12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter twelve
Carter
Monday morning I get up and get ready like any other day, but I don’t have work today.
I need to go down to the precinct to talk to Nash.
All weekend, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Friday went.
It was a repeat of how I spoke to the cops the first time around.
I didn’t give them enough because I was too emotional, which was also on them.
Nash didn’t ask enough, and I know it was because of how emotional I was.
Just like the first time. So, I need to keep my shit together if I want to help.
All day Saturday and even worse on Sunday, I went over our conversation.
What I should have done better. What I should have done differently.
I’ve replayed it so many times that there is no way I’ll go into his office today and not give him everything he needs.
Hopefully, enough to do something about this.
It’s up to me to do this, to help find Ryan’s killer.
There’s no one else out there who says a damn thing.
It’s just me. Ryan isn’t here to take the lead and figure things out for me.
That’s the dynamic we fell into. Ryan was the caregiver. He took care of me, all the time.
We were only together for two years, but I knew he was my forever.
So much that I quickly fell into letting him take control of everything.
It was easy for me because I’m not that kind of person.
I can survive, I can do what I need, but I’m not the one to take the lead on things.
That’s just not who I am. It makes me uncomfortable.
But I can’t be that person anymore. At least not when it comes to this. If I just have to pretend for a little while, to get through this and help find Ryan’s killer, I can do that.
There’s a gentle snow falling when I get outside, but it’s not as cold as it usually is. I take that as a good sign.
Ryan loved the snow. Maybe this is him telling me I’m doing the right thing.
I shove my hands into my pockets and duck my head as I make my way to the subway station to get to the precinct Nash works at. It’s not as busy as it usually is this early in the morning, which is a surprise, but maybe it’s because I’m going in a different direction.
I get off at my stop, make my way up to the street, and check street signs and the map on my phone to figure out where I’m going. It’s a ten-minute walk until I reach the building I need.
Warmth blows from above when I open the door and step inside. The floor is shiny with big, square tan tiles. High ceilings. Pictures of the city and officers from over the years hang on the walls on either side.
Straight ahead, an old man with a big white mustache sits behind a large glass window, typing away at a computer. A few chairs line the wall to my right, while a locked glass door on the left leads into the rest of the precinct. Through it, I can see a long hallway with doors along one side.
“Can I help you?” the guy asks as I reach the window. He’s in uniform, a to-go cup of coffee sitting on the desk opposite the computer.
“I’m here to see Detective Bennett.”
“Is he expecting you?” the man asks in a not-so-friendly tone. The kind of tone I’m used to when dealing with cops.
Nash is definitely an exception.
“No,” I answer, then realize I don’t know if he’s even here yet. What time does he start? What time is it? What if he’s out fighting crime or something?
“Name?”
“Carter Evans.”
He picks up the phone, dials a number, and waits as it rings.
“There’s a Carter Evans here to see you. Uh, no, there’s no one here. Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He hangs up the phone and brings his attention back to me. “Have a seat. He’ll be right down to get you.”
I nod and take a seat in the chair on the end and look around the space. It’s clean. Expensive. Not like the police station in my area that looks like it was built in 1900 and no one ever upgraded it.
It’s quiet in here. There’s a stillness to it that I find calming. So calming, it has me relaxing, and I imagine I could fall asleep right here. I slept like shit all weekend because I couldn’t turn my brain off. I hope getting it all off my chest today will help with that.
Nash comes into my view behind the glass wall, and he pushes open the door, stepping halfway out.
“Carter,” he says, sounding concerned. “Is everything okay?”
I get up.
“Uh, yeah. I was hoping we could talk?” I say.
“Sure, come on.”
He holds the door open for me, and I walk beside him as he leads us to an elevator that takes us to the fifth floor.
We go right and turn into an office that looks like any other office I’ve ever seen.
A desk with a high-back chair on one side and two on the other.
Two large windows overlooking the city. A filing cabinet, a coat rack, and another small desk against the wall with a printer/copier machine and drawers beneath.
I hang my coat on the rack as Nash closes the door.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing for the chair at the desk. He moves around to sit in his chair.
It creaks as he does. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I should have called.”
“It’s fine. What’s going on?”
I feel the emotion crawling up my throat and settling there, making it difficult to speak.
This is what I said I wouldn’t do. This is what I need to get over so I can talk and tell him what he needs to know to solve the case. Why is it so hard to just fucking talk about this?
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. I take a deep breath, let it out, then face him and tell myself I’m doing this for Ryan. “I’m not happy with how Friday went.”
His eyes narrow just slightly. “Okay. How come?”
“It’s hard to talk about what happened, and both times someone asked, I’ve gotten emotional and couldn’t explain the right way.”
“Understandable.”
“I just want to go over everything again more clearly. Make sure I’m saying everything that needs to be said.” I say the words firmly, having practiced them all morning. I’m proud of getting them out. Now I just need to get the rest out without crying.
“Yeah, of course. Give me a minute to grab my stuff.”
He lifts his bag from the floor and digs through it.
Spread along his desk are stacks of folders with names on them. All unsolved cases, I’m sure. I don’t see Ryan’s.
But that’s because he pulls it out of his bag, and I wonder why that one gets special attention. Not that I’m complaining, but does he always take cases home? There was a comment he made about always working, but then why are some here but some are still in his bag?
He puts the file down in front of him. It’s not as thick as some of the others, and the morbid part of me wonders what’s in there. Probably a lot of things I don’t want to see. The thought makes me sick, so I shove it from my mind, which isn’t easy to do. Until Nash starts speaking.
“Where do you want to start?” he asks, shifting the file and notepad in front of him. He puts his bag back on the floor and moves the other folders aside. I can’t help but wonder how many times someone pushed Ryan’s folder aside for another time.
“Are these all cases that you’ve re-opened?” I ask instead of answering his question.
He glances at them. “Hoping to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s not up to me whether or not they are opened again. I’m going through them all, hoping to find enough evidence to support re-opening.”
“So you just look through these files all day? Reading stories of people who were murdered. Seeing photos. Going over statements.”
“That’s part of it. I also call the people involved. Try to get more information. Look over reports and evidence.”
“That doesn’t… Isn’t that a lot?” I ask. “Like, mentally. Seeing all that death. I can’t imagine those photos are pretty. Reports, either.”
I know I’d already asked this… sort of. But I didn’t have a clear head then, and I want to understand why he is so capable of doing this when I can hardly function.
“They’re not. But it’s what keeps me doing this job. A lot of what I see is horrendous. Things no one should ever have to see, and that’s why I do it. It can be a lot. Some cases hit me harder than others, but I use those emotions to push forward and do what I can to solve them.”
“Have you solved any yet?” I ask.
“No,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “But, like I said, I’ve only been here a month.”
“Are you close?”
“Hard to tell, but my boss is already annoyed with how many times I’m begging him to reopen cases and add more people to my team.”
I chuckle. “I can’t imagine you begging for anything.”
He smirks, then grabs a pen, shifting in his seat.
“Where do you want to start?” he asks again.
Right. Work. He’s working right now, and that’s what I’m here for. This isn’t a chatting session.
“I don’t know. I think it’ll be easier if you ask me questions. Specific questions. Where are the blanks? Where do you need more information?”
“What do you remember about the man and the woman?” he asks.
I blink and sit back in my chair, trying to pull up the memories I’ve spent so much time trying to bury. It never really works, but the images have always been foggy.
“I remember that the man was taller than Ryan.”
“How much taller?”
“Few inches.”
“And he was six-foot, right?”
My eyes narrow at him. “You remember that?”
“I always remember details of my cases.”
My chest warms, and I don’t know why. But I do know that his comment is just one more thing to help me trust him.
I nod. “Yeah, Ryan was six-foot.”
“Safe to say the man was between six-two and six-five?”
“Yes.”
“What about build?”
“Skinny. I remember thinking that Ryan could have taken him, had there not been a weapon involved.” I nod as I speak the words, sure this is true. Sometimes I wonder if my memory is wrong, but I know this is right.
“So, skinnier than Ryan?”
“Yes.”
He nods and writes some things down.
“What about the woman?”
“She was small. Short and petite. Maybe up to my shoulders. She had on those shoes that nurses wear.”
His eyes narrow slightly and he looks up at me. “Like nursing clogs?” I nod. “That’s new.”
“No, I definitely told the officers that at the hospital.”
He digs through the file and pulls out some papers, scanning them all. “I’m not saying you’re lying, Carter, but it’s not here.”
I shake my head and take a few deep breaths so I don’t start panicking again. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t.
“Hey, don’t get discouraged. We’re doing this now. We’re going to make it right.” He gets up from his seat. “Do you want coffee? Water? Tea?”
“Tea is fine.”
“Come with me,” he says, moving around his desk and toward the door. I follow him out and down the hall to a small break room. “There are at least ten different kinds of tea here. Not sure what you want.”
I browse the different tea bags and pull out the ginger one. He takes it, gets water going for it, and starts his coffee at the same time.
“You work at a coffee shop or something?” I ask.
“It was one of the jobs I had when I was younger and taking care of my brothers.”
“One?”
“I was working three.”
“What else did you do?”
“Delivering newspapers and a janitor at a middle school.”
“How did you have time for all of that?”
“Janitor was at night, cleaning floors and stuff. I’d go home, sleep a few hours, then get up to deliver papers before the sun was up. Go back home. Change. To the coffee shop. Get home, sleep some more. Spend time with my brothers. Repeat.”
“That’s a lot.”
He nods as he puts in the pod to the machine, closing the lid and pushing the button for coffee. “It was. But it was worth it.”
“What are you brothers doing now?”
“Jericho is a firefighter in Chicago. Hollis is in California. He’s always in and out of jobs.”
“When I was a kid, I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I hated when people asked me that question. Everyone else always had a solid answer. I never knew. Still don’t.”
“Do you love what you do?” he asks, turning to face me.
I smile as I think about my job. “Yeah.”
“Then why does it have to change?”
“Just feels like I should be doing better. More.”
“I think you should judge that on your happiness, not on societal standards.”
“Well, I’m not very happy either.”
“You’ll get there,” he says, holding out a paper cup of ginger tea. “Do you need milk? Sugar?”
“No, thanks.”
We head back to his office, and he continues to ask me specific questions about that night, and I give him a few more bits of information he didn’t have before.
For the first time in a long time, hope blooms in my chest, and I wonder if maybe this will finally be resolved.
If, maybe, Ryan will finally be at peace.
If I will finally have some closure myself… and be able to move on.
“You want to grab some lunch?” he asks. “There’s a sandwich shop not too far.”
I look up at the clock on the wall, confused by his question. It’s a little after eleven. “Wow, I didn’t realize it was that time already.”
“My stomach always reminds me.”
I laugh and get to my feet. “Lunch sounds good. But I’m paying this time.”
“Not a chance.”