Chapter 14
“Beth, I know I haven’t been present the last little while, but you know what time of year it is,” Con said. “You know what’s coming up.”
“The past little while?” Beth made a face. For the first time in a long time, Con looked at his wife.
Really looked at her.
Like him, Beth Striker appeared much older than she actually was.
“Con, you haven’t been present for years. Years .”
Con continued to stare at his wife.
Things hadn’t been that bad, had they? They were happy, right? They didn’t fight. They just…
He shook his head.
They didn’t fight because they didn’t talk. Hardly even saw each other.
They didn’t fight because they just… co-existed. Cohabited—maybe that was as stretch. He worked all day, she typically got home after he was in bed. Or on the porch passed out with headphones jammed in his ears yelling at a coyote that may or may not have been there.
“I’m sorry.” Con’s shoulders slumped. In his mind, he saw his sister, saw Valerie the way she’d been that day, that last day. Angry, furious, screaming at him that their mother wasn’t their mother anymore. “But you don’t know how hard it has been for me. You don’t understand.”
Beth sighed and took a sip of her wine.
“No,” she admitted. “No, I don’t understand. Lord knows I’ve tried to understand. For more than ten years, Con, I’ve tried to understand. I really have. And I stayed with you for as long as I can. I stuck it out. You remember those first few weeks after your sister went missing?”
Con clenched his teeth and fought back tears.
Those first few weeks after Valerie had gone missing had been a living hell. After their fight, he hadn’t gone looking for her right away. He thought Val was just blowing off steam, working the bar circuit as she sometimes did when she was mad.
Which, to be fair, had been often lately.
But then Val didn’t return.
Ten days after he’d last seen his sister, Con started to search for her. He tracked her car, which had been discovered in an abandoned real estate development area in north OC. He reviewed footage from local shops, ATMs, traffic cameras, but none of them had captured her image.
Her debit and credit cards stopped being used two days after she disappeared.
And then The Sandman struck, although Matthew Nelson Neil wouldn’t receive the moniker until after his third victim, Ashley Zella, was discovered.
It wasn’t until Con found Val in a grainy, thirty-second video from the gas station that he knew something was truly wrong.
Because she hadn’t been alone.
The man who would haunt his dreams from that moment onward was with her.
“I did everything I could,” Beth continued when Con didn’t say anything. “I stood by your side, helped you every way possibly could think of. Put my own career in jeopardy. And I didn’t complain. Not once.”
Con raised his eyes and gazed at his wife through watery vision. What she was saying was true.
She’d been a rock when he’d been a puddle.
And how had he repaid her?
Neglect. Ambivalence.
Indifference so profound it bordered on cruelty.
“Ten years, Con. Ten . I just—I just can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”
Colin moved forward, reached for Beth, intent on putting his hand on her shoulder, hugging her, holding her, kissing her, telling her he loved her.
Doing all the things he should have done for the past decade.
For all of his ability to adopt whatever persona a case demanded of him, Con had failed at even coming close to knowing what his own wife needed.
His own fucking wife.
But Beth was having none of it. She pulled back, finished her wine, and stared deep into his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Con. It’s too late. It’s too late for that.”
When her eyes flicked to her left, Con noticed the bag at her side. It was the one that Beth packed when she went on one of her frequent work trips.
She picked it up and started toward the door. Con was helpless, and just watched her go.
Beth stopped at the last moment, looked at him, and said, “I really hope you can find some peace, Con. I do. I want that for you.”
And then, with that, she was gone, leaving Con standing in front of his fridge, bewildered, shell-shocked.
He had no idea what to do.
Chase after her? Beg her to stay?
But he didn’t. He knew that, like she’d said, it was too late.
There was something else holding him back as well.
As much as it pained Con to admit it, the feeling that washed over him could only be described as relief.
Con loved his wife, but she was right. She had stood by him, holding out hope that things would get better, that he would be able to put his obsession with finding his sister behind him.
But he never could and now Beth was gone.
In a daze, Con grabbed a beer from the fridge.
Then he pressed his back up against the stainless-steel door and drank. He finished the first beer in just a few gulps then opened another.
And another.
When he finished his third beer anger overtook him.
He launched the bottle across the room. It struck the opposite wall and exploded, sending brown shards scattering to the floor.
“Fuck you, Matthew Nelson Neil.” He cursed. “Fuck you!”
Then, in a fit of anger, Con stomped to his office and picked up everything he had about The Sandman and his crimes, stacks and stacks of notes and police files, photos, his laptop with the gas station footage.
Everything.
He set it all out on the kitchen table, spreading the pages from corner to corner.
As he stared down at pages of crime scene photos, copies of the victims’ licenses, and the manuscript from The Sandman’s confession, he knew that beer wasn’t going to cut it tonight. Con retrieved a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet and pulled the cork.
No glass needed.
And then Con went over everything, starting from the very beginning.