Tellings of the Time: Complete series

11. 10

“How is she in there?” Beckett softly whispers, watching how Zoey crawls on top of Scott who is lying in a hospital bed. She’s been there ever since he came out of surgery, like she’s glued stuck to him. It’s kind of endearing.

“She made herself his emergency contact in the hospital system and might have threatened to forge email coming from the board sending compromising things to important people, so they’d all be out of a job,” Chester answers. He’s sitting on the floor of the hallway in the hospital with his laptop on his knees, refusing to stop working just because we’re waiting on all the doctors to do their work.

“So basically, she broke several laws just so she could be with her boyfriend,” Beckett says while he comes to stand behind me and lays a hand on my stomach. It’s soothing, and I appreciate the warmth from his body. I might not want to admit it out loud, but seeing how much blood Scott had lost has really shaken me.

“Yeah,” I answer, staring through the same window as Beckett. There are all kinds of wires hooked up to Scott, but the nurses have promised us it’s just regular post-op precautions and nothing serious. Chester may have hacked his medical records and confirmed they were telling the truth. The surgery was to extract the bullet and suture the hole it left. It had nicked a vein, causing him some blood loss, but it had missed the artery. Thank God. This could’ve ended up really different. If nothing major changes, he’s going to recover fully, lifting a weight off my heart.

“She seems like such a nice girl,” Beckett says, genuinely confused.

Chester starts laughing out loud. “That girl is ferocious. There isn’t a nice bone in her body. Don’t let the tiny appearance fool you.”

“She’s pretty sweet to Scott,” Remy says, balancing two trays filled with coffees in his hands. He took it upon himself to go to the coffee shop down the road of the hospital because the coffee from the machines here is reason enough to hate hospitals.

“He has those puppy dog eyes going for him,” Beckett remarks when he accepts his drink from Remy.

“That, and a good ass,” Chester murmurs, throwing his double-double espresso back at once, shuddering when it reaches his stomach.

Grabbing my coffee, I wrap my hands around the cup, trying to get some warmth in me, but the thing that makes me feel the best right now is how all my guys interact.

Dylan and Alex are somewhere in the hospital as well, but they went to the cafeteria for a bit to stretch their legs. It’s been a long day, an even longer night and another long day. All the kids have been looked over, and they are in pretty decent shape physically. Mentally? Well, I don’t think there are any kids out there who could be okay after what they’ve been through.

The unsubs have been arrested and handed over to the police. The FBI’s involvement lent credence to our statements and spent the whole official police business up quite a bit. I guess the feds have a better reputation for being trustworthy than private investigators.

Everyone is unsure of what to do with Killian. The FBI brought someone in who specializes in child abduction and Stockholm Syndrome. He hasn’t gotten the official diagnosis, but at the very least, he was surviving. He was made to believe he had to help his abductors or he would be killed. Survival is a very natural instinct to kick in. The question is whether he did so willingly or because he didn’t see any other option. But he did shoot Scott, and his head is a mess, so that something needs to happen is clear. They just don’t exactly know what that something is.

Remy’s phone rings, and he glances at the screen, raising one of his eyebrows. Most of the people who would try to reach him are in the room with him right now.

“Yes?” he answers. The person on the other side of the line starts talking, and I see Remy’s face lighten up, making him look ten years younger than mere seconds ago. He smiles, his back straightening and his eyes full of stars.

“Thank you! I’ll be there. Yeah, see you on Monday, Andrew.”

He hangs up, looking like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Don’t make us wait,” I order, bossy as ever.

“I got the lead in a local ballet performance. It might not be one of the big stages in New York, but it’s a performance anyway.”

My heart flutters, seeing him this happy makes me happy by extension. I take him in my arms and squeeze him close to me. “Congratulations! I didn’t know you auditioned!”

He shrugs, his cheeks getting a little pink. “I didn’t really mean to do it. I was at the theater, just doing some routine dances, and then I got pulled in by Andrew, who saw me practicing, and dragged me into the audition.”

“You accidentally stumbled into a lead role?” Beckett scoffs.

“My competitive side might have come out the moment I entered the audition.”

I snort. “We’re all a bunch of addicted overachievers.”

“What play are you doing?” Chester asks, happily typing on his laptop and not looking up,

“Don Quixote.”

That makes him look up.

“You accidentally landed the role of Don Quixote?”

Remy hums.

“Bunch of fucking overachievers indeed,” he mumbles. “At least now we all have an enemy. We’re fighting crime, catching Wayne, and you can fight some windmills.”

“Yeah, but at least I’ve got Sancho Panza and his donkey.”

“So do I,” Chester says, grinning widely, eyeing Beckett and me.

“Did he just call me a donkey?” Beckett asks me, looking confused as hell.

“I think so,” I say, laying my hand on his arm and laughing.

“Absolutely not!” I can hear Miranda call all the way from inside my office. The days that she responded this way to Beckett are long gone, so I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and what this is about.

“You will not withhold my son from me,” I hear a familiar voice say that raises the hair on the back of my arms. Satan has left hell, and has come to pay us a visit. While I get out of my office faster than I thought would be humanly possible, Abraham pushes Miranda away and starts walking towards where Chester is working. He seems to be oblivious as to what’s going on, and I can tell by the way he’s watching his screens that he’s lost in a digital world, his eardrums getting severely damaged by the loud music that is coming through his headphones for sure.

Before I can reach his desk, Alex is blocking Abraham von Liechsenfield’s path, putting himself right between the old man and his son. I can practically taste Alex’s anger. I’m daring to bet it’s twofold: nobody gets to treat Miranda that way, and he’s protecting Chester.

Abraham doesn’t seem impressed, and I just have to say that if anything happens to the man right now, he can’t claim he hasn’t been warned. Alex’s look says it all.

Chester finally notices the commotion, doing a double take when he sees his father. His presence is tainting the place, and I can see Chester start to spin his thumb ring while he removes his headphones.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Why the hell would you only take the ten when you can get the twenty-five?” Abraham spits. I hate him all the way from his neatly combed gray hair to his sickeningly stylish mocha chinos.

“Because I don’t want your blood money,” Chester says calmly. I don’t know where he gets it, because I’m about to throw down. Alex is still blocking Abraham, making sure he physically can’t reach Chester.

“It’s a stupid decision!”

“It’s my stupid decision and mine alone. I’ve never wanted a penny of your fucking money. I don’t want it now. But I can put my pride aside and see that there are kids out there who would really love to go home safely, and taking this money will help me do that.”

“Then why not take the twenty-five?” Abraham fumes. “You could save even more kids then! Hire some extra people and do even more!”

“Because taking the twenty-five comes with strings, and I don’t want anything to do with either you or your wife.” I don’t fail to notice how he doesn’t even refer to her as his mother. “I’ve not yet figured out what your motive is to start giving me money suddenly, and wanting me back in your life so desperately, but what I”m sure about is that it’s got everything to do with control. You want to control me. And guess what? You can’t. So go ahead, disown me for all I care, write me out of your will, and leave the money to fucking Esther if you have to. But you can no longer control me, and I won’t ever hand you those reigns again.”

I can see his hands shaking, but his voice is even and he doesn’t break eye contact with Abraham even once.

“Are you still telling yourself those same old lies? Esther never did anything but love you.”

“Get him out of here, Alex,” I command, my voice icy, my eyes laser-focused on Chester. I’m seventy-five percent sure that if we don’t take Abraham away right now, Chester will kill him on the spot. I’d even help him if need be.

Chester is shaking so hard now that I’m afraid he might collapse. When Alex takes Abraham in a headlock while the man screams bloody murder and forces him out of the door, I slowly walk towards Chester, treating him as if he’s a wild animal that I need to approach with care.

Before I’m there, he grabs his keyboard and smashes it on the edge of his desk. I’ve never seen him this angry. I’ve seen him cower down in crippling anxiety. I’ve seen him panicking, hopeless and misunderstood. But this? This is blind rage.

I wrap my arms around him before he can start pulling his computer screens down and start smashing those as well. He tries to force his way through me, but he’s going on force alone, and I’ve got some training kicking in to keep him back. He’s still strong, making it hard for me to keep him from tearing the place down.

“Come on,” I whisper so he’s the only one who can hear. “Let’s go.”

I pull him to the exit instead of holding him in place. I don’t want to risk running into Abraham at the elevators, so I lead us to the stairwell and start descending all fifteen floors. Chester is quiet all the way down, following me on the foot. I can practically feel his scowl on my back.

I take the exit to the parking lot, desperately trying to remember where I parked my car that morning, only to find it by accident. I unlock it and open the passenger seat for Chester.

“Please don’t smash my car,” I say, making eye contact with him. The only thing that manages to do is intensify his scowl. He nods once, telling me he’ll do his best, but he’s not making any promises. The upside of knowing each other so well is that we don’t always need words.

We drive in silence while I navigate us to Remy’s house. Normally, Chester would be intrigued by now, trying to figure out where we’re going, but none of that is happening. He’s just staring out of the window, biting the inside of his cheeks. There is no spinning of the thumb ring going on. He’s pressing his fingernails into his palms so hard it’s bound to draw blood.

I pull up and park my car in the sloppiest attempt of parking a car in the history of bad parking jobs and find Remy’s car there as well. I grab my phone and start one-handedly dialing Remy, while I use my other to pull Chester with me. Following my footsteps the first time I came here, I walk around the mansion to the spot where Remy chops his wood.

“Hello,” he finally answers.

“Yeah, we’re outside. We’re going to chop some of your wood to do some emotion regulation or whatever the psychological terms for that shit might be.”

“Sure, who’s we?”

“Chester and I.”

“I’ll be out in a minute. Make sure you’ve got the sharp ax.”

“He just really needs to break some stuff.”

“Just one of those days,” he says, referencing Limp Bizkit, and I can’t help but smile. Chester stands with his hands in his pockets, staring at his shoes. Even from here, I can see him spinning his thumb ring in his pocket. So I let him stew a little until Remy comes outside, walks into the little shed near the wood chopping area and comes out with a big ax.

He hands it to Chester without saying a word, picks up a piece of wood that needs to be chopped and sets it up for him. Chester’s knuckles turn white with how tightly he grips the ax. He plants his feet at the width of his hips, rolls his neck, weighs the ax and then lifts it up. He puts his whole body behind it when he lets it fall down. The ax gets stuck in the wood, not splitting it, so Chester starts working on getting the ax out and repeating the process.

Remy and I stand back, silently observing the way Chester exudes all his pent up anger on wooden blocks. For the moment he seems to be lost in his own world, the thoughts in his head taking everything over.

“What happened?” Remy asks. He’s not quite whispering, but he’s talking softly.

“Chester’s dad came to the office to… I don’t really know. To cause trouble? He ended up saying that Esther never did anything wrong and only loved him, and then Chester broke his keyboard.”

“Hence the woodchopping,” he concludes, his eyes glued to Chester and worry lines around his eyes.

“Yeah, let’s use the anger towards a goal that’s actually useful.”

“Good thinking,” he tells me, kissing my cheek before he walks towards Chester. “Now imagine it’s his head,” he advises his lover, making me chuckle.

The next time he lets the ax come down, it’s about twice as hard as the one before. Remy sets down another log for Chester and then stands behind him, adjusting the position of his hands on the ax.

“If you hold it like this, you get more momentum.”

Now what’s better than seeing your hot boyfriend chop wood? Seeing two of your boyfriends chop wood together. If it wasn’t for the look on Chester’s face, I might think this is a completely different experience.

“Good posture,” Remy compliments him, stepping back so he’s safe from all the swinging. “Now let it all out.”

The last thing I expect Chester to do is to start shouting every time he lets the ax come down. First they’re guttural grunts, but they soon change into curse words.

“Fucking monster of an asshole!”

Chop.

“Unworthy, incredulous motherfucker!”

Chop.

“Duck dick fucking cruel joke.”

I snort as he chops while Remy squints. “Duck dick?”

“Ducks have this corkscrew-shaped kinda penis, while the female’s vagina also has a corkscrew shape, just curved the other way. Making ducks one of God’s most vile creations. Mallards always rape the hen, and it’s physically as unpleasant as it can be for them.”

Remy scrunches his face. I thought this was common knowledge, but being friends with Chester has taught me some obscure weird shit over the years. Shortly after that, Chester finally collapses, laying the ax on the ground and sitting down next to it. He puts his hands in his hair, breathing heavily, staring at the ground between his feet.

“I don’t believe in karma, because there’s absolutely no scientific evidence for it. I know bad stuff happens to good people every day, for no good reason at all. But sometimes I wonder what the hell I did wrong to end up with two parents who really don’t give a flying fuck about me. I mean, how can you not give any love to your kid?”

I let myself fall down on the floor next to him while Remy does the same thing on his other side.

“No, you didn’t deserve this,” I state. “You deserved two people who loved you more than life.”

“Look at it this way,” Remy says. “Because those two unworthy pieces of shit didn’t care for you, you went to boarding school and ran into Abby, and now you do have two people who love you more than life.”

“I know,” Chester says. “It just would have been nice.”

I drop my head on his shoulder while Remy puts an arm around his back.

“It would have been nice if my parents had accepted me for who I was. Had put my happiness above their own expectations,” Remy says.

Chester hums in agreement.

“It would’ve been nice if my parents hadn’t been murdered,” I finish.

Silence lingers.

“God, we’re a pathetic bunch, aren’t we?” Chester scoffs.

“Does Beckett have his own sob story?” Remy asks. “That would just finish up everything in this relationship.”

“No, he’s got two very accepting, very alive, very loving parents,” I answer.

“Then why is he the one with a stick up his ass?” Chester asks.

“Beats me,” I answer. “But I think his stick isn’t there that much anymore.”

“Probably because he’s getting some,” Remy says.

A few weeks ago, my cheeks would’ve probably heated by now, but now that I’ve come to terms with how things work between us some more I just have a knowing, crooked grin on my face.

We sit there for a few minutes before Remy finally asks Chester if he’s cooled off a little, which he confirms.

“Well then,” I say, pushing myself up from the ground. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Mall.”

“Why the hell would I go to the fucking mall?”

“Because you broke your damn keyboard and you won’t use any other keyboard. So we’re going to the electronics store and get you the exact damn keyboard which will cost way too much money because it has stupid colors, so you can get back to work.”

He huffs. “I’ve got money now. I can break all the keyboards I want.”

“Glad to see your Von Liechsenfield side finally shining through, asshole.”

He looks pained.

“Too soon?”

“Always.”

“Just don’t break any more keyboards.”

“Deal.”

My office door flies open later that afternoon and Chester comes rushing in with a laptop in his hands. I’m about to ask him what’s going on when he starts talking, as if someone has put him on fast forward.

“Grab your keys and your phone. I’ve got a hit on Wayne. He’s downtown. If we’re quick, we might be able to get there in time.”

He hasn’t even finished his sentence completely before I’m up and halfway out the door. We rush towards the elevator, and I’m already dialing Beckett before I realize I’ll never be able to relay the message while we’re going down. I’ll just call him from the car.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

He shows me the screen of his laptop, where Wayne deliberately looks into the camera, his blue eyes glinting with pure, unadulterated evil. I recognize the building behind him. It’s a short drive downtown indeed. While we reach the ground floor, I see how Wayne takes a letter out of his pocket and leaves it beneath a mailbox. Which is fucking weird. Why not just post the letter?

“What the hell is he doing?” I ask Chester while I open my car and climb in behind the wheel, no longer able to look at the screen.

“He’s just standing there, looking at the camera. He fucking knows what he’s doing. He knows we’re trying to find him this way. Which means we’ll never find him like this unless he wants us to. He’s too smart to fuck up.”

I can hear Chester’s molars grind and I understand his frustration. After I’ve started the car, I call Beckett.

“Yeah?”

“Got a live hit on Wayne. Chester’s sending you the location,” I say, cutting to the chase and giving Chester a questioning look to see if he’s acting on my command. He just nods curtly before he starts typing.

“On my way,” Beckett says and he ends the phone call. We’re nothing if not effective.

I drive towards the location, but it’s rush hour and people in general drive like idiots if you ask me, so it’s taking for-fucking-ever to get there.

“Fuck!” Chester yells, his fingers flying over the keyboard at the speed of light.

“What?”

“He’s walking away. Just fucking walking. As if he has no care in the world.”

“Well follow him!”

“What do you think I’m doing?!”

“Why are you yelling at me?!”

“Because you’re yelling at me too!”

It’s in this instance I realize it’s a good thing that Chester and I aren’t generally in the field together. While sometimes we can work as a team, other times we act like a bunch of kids who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. It’s the latter this time.

I take a deep breath.

“Okay, no more yelling. Where’s he going? Where do I need to go?”

“He’s…”

Chester works on his laptop, furiously staring at the screen. When I glance in his direction, he’s frowning, looking angry.

“Where is he?”

“I lost him!”

“What? How?”

“He walked into a crowd and never came out. He must’ve shed his coat when he walked into the crowd or something and put on something on his head because I don’t see him anymore and none of the cams are picking up on him.”

He’s practically screaming at the end of his rant, and my stomach drops. This asshole keeps fucking with us. Fucking with my head. And the worst thing is that it’s working. Anger boils inside of me, waiting for an outlet but not finding it. I try to let it go because this isn’t over yet and I need to keep a clear head.

“Now what?” I ask him.

“Now I want to fucking strangle him.”

“You’d have to find him first to do that.”

He grunts, his eyes never leaving the screens on his laptop. “Might as well go check what he left at the mailbox. Becky is meeting us there too.”

Don’t have anything to say about that.

I keep navigating my car towards the mailbox while we both stew in our anger in silence.

Once we finally reach our destination there isn’t anywhere to park my car, so I blatantly double-park it in front of the car that’s closest to the mailbox. I’ll pay the fine if I have to, or better yet, try to flirt my way out of getting it. Worst case scenario I use my trick card: the FBI agent.

Beckett parks right next to us, so I guess we’ll all get away with the double parking. He comes rushing out of the car, his eyes ping-ponging between us and everyone on the streets.

“Where is he?” he asks, his whole body screaming for action.

“Gone,” I say, noticing the sound of defeat myself.

“How?” Beckett all but yells. I step away from the men while Chester starts explaining what happened. I quickly spot the mailbox we saw Wayne standing next to on the cameras and rush over. The rational part of me knows that whatever he’s left can’t mean anything good, but I’m in way too deep not to want to know.

There’s an envelope at the bottom of the mailbox. In big blue letters, it says ‘Abby’.

“Beckett?” I half yell.

“What?”

“Do I need gloves to pick up that envelope?”

He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he came over and held out a pair of rubber gloves for me to put on. I try to banish all thoughts in my head, focusing on my breathing instead. Mentally I close a door to all my emotions, suck in a big gulp of air and open the envelope.

It’s a letter.

Handwritten.

If you’d ask me it looks suspiciously like a love letter. And that’s weird, because in Wayne’s mind there is something special going on between both of us, but it’s never been romantic. He idolizes me in the way children do their parents. He wishes to protect me, to keep me safe and to keep me close. But to my knowledge, it has never been more than that.

Chester steps closer to me, looking over my shoulder when I unfold the letter.

It’s a poem.

A horrendously bad poem, using fancy words to paint a pretty picture about how killing women makes him feel. Why the hell does he want to share this with me?

Once I’ve read the entire thing, I hand the letter to Beckett, who stops me so he can put on some gloves himself. I’m not sure why we’re even bothering. We know who’s behind all of this, so why are we taking forensics precautions?

“Why are we still handling this like it’s evidence?” I ask Beckett, who quickly reads the letter.

“Because it is.”

“But we’re not going to learn anything from this.”

“Sure we can,” he says, folding the paper back up and sticking it in an evidence bag.

“We already know who is behind all of this.”

“Yeah, we do. But once we catch him, we must have the physical evidence to back everything up. This piece of paper isn’t that valuable in terms of getting him convicted for the murder of all those women, but it shows his character. He’s obsessive, he’s devolving, he’s targeting you. And this just shows it. It helps us with the psychological profile, which in the end will hold up in court. And we have to follow protocol. If we don’t, it’ll come back to bite us in the ass. If we always follow protocol, there’ll never be any room for discussion about it.”

I sigh, frustrated, annoyed and angry at the world and Wayne and his fucking shenanigans. Beckett might have loosened up a little in his time working with us, but deep down, he’s still the same law-abiding agent he was when he got here. And maybe that’s just what we need to keep everything on the straight and narrow.

“We’ve learned something today,” Chester says, stroking my back through my clothes.

“What?” I snap, taking out my anger on my friend.

“That he’s a fucking bad poet.”

To my disbelief, Beckett starts laughing. “Can’t argue with that.”

We start walking back to the cars, but Chester lingers before he gets ready to get back in. I squint at him, trying to figure out what’s going on in that big head of his. Having known him for as long as I have means that I normally have some sense of what he’s thinking, but the way the wheels in his head spin makes it unpredictable at any random time.

“Becky?”

Beckett sighs but doesn’t tell Chester not to call him Becky. “What?”

“Does this devolving mean that Abby is in danger now? Is he going to want to kill her?”

My heart skips a beat. That’s something I hadn’t thought of myself. Both men observe each other, Beckett weighing his words before he speaks.

“Listen, profiling is just guesswork in the end,” he says.

“Glad you finally admit that yourself,” Chester interrupts him.

“Scientific guesswork,” he adds, giving Chester a foul look, “but guesswork nonetheless. It can go either way when a serial killer is devolving. He’s deviating from his regular pattern. Does that mean he will deviate from his victimology as well?”

He seems to think about that for a while.

“Maybe. I guess that if he runs into some sort of trouble, meaning he can’t get to his regular victims, he might take someone who doesn’t fit the bill as well. Settle for another kind of woman. But right now, he’s still holding on to the things he can hold onto. Obviously, he already has a list of possible victims, so he’ll go after them first.”

Then he stares at me, studying my face before he goes on.

“Abby being involved in this investigation, him obsessing with her, makes her into some unattainable goal. She’s at the same level as his mother is for him. He idolizes her. My best guess is that won’t change. He’ll want to impress you, not kill you.”

I inhale deeply, coming to terms with that truth.

“But as I said, still guesswork. Psychopaths are not exactly known for their mental stability. You never know when they’ll change their mind.”

Chester nods once and then steps into the car. Beckett and I exchange a wordless goodbye before he gets back in his car, and I follow in after Chester. I’m coming to terms with the extreme high of finding Wayne and the low of not finding him after all. There’s a new layer of urgency after what Beckett just told us. We have to catch him before he changes his mind and comes after me.

Then again, I’d rather have him come after me than after any other innocent woman.

Let him come.

Chester sighs and rubs his eyes with his finger and thumb, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m going to have to spend a lot of extra time on the shooting range.”

I chuckle. Sometimes his mind takes leaps I don’t see coming. “Why’s that?”

“Because as you annoyingly pointed out, shooting in a game isn’t the same as in real life, and if there’s a chance Wayne’s coming after you, I don’t want to miss when I get the opportunity.”

I back the car into the street and smile.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“What?”

“Admitting that you’re not a genius in every aspect of life.”

He rolls his eyes at me and slouches in his chair. “Yet,” he mumbles.

The laughing fit I get makes the drive back a whole lot more pleasant than it would’ve been without this. He’s just made a very hard moment lighter, and I’m forever grateful to have him in my life. Even when it’s fucked up.