7. 6
Chester walks into my office, where I’m trying to finish up the last paperwork after retrieving the boys a few days ago. Paperwork is a bitch. The only reason I’d ever consider working for the government is because I’d have to fill in fewer forms. You’d think that doing good deeds would be enough, but no, they need it in writing and preferably on several kinds of forms with the exact words the authorities like. Use the wrong one and you’re screwed, punished by endless additional forms.
“Got a minute?” Chester asks with some of his cheap energy drink in one hand while he sits down in his usual spot on my windowsill. He’s still wearing the same loose and ragged jeans he wore yesterday with the same Madball t-shirt.
I push away the papers I’m filling out and sit back in my chair, getting comfortable by putting up my feet on the edge of the desk. For some reason, seeing him sitting there in the golden sunlight of the rising sun makes me want to go over to him and crawl in his lap. Ever since we kissed, I find myself more and more touch deprived. Which is something I don’t have any space for in my life or my head right now. “Sure.”
“It’s closing up to the third of the month,” Chester starts while his middle finger starts spinning his ring. “He’s going to take someone again.”
My stomach sinks. I know. I know, I know, I know. And I feel like there’s nothing I can do about that. But half of what’s keeping me up at night is the nearing deadline. Another woman set to be taken and killed.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say, looking everywhere but at the windowsill. I need to have some sort of distance to keep myself and my feelings intact. Chester’s too near.
“I made a list of possible suspects,” he suddenly says.
That grabs my attention, making me lock eyes with him. His baby blues seem tired and sad.
“How?”
“I factored in everything that was in the profile. Compiled a database. If this killer really is from a family of means, there’s no way he’s not in my compiled data. He’s no ghost. He’s someone. Then I started cross referencing everyone on those lists, narrowing it down. I’m down to two hundred and twenty-one names.”
That was impressive. From all the men born in Portland to just two hundred and twenty-one? Still a long list of suspects.
“Good job,” I praise Chester, even if we both know it’s not good enough. Not because he didn’t put in enough effort, but because not having the exact right name will mean someone still gets murdered.
“Yeah, well, it’s still useless,” he mumbles. This time he’s the one who looks away.
“Not useless,” I object. “It’s a start.”
When he looks up there’s a rage I can’t quite place and right on cue, he begins to spin his thumb ring.
“What?” I snap, harsher than I’d like to be. But let’s be honest, we’re all on edge, beyond tired, and probably a little shaky from too much caffeine.
“There’s a lot of names there that I recognize,” he almost whispers. “Kids from my parent’s friends. Nephews. Acquaintances. Statistically, the chance that I know this serial killer is high. Like, more likely that I know him, or at least of him, than not.”
That makes me swallow.
“There’s a reason you distanced yourself from everything about that life,” I try to soothe him. “And there was always a chance that ever since Beckett and Winny said he was rich and from around here that you knew him.”
“I know.”
Silence.
“But it’s still uncomfortable seeing all those familiar names. I played with some of these men when we were in diapers. If one of them turns out to be the killer, I’ll forever regret not making him choke on a sandpie we made.”
I chuckle. “That would imply you would be allowed to play with sand.”
Chester grunts. “True. Maybe I could have choked him with my neatly folded napkin, using proper etiquette and all.”
“Yeah, that sounds more realistic.”
He sighs, and I answer by sighing back.
“I’ll see if I can narrow down the list some more,” he says while he gets up from the windowsill and walks to the door. “Then I’m going home and I’m taking a nap, because I’m going to need all my strength to survive tonight.”
I nod.
“Sounds like a plan.”
And just like that, we go on with our day.
A long sigh escapes my mouth when I put in my zirconia earrings. Apparently it’s a day for sighing. We’re almost at the Charity for Children event. Out of all the charity events we attend, this one is usually the easiest. People are already on board to invest in helping some kids, so convincing them is easy, but I hate the begging for donations part anyway.
Technically, we’re still good for another while with the donation Remy left us. But that money is going to run out sometime and I’d rather gather new donations at this event than any other.
Chester’s brow is permanently furrowed and he has been staring out of the car’s window ever since we left. He seems lost in thought ever since he told me about compiling that list of possible suspects earlier today. It’s like he’s single-handedly trying to solve this puzzle in one day. I made him get dressed up, but it’s like he’s not fully here mentally at the moment.
Alex is driving us this time. He willingly offered, because of the constantly crying baby at home. I almost declined his offer, but who am I to judge when he needs to get out every now and then?
I make Chester step out of the car instead of the other way around, but fuck proper etiquette and fuck societal constructs of gender. If I want to help my friend out of the car, my lack of penis should not be a problem.
We make our way to the event, which is being held in the Hilton Portland. It’s less fancy than the mayor’s ball. You still have to be invited to attend, but there are no fancy ushers letting us in.
We enter a room full of people who are dressed for the occasion. I pulled out my second fancy dress. A simple, elegant black dress because you can never go wrong with that. Or so I’ve heard. I let Chester off the hook this time. He doesn’t wear a tie, and it seems he can breathe a little better like this.
The mood is light, and people are chatting away. There’s a live band on stage, playing whimsical instrumental songs. There’ll be an auction tonight from which the proceeds will go to several charities for children.
“Oh fucking hell,” Chester says under his breath, looking even paler than usual.
“What now?” I ask, not understanding what this is about.
“There’s names from my list here,” he whispers, and I can see why that would bother him. The guilt of thinking Remy was the serial killer rises up in my chest.
“Just… steer me away from them,” I tell him.
“Stay away from the young dudes, focus on the old dudes and you’re golden,” Chester answers while snatching us two flutes with champagne. Yeah, I’m going to be needing that.
Making our way through the crowd, we reach the other side of the hall. There’s a lot of people here. Children are always popular. Unless they actually have to put time and effort in, that’s something that’s left up to us when things get too complicated.
I’m observing people, trying to figure out who to approach, when Chester starts silently swearing a whole arrangement of curse words.
“What?” I whisper.
“Satan Co,” he breathes, pointing his chin to the far right side of the room. Two little circles have gathered there. One full of men, Chester’s father demanding everyone’s attention with some story he’s telling. They all cling to his lips like they’re made of ambrosia. The other one full of trophy wives, silently talking to each other while showboating their latest surgery and haute couture.
“What the hell are they doing here? They don’t give a crap about kids,” I whisper to Chester while I grab his hand. He had already started to spin his ring, but I weave my fingers through his and gently stroke the back of his hand with my thumb.
Like some magnet, Chester’s father raises his head and locks eyes with me. He says something to the men he’s talking to before he swaggers his way to the other side of the room. I hate everything about him, from his shiny and expensively styled silver gray hair to the light blue Italian leather shoes he’s wearing.
This should be the point where my flight response kicks in, but I know this is inevitable. If we want to leave here tonight with a sizable donation, we have to make it through this hell and make it through all seven layers of Abraham von Liechsenfield.
“Son,” he says with the fakest of smiles on his face. It makes me want to vomit. “You never contacted me. Has your little friend not told you to call me?”
His sleazy eyes fall on me and it makes me want to rub my skin raw.
“She told me, I just have no intention of ever speaking to you again. What the fuck are you even doing here? You hate children,” he says, repeating my words.
“Mind your words, Chester darling,” his mother says when she reaches us. “We’ve taught you better than that. Improper words are a sign of weakness.”
“Well, I guess not even all your money could make me strong. Might be best to just let me be and never speak to me again,” Chester snides, his hand squeezing mine so hard there might be bruises there tomorrow. I let him.
“Oh no, we’ve got a lot to talk about. I expect you to contact me to set up a date soon,” Satan says.
Co is pushing her fake tits out, fervently nodding her head in agreement with her spouse.
“Yeah, sure, expect a call when hell freezes over,” Chester answers before he starts pulling me with him to another side of the room.
“Pleasure,” I say to his parents and I wave with my fingers as we pass them. Chester doesn’t slow down, grabs a refill of champagne for us somewhere along the way and downs his glass before we settle on a different side of the room.
“All the men he was talking to were on my list or related to someone on my list,” is the first thing he says. His body is trembling, but it’s starting to ease up some. “Fuck, I really did not expect them to be here tonight.”
He lets himself fall with his back against the wall. Without thinking about what I’m doing, I press my body against his and wrap my arms around him.
“They never come to this event, so there was no reason for us to have any suspicion they would be here.”
Part of me wants to press my lips against his to make him feel better, but I don’t know if he’d appreciate me doing it in front of his parents. They never accepted that Chester was attracted to men and always denied he was gay. Me kissing him would only solidify their objections to him liking men more than women, and I don’t want to do that to him.
“Let’s just… do what we came here for,” Chester finally says.
I let out a deep breath, nodding my head to him. “Just make sure it’s someone who doesn’t have any relations to anyone on your list, please.”
The idea that people who could possibly be or know the serial killer were attending a charity event for children made me very nervous. Yes, this particular serial killer was very much against harming children, which became clear from all the help we’d received from him, but there were others out there who weren’t as opposed to hurting kids. Who thrived on it. And just the idea that some of them might be here, putting on an act, made me want to turn this whole place upside down.
I breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four.
I’m getting way too worked up, and suddenly it’s Chester who’s stroking the back of my hand instead of me stroking his. I lean into him, laying my head on his shoulder for the shortest of times, showing him my thankfulness and vulnerability at the same time. It’s like we’re having a full on freaky Friday moment.
A waiter with a tray of hors d”oeuvres passes, and Chester makes him stop, grabbing two of whatever the hell it is off his plate. Turns out to be salted caramel peanut bites, and I actually enjoy them. The planner of this event always keeps in mind that it’s about kids, and even makes the food kid friendly.
Instead of expensive flower arrangements, there are balloons throughout the whole space. Tomorrow morning, a truck will come over, pick up all the balloons and distribute them to children’s hospitals and the few orphanages there are left.
As I said, this event has always been one of my favorites.
“How long ago has the last donation from The Duke been?” Chester asks me as he points out an elderly couple.
I take a second to think about that. “Maybe three years?”
The Duke isn’t a literal Duke. He was someone who had something to do with the original Dukes of Hazzard back in the eighties, then invested his money in a smart way, and voilà, his fortune was born. Sadly, some folks had kidnapped his kid, bribing The Duke for his safe homecoming. Authorities had caught the kidnappers and brought the kid home safely before The Duke paid the ransom. It was enough for The Duke to pack up his bags and move his whole family from Georgia to Oregon though, never looking back. He repaid it by making donations to whatever kind of charities he saw fit.
FIX Foundation could always rely on a donation from them, but we didn’t want to impose.
“We could?” Chester said, not having to finish his whole sentence.
Looking around the room, I subconsciously scan in search of Remy. But no matter how badly I want him to suddenly appear and magically forget everything that happened, he’s just not here.
“Let’s go for it,” I agreed. I did not have the time, energy or mental capacity tonight to work for it.
Walking toward them, The Duke’s wife sees me first. She’s one of those really classy ladies. Her hair is always immaculate and she never wears the same dress twice. All her outfits are pristine and if I ever grow out of my leather pants phase, I’d love to become her when I grow up. But her very best attribute is her heart. She’s one of the kindest women I’ve ever met.
“Abby, sweetie!” she exclaims right before we reach her. “It’s been way too long since I’ve seen you and Chester. Is that the same dress you were wearing last time?”
“It sure has been a long time, Bella,” I say, a smile I couldn’t fake beaming from my face, ignoring her comment about my dress, because yes it most certainly is the same dress. “How are the grandkids doing?”
“Oh marvelous! Layla just had another one. He’s all pink and smells of new baby and he’s perfect.” She has that new grandbaby look. That face we’re looking for when we’re out searching for new donations. The Duke is a sure thing though, so the fact that they just had another grandchild is just a plus.
“Congratulations! What’s his name?”
Her face sours. “Samuel Theodore Dylan.”
“Why do I get the feeling you disapprove of those names?”
“You know I worship the ground my kids walk on, but come on. Samuel Theodore Dylan? S.T.D.? Are you kidding me?”
Chester starts laughing out loud and I can’t hide my own smile. It makes The Duke look up from the man he was talking to before we reached them. He gives me a quick hug and then gives Chester the same treatment. If Aunt Viv hadn’t adopted me, I would’ve wanted The Duke to adopt me.
“So, what do you need, kiddo?” he asks me straight to the point in his warming Southern accent.
“Some salary for my kickass team,” I respond truthfully. I can be blunt with The Duke. He will respect that more than me beating around the bush.
“Done,” he answers. And just like that, it’s arranged, no questions asked, no strings attached.
“Congratulations on your new grandchild,” Chester says.
“Ah, yes, our little venereal disease. He’s perfect, except for the name. But I guess every kid has a right to their own trauma. I’d rather he has a trauma because of a poor name choice than being kidnapped,” The Duke says, wrapping his arms around his wife. They’re nearing their eighties and they still seem enchanted with each other. It’s all I can ever hope for.
Chester’s hand is still firmly in mine as we spent a while chatting with The Duke and Bella, before we give Alex a call to come pick us up. We’ve got what we came for, and now all I want to do is get out of here and leave hell and its hellspawn as far behind me as we can.
Once we are outside, Chester seems to relax. All the muscles in his body suddenly no longer tense. Still, he doesn’t let go of my hand. It isn’t until we’re back home again that we finally let each other go.I must be a fucking sight to see. In my figure hugging fancy black dress, high heels, trying to get my stance perfect to aim my gun at the shooting range. Not that I care. This turmoil inside me just needs to die down. As soon as Alex drove us back home, Chester said he was going for a swim, and I grabbed my keys and drove myself to the gun range. I’ve been emptying clip after clip, killing paper people for the last hour. But it isn’t working. My mind is still in overdrive and the feeling of bugs crawling beneath my skin is still there.
A sigh escapes my mouth when I put the safety back on the gun and lay it down.
“Got it out of your system?” a familiar deep voice asks.
When I turn around, I look into the deep emerald pools that are Beckett’s eyes. And for a moment I forget where I am, who I am.
“Nope,” I answer, because I don’t think there is a way to get this out of my system. I press the big red button, making the paper fly forward. Pulling it off, I lay it down on my pile of paper victims.
“Can I?” Beckett asks.
I just shrug.
He hangs a new target and pushes the red button again. Instead of letting me get away, he grabs his own government-issued weapon and aims it forward, keeping me in his arms. I can smell his aftershave and some kind of wash detergent that reminds me of my mother. For just a tiny moment in time, I want to wrap myself in his comfort and wallow myself in the smell of the past.
He steadies his arm on my shoulder, the bottom of his chin just scraping the top of my head. A shiver runs down my spine, and then he opens fire. He doesn’t empty his whole clip, he just shoots twice, once through the heart, once through the head.
When I take a deep breath, I become acutely aware of his broad, muscular chest against my back and I want to shudder. We stand frozen in time for a moment, our bodies touching, but neither of us saying anything. Just like that time in my office where I physically had to hold him back, the air seems to become electric.
“Got some new data,” he finally says, his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the timbre, giving me goosebumps.
“What’d you find?” I ask, taking a step forward and spinning around so I can face him. He doesn’t back up, staying right there in my space. My heartbeat picks up, and when I see his dilated pupils, I clench my thighs. We’re so close that I can see a small white line on his upper lip, some kind of scar, and it makes me wonder what happened. He probably has a whole arrangement of scars, chasing serial killers isn’t exactly a very safe job.
I can hear him swallow before he takes a step back.
“Results on some of the earliest victims came back. We couldn’t match them up according to his usual victim profile and the date of disappearances, so we had to wait for DNA results to come back. They just came in, and it turns out he played around a little with his earliest victims. There’s an African American woman amongst them and two blondes. Seems like he was trying to figure out what exactly his preferred kind of victim was before he settled on his usual type.”
An unwilling shiver runs down my spine. He picked out women at random until he found the exact kind he liked. What kind of fucked up world do we live in?
“Which tells us what, exactly?”
I don’t exactly know criminal behavior as well as Beckett, my focus has always been on abductors and child predators, which are a whole different species from serial killers.
“Well, it tells us he has had the urge to kill women before he understood that it all comes from the murder of his mother. Once he figured that out, his victims all started looking like her. Meaning he had to up his game after that, because he was looking for a certain kind of victim. He could no longer just randomly take someone off the street. This means that in the last five years, he educated himself in finding what he’s looking for.”
I still feel like he’s taking random women off the street, but they just have to have certain kind of hair and eye colors.
“The interest in psychology or criminology came even after that. His craving to fulfill his needs topped his urge to understand himself.”
I find myself nodding.
“So we’re looking for someone who was acquainted with forensics before he started killing and educated himself in criminology or psychology after that.”
He tucks a loose strand of my hair behind my ear while he says so, making me look up in his green eyes. The gesture comes so out of the blue that I don’t know how to react to it. So I don’t.
“Chester is making a list,” I say, my voice suddenly hoarse. “He’s narrowed it down to two hundred and twenty-one. Maybe this information will narrow it down further.”
Beckett nods, never taking his intense gaze off of me.
“I’ll email him the results, maybe he can see more connections than we can.”
That’s practically admitting that Chester is really good at what he does and that Beckett needs his help. It’s something I didn’t expect him to ever admit out loud, and I look up with a smirk when I see a muscle in his jaw tick.
“What’s with the outfit?” he asks, because I guess we’re done with the conversation.
“Went to a charity event to get a donation so we can keep doing our work with pay.”
“And that got you so riled up that you came here to shoot stuff?”
I scoff.
“No, running into Chester’s parents, having a serial killer on the loose and estranging myself from the man I was falling in love with because I thought he was the serial killer got me all riled up. Top that off with not being able to sleep, and you’ve got one cranky Abby that wants to shoot stuff.”
Something flashes over his face, but he looks away from me quickly. Is that guilt?
“Well, you might as well look gorgeous while shooting stuff,” he says, still looking away from me.
I raise my eyebrows. Why the hell is Beckett suddenly complimenting me? “Really? I’d rather wear a good pair of pants.”
He cocks his head. “All the same.”
And just like that, he turns around and walks away, leaving me all kinds of confused.