7. Chapter 7
The partner. The partner the partner the partner. Tristan. The burned body? Must be. Maybe he found out, accused Caleb.
I can't think of him as my husband anymore. Just Caleb. Just him . But not Cocooner yet, either.
No, Tristan must be the Needler. Caleb cocooned his sister a year before, then Tristan found out and stabbed Caleb in a rage. Yes, that must be it. But then the body at the scene... Who? Even now, I can't stop. Trying to piece it all together. I search for a picture of Tristan, but I can’t find one. I find too many others; Caleb’s arms around me, our wedding. I can’t look at those. I met Tristan, so briefly. He was skinny, I remember that; blond, a beard, crooked teeth… I give up looking for him. Now I can’t take it, with every picture from every album scattered among the bottles already cluttering the apartment. Always something within reach, even if it’s just the dregs. What else can I think about, if not the case? It’s a breakthrough, really. A detective’s dream. What else? The times Caleb worked late, all the times he just wanted to be alone. Even when I had been alone all day, trapped in that suburban prison, the only highlight of my day him coming home. He imprisoned me there, always encouraging fewer and fewer hours until… none. The job was too dangerous. But not too dangerous for him, no, he still went, still had a life, a career. Usually coming home too late for dinner, and barely a peck before he locked himself away. I never called the station, never checked. Trusted him. Too much. Shouldn't have. I take another swig, two gulps, long enough to burn. I'm allowed to leave, to get the paper, to visit the bottle shop. They can't stop that. I haven't done anything wrong. Unless naivety counts. Which it should.
I answer an unknown number, letting the outside world intrude. Someone who says their name like I should know it. They're doing a documentary. Do I want to say anything? I say something, but it’s not suitable for their documentary.
The men out front of my building don't know me, or me them. They probably know me now . Today’s paper has me on the front page this time. Standing at the memorial, the shrine to Caleb's truth. My shoulders are slouched, my face twisted. I've never been so perfectly captured in misery. ‘ Terrific actress, or stunned widow?’ The headline asks. Indeed.
The article blurs after the part about his kills, even the amateurish ones that are now being attributed to him, back in his hometown. Re-opened cases. I feel nauseous. There was never a time he wasn’t that, not while he was in my life. From before our first date, he was that monster. Born a psycho, too good at hiding it, or just waiting for the one too dumb to see through the act.
They're listing reasons they think I knew now, then reasons they think I didn't. Asking the public's opinions on it. Marie from Northside thinks I mixed the plaster, and claims she can see a woman's touch there. Devon from Downtown says he's been following my story for years, all the pictures, all the grieving. No one can fake it that well, he says. Someone else from somewhere else suggests that I picked the victims, all those female detectives. Jealousy. The same person thinks I'm advising the copycat, giving them pointers. I try to imagine that. Feet tied this way. Wings for the next one, not this one.
When I wake up, I know it’s him on the other side of the room. The bleariness of intoxication is still presiding over the headache of it, that’s how I know I wasn't asleep too long. He stays over there, by the other wall next to the TV, outside the light coming from whatever is playing on the screen. I lift my arms as though taking a bow from my seat on the couch. Around me bottles clink and wrappers crinkle. "Not so fuckable now, am I?"
He doesn't answer that. "You had to know, sooner or later."
"Oh yeah. Thanks ."
He's silent, just an oppressive presence on the other side of the room. Maybe he’s not even there, maybe I'm drunk enough to hallucinate.
"So which are you? Tristan?" I inquire. "Or a victim who got away, maybe?"
"I don't think you're ready for any more news."
"Noooo better I stay in the dark. Another three and a half years, maybe? Then you'll tell me who you are?"
"You weren't ready when it happened. You nearly destroyed yourself as it was."
I scoff.
"It’s not your fault you didn't know. No one did."
I hold an unsteady finger up. "Ah, but only I was married to him." I tilt my head. "Gosh, that’s two serial killers for me! Do you think there's some kind of record?"
He walks over, sitting beside me on the couch, I feel the seat move with his weight. Some kind of action scene plays out on the TV, white flashes rolling over his mask. "You need to believe me now. Copycat Cocooner has plenty of reasons to be interested in you."
"Why now?" I pull a face as I try to take another swig, just to find the bottle empty.
Needler takes so long to answer me that I tilt my head at him, swaying softly. "They're saving you like he was," he says.
"Oh yeah?" I ask, lunging across the coffee table for another bottle with a sip left in the bottom. I don’t reach it, instead pulled back to the couch, against Needler. I try to wriggle away, but his hold is firm, my cheek braced against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, squeezing softly.
“Don’t destroy yourself, Little Shadow,” he murmurs against the top of my head.
Just the feeling of being held is enough to make my eyes sting with a fresh round of tears, feelings leeching back through the self-enforced numbness. I slap benignly at his arm, snivelling, accusing, “This is all your fault! You did this!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You could have told me!” The words are barely audible, muffled and wet against his shirt.
“I know. You’re strong, you’re going to make it.”
I don’t recall what else I accused him of. Things he both is and isn’t responsible for. The energy drains out of me, and I stop struggling, let myself be held, murmuring as I drift off, “I just want to know who you are… just want to know… show me.”
***
The call comes from Tawill herself. It’s a Friday. I struggle to recall which day my life imploded on, and how many days it is been since. A week? Two? "You're cleared," she tells me, then pauses, waiting for something. Elation, maybe. "Your involvement is no longer in question. You can come back, Monday."
"Mmm," I say, afraid to say anything else less she catch the intoxication in my slurs. "Thanks!" I’m not drinking as much as I was a day ago, so much that recalling Needler’s visit and what strange things I may have said is difficult, but still I’m staying a level of drunk to take the edge off the deepest feelings, the ones I’m not ready for yet.
I hang up the phone. Picture the station, my desk, the way everyone will stare. Why bother?
***
"Why weren't you in today?" Dirk demands, the moment he steps through my door. I thought I'd locked it, that’s why I'd ignored the knocking, and his voice shouting from the other side.
Just when he smells the alcohol, just when his nose wrinkles, I turn away again. I don't need his judgement; I don't care about it. To prove it to him, to myself, I pick up the bottle from the coffee table as I step away. "Tawill has said you can come back. You're cleared," he tells me, as though I'd merely forgotten over the weekend.
" Woo-hoo ."
He drops the blue binder in his hand onto the coffee table, where it lands with a slap. I eye it. “What’s that?” I know what it is, I just don’t know why it’s here .
“A copy of everything we’ve got on Cocooner. New and old.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You need to be doing something. And like it or not, you’ve got insight we’ve never had before.”
I snort. What a cost that came at.
"Why weren't you there today?" he presses as I turn away, back towards the kitchen,
"You don't need me."
"That's hard to argue with right now."
I swing back around, finding the turn unsteady. "I think I've earned a week off."
"Oh, really? Caught someone, have you? Put a killer in prison lately, maybe?"
I sneer as he crosses the room. "You and those two are out there chasing Cocooner's smoke. Like that’s doing any more good."
Flinching when he steps forward, around the mess of rubbish on the floor to snatch the bottle out of my hand, I’m too slow to react and snatch it back. "And what are you doing?" he asks, lifting it to squish the amber liquid. "Drinking your way to finding Needler, is that it?"
My lip curls. I reach for the bottle, and he pulls it out of my reach without taking a step. "I'm not looking for him anymore," I grunt.
"Bullshit," Dirk says to my back as I turn for the kitchen. If he won't give me that bottle, I'll get another one. No way am I looking inside that damned binder.
"What does it matter to you?" I strain, unsteadily reaching into my stash, knocking a bottle over before I get a grip on another one. When I come back down, I'm unprepared for Dirk to be in here with me, looming over me. I press my teeth together. "Why are you so keen to know if I'm still looking for Needler?"
"Aside from the fact you're running yourself into the ground and you're borderline unbearable to know right now?" Dirk asks, watching me unscrew the lid.
"Really? That’s it? For my benefit?" My mouth stays open as he snatches this bottle too. Resisting a strong urge to shove him, as ineffectual as though it may be, I lift my chin and say, "Maybe you don't want me to know who it really is!"
I'm angry, not thinking. I turn away and reach high into the cupboard again, but I don't even get the bottle all the way down before Dirk snatches it, too. This time, he doesn't stop there. He pitches it at the tiles on the other side of the kitchen, and it smashes, crumples, glass glinting wet.
"Hey! What the…"
Then he smashes the other one he's holding. Glass skitters across the tiles. I give in and shove at his chest. "What the hell is your problem!?"
He spreads his hands. "Why don't you tell me, huh? Why don't you say what you've been beating around these past months?"
I know what I want to say, to accuse him of. But even through the haze I've been swimming in this past week—drowning in, those words will be irreparable. So I say something else. "I know about your little mob deals. Tipping off the club owners about raids."
He frowns a moment, gaze locking on mine, but otherwise doesn’t seem concerned, which is aggravating. I’d pictured horror, wonder… something. "How could you know about that?"
"I followed you," I blurt out. "At the diversion ball, whatever. I heard everything!"
His eyes narrow. “You followed me? That’s why we didn't catch Needler before he killed someone?”
“That’s not why.”
“You were supposed to be looking for Needler!”
"I WAS!"
The silence between us is so laced it’s almost not a silence anymore. Blood thumps in my ears, my last words echoing through my head. The muscle in his jaw works as he stares down at me.
With a dangerously calm voice, Dirk asks, "Is this what you've really wanted to ask?"
"Fine! I'll say it!" I throw my hands out in frustration, letting the alcohol, the idiocy, speak, letting it ruin everything that’s not already shattered. “You're a good fit."
"For what?" growling the words, he steps towards me, and I reflexively step back, coming up against the fridge.
"For Needler!" I yell back, as though it’s obvious. To me, it is.
" Needler? You think I'm Needler?"
"Why not?" I slide my back off the fridge, stepping further into the kitchen instead. “Your disappearing acts, first at the stakeout, and Butcher turned himself in the next morning… Then at the diversion, and someone else dies!” I’m convincing myself now, words pouring out of my mouth, evidence is mounting. “You know where I live, and you found me at the filtration plant!"
"Wait, where you live?" Dirk's eyes widen, the anger of a moment ago momentarily forgotten. "Has Needler been here?"
I ignore him, shaking my head, gripping my scalp with both hands so that my hair becomes more of a mess. “You’re always trying to push me off the trail… He threatened to kill you.”
“He what ?” The anger is back, as is that horror I’d envisioned.
"…So I'd have a good reason to never have seen you both at once. You have deals with criminals like we thought he might, how he finds his victims... He just didn’t want you there at the same time… And the obsession with Cocooner." I'm backing away, towards the rear of the kitchen. Needler had once been in here with me. I'd backed away from him, too. "Because…”
Dirk is holding his hands out like I'm a frightened animal now. "Okay, you’re stressed, you need rest…”
“Because it is you !”
"El…"
" You're Needler! You've got to be…"
Finally, something snaps. Dirk's yell takes me by surprise. “Are you fucking insane?”
I flinch. He's never yelled at me before. My paranoia fills the gaps. If my husband was that , my partner can be this . Here I am in the corner, but he's backed into another corner. That must be why he's finally breaking. This is it. "You're not denying it."
Dirk only stares at me for a beat, then laughs, a dry, humourless choke. He runs his hands through his hair like he wants to rip it out. “I could as easily accuse you. Think about what you’re saying!”
That gets through the haze. “Me?”
“Who do usually we look to first in a murder case? Who so often did it?” He's coming towards me again, big and looming. "The spouse."
“Stop.”
“No. Think about it; Your husband bothered you, maybe beat you, assaulted you. Maybe you found out what he really was. You snapped and killed him. You spend two years fighting the urge to do it again.” I’m backing away, up to the bench. “But you can’t resist the urge anymore. You reason that if you only kill the bad ones…”
“Stop!”
Somehow, he's closed me in… caged me. I shove hard at his chest, so hard I'm out of breath, like I'd been holding it until now. He falls back a step and we both stare at each other. He's as angry as I've ever seen him. For a minute we just stand there in a standoff. Then Dirk throws his hands up. "Fuck this. I'm done."
"Where are you going?" I demand, an edge of panic in my voice as I watch him leave the kitchen.
"Off to stab someone, partner ."
***