3.2
Seb is, once again, running the lab solo.
"Rosie off to the Cocooner scene?" I ask as I step in.
Seb turns, lifting his head from where he's leaning over a microscope in the corner. Bringing his thick glasses back down, he squints at me. "She is." He smiles a little, staying in his seat, and it gratifies me somewhat that he's become less awkward around me. For me, Seb has become a nice break from the usual cop persona- that specific way of being over-confident and world-weary at once. Somehow, he's escaped absorbing the cynicism so far.
"H-heard you were off sick. Glad to see you b-back."
I smile and prop up on Rosie's chair. "Yeah, just needed a break."
"You here about the m-Masker?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"It’s him. Matches the DNA at his scenes, and the boot size."
"Of course," I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. Needler gets his guy.
Seb is smiling at me with that endearingly quirked mouth. "You s-seem like you wanted to hear he got the wrong person."
That gets a short, sharp laugh out of me. God, is he right? For a minute there, I forgot what that would mean. "No, no. You're right. Better that he's getting the right people." Oddly, I feel the urge to linger. So when the conversation lulls and Seb starts to fidget, I find a new avenue of conversation. "Heard back from Rosie at the scene yet?"
"Nothing yet."
"I guess that’s a bad sign."
Seb tilts his head. "If Cocooner had left his address somewhere, we'd probably hear about it p-pretty quick, yeah."
The idea makes me smile. "Rosie didn't send you."
"No, she h-hates Cocooner the most."
I nod slowly. "She lost a friend to him. When he decided to target female detectives one year. Back before…" I trail off, then straighten my shoulders. "Rosie has seen a lot."
"W-we're all g-getting that way."
***
I stay late. Just because I missed a week, I tell myself, as though I don't regularly stay two to three hours past the end of my shift. The crew comes back from the crime scene, and I get caught up on what they found. Which is summed up as more of the same. No leads yet.
By the time I'm back on my street, having parked my car around the block, I'm exhausted, both mentally and physically. Over a week clean, and I'm barely even thinking about having a drink to top the night off. All I want is to climb into bed. Which makes it even more soul-crushing when no amount of ferreting through my bag turns up my housekeys. I must have left them on the hook inside my front door.
I try calling Olivia as I stand outside the building, locked out from even accessing the stairwell, though I know full well she usually works night shift Mondays. Then, to add insult to injury, it starts raining. I curse and press close to the front of the building, looking up through the droplets to ascertain that it’s setting in to stay. A quick urge to cry washes over me. But like most emotions, I push it down.
My only option is seven flights of cold exposed fire escape to hopefully be able to jimmy the window open at the top. At least there will be a hot shower waiting for me, I tell myself as I head down the block to get around the back of the building.
Climbing the stairs takes an age. I'm soaked through by the time I get to the seventh floor and the small window that looks into our living room, the rain only falling harder in the time it took me to get here. And then, as I try to lift the window open, it doesn't budge. I can even see the latch at the top, turned closed. Swearing loudly into the rain, I rest my forehead against the glass, my breath fogging it. What now? Call Dirk? God, as if I need him to think I'm any more incompetent lately. I could break the glass.
It's while I'm running through everything that I have on me, working out what will work best for that task, that I realise I'm not alone. The landing sways softly, attached by bolts to the wall, and the rain masks any other sound, including the heavy rattle that any footsteps elicit. Rather, it’s the shape in my peripherals that I register first.
When I turn my head just enough to see him there, on the far corner of the landing, leaning against the rail by the stairs, I gasp and jump back to the edge. Briefly, looking at that mask, and the blackened mouth smudged an even darker black with wet, I consider going over the side, trying to catch the window ledge a meter away. But he doesn't react to me noticing him, doesn’t move, not an inch.
I grip the bars, pushing myself into the corner and farther from him. My chest rises and falls fast. He knows where I live. Of course. From when he’d followed me. He didn't just stop after he took out my other tail.
"This could help," his voice comes, even more obscure through the rain, hand lifting to hold a flat iron bar out to me. The kind that petty thieves use to unlock windows just like mine. I don't reach for it, don't even look at it. My eyes stay firm on him. Hand dropping, his mask tilts, watching me. “You're hunting me," he says.
“It feels the other way around.”
“Oh no." The corner of his mouth lifts in a grin made unsettling by the way water droplets streak through the black. "You’re not the type I prey on at all, Little Shadow.”
The edge of the rail bites into my palm, water dripping into my eyes. “But my husband was? He was an officer, a good man.”
Silence answers me. I don't know what to do but stare back at him, unable to read any expression, to guess what he’s going to do.
I shriek as a loud clattering above me crashes against the upper landing. When I look up, all I see is a large owl there, big eyes turned down towards me. Letting out a breath, clutching my heart, I look back down, but the corner is empty. Down, through the grates of the fire escape, I see a dark shape descending. And in the corner, he's left the tool, and my way inside.
***
Locking the window feels somewhat redundant now. As does locking the doors. But I do it all anyway, every day when I leave, and endless more times when I come home, obsessively checking the bolts are still in place. They always are.
No amount of looking over my shoulder turns up another sighting of Needler. But I'm convinced he's there, hidden in the subway crowds or the clutches of reporters outside work, or else watching from some place I can't see.
All this being true, Downtown in the middle of the night isn't the best place for my nerves. Especially since the absent moon nights have come back around again. Too early, I assure myself. He’s not due to strike again for another month at worst.
"Remind me why we're here again?" I ask as I look both ways up the street. Short of Crennick Row, Downtown was the place with the highest crime rate in the city. By night, the neon lights come on and the nightlife comes out, and with it all manner of shady deals and shadier places. We're facing one such venue, with an outline of an unrealistically buxom woman on a pole above the entrance, and the name Illuminate , though the lights on one of the l’s is out.
Dirk looks back at me. "Working."
"Uh huh…" I say, sounding unconvinced at best, but I follow him anyway. "Know your way around, do you?"
Dirk grins at me. "Come on, sometimes you gotta get among 'em to catch 'em."
"Nice catchphrase. You put that on your resume?"
"Hey, every side-kick needs a catchphrase," he counters.
It takes me a second, as we join the back of the queue, to work out what he's implying. "You are not my sidekick! We're partners."
"Oh come on, look at you; the tragic back-story, the burning internal rage, the deep personal flaws…"
"Watch it," I warn.
"Besides, everyone prefers the sidekick. We're funny."
I squint at him, trying to remember the last time he even laughed. Dirk rolls his eyes. "Look, the reality is that it has once again been over a month since Needler's last hit. He's ahead of us, again . Maybe we should change our tactics."
"Won't they recognise us? Our faces are on TV," I hiss at him as we move up.
"You're the face of the Needler case, not me."
"Excuse me?"
"…Besides, you think we'd be the first law-types to show up after dark in Downtown? If they start kicking those out, they'll lose half their business."
"Please be joking."
I follow him in, the lights turning his black jacket blue, then purple, glowing similarly off his hair. The jeans he’s wearing have been around long enough to be ripped and weathered in ways stores usually try to emulate. Right now, smiling devilishly back at me, Dirk certainly doesn’t look like someone on the right side of the law. "Not everyone is quite as pure in their intentions as you."
Inside, it’s basically what I expected, except slightly more. Stages with poles in the middle dot the large, shadowy room, and seemingly everywhere I look, a half-naked woman is either dancing or serving drinks. Other than those, most of the clientele is predictably men, ranging from fat businessmen straining in their suits, to the rougher types, bald heads and neck tattoos. I can imagine how those two groups might serve each other, and a place like this, anonymous and filled with smoke, would be a good place to facilitate that.
I clear my voice as the wafting of cigars tickles my throat. "Unless I strip down to my underwear, I don't think I'm going to fit in here."
"I have faith in you. Lose the jacket. Have a drink and get some guy who's seen you on TV talking. Good luck!"
And Dirk leaves me while I gape after him. Asshole. But I take my jacket off anyway, leaving just my thin singlet underneath, and pull my hair out of the tight ponytail it usually stays in.
It doesn't take much sitting at the bar before I get company. The guy is good-looking, in a slightly scary kind of way. He's managed to pull off the bald head and the spacers in his ears as well as the indefinable neck tattoo.
At first, he’s leaning his elbow on the bar, peering at me. "I thought you looked familiar," he smiles, a drawing, magnetic kind of smile only the truly confident can seem to manage as he props on the stool next to me. "You're that detective." He glances around, raises an eyebrow, and adds, "Didn't think this would be your kind of place."
I consider lying and then decide I've had enough of that lately. "It’s not, really."
"No?"
"No, I'm here to see what the public is saying about my target, actually."
His head tilts, and he slides a little further onto his seat, getting comfortable. "Needler."
"The very one."
His eyebrow twitches upwards. There’s a piercing in it, shaped like a spike. "What are you willing to give for…" he waves a hand. "Taking your survey?"
I laugh, meeting his eyes. In this light, they could be any colour. He’s not exactly my type, but I’ve forgotten what this, the flirting and unknown, could be like, how good it could feel, and I let myself imagine how good other things could feel too… "How about a drink?" I gesture at the bartender.
My new friend lets out a soft laugh. "Usually I'd be buying, but what the hell, my taxes pay you, right?" Something tells me this guy doesn't pay his taxes, but I bite my tongue on that. "I ain’t giving you my name, though."
"That’s fine, Matt ," I say. After ‘Matt’ tells the bartender what he's drinking, I ask, "So the Needler?"
He grins. "Seems like a pretty cool guy."
"But a murderer."
He shrugs like this is a minor detail. "Of murderers."
"He killed two cops. On his first hit."
Matt sips his drink, tilting his head side to side. "Depends what you believe."
"And why hasn't he taken out Cocooner?" I ask, getting too swept up in the debate. Thinking somehow, one argument at a time, I can convince the public of what he truly is. "If he really is ‘serving the people’.”
"Well," Matt says with a grin, "If you believe what they say, he already has."
That stops me. "How’s that?"
"Well, that charred body in the reports could be the needled cop’s partner… but could be somethin’ else."
"What?" I frown, then shake my head. "People can't think that was the Cocooner?"
"Well, look at the vics before and after. If you do, it seems pretty clear. What we got now is a copycat."
My mouth falls open. Sure, the Cocooner's style changed slightly from about three years ago. But that’s a mad theory.
And yet a part of me, a beat after absorbing it, wants to believe it. Because this would mean, all this time later, that Caleb didn’t die for nothing. He got the Cocooner, after all. Even if the Needler got him right after.
"Hey, you still with me? Why don’t you finish that one and I’ll buy next?"
I blink back at my companion. My legs are unsteady as I stand up from my stool. "I've got to uh…"
I walk away, ignoring his call after me as I shoulder blindly through the crowd. The annoyed faces that turn to me, the flashing lights and darkness between struggling to push into my awareness, to bring me out of the churning thoughts. I need to think. There's a dark table in the far corner, right next to the entrance to the urinals, and smelling as you'd expect for the proximity. My head is spinning too much to care about the smell, and I sink into one of the chairs, elbows propped on the table, to lean my head into my hands.
Dirk was right, I suppose. There are things only being out among the public will reveal to you. Why did we never consider this ourselves? Because everything fit neatly as it was. Caleb and Tristan, victims of the same killer, the Cocooner carrying on, constantly evolving but always the same psychopath.
A man in a hood sits across from me, close in the small booth. I'm about to excuse myself, hardly in the mood for more conversation, when I look up and my heart stops.
“Been asking around after me?” The voice is quiet, obscured. For the first time, there's a lower half to the mask. Black metal curves to fit snugly against the silver top half, moulding into smirking lips and a slim jaw. I can see nothing of his face. But it’s him, alright. My breath catches, and I straighten, glancing to my left and the crowd of people. He can disappear in an instant if I call for help.
“We’re going to catch you,” I tell him, voice tight.
“Well," something like a soft chuckle sifts through the mask. “I’d better finalise some things, then.”
My jaw tightens. There are not many things he can mean by that. “Who?” I dare to ask. “Who’s next?”
“Why? Are you going to offer them a nice hotel room, maybe room service?” I don’t answer, and the mask tilts, eerie in its mockery of a face, an expression. “The Butcher might wish you’d left him to me once his inmates get wind of what he did.”
“Why do things this way?” I ask stiffly. “You could have been an asset to our side.”
“I’m sure.” He leans on the table, pinning me under his scrutiny across it. "Catching them is one thing, keeping them is another. My way, you don't need to keep anything."
"That’s how the law works. Innocent until proven guilty. Something you're clearly not familiar with." I stop myself. How am I here, in some kind of strip joint fronting for a criminal meeting spot, having a conversation with Needler? Needler, who I’m now sure, has been following me since the wastewater plant.
"Come on," he taunts. "There's no camera pointed at you now. Innocent is a matter of one’s wallet."
My jaw works. I should scream, watch him disappear. But there is something I need to know, something I know he can tell me. "Is Cocooner a copycat?"
He draws back, infinitesimally, but enough.
"Did my husband get him?"
The mask is impassive… and silent.
A group of laughing, drunken men stumble towards the urinals. I glance sideways as one nearly stumbles into my seat, and I see the small white baggies they're already pulling out of their pockets.
When I look back forward, Needler is gone.
***
Well, Dirk was right about one thing. This is where you find the criminals. I'm leaving, and if I don't find him to tell him that in the next five minutes, he's just going to have to figure it out on his own.
I've done a circuit of the bar, and I'm about to throw in the towel when I happen to glance through the glass and onto the beer garden. He's there, smoking and laughing with some business types. He looks so… natural. Like one of them as much as one of ‘us’.
Once I step out into the fresh, cool air, I realise I've left my jacket inside somewhere. But Dirk spots me, and he excuses himself to walk over to me where I wait under the fake palm fronds in the corner.
"Seen a ghost?" he asks, turning to sit next to me on the wall, balancing his beer on his other side.
I nod towards the group he just left. "They won't mind seeing you talk to a cop?"
"Eh, they know I'm a cop. We're familiar."
I shake my head. I shouldn't be surprised that Dirk is not the law-abiding good boy we're all supposed to aspire to. In Tregam, everyone is dirty in one way or another.
The fresh air is soothing, and now that I'm sitting out here, I'm not in such a mad rush to leave. "Do they know anything?"
Dirk shrugs, fingers curling over the lip of the wall next to his thighs. "A couple says they've seen him- that silver mask anyway, around. But as for his next target… no idea. There's lots of talk though. They say a lot of the killers are going real quiet, scared they'll be next."
I frown. "That one in custody, Talisof…" I recall, naming the man we saw not so long outside the courthouse, the one who seemed more celebrity than suspect, in his sleek black car and tailored suit.
"The millionaire?" Dirk scoffs. "In custody for now , you mean?"
"We don't know he did it."
"El, if he didn't poison those old ladies himself, he paid someone to do it. He's guilty. Why are you asking about him anyway, he's not our case? Are people here talking about it?"
I shake my head. “No, I don't know. Just a thought. In all honesty, people are talking about Cocooner more than anything.”
Dirk pulls a face, tilting his head up towards the small sliver of night sky. “Have you seen the latest body yet?”
“No.”
“They got the plaster off in the morgue.” Dirk almost visibly shudders. “Of all the nutjobs in this city, he’s the most fucked up. Gives me nightmares. The way he takes his time and wraps them up like that, alive and well until the final piece to drown in.”
I eye Dirk sidelong. A softly waved lock of hair flops across his brow as he idly nudges at a rock with the toe of his boot. He’s sat close enough beside me that his wide shoulder brushes mine, and I feel that I should move away, but I don’t. “I didn’t know it got to you.”
He shrugs, as though it’s nothing. “We’ve all got something, right? I’d just hate to know what was coming like that. That my final state was gonna be as some asshole’s ‘art’.”
Taking a breath, I can’t disagree with him. “People think it’s a copycat.”
Dirk’s glance is sharp, then he gives a humourless laugh. “That didn’t take long.”
“So you’d heard that. Why didn’t you mention it to me? We were just talking about the theories.”
“I don’t know,” he sighs, looking away. “I knew what it would mean to you. That his death wasn’t for nothing, right?”
“Well…” I trail off. Who knew he knew me so well?
“I just didn’t want to give you something like that just to have it taken away.”
With a deep breath, I slide off the wall. “Okay, I’m gonna head home.”
He’s peering at me, a slight frown between his brows. “Are you angry at me?”
“No. Really, I’m not. I just… I’m tired. And I think I’ve gotten all I can from this excursion.”
"Alright. Give me ten minutes, and I'll walk you home."
Usually, I'd wave off the offer. But with the certain individual who keeps showing up lately…
"Ten minutes?" I ask.
"There's one more avenue to explore."
I follow his eye to a stripper doing the rounds, trying to pull some sad sod into getting a hundred-dollar lap dance.
"Can't you get lap dances on your own time?" I ask.
Dirk gives me a cheeky look. "Strippers hear plenty. Who's more likely to brag and spill something than a guy with an ass in his face?"
I give a sweet smile. "It seems like you could be the one to answer that question." He snorts. I take a jab. "How does Yolana feel about your evidence-gathering tactics?" I ask, naming his current… something. Girlfriend is not quite the word. I've met her once, and that was because she happened to be coming out of his building at the same time that I picked him up for work one day. Nice girl, though none of them last more than a handful of sparse months before they work out they're wasting their time going for anything more than a semi-frequent sleepover with him. Then he’s usually single for a few months until another woman decides to have a go at making him into husband material.
Dirk snorts. "We're not exactly headed for the altar. Besides," he says, always keen to change the subject away from his lady friends. Which, to be fair, there’s only been three that I know of since we became partners. "You really want to talk about not doing things by the book?"
I cringe. Tawill doesn't know about my midnight escapade, just like she's not going to know about this one.
"Fine, whatever. Just make it quick."
***