6.2
Tawill is both unimpressed and unsurprised by the outcome of our little mission. Or at least that’s the vibe I'm getting as we sit across from her. The clock ticked past midnight long ago, and she looks no different now from how she does first thing in the morning. It’s a superpower, being able to look the same level of put-together no matter the time of day or night or circumstance.
"So not only," she says, concluding our briefing which was related in excruciating detail, all the way to Dirk paddling his way out of the lake while we chased Needler through traffic, "Did you not catch your target, you also failed to prevent a murder by said target at the very event you were attending."
"The grounds were pretty big…" Dirk starts, then cuts himself off as she fixes him with a withering look. He's still damp, dripping a little off the seat and smelling richly of lake water.
Her withering look then cuts to me. "And you pulled your gun on a group of witnesses within three sentences of your interaction with them."
"I uh, suspected them to be involved in a gang…"
"Three. Sentences," Tawill repeats. "You were able to gather enough information within three sentences to make that assumption? You really are a super detective." The sarcasm dripping off the last line is enough to make me cringe. “They were not part of a gang, just on an online forum.”
"I'll admit I'd had a long night."
"Really?" she asks in mock sincerity. "A long night? That’s funny. By my watch you were both there barely two hours before managing to conclude this disaster."
Neither of us has the guts to answer that, and Tawill sighs, sitting back in her chair. "The line of duty memorial is tomorrow… today, now," she amends, glancing at the clock. Her expression softens slightly as it comes back down to me, an acknowledgement of the extra meaning the day has to me. The extra meaning it has to everyone who has lost a loved one in the line of duty. "I expect you both to be there at the start of service and to be positively bushy-tailed. That means the crack of dawn. And you will be on your best behaviour and you will smooth over this mess when the press asks you about it. Understood?"
"Yes, ma’am."
***
Of course, Needler is in my apartment when I arrive home, sitting patiently on the arm of my couch, the lights off. He’s worked out that Olivia is out of town. And he’s still wearing that black hood, ragged at the edges, but it’s fallen back from his head now. I lock the door behind me. I was just chasing this man through a party. Now he's here, and there's shit-all I can do about it.
"Nice dress," Needler says with a smirk.
I glance down at myself. My day clothes are in the bag I drop as I step in since I couldn’t be bothered working my way out of this sodden dress in a closet at the station. "Was it you who got on the train?"
The mask tilts. "Why? Working things out for yourself?"
"Trying to eliminate some possibilities, actually."
"Ah, you must be dying to know."
That serves as a harsh reminder. "You hanged a man."
He stands, stepping towards me. "A racist and a coward. Some loss."
"It’s not for you to decide."
"Then whose choice is it?" he asks, following my step as I back up and come against the wall next to the closed door. "Yours? Tawill's?"
Closing the gap, his hips press to mine, promising moments of thoughtlessness—bliss. But it shouldn’t be blissful, I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t be so weak. There’s no future here, not one I can see for myself. It might not have worked out when I thought it would, but I still want a life, and a husband one day, even children. “I’m seeing someone,” I say quickly, though it comes out breathy, my hands braced on his biceps.
He doesn’t seem bothered. “Fucked him yet?”
“No,” I admit, pressing back.
“Mm, serious, then.”
“It could be.”
He's lifting my dress, finding my thigh, hand sliding under to lift my knee.
“Well, if you fuck him, you’ll have to tell me how it is. If he satisfies you."
“You’re a killer. A criminal.”
“Mm, your protests so far must have been very softly spoken.” I swallow a wince. He’s not wrong, there. “If you don’t like what I do to you, or what I make you feel… go on and say it. Be loyal to your ‘someone’.”
I could say that, say something, anything . I could tell him to get out. He’d go, I know he would. Instead, my jaw works, mouth stubbornly closed. He chuckles, pouring salt in the wound of my pride. “It could be serious...” He presses, lifting me against the wall, and my legs wrap around his hips, the skirts of my dress bunching awkwardly.
He carries me all the way to the bedroom, stopping and pressing me to the doorframe to kiss me. "Imagine if you'd caught me tonight." His thumb scrapes my bottom lip. "What an interesting interview that would be."
My eyes widen slightly. "You'd tell them?"
"No, I wouldn't tell." He pauses then, the closest I've ever seen him to hesitating. "You shouldn't be on the Cocooner case."
Surprised, I straighten my legs, though he doesn't let me have more space as my feet touch the ground. "Why the interest in him lately?" I watch the glimpse of his eyes through the mask, dark hazel or green. It’s hard to tell. Always in dark places with him. Intentionally, I suppose, another reason for me to believe he thinks I’d recognise him if I got too close of a look. "He's due to strike again soon. But you know that."
The mask ducks, hiding his eyes.
"What do you know?" I press.
"Just… don't go off alone where you think they are."
"Why? He stopped targeting female detectives years ago when my husband—"
"You just shouldn't." Needler cuts me off again, bracing his palm against my cheek. "Don't risk your life."
I frown. He seems so earnest suddenly, but why? I laugh, almost awkward for it. "Why…"
But then he kisses me, long and deep, and all questions fall away.
***
Three hours of sleep later, and dawn comes too fast. As before, Needler was long gone by the time I woke up. I slump into Dirk’s car when he pulls up at the front of my building, and he immediately passes me coffee in a paper cup. "I know you don't drink it, but…"
"I'll take it," I say quickly, doing just that. Today, to visit my husband’s memorial, knowing what I did last night with Needler… I need something, and alcohol isn't on the menu.
"Good choice," he commends, pulling away from the curb. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him about what I heard last night, preferably without admitting that I followed him. His deals with the less savoury of Tregam, lying to the department. It’s all pressing on my mind, and I’m still yet to find a reason he can’t be Needler.
But is it just wishful thinking? Would he even have any interest in me in that way?
I make myself drop that question. Today is going to be hard enough without thinking about all of that.
The memorial is on the edge of downtown, a precious bit of real estate spared next to the city park, which itself takes up nearly a whole block. During the day the park is a nice place, full of families playing frisbee and people walking their dogs, almost like somewhere in a normal city, a city without the highest crime rate in the country. But at night, with the lack of lighting, it’s a place people avoid.
As the sun rises now, that transition is taking place, groups of people in respectful black fast outnumbering the more ragged types that slink off, following the shadows. A caretaker idles along, stabbing empty cans and pushing them into a hessian bag.
The memorial itself is spread over a flat of concrete between thick, harsh pillars. Framed pictures dot the space at intervals, many of them drowning in bouquets of flowers. The people are buried elsewhere, but this is a place to see them together, a place for the more regular public of Tregam to appreciate the sacrifices made.
Before the service starts, I break away and wander through the sparse crowd to his picture. I bought a bouquet at the entrance, and now I kneel, looking at his face. He was in uniform when this picture was taken, so smiling and sure then. I place the flowers. "I miss you," I say, and drop my gaze. How can I be here, saying this, when last night I lay with his murderer? Needler has never denied killing Caleb. Somehow, I'd tricked myself into believing he didn't, that it was a misunderstanding.
Those others that he’s taken, that’s somehow okay, so long as Caleb wasn't counted among them. But I was kidding myself. Needler is the one who took him away from me. The fantasy I’d spun where my actions somehow weren’t so bad is just that, a fantasy. Here I am, playing the grieving widow, when all the while I’ve been letting his murderer into my bed.
How did I come to this? Tears prick my eyes. "I'm sorry," I whisper, tasting them. "I've lost my way. I don’t know how it happened..."
The service is starting, a reading where the park meets the memorial. The crowd grows every minute, people rushing to make the dawn service. I get a seat at the front, with the other widows, children, or parents. The words wash over me, feeling meaningless in the harsh reality of losing someone this way. I wait for it to be over.
As we're all allowed to stand, a reporter finds me first. I recognise her, blond and pretty, with a voice that cuts through the space. She wants to know about last night and passes over today’s newspaper, folded back to the second page. It’s me, in my ballgown at the train station, beside Dean as we face off against a stubborn line of Needler fans. The picture is excellent, capturing a moment in time perfectly, Dean’s gun half-lifted, and the expression on my face as if I’ve already realised the futility of trying. I didn't even know someone was there with a camera. The headline reads: ‘The people choose their side.’
"Anything to say about last night’s Needler strike, Ms Bishop?"
I glance up sharply at the title. My married name. I guess for the occasion.
"Unfortunately, we were unable to anticipate the Needler's movements at the Tregam Diversion and were unable to stop the murder," I say politically.
"The victim was a racist and suspected gang leader. Is that correct?"
"We're looking into that. Now if you'll excuse me," I say quickly, as she opens her mouth to ask more, "I'm here to pay respect to my late husband, another victim of Needler." The way I say it is pointed, reminding them of what the city likes to forget. Of what I, even, have liked to forget. She backs off quickly then, and I turn away and march purposefully, my head starting to pound, the sun too hot for something just risen.
Lingering by Caleb's picture has the bonus effect of deterring most from speaking to me, other than to offer condolences. I think of nothing, really, and yet everything. Caleb, the home we had, the life we planned. They're distant thoughts, the meaning long lost now. He was so tired towards the end, distant, distracted. The only thing that reliably improve his mood was using that damned giant telescope of his. I’d wake up alone even if I knew he was home, just to look out the window and see him there, a silhouette in the darkness. Sometimes I’d go out and let him tell me about another distant star or a constellation that seemed too far away to matter. More often, I’d go back to bed.
His moods were unpredictable even to me in those days. Though he never drank and I understood what he was going through, having been a detective for longer than him.
How easy to forget those minor disagreements, the small grudges, all in the face of the greater grief that befell us. Befell me. He was dead, and there was nothing and no one to fight. I had to find something to fight then or give up entirely. And that something was Needler, and every other heartless soul in Tregam.
Dean stops by my side, and so does Tawill, nodding respectfully to Caleb's picture. Dean touches my arm briefly, and I offer him a smile. Dirk comes last, and I can only assume the reporters harassed him rather than me. Did he tell them the same story? What did he say of his part, supposedly thrown into the lake?
"I'm gonna head into the station." He glances at the picture. "Want a lift?"
"I think I'll stay a while longer. But thanks, I'll catch you there."
He smiles faintly, squeezes my shoulder, then leaves me.
I'm restless as the square clears, wandering among the other pictures, bouquets around them like sad little gardens. I glance at the photos, the names, and their quotes. Like I'm browsing, I realise. The place is cleared out and lonely, a chill wind bringing over cloud cover and taking the warmth out of the air. I tuck my hands in my pockets and make for the subway.
Only two stops to the station, but the late night and the emotional turmoil are catching up with me, so I sit down as the train rattles through its tunnels. The carriage is largely empty, the rush over, leaving me with just an old man, a group of teenage boys at the other end, and a man in a hoodie across from me. The train has a lull to it which almost has me dozing. I catch myself with my eyes drifting closed, straighten, and look at the man across from me. I should know better by now, be able to spot him from a mile away..
By the time I would have stood, he's crossed to sit next to me instead. Glancing at the old man, who has dozed off himself, I hiss at Needler, "What are you doing?"
Without a preamble, he speaks in his low, altered voice. The mask covers his whole face this time, shadowed inside the hood. "The Cocooner, they want you next."
I pull back abruptly. "What?"
"You need to believe me."
I laugh, but it’s an awkward, shocked kind of laugh. "Well, I don't!"
"I don't want to hurt you with this," he says.
"What are you talking about?"
"…But I will, if that’s what it takes to make you believe it."
I shake my head once. "How would you know what Cocooner wants?"
"It’s better if you and everyone else don't know that."
Irritated as much as afraid, I demand, "Then, without evidence, why would I believe anything you say?"
“They’ve perfected now. They’re ready.”
“Ready for what?” I ask, more exasperated. When he doesn’t answer, I realise he truly does mean for me to take him at his word. “I won’t let you scare me off another case so you can snatch them for yourself.”
A pause, I feel him regarding me through his mask. There's a different set to his shoulders, his mood, today. Something reluctant and almost sad. "That’s your final word on it?"
My jaw sets, and abruptly I feel I’m signing some kind of death warrant.
Needler pulls back, standing. The train is rolling to a stop. “So be it.”
That ‘so be it’ hangs over me the rest of the day, though I come no closer to interpreting it. It hangs over me through a lunch I don't taste, a meeting I nearly sleep through, and the re-heated dinner that’s still cold in the middle when I fall onto my couch.
Without getting undressed, I collapse into my bed, utterly unaware that when morning comes, I'll wish I'd stayed awake longer, and savoured the state of relative bliss that I'd been enjoying, compared to what was to come.
***
I wake up, thinking the ringing is my alarm. But no, I slept through that already. In a haze, I stumble out to the phone on the kitchen doorframe, recognising Dirk's number on the little screen. It’s 9 am. Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I pick up. "Dirk? What…"
"El! Have you seen it yet?"
"Ugh, seen?" I frown, in my half-asleep state, trying to work out if I have seen it. "I’m not sure what you’re…"
"Don't leave your house, don't turn on the TV, understand? I'm on my way."
I croak a laugh. He sounds downright panicked. And of course, the first thing I do, wobbling to the corner of the living room, tethered by the phone cord, is switch on the TV.
Dirk is still calling my name down the line, but his voice fades to an echo, the phone dropping away from my ear as what’s on the screen absorbs me. I don't know how long I stand there staring, how long that news story goes on. Longer than most. Then it starts again, told in a different way. But the same details, the same new reality. It feels like news just for me, like I’m the only person in the world watching. Like they knew I’d need to see it twice.
When I look down, the phone is on the ground, slid back towards the kitchen, the line dead.
I don't even have the mind to get into my car. I just leave, stopping long enough to slide my shoes on, the heels rubbing against my skin for the lack of socks. But I don't feel that either, not the blisters walking four blocks like that incurs, not anything. Time passes too slow and too fast at once. The walk stretches on, towards something I don't want to reach, but not long enough for me to make sense of it.
I reach the memorial. The crowd is gathered around the yellow tape, cordoning him off. Everyone turns and stares at me as I approach, but I ignore them in the sort of daze I’ve just walked four blocks in. Someone lifts the tape for me, or I lift it for myself. I'm unsure. Someone else says my name, but I keep walking forward, away from it.
On the TV screen, it could have been false. But here, standing in front of it, there's no room for anything else. In the corner of my eye, I see Dirk, breathless, arrive. But he doesn't come closer. It’s too late now to break it to me easy.
The flowers are gone from around him. In their place are photo frames, all different sizes, nearly a dozen of them, all facing Caleb, accusing him from within white-plastered death cocoons.
We all know this arrangement, the victims facing the accused.
And it’s not just them, other photos are scattered around. I'm on my knees, that’s how I can reach them, how I can see the grainy security snapshots up close and recognise him in them. There are so many, a mountain of evidence. Of crime scenes, of the quiet streets leading from them and a single car, a car I used to know. And in the doorways, a man I know.
A man I thought I knew.
My Caleb. My Caleb and his victims.
The original Cocooner.
***
This time, it makes the front page. The letters seem bigger and bolder than usual.
'Martyred Detective the real killer all along’; ‘Needler exposes the truth, Copycat confirmed.'
And there I was yesterday, proudly reminding the world and the cameras that he was my husband.
Dean and Howie don't want to be across from me, questioning me. I can see it in their faces. For the brief moment that I have a mind to see anything. I've never been on this side of the table. "We've got to re-open those earlier cases," Dean tells me gently.
I nod, numb. Twelve earlier cases. Twelve kills now that the ones since his death aren’t counted. Twelve dead people. Not all of them cocooned, that came later. "I know." My face feels stiff with dried tears. I don't remember crying. I want to ask them, why bother? Needler has given them all the evidence they'll need. It’s all there, proof, undeniable. Needler is never wrong, haven’t I lamented that in the past?
"You really didn't know?" Dean asks again. Howie's mouth is a hard line. He hasn't said anything yet. He looks the most uncomfortable of all of us. He knew Caleb longer than I did. We all knew him. But it’s me who should have known.
I shake my head slowly. "No."
Dean sighs, pressing his fingers to his nose. "I'm sorry, El. None of us knew. I can't believe…"
Howie speaks, finally, "We can't be sure yet. Let’s wait for the forensics…" he trails off. We both stare at him. Denial is fruitless. It makes too much sense, as impossible as it is. He had access to the crime scene's first and took what evidence there was of him. And what DNA was left behind, well, wasn't he at the crime scene as a detective? It could all be explained away. Until it couldn't. Today, Needler's display.
He did warn me; I realise now.
And what does this make Needler? Innocent of a kind, of this, at least. What does it make me? A fool.
"They're not going to believe you didn't know…" Dean starts, but the door behind me opens then, loudly. I turn to see Dirk, and right behind him, Tawill.
"Detective Ginsburg is in no state to be interviewed right now," Tawill declares, then turns to me. "You're to go home and stay there until this all gets cleared up. I'll post a guard outside your building. If all this is true, there's a Cocooner copycat who has been operating for the past three and a half years, and you could be on their list. You three escort her home.”
***
Dean and Howie wait outside, Dirk the one who guides inside, to my couch. He drapes a throw over my shoulders, somehow finds tea I didn't know was in the kitchen and presses a hot mug into my hands. Only when he's kneeling in front of me do, I finally look and see him. There’s a slight line between his dark brows. I look him in the eye longer than I’ve dared before, now seeing more in his expression than I’ve let myself see before.
What I return is little more than blankness.
“You got Tawill to send me home. Before I could say anything dumb.”
“You’re not in a good frame of mind right now.”
My eyelids feel heavy, wanting to pull closed, to block everything out. “Why do you do this for me? Why do you care…” I turn away, away from his gaze. His eyes are many colours, green and hazel and caramel. What colour are Needler’s eyes? Always in the dark, I don’t know.
"It’s gonna be okay, El," he says, instead of answering my non-question.
My smile, for what it is, is bitter. And here I convinced myself that him being Needler would have been the worst news I could get. "Is it? How?"
"I don't know. But it will be."
I stare at the steam coming from the mug. As though a weight lies on every limb, every digit, it’s an effort even to let my shoulders lift and fall with each breath. "They're not going to believe me. They're going to think I knew or helped." And why wouldn't they? "How stupid could I be to…"
"Stop it. We all know you couldn't have been a part of it. The truth will come out."
I don't say anything, turning back to unresponsive.
"Look, I've got to get back. Everything is in an uproar. I know this is fucked, but it'll pass. You have to believe that. If you need anything…"
But I've already turned away, gazing out the tiny window, the streets fourteen storey's down where the news is right now circulating. I slept through most of the revelation. What bliss. I think I'll go back to sleep now.
When I tune back into the world next, Dirk is gone, and the mug in my hands is still steaming.