CHAPTER TWO
Kate heard the bathwater running upstairs, followed by Michael's delighted squeals as Allen convinced him it was time to get clean.
The evening routine had become Allen's domain over the past few months, giving Kate a quiet hour to herself.
She appreciated the time, even if she sometimes felt guilty about not being more involved in the nightly process.
She settled into the chair in their home office, a converted guest room that had slowly accumulated filing cabinets and bookshelves over the years.
Her laptop sat open on the desk, the screen showing a document titled simply "Notes - Early Cases.
" A cup of chamomile tea steamed gently on a coaster to her right, and she'd queued up a playlist of Bach concertos that played at low volume from the small speaker near the window.
The memoir project had started with good intentions but remained frustratingly amorphous.
Kate had imagined it would be straightforward, organizing her career chronologically and filling in the details as she went.
At first, she'd thought it seemed a little pretentious, but DeMarco had convinced her otherwise, stating it could be a valuable resource for younger agents.
Since then. Kate had found herself working in scattered bursts, writing down whatever memories surfaced rather than following any particular structure.
Some nights she'd add detailed notes about a specific case.
Others, she'd just jot down names of partners she'd worked with or cities where investigations had taken her.
The document had become a collection of fragments—moments captured before they slipped away entirely, with no real narrative connecting them yet.
Kate stared at the cursor blinking on the screen. She'd typed a single sentence an hour ago: "The Harriman case was the first time I started to get a better grasp on what true evil looked like." The sentence sat there, inadequate and melodramatic, capturing nothing of what had actually happened.
James Harriman had been a middle school teacher in a suburb outside Pittsburgh.
Respected, well-liked, involved in his community.
He'd coached youth soccer and volunteered at the local food bank.
When Kate and her partner had first interviewed him as part of a routine investigation into missing children in the area, he'd been cooperative and seemingly genuine in his concern.
He'd even provided them with names of students who might have information about one of the missing girls.
It wasn't until three weeks later, when they'd finally obtained a warrant to search his property, that they'd discovered what he really was.
The basement had been converted into something that still made Kate's stomach turn when she thought about it.
Four children had been held there at various times over the course of eighteen months. Only two had survived.
Kate took a sip of her tea, trying to use the warmth to settle the cold feeling that had spread through her chest. She'd interviewed hundreds of criminals over the course of her career, seen crime scenes that would stay with her forever, but Harriman had been different.
He'd looked at her during the interrogation with complete calm, explaining his actions as if he were discussing a hobby rather than confessing to atrocities.
There had been no remorse, no recognition that what he'd done was wrong.
Just a practical discussion of logistics and opportunities.
Kate had only been twenty-eight years old, still new enough to the Bureau that she thought she could compartmentalize everything, keep the work separate from who she was as a person.
The Harriman case had shown her that separation was impossible.
Some cases got inside you and stayed there, changing how you saw the world.
The cursor kept blinking. Kate hadn't added anything to the single sentence.
How could she write about this? How could she explain what it felt like to stand in that basement, seeing the evidence of what had happened there, and then sit across from Harriman while he described it all with the emotional investment of someone recounting their morning commute?
She saved the document without adding anything else. Maybe this was a chapter she couldn't write, at least not yet. Maybe some memories needed to stay in the past, acknowledged but not examined too closely.
She could hear Allen reading to Michael upstairs, his voice carrying through the ceiling in the rhythmic cadence of a bedtime story.
The Bach concerto had ended, and the playlist had moved on to something by Vivaldi.
Kate closed her laptop and picked up her tea, cradling the warm cup between her hands.
The project had seemed like a good idea when she'd started it.
A way to preserve important experiences, to make sense of a career that had defined most of her adult life.
But now she wondered if she was making a mistake.
Dredging up these old cases meant reliving them, feeling again what she'd felt the first time.
The fear, the anger, the helplessness of arriving too late or missing crucial details until it was almost too late.
She'd survived her career by learning to move forward, to close one case and open the next without dwelling too much on what she couldn't change.
Writing a memoir meant doing the opposite, sitting with those memories and forcing herself to examine them in detail.
Kate wasn't sure she had the emotional stamina for that kind of excavation.
By the time Allen came downstairs, Kate had finished her tea and was staring at the dark window, seeing her own reflection in the glass. He appeared in the doorway, looking tired but content.
"Michael's out," he said. "Barely made it through three pages before his eyes closed."
"Good." Kate stood and stretched, feeling the stiffness in her shoulders from sitting too long. "How was bath time?"
"Splashy. I think more water ended up on me than on him." Allen smiled and gestured toward the laptop. "Making progress?"
"Not really. Just adding some notes. I may not have the writing gene in me."
“Eh, you’ll figure it out.”
They headed upstairs together, moving through the familiar motions of getting ready for bed. Kate changed into pajamas while Allen checked that all the doors were locked. They met in the bedroom, where Kate had already turned down the covers and set her book on the nightstand.
Allen climbed into bed first, settling against the pillows with his own book, a thriller he'd been working through for the past week.
Kate got in beside him and picked up her novel, a mystery she'd started three days ago and was already halfway through.
Reading before bed had become their routine, a quiet half hour together before turning off the lights.
But tonight Kate found herself reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing any of it. The words on the page kept blurring, her attention drifting back to the document she'd left open on her laptop downstairs. That single sentence sitting there, incomplete and insufficient.
She turned a page without really seeing it, her eyes moving across the text but her mind elsewhere.
The Harriman case wasn't even one of the worst she'd worked.
There had been others, cases with higher body counts or more elaborate crimes.
But it had been the first, the one that had cracked open her understanding of what human beings were capable of doing to each other.
She tried to return to her book, managing a few more pages before her concentration gave out completely. Beside her, Allen had already set his book aside and was starting to drift off, his breathing growing slower and more regular.
Kate closed her book and turned off her bedside lamp, settling into the darkness.
But sleep felt distant, her thoughts still circling around the question she'd been avoiding all evening.
Was this memoir project a mistake? Was she opening doors that should stay closed, inviting old nightmares back into her life when she'd finally found some peace?
She didn't have an answer. Not tonight, anyway. Kate closed her eyes and listened to Allen breathing beside her, using the sound as an anchor against the memories that wanted to surface. Eventually, she drifted into an uneasy sleep with thoughts about tomorrow’s meeting with DeMarco on her mind.