re only looking for a small collection of women. One or two every so many miles.”
“What are you thinking?” Billy asked.
“Reaper will take women, use them for a couple of days. They may show signs of rape, beatings, stuff like that.”
“May?”
“Some women are agreeable to being used for the right money. The only thing is, Reaper won’t pay them.”
“Okay, can you be clear on what kind of search you want?” Billy started to type into his computer.
“Anything about one or two women. On the rare chance, there will be a guy thrown in, but I mean rarely.”
“Do you want me to look specifically for prostitutes?”
“No. Reaper won’t care if they’re a working girl or not. He’ll see a woman he likes and take her.”
Billy began his search. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m in your house, chasing rumors and gossip. How do you think I feel?” he asked.
“Wow, honesty. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Oh, believe me, I do. People just don’t like my idea of honesty.”
Billy laughed but it sounded forced. “Okay, what do we have here? This could take a couple of hours, but we do have a hit about thirty miles out of town and that was only a couple of weeks ago. Oh, wait, it was a drowning.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t him? Some of them could look like suicides and deaths.”
“No, she was drunk and walked into a lake. At least that’s what it’s saying as a reason. They’ve got security footage that shows her doing this. The lake is near some kind of protected real estate. Sorry.”
“Keep looking.” He leaned over Billy’s shoulder, but the database didn’t look familiar or in any way make sense. “How did you become a cop in Knight’s Bridge?”
“You mean because I’ve got the ability to be a city cop?”
“Pretty much. You’d have been promoted a long time ago.”
“Yeah, because they’d overlook me helping you,” Billy said.
“You’re a good cop.”
“I do what I can to protect people and the town. It doesn’t make me a good cop. It makes me a really good person. That’s all.” Billy kept on clicking away. “We all have our faults and I don’t want to be a city cop. Never did. I wanted to make a difference in a small town and that’s what I do. I make a difference where it counts and to me, here, this is where it counts. Nowhere else.”
“Fair enough.”
“What’s the deal between you and Reaper, anyway? You’ve got some kind of shared past?”
“Something like that. Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“One day, I expect it will be a story you can share with me. Wait, I think I have something.”
Preacher’s phone began to ring. He glanced down at the screen to see an incoming call from Randall. “What the fuck does he want?” He ended the call and looked over Billy’s shoulder only for the screen to make no sense. There were a bunch of names, numbers, and what looked like reference points. His cell phone rang again and he saw it was once again Randall calling.
“Clearly, whoever that is wants to speak to you. Answer it. I don’t mind.”
Preacher cursed and answered. “I’m a little busy right now—”
“We have her,” Randall said.
“Excuse me?”
“Robin, she’s in the hospital.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s her. She looks different but it’s her. I’d recognize her anywhere, even with the hair. You need to come to the hospital, Preacher. It doesn’t look good.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t look good?”
“You’ll understand when you get here, but you need to come. Quickly.” Randall hung up the phone.
Billy had stopped typing. “What is it?”
“That was Randall. He says Robin’s in the hospital but it doesn’t look good. Wouldn’t you have gotten a call?”
Just then, Billy’s cell phone rang and both men looked at it.
Billy picked it up. “Hello.” He didn’t say anything, just listened. “I’m on my way.” Billy clicked on the computer and within seconds, it was dead. “We’ve got to go. That was the hospital. Robin Keats is in the hospital. She’s in a coma and the doctors don’t know if she’s going to wake up. She’s been beaten and they need me to go down to take a look.”