Chapter 11 Tom
Tom
Detective Sawyer valued her private space.
She’d mentioned it once, offhand, when the subject had been brought up.
I need my own space sometimes, she’d said.
It’s nothing personal. I just get claustrophobic.
So for her to let me into her home was something significant.
A threshold crossed. An invitation into a part of her life she kept carefully separate from everything else.
Her house was messier than mine; the kind of disorder that came from long days and short nights, where you came home too exhausted to do anything but collapse.
The walls were painted a neutral beige, a handful of framed photographs breaking the monotony, unevenly spaced.
One showed a young woman pushing a little girl on a swing, their matching blonde hair a blur of movement.
The next one was more formal—an older man in a military dress uniform posing stiffly for the camera, mouth set in a thin line. Sentimental mementos, mostly.
Blankets lay thrown over the couch in rumpled waves, one half-sliding onto the floor like she’d kicked it off in the middle of the night.
A leather jacket hung over the back of an armchair, since she was apparently allergic to coat racks.
A book lay facedown on the coffee table, spine creased from repeated readings, a few of the pages dog-eared.
Forensic Psychological Assessment in Practice: Case Studies.
I wasn’t surprised. Shay didn’t seem like the type to draw hard lines between work and home life. The job followed after her, settling into her everyday life. She was sitting on the couch, reading through a file, brows pulled together in concentration.
“Any news on the Baker case?” I asked, moving to sit beside her.
She sighed, the sound heavy with months of accumulated frustration. “Not really. Every lead I had ended in a dead end. It’s like chasing smoke.”
I knew the feeling. I knew it more intimately than she’d ever imagine.
“It doesn’t help that Donovan’s constantly on my ass about it, either.”
“What does he say?”
Her expression darkened instantly, mouth twisting with barely concealed contempt. “Donovan thinks these are unrelated cases. He’d rather close them as individual homicides and keep his clearance rate up than actually investigate a pattern.”
I’d come to make my own assessment of Captain James Donovan over the past few months, and determined that the man was an idiot. Worse—he was a willfully blind idiot, the kind who preferred convenient lies to uncomfortable truths.
“But you don’t think so,” I said.
“I know they aren’t unrelated.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, conviction radiating from every line of her body.
“It’s obvious if you actually look. Linda Fell, Alfred Thorne, Martin Baker.
All three of them had criminal records—domestic violence, child pornography, sexual assault.
I get the sense that the killer thinks of themselves as a vigilante, of sorts. Someone with a mission.”
“Someone young, most likely, idealistic,” she continued. “Wanting to take justice into their own hands. But they’re inexperienced, green around the edges. They got spooked when their last kill went wrong. But they’ll start again, eventually. People like that always do.”
“Sounds like someone with a strong moral code,” I said.
“A moral code.” She laughed, bitter. “Is that what we’re calling it? They’re a killer, Tom. Maybe their victims were monsters, but that doesn’t make vigilante justice right.”
“Depends on who you ask, I suppose.”
She looked at me sharply. “You can’t really believe that.”
I shrugged, keeping my expression neutral.
“I’m not saying I agree with them, but I can see where they’re coming from.
The justice system fails people all the time.
You know it does.” I met her eyes. “Don’t you ever wonder what the world would look like if someone actually held the worst people accountable? ”
“Every day,” she admitted. “And then I remember that we have laws for a reason. That civilization only works if we agree not to kill each other, even when we really, really want to.”
“But you do want to sometimes.”
“Of course I do. I’m human.” She sighed, rubbing at her temples.
“Last year, I worked a case—a young girl, nineteen-years-old. She was found dead in a ditch. Her boyfriend had been abusing her for months. We arrested him. He got eight years because his lawyer argued diminished capacity. Said he had PTSD from his tour overseas, that he couldn’t control his impulses. ”
She looked at me, and I saw something dangerous flickering in her eyes. “Eight years. For destroying that girl’s life. For erasing her before she even had a chance to really grow up. Every day I think about finding him when he gets out. Every single day.”
I wanted to tell her I could make that problem disappear. That I’d done it before. That men like him were exactly why I did what I did—to remove the poison that the system kept recycling back into the world.
“But I also know that the moment I cross that line,” she continued, voice steadier now, “I become something else. Something I don’t want to be.”
“And if someone else crossed it for you?”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: “They’d be a murderer. And I’d have to catch them. That’s the job, Tom. No one gets to take the law into their own hands. No matter how righteous they think their cause is.”
I nodded slowly, understanding her even as I fundamentally disagreed with every word. Shay lived in a world of rules and procedures, of faith in systems I’d long since written off as broken and corrupt. It was admirable, in its way. Naive, but admirable.
I wondered what she’d think of me if she knew.
Would it shock her? Would she feel betrayed, personally wounded by the deception?
Would she pull her gun on me without a moment’s hesitation?
The thought sent something cold through my chest. Not fear exactly—I’d moved beyond fear ages ago. Something else. Something that almost felt like regret.
“So what’s your plan?” I asked. “With your vigilante cases.”
“Keep investigating. Build the case even if Donovan won’t back it. Eventually, the evidence will be too strong to ignore.”
I pulled her closer, and she came willingly, settling her legs over my lap, tucking herself against my body like she belonged there.
I traced my hands down her sides, and we stayed like that for a while, until something on the windowsill caught my attention—a small green shape with tiny, mean-looking spines.
It really did kind of look like a bunny if you squinted, ears and all.
“Is that Roger?” I asked, nodding toward the potted plant.
Shay burrowed closer into my side. “Shut up, Hayes. Unless you want to walk to work tomorrow.”
* * *
It was early evening, the sky clinging to a thin wash of blue that bled pale at the horizon, reluctant to surrender to darkness.
Streetlights flickered on in sequence, one after another, down the block like dominoes.
I was passing by a row of darkened storefronts when something across the street snagged my attention.
The posture clicked into place first. Then the profile. A car passed between us, and I waited for a break in the traffic before stepping off the curb. By the time I reached her, she’d turned to face me fully, lips pressed into something that might have passed for polite.
“Mrs. Winslow. Good evening.”
She was a small woman, barely reaching my shoulder, even in her sensible orthopedic shoes.
Her silver hair was pulled back in a neat bun, and she wore a wool coat that had probably been expensive twenty years ago.
She carried a cloth shopping bag in one hand, filled with what looked like groceries from the corner market.
“Out for a walk?” she asked.
“Heading to your store, actually. I heard you’ve got in a new collection coming in this week.”
“Of course you are.” Something in her voice made the back of my neck prickle with instinctive unease. “Julia mentioned you might stop by. She always knows when you’re coming. Has a sense for it, apparently.”
“She’s very attentive to her regular customers.”
“Is that what you call it?” Mrs. Winslow shifted her shopping bag to her other hand. “Walk with me, Doctor. I’m heading home, and it’s on your way.”
It wasn’t a request.
I couldn’t imagine what she’d want with me, but I went along with it. I offered to take her bags, and after a brief, measuring look, she passed them over. We fell into step together, her shorter stride forcing me to slow my usual pace. For a block, we walked in silence.
“Julia is a good girl,” Mrs. Winslow eventually said. “Smart. Talented. She has a bright future ahead of her—college applications are going out next month. She’s been accepted to three schools already. Full scholarships.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said, genuinely meaning it. “She’s always struck me as exceptionally bright.”
“She is.” Mrs. Winslow stopped walking abruptly, turning to face me on the sidewalk. A couple had to navigate around us, shooting irritated looks that she completely ignored. “Which is why I don’t understand what’s happening between the two of you.”
The words hit me like cold water, shocking in their directness. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Doctor Hayes.” Her eyes—sharp and assessing behind wire-rimmed glasses—fixed on my face with uncomfortable intensity.
“Do you think I can’t see what’s happening?
I see the way you talk to her. The way she looks at you when she thinks no one’s watching.
Those late nights where she never comes home, ‘Studying at a friend’s house,’ she says. ”