41. Forever & Always #2
I recite her phone number, staring blankly as Brady shakily jots it down while someone else urges Braylon to cool down elsewhere.
He doesn’t go easily. “Her father trusted you! He fucking took you in!”
Yes, he trusted me, and I took care of her, took care of her better than anyone could. I assure myself, only I know what Audrey needs.
“Braylon, take a walk!”
After that, the monotony of the booking stays consistent throughout.
Mrs. Maybelle smacking her gum as my handcuffs are removed, allowing me to unload my pockets.
The mostly forgotten pager falls to the small plastic box with little fanfare deserving of such an attentive crowd.
It’s hard to enjoy it; it’s a big day for me, and all I can do is log the weak spots in my mind.
Wondering how hard they’ll make it to get back to my sweet Audrey.
Assuring myself, something I’ve never needed before, that if I’m quick…
smart… it won’t be hard. The thought of her, scared and alone, worried for me, is equal parts titillating and wrenching.
The buzzing is loud as they fumble the camera for my mugshot, fucking up the exposure the first time.
I could bolt now. My body is deceptively loose, unhurried as they direct me to turn to my side, the flash blinding.
I wouldn’t get far, but Brady… he could be helpful soon.
I don’t know what the rookie did to get on the sheriff’s bad side, assuming he has a good one.
It’s clear this is a punishment for the newly minted cop, judging by the disapproving satisfaction of the other officers hanging around.
Raised voices barrel from the back of the station, where the sheriff's office lies. Altman’s forced southern twang nearly drowned out by the older man as they enthusiastically compare dick sizes.
“Do you think I did it?” I ask simply. Nobody has said what I was arrested for, but we know. Although what murder specifically they’re using to press the charges, I’m sure Altman will inform me of shortly.
He ignores the question, the officer at my back shoving me into a metal chair while Brady readies his fingerprint paper and inkpad. “Hand.”
I should be standing upright for this. My hands should be washed and dried with a non-porous towel.
They do none of these things. I stretch my hand across the desk.
His paper is flipped; all the fingerprints will be upside down on his sheet.
My jaw clenches as he grips my hand, pressing straight down into the pad.
When he lifts it, I wait, grinding my teeth just as he’s about to place my finger on the paper.
“Rotate it,” I snap, making a show of my annoyance.
Brady flinches, smearing the print across the paper.
“You rotate it on the pad, Officer Harrington. Like this.” I mimic the proper motion.
“Shut up,” the cop behind me hisses. “I’ll go get a wet paper towel.” He shoots us with a glare. “Don’t move.”
“I could help you. Tell you how before he gets back,” I offer simply.
“N—"
I cut him off. “It’d be unfortunate to piss off the sheriff even more with Altman around.”
His gray-blue eyes flick up to me before he drags out another sheet of paper. “Show me the motion again.”
“Of course.”
As much as I loathe to admit it, the stale, cramped holding cell has its desired effect.
Hours pass slowly as I pace, worried about Audrey, Altman biding his time, waiting me out.
The only light, aside from the harsh fluorescents coming in from the hall, is from a window across the way.
It’s a big, old-style sunroom window. The ones with the twisting crank knobs that open in wide slots horizontally.
A thoughtful yet unwise design choice for a police station.
It wasn’t often I went to the homes of my victims, but I had done it once or twice.
It’s little things like this, the presence of failed puppet number six’s sunroom windows, that make me second-guess if Audrey was onto something when she declared at seventeen that everything is outlined by the universe.
That everything we’ve ever done or would ever do is already drawn out before us.
By the time Brady returns, guiding me silently toward the opposite end of the station, Altman is already waiting, his binder pressed under his arm just the way my puppet described when he ambushed her in front of the alterations shop.
It’s a shame I won’t have an opportunity to hurt him.
Not the way he has me, by hurting her. He smirks, his aftershave overwhelming and unpleasant in the stuffy room, his mustache tilting as he gestures for me to sit across from him.
I do, knowing how much this means to him, how hard he’s worked for the past few years, making my life a living hell.
How he suspected.
How he was right.
There’ll be another press conference. He’ll make his statements, take his credit, go home with a full dick to a wife who stopped caring years ago.
He’ll probably even call his daughter, if she bothers to pick up with her busy English Lit schedule.
He’ll feel safe knowing I’m no longer a threat.
I smirk back, not hiding, not masking, like my dad taught me.
I let him see me as I am, absolutely thrilled by the aspect that the world is filled with sick, unright fucks like myself.
That safety is an ignorantly willful state of mind and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of monsters waiting to take my place in the headlines.
This victory will be brief and fleeting because I may be gone, but I will never be far from his mind.
“You gonna talk, Bell?”
“About what?”
“Where is Jessica Jordan?”
I pause, making a show of thinking for a moment. “Couldn’t say.”
“Was she one of the girls, or did you do her like you did her brother because she was close to Audrey?”
Her name in his mouth makes the buzzing louder. Distracting even. My need for her pulsing harder than the beat of my heart. I need to make it there. Make it home, hold her.
“Bell!”
I look up, finding his face disturbed, wondering how long I’d been out of it.
“Where is Jessica Jordan? We have you on that last victim. The others are being exhausted now.” He slams his binder down between us, flipping it open to a page containing some court document I barely glance at.
“Faked autopsy reports, washed away the evidence, running off interns. The witnesses. We’ve fucking got you. ”
I don’t respond.
“Bryan Johnson was clever. You could’ve gotten away with that one until I saw what you did to him. Just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You get off on that, huh?
I give him a withering glance.
He knows it wasn’t about that.
It never was, despite his taunting in that press conference.
“Why Gideon? Why not just come home if you needed her that badly?”
That gets my attention.
“You love her. Why not just come get her? Why hurt all these other women for your next-door neighbor? I didn’t get it at first. Hell, it almost made me second-guess my gut there for a while.
Until I saw her, and she was the spitting image of them.
The way you held her, orbited her, watched her…
I knew. I knew it was about her. For her, even. Did she tell you to do it?”
“Of course not.”
He pauses, not having expected a response. Me not having fully expected to give one either.
“It was your mama, right? She’s the one who started it, that threw me for a loop too.
She’d hung herself, but it wasn’t the rope that got her.
It was the fall from the banister. Her head hit the ground, but in the pictures,” he flips open his binder and there she is, Abigail Bell’s pitiful, crumbled body in the foyer that looks no different than it did today.
I don’t bother to fake a reaction, just staring dispassionately at the photo, already knowing what he’s going to point out.
“There’s no blood under her head. A wound like that? There’d be blood and a lot of it.”
There was, I quip internally. In the woods, on me, the dirt, the steps, the porch. Pain in the ass getting blood out of porous wood. I’d wager she’s still in there, soaked in really deep like her misery soaked into every fucking thing she touched.
“Did your dad know?”
I consider staying quiet, keeping up the uninterested, stoic thing, but the point is moot.
He’s got me; we both know that. This is a waiting game now, and I’m just killing time.
So I lie, a last kindness delivered brutally to the man who raised me.
“My father was an idiot. Very eager to write off his depressed wife after she hung herself. A good enough excuse to get out from under the family business he always hated.”
He buys it easily enough, nodding along as if it all makes perfect sense.
He starts flicking through his binder, letting me watch my career, my every move.
His entire case flicks before my eyes, shoving my face into it like a dog that pissed in the house.
Pictures of me outside my house in Piedmont, at the hardware store, an impressive witness sketch.
He’s had me for a while. Weeks? No months.
I smirk, no longer interested in watching him display all his files. “You knew I would kill her.”
“Who?”