Chapter 36
Joss
“You should have told us sooner,” Officer Vega says, but he’s young. I bet he has no idea about my past or the history of this property. “We take vandalism very seriously here in Camden.”
Of course they do. We’re in the wealthy suburbs. It’s a boring area to be a cop, and they’d love to get more calls of any sort.
“I’m sorry,” I lie, swiping a tear of frustration away. I’m not scared, I’m pissed. I ignored Gabe, of course. Made the call about the vandalism, told them I was worried something serious was happening, and rushed down.
To find Gabe wearing bloodied gloves and carrying a wire kill trap in one hand, a trash bag with a dead animal inside it in the other.
There was only a half second of panic — but I can still feel that half second in my heart as I talk to the cop — before Gabe saw me and blurted out, “It was a possum, not Jerry.”
The lawn was covered in kill traps, at least a dozen of them, and although nothing else but that poor possum got caught up in them, Gabe had to assure me repeatedly that he saw Jerry in his little house under the new deck. The only reason he wasn’t still there was because Gabe ran him off the property so he didn’t have to keep an eye on Jerry while he disabled the traps.
It’s painstaking work. These things are brutal enough that he’s triggering them with a stick instead of risking his hands disarming them. I keep one eye on him as Vega takes my statement, but he’s being careful.
“How long would you say this has been going on?” Vega asks.
“That’s . . . a trickier question than it should be.” I laugh, but it does little to temper the statement.
“Why don’t you start in the beginning?”
“You new to Wilmington in the last six years?” I ask. “This house doesn’t have a great past. I don’t have a great past. So there was a good three, four years where this was a regular thing, not worth addressing. And then it stopped, and I thought it was over, but then there were some incidents this past fall.”
“What changed?”
I nod to Gabe. “We started dating. My picture got in the news. People remembered me. It was bad for a while, a few times a month. But then they stopped again in January. Until this.”
“Did anything change this time?”
I shake my head. It’s been a weird couple of months. “I got pregnant back in October, everyone knew by December. Gabe and I broke up in December, too. But it still happened a few more times. And then nothing for the last two months . . . until Gabe and I started seeing each other again.”
Officer Vega looks over at Gabe, diligently clearing the traps. His eyes narrow. “So this has only happened while Gabe was here?”
“Well, not here here. Sometimes he is, sometimes he’s—oh! Are you thinking Gabe is doing this? No. I mean, I know people are crazy, and trust me, I don’t take things lightly or ignore red flags. But he literally built a cubby for the raccoon that lives here. He would never put these traps out.”
I can tell Vega doesn’t agree with this argument, and I get it. He doesn’t know Gabe like I do. He didn’t spend two months trying to convince himself that Gabe is a bad guy based on one incredibly inappropriate decision he made that reflects something far more important. He’s looking at a woman who might be easily duped by a man who could be a run-of-the-mill sociopath who feigned a humanitarian streak to manipulate her into thinking it would be impossible for him to harm an animal.
But it doesn’t seem impossible to me that he would lie to me to get me pregnant, and it is impossible to me that he’d try to kill Jerry.
“And you have no security system to prove he didn’t leave your apartment while you were sleeping? No cameras out here?”
“I’m sorry. I swear, I was going to get one of those doorbell cameras, but then the vandal stopped and it slipped my mind.”
“And you?” Vega yells to Gabe. “Mr. Shaunessy? You didn’t see anything?”
The look Gabe gives me isn’t the one I’d expect right now. He’s gotten on my case numerous times about getting cameras, so this would be the perfect moment for him to look vindicated. But with the pregnancy, the threat on Jerry’s life, and everything else, I could really go for supportive right now and maybe save the told-you-so for a later date.
He’s looking oddly sheepish, though, as he says, “Well, not me personally, no.”
Vega raises an eyebrow. “Do you know someone who did?”
“Jerry did.” His phone buzzes in his hand, and he holds up a hand for patience as he answers it, putting it on speakerphone for us. “Jeff, buddy, tell me some good news.”
“I do, in fact, have good news. But good god, man, you could have warned me I was loading a snuff film.”
Gabe mutes the phone to explain, “He means the possum,” before unmuting and telling Jeff, “You got a good look at the vandal’s face?”
“Yeah, bitch got a close-up. Was taunting Jerry. I genuinely didn’t know a woman could have so much hatred for a raccoon minding its own business. I’m sending you the video, but do me a solid and go give the lens a scrub, would you? Jerry keeps smearing mayonnaise on it.”
I watch, stunned silent, as Gabe crouches under the deck in front of Jerry’s cubby and scrubs the little circle next to the door. This whole time, I thought it was a silly bit of decoration, a pretend doorbell.
It’s a camera.
“Dammit, Gabe, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Love you, ma’am!”
I shake my head and make a mental note to start plotting to deliberately do stuff behind his back.
More stuff than what I have planned tonight.
This is just our lives, I guess.
He messes around on his phone as he walks back to us, his gaze stuck on his screen. The way he holds it indicates that he’s watching the video Jeff said he was sending him. “If this makes you feel at all better, the feed is going straight to Jeff, and he’s promised not to watch them unless we ask for a specific clip. It’s for your safety. I figured you’d eventually remember to get a camera installed, and in the meantime, this would be for emergencies.”
Officer Vega nods like this isn’t a dick move, and I have to remind myself that Gabe’s a big bear sort of guy who really is just trying to look out for me. Also, I’ve been hoping he likes surprise parties, but now I’m kind of hoping he doesn’t.
“Whatcha looking at me like that for?” Gabe asks.
I shrug.
He shifts uncomfortably, like he thinks he’s sleeping in the raccoon house tonight. “Look here, wanna see how cute Jerry was taking home half a ham sand—ohhh, shit.”
Officer Vega and I both flank him to see what he’s seeing, and we all watch together as the vandal approaches the house with an apple core, one of Jerry’s favorite treats. So although it’s devastating, it’s not entirely surprising that it’s Rachel with the apple core.
I keep watching, hoping that this is just terrible timing and she was bringing Jerry a late-night snack and leaving, barely missing the vandal, but then she says, “You want this trash, you little shit?”
Jeff was right. That’s the nicest thing she says to him before he makes a grab for it and she snatches it away and tells him she’s going to leave it on a trap for him. I watch in horror as she sprays the lawn and sets up the ring of traps, placing the apple core on the one closest to him.
“I don’t understand,” I say voicelessly as she disappears from the screen.
“Do you know this lady?” Officer Vega asks.
“Rachel Graves. She’s one of my students.”
“And vice president of my fan club,” Gabe adds grimly.
My eyes are still riveted to the screen, but thankfully, Gabe is protective to a fault, and once the possum ambles into the frame, he presses the phone against his chest.
“They’re the single biggest preventers of Lyme Disease,” I tell him. “That poor guy didn’t deserve—oh hey, are you okay?” I ask when I notice Gabe’s cheeks are red, his knuckles white.
He puts his arms around me, pinning me against him, covering me as much as he can. “This is my fault. It never had anything to do with you. That’s why she only bothered you when she knew we were together. Dammit!”
Vega hands me a card and starts taking pictures of the spray paint. “I’ll need that video sent to me. I need the source though. The dates of the other incidents, if you know them. Any evidence. Did you take photos?”
I guess we should have waited to clear those traps until photos could be taken, but Gabe did the right thing choosing the safety of any animal that might happen through the yard. When I first saw the traps, I thought how lucky it was they chose to do this on a Sunday when Rose and Iris were at a convention so they wouldn’t see it. Now it all makes sense.
“I did,” Gabe tells him. “The one I was here for. I bet other people did too. We’ll reach out to everyone who was around those days, give you anything we can.”
“Rachel actually helped me clean her mess up,” I grumble. “Twice.”
Vega perks up at that. “Has she always come by the next day?”
“Most of the time. It didn’t click until now, but yeah.”
“You two, sit tight for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
He jogs around to the front of the house, and we watch as he gets in his patrol car and drives off, only to come back on foot a few minutes later. His instincts are right, and it’s only fifteen minutes of the three of us hanging out on the deck, sipping coffee while Gabe signs some Jugs merch for Vega, when Rachel appears below us with a story about dropping off cookies.