3. 2
Pain stings through my head the next morning while I’m sitting in my office. Thumping my head on the desk did not make everything better. No, it’s kind of making it worse. I’m not dumb. I know this shit, but I can’t help doing it anyway. I. Just. Can’t. Fucking. Handle. This. Waiting is the devil’s evil master plan. I’m sure of it.
Frustrated, I push my chair away from my desk and get up. I’ve done absolutely nothing workwise and I wouldn’t be able to do it even if I tried. Maybe grabbing yet another cup of coffee will get me out of my funk.
Miranda is cleaning the counter and making a cup of tea in the kitchen.
“Hello sugar,” she says when she sees me. “Can I make you anything?”
“Coffee, I suppose,” I sulk. And when I hear myself, I realize that I shouldn’t act like this. I know it, really, but I can’t seem to stop myself.
“What’s gotten your panties in a twist?” Miranda asks while she starts making me a cup of coffee.
“I hate waiting,” I mope some more. “And I’m getting literally nowhere today with my tasks. So now I’m over here complaining to you.”
She giggles, hands me my coffee and starts walking towards her desk, beckoning me to follow her. She reaches into the last drawer of her desk and removes a tupperware container.
“What’s this?” I ask, eyeing it suspiciously.
“It’s the fuck-it container.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard Miranda curse, so I physically take a step back when I hear her say fuck. I didn’t know she had it in her.
“The what?”
“The fuck-it container. It’s full of rubber bands that are somehow stuck together. Whenever someone around here is having a fuck-it attitude, they get the fuck-it container and they can try to get them all untangled.”
I snort, taking the container out of her hands and grabbing a chair so I can sit with her at her desk.
“Do people use this often?”
“Your lover is a regular,” she answers with a wink, looking in Chester’s direction. He doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on over here, lost in a world of music and code.
Somehow, I’m not surprised. I open the container, finding a mess of rubber bands and I try to find a logical place to start. It’s useless though - how the hell did she manage to fuck this up so badly? Or is this one of those things that people make worse while they’re trying to make it better?
For a while I get lost in this rubber maze, not hearing the world around me anymore, and my coffee is cold and long forgotten. I startle when two hands start massaging my shoulders and when I look up. Chester smiles at me and I feel my insides warm. God, was there ever a time I saw him as anything else than this? It feels like several lifetimes ago.
“You got the fuck-it container?” he asks with a smile that reaches his eyes.
“Yeah, it matched my attitude.”
He laughs. “Works though, right?”
And I have to admit that it does.
“Got a sec?” he asks when he notices I’m not going to answer him.
“Sure.”
I put the lid back on the container, hand it back to Miranda and thank her for the distraction before I follow Chester to his desk. He sits down on his desk chair, wheels over to where I’m standing and pulls me in his lap.
“You needed me to warm your lap?”
“Always, but as much as that idea appeals to me, it’s not why I asked you over here. No, I found some new kids we should be looking for.”
I inhale sharply and focus on his screen instead of the way I feel my body reacting to sitting on his lap. He shows me the feed of what I assume is a home security camera. The image is grainy, but there’s still enough to go on.
“This is Viktor Gobachov, he’s eight. And this,” he says while he does something and the feed starts moving, “is the last image that was taken of him. He’s being pulled into a car. He was kidnapped and nobody has heard from him since.”
A little boy with the whitest blond hair gets pulled into a black sedan before it speeds away. I swallow. God, he’s so young. I open my mouth to start asking questions, but Chester holds up one finger and stops me.
“This is Paul Nigel, age nine,” he says, tapping away on his keyboard and pulling up another feed. A little boy with black skin and perfect cornrows disappears into a gray sedan. “And this is the last time anyone has seen or heard from him.”
“Fuck,” I say.
“Hm,” Chester agrees. “Now, if you agree, we can put the team on this. Local police have figured it’s the same unsub because both boys were taken in the same manner in the same neighborhood. I agree with them. They’ve tried to trace the cars, but both driver’s licenses were falsified.”
I sigh. “Dead end on the cars?”
“Yeah. Based on what I’ve learned lately, it’s probably not a first time offender. Chances are he has a record for something resembling pedophilia or child molestation or abuse. Statistics also suggest that he’s a local. Transporting a kidnapped kid over great distances is risky and a risk most aren’t willing to take.”
My stomach clenches looking at the images on the screen. They’re just boys. And somebody took them. Took their childhood from them.
“And what I suspect, but can’t defend with science, is that he’ll use them to make child pornography and sell or share it on the dark web.”
“What’s that assumption based on? Why do you think that if it’s not science?”
Chester wraps his free arm around my waist, hugging me closer. “They’re too different. If he took them for his gratification, they’d be alike. If he took them for himself, he’d have a type. One white-blond, blue-eyed, white kid and one black-haired, brown-eyed, black kid? No. He’s doing this because he wants to share it with an audience.”
I nod along, agreeing with that assessment.
“And there’s a selfish part of me that hopes that that’s the case, because that way there’s a chance we can find him. We can trace them if they’re being put out there on the dark web. Possibly find them. Bring them home.”
I smile. “AKA the good part of our jobs.”
“Exactly,” Chester agrees, kissing my shoulder.
I turn my upper body so that I’m facing him and throw an arm around his back. “Good job. Now let’s bring them home.”
“Yeah, well, I had to do something besides waiting.”
“Now you’re just making me feel bad,” I say while I wince. “While I was busy untangling rubber bands because I hate waiting, you were finding us new cases so we can hopefully save some kids.”
“Somebody’s gotta pull all the weight here,” he teases, grinning at me and raising an eyebrow.
“Asshole,” I say, jabbing him in his side.
He laughs. “Love you too.”
“Surprise?” Dylan asks when he looks out of the SUV window we’re all sitting in later that afternoon.
“Yes, it’s a surprise,” Alex says. “That means, per definition that you’re not supposed to know what it is yet.” Alex is driving us to some place while we should be working out. “It’s something special,” he says, “and I figure it’s going to be pretty fucking gruesome. But who doesn’t like to be slaughtered in a good workout?”
I surely do.
Scott is annoying the crap out of all of us by singing 9 to 5 on repeat, claiming it’s stuck in his head and we all have to suffer.
“Is it much further?” I groan when Scott sets in the thirtieth rendition of the song.
“About a fifteen minute drive,” Alex says, smirking at me in the rearview mirror.
“That’s too long,” I mumble, tapping Scott on the back of the head and making him yelp.
“What was that?”
“That was me turning off the radio.”
Alex and Dylan snicker, and we can drive the rest of the way in silence, Scott glowering after I chastised him.
When we drive through a forested area for the last ten minutes of the journey I’m starting to wonder what we’re going to do. Some kind of crazy survival shit?
“It’s right around here,” Alex says, pulling up to what looks like nothing in the forest. There’s a road and a clearing with another SUV parked in it, but nothing out of the ordinary.
“What are we doing?” I ask, not able to contain my nerves anymore.
“You’ll see.”
“I’m your boss. Tell me, dammit! Do I need to up my occupational hazard insurance?” I have no trouble trying to use every advantage I can get, but Alex is a hardass and it’s not working. The only thing it does is earn me a shit-eating grin.
“Not if you’re a team player today.”
He parks the car and signals us all to get out. Someone in an army uniform gets out of the parked car as well, grinning at Alex. The men walk up to each other, grab a wrist, and give a one-armed hug.
“‘Bout time,” the stranger says.
“Been too long,” Alex answers.
That’s the thing I like most about two men having a conversation. They don’t waste it chit-chatting about nothing. Minimum words, maximum efficiency. Then Alex turns towards us, having the same look as when he’s got a workout in mind that has a huge chance of killing us.
“This here is my good friend, Drill Sergeant Mike Lowell. He’s going to get us through a military-grade obstacle course right here in these woods. And if you behave, he might let us play with the guns as well.”
My face splits in two, because this is my idea of a good time. Dylan jumps up and down, reminding me of an excited puppy and Scott cracks his neck, his tell for him getting ready.
Drill Sergeant Mike Lowell has the same evil gleam in his eyes as Alex, patting his friend on the back before getting right in our faces. Fuck personal space, he’s getting right into it. And then he opens his mouth.
“Ladies! We’re going through an obstacle course through these trees. You’re doing it as a group. If one of you fails, all of you fail. So help each other the fuck out and don’t die!”
I can’t wait.
Alex joins us, grabbing something out of the pockets of his pants. I recognize it as a camouflage stick, which he smears on all of our cheeks before doing his own. Mike is shaking his head, hiding a smile.
“Follow me, kiddos!” he shouts before plowing through the trees.
After a small hike we reach another clearing with a wooden wall right at the front of it. Seeing it gives me excited butterflies in my stomach, and my feet start skipping involuntarily.
“I hope you didn’t wear your fancy clothes because once you’ve finished this, there’ll be nothing fancy left about it.”
“Awesome,” Scott exhales, and the roguish look in his blue eyes makes him look younger than he is.
“It’s not that difficult,” Mike continues. “You get over the first hurdle and then you go over the next one until you’ve had them all. NOW GET GOING!”
And just like that we take off. Alex sprints and runs up against the wooden wall that’s got to be at least ten feet high. Using his speed, he’s able to run up two steps before he stretches and grabs the edge, pulling himself up until he sits on the ledge with a leg on either side. Dylan does the same, not having to use the hand Alex is extending. Both of them leave space between them and bend forward reaching down. Scott runs next, taking both Alex’s and Dylan’s hands until they can pull him over and he can jump off on the other side.
Being the smallest out of all of them, I’m last. I run, place my foot against the wall, try to run up and grab Alex’s and Dylan’s hand when I’m coming up short to reach the ledge on my own. Pun intended. They pull me up, until I can climb over and jump off on the other side of the wall.
Coming down in a big pool of…
“MUD!” Dylan yells with joyful glee when he jumps down and lands in it. Alex cackles and I can’t hold back the laugh that forms in my chest. “I love mud!” he adds.
Now that we’re all on the other side of the wall, we can go to the next hurdle. About fifteen feet up ahead, a rope hangs from a tree branch. There’s a rubber tire tangled in it about half way up and a platform high above the ground. This? This is perfection.
Being the last one over the wall, I go first now. It’s an unspoken rule: I go first if I can, they have my six. Jumping up, I grab the rope as high as I can, using the strength in my upper arms to pull myself up higher and higher. Once I reach the tire, I climb through it, continuing my way up until I reach the top.
I can hear Alex laughing from the ground, telling one of the other guys they won’t fit through the tire and they’ll have to do it the hard way and go around it. Both of them cuss, making me laugh. Sometimes not being a bulky dude comes in handy.
On top of the platform, there’s a box filled with ziplining handlebars and a metal cable going down through the canopy of the trees going all the way down, and I can’t help but think that this thing just keeps getting better and better. I wait for all the guys to climb up, all of them lighting up with the same enthusiasm when they find the funicular.
I grab a handlebar, apply it to the cable, grab them and give the guys my biggest smile before I jump off of the platform and almost fly through the woods. I whoop the whole way down - my team following me with the same excitement.
We finish a crapload of obstacles, each getting harder over time with muscle fatigue setting in, and at the end of the obstacle course, we’re all more mud than human – and all extremely content. I’m panting, my muscles hurt, I’m tired and I’ve got cuts and scrapes all over, yet if Mike would offer us to go again, I’d jog back to the start and gladly have a do-over.
“Good job, men,” Mike says, who’s been with us for the whole obstacle course. “Nothing fancy about those clothes now, right?”
Alex gives a toothy smile. “You’re looking mighty clean yourself, Mikey.”
And that’s all it takes for all four of us to jump the drill sergeant and get him just as dirty as the rest of us.
“I knew this was a bad idea,” the man says grimacing.
“Now tell me about these big guns you promised us,” Scott demands, looking more serious than ever.
Alex laughs out loud, slapping Scott on the back. “Mike is going to take us to try our hand at long-distance shooting.”
“With a sniper rifle?” I blurt, my insides skipping. I’ve never shot a sniper rifle, but I’ve always wanted to try.
“A little trigger-happy?” Mike asks.
“Always,” I answer earnestly, jumping on Dylan’s back for a piggyback ride. He whoops and starts walking to the cars. I might need to give Alex a raise. This has been the best afternoon ever, and I haven’t been worrying all the while I was out here. And now we’re going to shoot things.
The.
Best.
No doubt about it.
Sitting on the kitchen counter with my knees pulled in, I’m watching Chester and Remy clean the kitchen later that evening. I’ve cooked, they have to do the cleaning. It’s only fair.
“I’m telling you, it was so epic,” I ramble on. After the obstacle course, we went to a site somewhere up a mountain, where we got to shoot targets at increasingly large distances. Mike explained to us what we were supposed to do, and we all got to take a crack at it. I hit two of the three targets, making myself very proud. Part of it was probably just luck, but who cares about that? The whole afternoon made me forget everything that’s going on for a moment, my stress being lifted, and I can’t stop talking about it, wanting to bask in relaxation a little longer.
Chester leans over me, putting a plating dish back into the cabinet. When he moves back, his hand strokes behind my ear. “There’s still mud here,” he says while he grazes the skin behind it.
“No way,” I exclaim, genuinely surprised. “I showered for forty-five minutes. How is there still mud?”
“It really was everywhere,” Remy says, watching Chester and me from the other side of the kitchen with something feral in his eyes.
“Stop looking at me like you want to get me all dirty again,” I tell him, my eyes squinted and a finger pointed in his direction.
“You’re full of great ideas,” he hums.
The doorbell rings, and I run to answer it while still laughing. Once I open it, I see a young lady with a huge bouquet of peonies. My face gets taken over with a huge smile. I love peonies. They’re very pretty.
Did Beckett send me flowers? He doesn’t seem like the flower-sending kind of guy. If any of them would send flowers, I’d expect it to be Remy.
I take them from the girl delivering them and thank her, closing the door behind me and searching for the sender of the flowers.
There’s a small white envelope tucked between the flowers which I greedily pull out from between them. A little card comes out, reading ‘With love’ on the front. I’m not even sure who it is from, but it’s making me smile already. Once I get the card to open, my heart stops. These flowers are definitely not from Beckett.
On the inside, the name Coraline Memphis is written.
And I know fully well what that means.
To an unknowing employee of a flower shop that must seem like the name of the one sending the flowers. To me, it’s the name of another victim.
My hand starts shaking and it feels like someone is throttling me. We were right that it isn’t Alson. He’s still stuck at the precinct and couldn’t murder anyone. I’ve never hated being right more in my life - the cost of my rightness being Coraline’s life. I grab my phone and start calling Beckett.
I’m so fucking glad he always answers.
“Abby?”
“It’s not Alson. It’s Wayne. And her name is Coraline Memphis,” I manage to stumble out, all the while staring at the flowers and the card with the sound of my own blood coursing through my veins in my ear.
“He sent you something?” he asks, immediately catching on to why I’m calling him. It isn’t just criminals he understands, it’s people in general. He just understands the way they think. It’s probably the reason he knows I’m freaking out as well.
“Flowers. He sent me flowers. My fucking favorite flowers. How the hell? It’s not like I tell everyone what my favorite flowers are!”
Staring at the flowers in my hands, they suddenly feel dirty. I let them drop to the floor, watching them go down as if in slow motion. They just lie there while I hold onto the card as if it’s my most prized possession.
Beckett sighs. “He’s smart. He found a way.”
“Fucking smart motherfucker. We need to stop him. This has gone on for far too long. There are too many names! I can’t carry all those names around with me!”
Choking on my own words, I’m stuck between rage and sadness, both emotions battling for supremacy, but they end up having to temporarily co-exist.
“Is anyone there with you right now?” he asks. “I’m still stuck at the precinct and with this new name, I’ll probably be here a while.”
“Remy and Ches are here,” I mutter.
“Go get them,” he bosses me and I can’t for the life of me think of a reason to not just let him. Slowly, I’m able to move my feet again, making my way into the kitchen, where Chester and Remy are hanging against the kitchen island and playfully pushing each other.
“Can you find anything out about her?” I ask Beckett, the tone of my voice alarming the other two men in my kitchen. Both of them give me questioning looks.
“I think Chester is faster,” he grunts. “I have to go through official channels.”
Now I’ve heard it all.
Am I in actual shock, or did he really say that?
When I keep quiet he starts speaking again. “I have some stuff to do here, but I’ll come get the flowers and the card as soon as I can. We have to bring it in as evidence. See if Chester can get some information?”
Yes, I could use some directions right now.
“Sure. Bye,” I answer before hanging up.
Chester takes the card out of my hand, glancing down once before pushing Remy in my general direction and taking off. Remy’s arms take me into his hold, strong and safe as ever.
“It’ll be okay,” Remy lies to me, but we all know he’s full of bullshit. Nothing will ever be fine again. We’ll have to find a way to learn to live with this. Silence takes over when we both choose to go along with the lie.
I didn”t notice Chester leaving the room until he returns with his laptop, setting it down on the kitchen counter. He’s opening various screens faster than the speed of light and starts typing away.
My first instinct is to start firing questions at him, but they never leave my mouth, because I’m just so beyond done with this whole killer.
Not just this killer.
Wayne.
It’s motherfucking Wayne.
Remy’s arms tighten impossibly more around me, making me realize I’m not breathing. So I force myself to breathe out for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four again. The sudden intake of oxygen is making me a little dizzy. Lips are pressed to the side of my head until Remy leans down on it with his cheek and keeps it there.
“So, Coraline Memphis,” Chester says, his voice croaky. “From what I can find in general databases, she’s a nurse, single, living alone right here in Portland, conveniently right on the number four on our psycho’s map.”
I swallow, because what is there to say, really?
Another human life being reduced to the atrocities done to it. A life taken away, a victim created.
Chester sighs, pulling me out of my head. He looks away from his laptop, tilting his head back slightly. For some reason, he looks defeated.
“Listen,” he starts, staring at the ceiling. “I can tell you everything there is to know about Coraline in about half an hour, but what fucking difference does it make? We know all there is to know about her. She looks like Isaac’s mom, she looks like you, she lived in the right place. Other than that, it isn’t about the girls. It’s what they represent.”
He rubs the back of his neck.
“So say the word and I’ll pull her apart digitally, right down to if she filed her taxes correctly, but I don’t think it’ll amount to shit.”
I sigh, because he’s right, and suddenly a shiver runs down my spine.
“Leave it,” I tell Chester. “I want to know how the fucker knows that peonies are my favorite flower.”
Remy lets me go, and I get pulled into Chester’s lap immediately.
“Don’t need a laptop to figure that one out,” he says.
“Hm?” I ask.
“You bring peonies to your parents’ grave. He’s been there, he’s figured it out, he’s smart.”
Ugh. I don’t want him to be right, but he probably is. I lean with my forehead against Chester’s, closing my eyes for a second. I was right. Fucking right. It was Wayne all along.
It’s late and dark outside when Beckett comes in relation to the motherfucking flowers. Remy, Chester and I spent the evening watching TV and drinking. The exhilaration of the afternoon has worn off and all that’s left is fatigue.
I’m so tired I can feel it in my bones.
Beckett is standing in front of the door, bending down to pick up the flowers and card, but he lingers instead of going away. The dark circles underneath his eyes and the way his shoulders are slumped tell me everything I need to know.
He just sighs before turning around to return to his car.
On instinct I reach out and grab his hand.
“Hey,” I say.
His jaw is tight, and he doesn’t answer.
“I know,” is all I say, because if anyone understands it’s me. What I mistook for stubbornness when I just met him is actually care. He didn’t know he could trust me when this investigation just started, so he didn’t let it show. But he gives his all to his job because he cares so much.
“Let me put this in the car first,” he finally says, looking at the way our hands are interlocked.
I meekly follow him, holding onto him as I let him stumble to do everything single-handedly.
Tough titties for him, I’m not letting go right now.
Once he manages to get everything in the car with just one hand, I pull him along, walk around, and sit down on the hood. Beckett shakes his head, but I don’t miss how one side of his mouth turns up.
We sit in silence, staring up at the dark night sky. It’s a clear night, and I can see some of the constellations Chester tried to teach me years ago. It was during the nights we took counting the Perseid meteor shower seriously, but it never really interested me. I try to figure out what Beckett’s take on stargazing is by staring at him really hard, but I can read his mind just as well as I can map my way through the stars. The safe option would be to think he doesn’t know them, never sitting still long enough to look at stars, but deep down he’s a romantic at heart, so who knows?
In the end, I just ask him.
“I usually don’t really have time to look up. Too busy looking around,” he answers, knees pulled in.
That’s something I can relate to, and confirming my earlier train of thought that he doesn’t take the time to look up at the stars. Pointing my chin towards a particular part of the sky, I say: “I think that’s Orion.”
“The hunter, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one is it?” he asks, squinting his eyes.
“One of those up there,” I answer, pointing in a general direction somewhere vaguely.
He smirks. “Glad you know your constellations so well.”
My mind wanders to Wayne and how we’re going to get him. “So, are we the hunted or the hunter right now?”
He takes a moment to think that through, brings our intertwined hands to his mouth and kisses my knuckles.
“The hunter,” he finally answers. “Always the hunter.”
Well, let’s do some fucking hunting.