Chapter Twelve
Stepping out of the interview room was not dissimilar to stepping out of a sauna and diving headfirst into an icy tundra.
Lee Holmes wondered if her body would ever get used to this newfound sense of mental whiplash; the notion of standing as close to the edge of a mountain top as physically possible, as the truth lay underneath, onlookers desperate to push her into it.
She came to the swift conclusion that Morgan Finch was not accustomed to the same unfamiliar feelings as she observed her girlfriend at reception, laughing with one of the officers as if the pair of them had just exchanged pleasantries over brunch as opposed to sitting in an interrogation room answering questions in relation to a murder that she had in fact committed herself.
Morgan shook the officer's hand upon noticing that Lee had finished with her own interrogation and offered a smile in her direction as she walked over towards her. “Hey babe. Wanna grab some breakfast? I’m starved.”
If it wasn’t for where she was standing, Lee Holmes might have shattered every glass window in the precinct with a shrill scream aimed directly at her girlfriend.
How was it that Morgan somehow made it seem as if nothing had happened four days ago, despite the fact that they were both literally standing within a police station after just having answered questions about that very night?
“No, baby,” Lee said, in a tone only Morgan could understand.
“I don’t want to grab breakfast. I’d actually like to go back to the apartment so that we can continue the chat we were having earlier. ”
Morgan’s eyes shifted again, becoming darker under the glowing lights of the station.
It reminded Lee of their intimate moments together, when the lights had been dimmed and her girlfriend's pupils expanded, turning a darker shade of green in a desperate and wanting need. She tried not to think about it too much, if only because associating the anger she felt with the moments of bliss she shared with Morgan could somehow damage those moments, perhaps. “If that’s what you want,” Morgan offered, glancing at her sternly. “We can continue our chat.”
Sometimes, when Lee Holmes got home from work, her days blurred, as if she had never left her apartment to begin with.
She would sip her coffee in the morning, read the latest magazine that she’d purchased from the newspaper stand outside, before stepping into her heels and heading out.
When she came home, she would sit in the same seat, read an article from that same magazine, and indulge in a cup of tea.
It wasn’t a mirror image, but it was damn near close.
As she closed the door to their apartment behind them today, it seemed more like a wall had divided her morning and afternoon, and she couldn’t see through it if she wanted to.
Lee had barely set down her handbag on the coat rack before she latched onto the conversation again, desperate to break through the wall. “You weren’t on the tape. How is it possible that there isn’t the slightest hint of you caught on CCTV? Not even a shadow.”
She felt Morgan’s eyes on her for just a moment before Morgan mimicked Lee’s actions by placing her denim jacket onto the coat rack beside the door.
Without warning, she stepped past Lee as if she wasn’t there at all, silently willing them to continue their talk in the bedroom where it was more comfortable, acknowledging that the living room was presently off limits.
She walked down the hallway whilst she spoke.
“Are you sure that you want to know about all of this? It’s not like you jumped for joy at our last conversation. ”
Lee followed Morgan with determination, crossing her arms whilst she walked.
It was like they were at the police station once again, as Lee prepared herself for a scream that could shatter eardrums. “I want to know everything, Morgan. Excuse me for not seeming enthusiastic earlier when I was trying to get the truth out of you and I was being met with nothing but hesitation.”
The pair of them had made it to the bedroom now, as Morgan took a seat on Lee’s side of the bed and patted the other side.
Morgan always sat upon Lee’s side when they weren’t sleeping.
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Lee.
I’m hesitant for a reason. I just…don’t want you to think that I’m a monster. ”
At present time, Morgan’s inner workings were like Schrodinger's cat. Lee had tried so desperately to peek inside the box, because without looking, she was unsure as to whether there was a piece within Morgan Finch that was dying, or worse, dead. The piece that had a capacity to love, to feel.
Perhaps Morgan was a monster. Or perhaps she was a complex individual with a thousand tiny pieces inside her, all of them living, only living differently to what Lee was accustomed to. She couldn’t know until she looked inside.
Lee Holmes realized at that moment that if Morgan truly was the latter, then maybe there was a part inside of her that was terrified just like she was, and approaching her with force would only make her retreat further into the box.
For that reason, she took a seat beside her on the bed, and for the first time since the night of their anniversary, placed a hand upon her girlfriend's own hand. “I only want to know what this means, Morgan. I still love you, and that’s why I need to be honest with you. I can’t push forward in this relationship without understanding who you are. ”
“I don’t kill for trophies,” Morgan sputtered out, looking away, exhaling deeply as she found her words, seemingly spurred on by Lee’s own.
“I don’t kill for sport, or to build this invisible tally in my head and measure my accomplishments.
Sometimes, what I do keeps me up at night, and other nights I sleep soundly, as if I never did anything at all.
I feel things just like you do. I love just like you do.
And I love you. I can’t explain why I feel this desire to do what I do.
I don’t necessarily understand it myself.
I guess the best way that I can at least try to explain it is that it’s the scab that you can’t help but scratch.
The more you scratch it, the itchier it gets. And I’m itching, Lee.”
Morgan stared directly into the carpeted floor below, leaning over the bed as if leaning over towards the edge of the mountain top, just as Lee had done at the station a mere hour earlier.
Lee cleared her throat, despite having no obstruction, hoping that the sound would somehow make Morgan turn around and face her.
“Have you…hurt people who aren’t like Edward Beckett? ”
Morgan opened her mouth as if to speak, before closing it again, hesitant like she had been before. Lee squeezed her hand supportively, spurring her on. “You mean like, good people?” she asked, quietly.
Lee nodded in confirmation, gazing directly at Morgan’s side profile, desperate for the woman to look at her as opposed to the carpet. To take a step back from the edge of the mountain.
As if on cue, Morgan’s eyes darted towards Lee’s.
Lee didn’t see that darkness there from the police station, or from the kitchen hours earlier.
She saw the woman she fell in love with staring back at her.
The woman with eyes like distant planets.
“I don’t think we’re all innately good, or innately bad.
It sounds like I’m dodging the question, I know.
But if fifty people were in this room, and they all had to decide whether I was good or bad, I don’t think all fifty of them would say I was bad.
Perhaps a majority, but not all. And yet I kill people, Lee.
There are so many factors that make up a person.
If you’re asking whether I’ve killed anybody I deemed ‘good’,” Morgan said, offering quotation marks in the air with the hand that wasn’t holding Lee’s whilst she spoke, “then I guess I haven’t, no. ”
Lee pondered this answer for a moment, taking it all in.
Her deepest fear was confirmed to be false.
Morgan didn’t kill just for the thrill of it.
She did it for a reason that perhaps neither of them understood.
But for now, what she did understand was that she killed people like Edward Beckett, and Lee herself was the farthest thing from Edward.
Perhaps that would be enough for now to sleep soundly at night beside her, knowing that Morgan deemed her good.
“If I was one of the fifty, I wouldn’t be in the majority.
Besides, the two of us can barely fit in this room, let alone fifty people. ”
Lee tried to expel the thought that three people had been in this apartment only four days prior, one of which was no longer alive.
“What about the CCTV?” Lee continued, acknowledging the fact that within the last four days, she was being met with a rare moment of honesty that she perhaps might not see again for the foreseeable future.
Morgan Finch laughed, as if humored by the question, before shaking her head.
“I didn’t tamper with the CCTV. Our apartment is a piece of shit.
Ergo, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the CCTV on our floor is equally shitty.
Perhaps I took advantage of the fact that our floor has no surveillance, but I didn’t contribute to that advantage.
I entered the building from the alley around the back, and I took the stairs. ”
Lee nodded, allowing the information to seep in, much like ink on a crisp white page. Before she could even process as to what to say next, Morgan continued.
“I’m going to get another hour or two of rest considering I’m no longer working today, unless there’s something else?” she asked.
There were perhaps a million ‘something else’s’, as Morgan had put it, and yet, Lee shook her head and exited the room, exhaling only when she had closed the bedroom door behind her.
Leaving Morgan to sleep for another hour, Lee stepped outside onto the fire escape, hanging her arms over the railing.
With her eyes closed, she pictured the day they met, legs crossed around a campfire, basking in the glow of the light just as she was doing now.
“You want one?” Morgan’s first words towards Lee falling out of her mouth as the smoke from her cigarette entered it.
Lee Holmes recollected how the light of the fire made Morgan look beautiful.
She recollected thinking how beautiful she would look with or without it.
For Morgan Finch emitted her own light as she sat beside her, offering her something she had yet to taste before.
It took a moment for her to shake her head—to decline the girl before her.
She had yet to even learn this woman's name, and yet somehow, she would do just about anything to place that same cigarette in her mouth that was presently sitting in Morgan’s, like a faux kiss of ash and smoke.
“I don’t smoke. I appreciate the offer, though. I’m Lee. Lee Holmes.”
Lee would never forget the next words that came out of Morgan’s mouth, indelible now since the moment she witnessed what the woman was capable of. “Holmes, huh? Just like my man, Arthur Howard. Good ol’ H. H. Holmes.”
Even then, the signs had been there. Lee had batted them away like a nuisance fly, if only because she herself had a fascination with serial killers through means of her podcasts.
As the sun painted her vision in purple and green splotches upon the balcony upon where she stood, Lee Holmes came to the conclusion that she would not continue to help Morgan now just as she wouldn’t smoke a cigarette then.
Perhaps she did enjoy the power she felt that night whilst they washed away the existence of another, that addictive buzz that coursed through her insides and lit her up.
But that feeling would always be fleeting, just like nicotine.
A temporary high laced with permanent regret. She wouldn’t indulge.
Instead, she would sit beside the proverbial campfire of their relationship and watch Morgan inhale.