CHAPTER FIVE
The tap was still running when Torres pushed open the restroom door.
The sound echoed off the tiles — steady, rhythmic, like a clock marking seconds.
She paused in the doorway for a moment, watching Kate bend over the sink, splashing cold water onto her face, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath.
“Figured I’d find you here,” Torres said softly.
Kate looked up in the mirror, startled. Her face was wet, her hair darkened at the temples. She reached for a paper towel, her hands shaking slightly. “I didn’t mean to—”
“What? Cry in front of the boys?”
Torres stepped closer, letting the door swing shut behind her. The smell of cheap floral air freshener filled the air.
“You don’t need to apologise for being human. I’ve seen guys puke in that bullpen after less than what you’ve been through today.”
Kate gave a weak smile. “Hardly comforting.”
“Didn’t mean it to be.” Torres folded her arms, leaning back against the tiled wall. “You want to tell me what that was about? The tears, the drawer — all of it?”
Kate hesitated. She’d trained herself not to talk about personal things on the job.
The Bureau had a way of turning grief into paperwork — a line on a psych eval, an entry in a case file, before you knew it, you were on extended leave or waiting for a review board.
But something in Torres’s tone — direct but kind — loosened her defenses.
“It’s hard to explain,” she said finally. “That message — Green Gables — it’s… it’s from when I was a kid.”
Torres nodded once, slow and encouraging. “Go on.”
“When I was about ten,” Kate said, “there was a cartoon version of Anne of Green Gables on TV. Sunday mornings. It was this gentle, old-fashioned story about a redheaded orphan who talked too much and dreamed too big. My mom used to tease me that I was just like her — running around with my head in the clouds.”
“We read it in grade school. Aloud.” Torres gave a little shudder.
A wistful smile crossed Kate’s face. “I never actually read the book. But I loved that tv show. I wanted to live inside it. I wanted to find my own Green Gables — someplace quiet and perfect and mine.”
Torres tilted her head. “Was home life… you know… loco?”
“Not at all. I was an only child, my mom and dad loved me, and they loved each other. The only tension was… well, if I tell you what the message means, you’ll see.”
“I’m all ears.”
"One Sunday, my dad helped me build a treehouse in our backyard. I grew up outside Chicago, in a leafy suburb, with a big sycamore in the garden. Clapboard house with a cute name.”
She paused, swallowing.
“What was it called?”
“The house? Mulberries.” She sniffed. “My Dad was usually working weekends, but that day he stayed home. It felt… special. Like a secret between us. We spent the whole morning sawing, hammering, arguing about whether the ladder should be rope or wood. When we finished, it was all crooked and lopsided, but it stood. I climbed up there and told him it was Green Gables.”
Torres blinked. “I was going to say sweet,” Torres said. “But how comes it’s on the bottom of a drawer in a Manhattan crime scene? I mean, surely that’s just a coincidence, isn’t it, or…”
Kate looked at her. “I don’t… I can’t…”
Sensing she was about to break, Torres squeezed her arm. “Ok, ok, too many questions, honey. Take your time.”
At length, Kate found she could continue.
“It was more than sweet,” she said. “It was rare. My dad… he wasn’t around much.
He was a scientist, always at his lab. He worked on embryonic stem cell research — this was back when it was just starting to become controversial.
My mom used to call it his ‘holy crusade.’” She smiled faintly.
“They did argue about that. Constantly — the hours, the broken promises. She wanted him home more. I think I’d stopped expecting that by the time I was nine. ”
Torres didn’t interrupt. She just watched her, arms still folded, patient.
“That Sunday was different,” Kate continued. “We had lunch on the porch, the two of us. He told me he’d make a sign for the treehouse — carve it himself, paint the letters green. Green Gables. I waited all week for it. But it never came.”
Torres’s eyes softened. “He got busy again.”
Kate nodded. “Always. By Monday, he was back at the lab. I remember standing under that treehouse the next weekend, staring at the empty space above the door where the sign was supposed to hang. I knew then he’d never finish it.
He didn’t mean to disappoint me — he just couldn’t help himself.
Work was who he was. It wasn’t just something he did; it was how he existed in the world. ”
Torres hesitated, then asked quietly, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Kate’s face hardened, the faint smile vanishing. “He was shot. Thirteen years ago.”
Torres blinked. “Christ. I’m sorry.”
Kate nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on the mirror.
“We’d moved to Maine by then; my Dad always had to follow the funding…
” She blew her nose before continuing. “It was late — he was leaving a church in Portland; to this day, nobody knows what he was doing there. Someone came out of the parking lot shadows and shot him twice. Once in the chest, once in the neck. He was dead before the ambulance got there.”
Torres swore under her breath. “Jesus.”
“They never found the shooter,” Kate went on.
“A few months later, a man in Indiana confessed. A religious maniac, said God told him to do it — that my father was playing God, interfering with creation. But he’d confessed to other murders that he couldn’t have done.
They let him go and eventually the police stopped investigating.
I think they assumed it was just another lunatic with a savior complex.
Ironically, his victim had a savior complex too. ”
Torres rubbed the back of her neck. “And that was thirteen years ago.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “I was twenty-three, a year into my PhD.”
For a long moment neither spoke. The air seemed heavy with the smell of disinfectant and the low hum of the fluorescent lights.
Finally Torres said softly, “So when you saw Green Gables written on that drawer, it reminded you of him.”
Kate looked at her reflection — pale face, damp hair clinging to her temples. “That’s what I thought, at first. Just a memory. But that’s not it.”
“No?”
Kate shook her head. “Nobody knows about that treehouse. Nobody. Not Marcus, not my Mom… well, I guess my Dad could’ve told her, but if he did, she’s never mentioned it to me.
And we talk, you know? We drive each other crazy, but we talk.
Not about Green Gables, though. I haven’t even thought about it in years.
So how does it end up written under a murdered man’s desk drawer? How can anyone know that detail?”
Torres frowned. “Could someone from your past be involved? Maybe someone from the Bureau?”
“No,” Kate said. “It’s too specific. This isn’t in any record, not in my file, not anywhere. This was a private memory. Something that existed only between me and my father.”
Torres stared at her. “That’s… unsettling.”
“Unsettling?” Kate let out a brittle laugh. “It’s impossible. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he’s been there all along,” Kate said quietly. “The man who killed Brennan — maybe he’s not just a killer. Maybe he’s been watching me. Not just now, not just since the Commandment murders started. Maybe for years.”
Torres frowned. “The what murders?”
“Sorry. I tend to think everyone’s living it like I am.”
Kate explained the torturous events of the past year, beginning with the ritualized murder of a priest in a small Maine fishing town.
Cox's seeming obsession with her past, his notion of her as some sort of witness to his deeds.
Kate's last, mortal encounter with the man in the woodlands, the killer gravely sick but still possessed of an almost superhuman drive to survive, and inflict harm.
Torres listened carefully, professionally, and reactions were kept to the bare minimum.
When Kate had finished, her companion let out a long huff of air, the reaction of some who believed what they'd been told, but only just.
“That’s a lot to handle.” Torres shook her head, still half-incredulous. “And the guy behind it all… Cox? Now you think he’s been following you since you were a kid?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Kate said. “It sounds crazy. But it feels like he’s inside my life somehow. Inside my head. As if he’s been taking pieces of me, storing them away until he could use them.”
“That’s a hell of a theory,” Torres said, but her voice lacked conviction.
Kate looked at her. “It’s not even a theory.
It’s more a feeling — the kind you can’t shake.
I don’t even know for sure if Cox is still alive now.
He was seriously messed up the last time I saw him.
For all I know, he could have passed the mantle on to someone else, and he’s just sitting there, admiring the damage it causes.
Or he could even be dead. But he’s certainly in here.
” She jabbed her forehead with a knuckle.
Torres exhaled slowly. “That’s all… pretty spooky.”
“It’s worse than spooky,” Kate said. “It’s invasive. He’s not just killing people — he’s rewriting the story of my life, one memory at a time. If he knows about Green Gables, then what else?”
They stood there for a moment, the sound of the dripping tap filling the silence.
Finally Torres spoke. “I don’t pretend to understand how this guy’s mind works, but I know one thing — you’re not alone in this. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Marcus. Whoever’s doing this, we’re going to find him. And when we do, I promise you, we’ll make him talk.”
Kate turned toward her, startled by the steel in Torres’s voice.
“I mean it,” Torres said. “You said he’s been up inside your life? Fine. Then we’re going to drag him out of it. This bastard doesn’t get to live rent-free in your head.”
Kate let out a shaky breath. “That’s easier said than done.”
“Maybe,” Torres said. “But I’m good at difficult.”
Kate smiled faintly. “Thanks. Really.”
Torres shrugged, but there was warmth behind the gesture. “Don’t mention it. We all need someone in our corner. Even you big swingin’ dick Bureau types.”
Kate gave a small laugh. “You say the sweetest things.”
“I know,” Torres said. Then, more gently, “You okay to go back out there?”
Kate hesitated, glancing at her reflection one last time. “Give me a minute.”
Torres nodded. “Take as long as you need. I’ll keep Marcus off your back.”
“Appreciate it,” Kate said.
Torres started for the door, then paused. “For what it’s worth, Valentine… your dad sounds like he loved you. Even if he didn’t know how to show it.”
Kate’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “Yeah,” she said softly. “He did.”
Torres gave a small nod, then left. The door swung shut behind her, leaving Kate alone with the hum of the lights and the faint scent of soap.
She stood there for a long time, listening to the sound of her own breathing.
She thought about her father’s hands — the way they’d trembled slightly when he held a nail steady for her to hammer, the smell of sawdust clinging to his shirt.
She could still see him on that ladder, squinting up through the leaves, telling her to pass the next plank. She’d believed he could fix anything.
Now, years later, she wondered if he’d somehow seen this coming — not the murders, not the man who haunted her life, but the shape of her future. The way she’d end up chasing monsters, trying to make sense of them. Trying to understand.
She shut off the tap, dried her hands, and looked at herself again. Her reflection looked calmer now, but her eyes were still haunted.
“Green Gables,” she whispered under her breath. The words sounded foreign now, like an incantation that had outlived its meaning.
She turned toward the door, took a breath, and walked out.