Chapter 9
NINE
Liam
My sweet Gabriel is off at his sister’s, and I am doing what I enjoy doing best while he is gone… stalking.
It gives me a warm little tickle in my body as I watch the person scurry off with absolutely no idea that I’m watching them. They have no idea their freedom is close to an end.
My question is… are they the accomplice?
Or the killer?
The two involved don’t meet at the zoo. No, that’d be far too risky. They meet at a dark park where they think no one will notice their late-night rendezvous.
But I do.
I even join them. They just don’t know it yet.
It’s almost disappointing how easy this was. It should have been harder. It should have been impossible to deduce, but here I stand, not even forty-eight hours after being tasked with the job and already being bestowed an answer.
They’re talking in hushed whispers. It’s impossible to hear them without getting closer, and I’m not yet sure I plan to do so.
It really doesn’t matter what they say to each other out here in the park, but I have to assume by their body language they’re both pissed at the other for not doing this well enough.
Boy, do they not realize how poorly it was done.
I get bored of this far too quickly as I think about what to do next.
Should I report it? Walk right up to Michaels and tell him exactly what happened?
Or take matters into my own hands?
Gabriel would really frown on me killing one of them, especially since I’m not yet sure which one did the killing, even though I have a pretty damn good idea.
Decisions, decisions.
I get into the car while I wait and close my eyes, giving myself some time to think.
The car door opens and one of them gets into the vehicle where I’ve found a comfortable spot to rest. They start the car and begin to drive as I wonder what kind of adventure they’re taking me on.
They never turn around to look while I question if they’re leading me off to the safety of their home.
What would they do if I simply let myself inside?
“How long are you going to just chill back there like a fucking creep?”
I let out a laugh, feeling like I should be surprised they noticed me, but I’m not quite sure I am. I sit up and wrap my arms around the driver’s shoulders. It’d be so easy to squeeze their neck from this position… wrap the seat belt around it. “Your poker face is something to be fascinated by.”
“I think… a part of me wasn’t even surprised you figured it out. The moment I heard your name, I knew it was over.” They pull off on the side of the road and push my arms away before turning around. “What was it? What gave me away?”
“You were sloppy, Jesse. You were very sloppy.”
He laughs as he shakes his head, but it’s such a despairing sound. “Was I?”
I get out of the car, well aware he could drive off as I do so, but where exactly is he going to go? I know where he works. I know where he lives. And now I know that he helped commit a murder.
I get into the passenger seat and raise an eyebrow. “Take a right up here.”
“Are you driving me to the police station? Because I happen to know where that is.”
“Not yet. I’m like a cat; I like to play with my food before eating it.”
“Of course you fucking do,” Jesse says as he starts to drive. He turns where I tell him and stops where I tell him to. He says nothing, he doesn’t try to plead for his freedom, but I can see the way his knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
His entire life is spiraling out of control.
“Park here,” I say as I point, and when he does, I get out of the vehicle and head over to the door.
He doesn’t get out. He stays in the car. Does he think he can drive off? Does he think there’s absolutely any way he could win any part of this?
I’m excited to find out.
I unlock the door and let myself in. I flip two chairs down off the table from where the cleaning crew had stacked them so they could mop, slide them under the table, then head into the back of my diner to see what I can find.
I plate up two pieces of chocolate cream pie and slide them onto the table where I sit down and wait.
It takes him seven minutes to get out of his car and come in. When Jesse steps inside, I’m busy eating my pie, but I do stop to grin at him.
The grin seems to unsettle him, and I question if I need to work on my execution. “Why are you doing this?” he asks, almost sounding pleading.
“Thought you’d like one last taste of freedom,” I say as I wave to the pie.
He sits down but doesn’t pick up the fork. Instead, he stares at the pie like it might either kill him or save him, and I’m not quite sure which way he’s leaning.
His brown eyes lock on mine. “How did you figure it out? Was it just because I had the tab up on the poisonous insects?”
“No, but it played a part. I knew the person needed an accomplice. It was a lot to do in a short period of time. I knew that the killer—let’s call her Lacey, just for fun—I knew that Lacey wanted to kill Zach, but she needed the perfect way to kill him with minimal work on her end.
And oddly enough, the venom from a black mamba would fall right into that category.
My guess is she had planned to do it somewhere discreet because Zach’s death seems both premeditated but also rash.
Was it Zach’s stalking of Nadine that pushed her to act sooner than planned? ”
“Yes.”
“So you knew Lacey was going to kill Zach?”
Jesse rubs his head. “Can I have some water? I need some water.”
“Of course. Don’t tamper with my pie while I’m gone,” I say with a smirk before I head off to get him a glass. I set it down in front of him and poke at my pie. “Is it safe?”
“I would never hurt you… but why are we having the talk here? Are you recording this?”
“I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“Jesse, I’m the one asking questions. Stay focused, please. You knew she was going to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Spicy. I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”
“I’m…” He swallows hard. “Liam…”
Since he’s busy trailing off and I’m an impatient man, I move on to the next topic.
“She’s rash, injects him with venom, he goes down quite quickly.
She calls you because she now doesn’t know what to do with the body.
I was convinced the person who removed the head was someone who’d worked preparing the meat.
But you know someone else who would know a lot about human anatomy and wouldn’t be squeamish when it came to removing a head? ”
“A medical examiner,” he replies hoarsely.
“Bingo. I’m so good at this.”
Jesse seems less pleased about my success.
“I knew I was fucked the moment Michaels said your name,” he says.
“I was absolutely fucked. We weren’t good enough at it.
My expertise is in examining bodies. Piecing together a story of what happened by looking at their skin, their trauma, the decay, not…
hiding bodies. I knew that if we removed everything that could allow a medical examiner to identify the body, there was a possibility we could get away with it.
“We were careful. We did what we could to deal with the body while there were still people at the zoo. And then we came back later to finish up where we’d left off.
We were careful about the cameras. We tried to stick to areas she knew was safe from being caught.
From the beginning, I told Lacey not to take the head to the crematorium.
She told me that she goes with the bodies and that she’d only place the head in right before they took the bag.
That they never open the bag. That she would personally be there to drive the body to the crematorium and to watch it burn.
And even though I left feeling confident she listened when I told her not to put the head in the bag, she put the fucking head in the bag.
She never expected them to send off the bag without her knowing about it.
“It fucked everything up. There were too many variables with the crematorium. When I left that zoo, I told her to take that fucking head and we would remove the teeth and dispose of it someplace it would never be found. I gave her places. I told her what to do, but she lied to me and secretly went with her idea and it fucked us over. I should have done it.”
“You should have. Honestly… I think you’d have gotten away with it.
The bones in the hyena’s pen were buried deep enough that it would’ve taken that hyena a long time to reach them.
My bet is it would have gotten bored before it did.
And even if it did uncover a few bones here or there, I doubt the young kids cleaning those pens would have been able to distinguish between a human bone and an animal one. ”
“That was because the hyenas had already dug quite a bit of that hole. It didn’t take us long to dig it deeper and cover it. So how did you know it was me?” Jesse asks.
“Your report was less detailed than normal. Don’t get me wrong, you weren’t sloppy—I’m sure you knew if you were, I’d have noticed—but there was just something a little off about it.
You are a very detailed person. You are determined to figure out what happened no matter how long it takes you, but you seemed less obsessed with the body.
You did everything by the book, but nothing more.
“Second, you would never fucking pass up an opportunity to bore us over some theory of venom. You’d pin us down and bore us to death until we just walked away, like when you show us pictures of your tarantula.
“Third, I didn’t catch it right away, but I did the second time I logged onto your computer. It solidified my suspicions when I went to your history and realized that you’d opened that tab about poisonous insects before Zach died.