Chapter Thirty
Rheda
Something cold skims under my ribs.
It shouldn’t feel like this.
It’s just glass, but it doesn’t behave like it.
It sits there, heavy and unmoving, like something has been placed over the room behind it rather than the lights simply turned off.
“You will have no engagement with him today,” Peter says to Mike.
Then his eyes flick to me. “Just observe his vitals.”
He reaches for his jacket. The movement is reluctant, like he’s not fully convinced he should be leaving.
“I’ll only be gone a few hours,” he says. “If anything changes, you call me.”
Mike nods. “Yeah. We’ve got it.”
Peter hesitates. His mouth opens slightly, then closes again. He drags a hand down his face, trying to force something sharper back into place.
“Alright,” he mutters. “See you in the morning. Sean, be back in at five.”
Sean hums his approval. He busies himself tidying up—stacking paper cups, cramming empty biscuit wrappers into one another. The soft shuffling noise irritates me more than I care to admit.
The door shuts behind Peter and Sean.
Mike moves around behind me, pulling out a chair and dropping into it with a low exhale. He clicks through the monitors, bringing up vitals, the steady rhythm of data.
A soft chime follows.
“There we go,” he murmurs. “We’ll get alerts if anything shifts. No point staring at it the whole time.”
I don’t respond because I am staring at the glass.
The longer I look, the worse it gets. My eyes keep trying to find something to settle on, something to interpret as shape or movement, but there’s nothing to catch. Just that same heavy, uninterrupted black. It presses back like it knows I’m looking.
I shift in my seat.
“I knew that this was going to be dull,” Mike says. He reaches down into his bag, hand moving to find something. He pulls out a small book. “I brought entertainment. Do you mind if I read?”
“Go for it.”
He props his feet up before I even finish my sentence, body reclined immediately. His ankles hook over the other. “Thanks.”
The cover catches my eye first. It’s pale, faded, a kind of washed out colour with a circle in the middle. It’s so faint that it almost disappears when I blink. The title sits small and neat across the centre: you were always a part of this.
Mike turns another page. I risk another glimpse at the book, and he notices. He looks up at me and smiles. “Have you read this one before?”
I shake my head. “What’s it about?”
He unhooks his ankles and leans forward.
“It’s a horror story about a little girl who goes crazy and murders a whole town.” His eyes seem to light up. “It’s brilliant. You have to read it.”
I grimace. “I don’t read horror.”
This earns me a lopsided grin.
“Let me guess, you get enough at work, right?” He taps his temple. “That’s the beauty of it. I always see it coming.”
He laughs. “If nothing else, it at least helps the time go by quicker here. Although, I must admit, it does make me a little jumpy.”
“I bet,” I smile.
Mike glances past me, toward the reinforced door, then back down at the book. He doesn’t turn the page this time.
“Though it’s funny what sticks with you on cases like this.” His thumb rubs the edge of the page. “Some scenes...they just don’t leave you. You know? Kind of like reading about it, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs as though pushing the heaviness of the topic away. “It’s nothing major; it just sticks in my mind. That’s all.”
“What does?”
He gestures toward the filing cabinet. “You know, the crime scene pictures. I can’t seem to forget how much blood there was.”
He points toward the cabinets on the far side of the wall.
I blink. “You’ve seen them?”
His face drops. “You haven’t?”
“No.” Cold moves through me so quickly it feels invasive. “When?”
“Monday.”
I swallow hard.
Monday. Three days ago. I’ve seen Peter plenty of times since then. Hell, I even had a whole shift alone with him. But...nothing.
Mike realises somethings wrong.
“Oh, Rheda, shit,” he snaps forward, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise that you hadn’t seen them.”
His hand reaches out to touch my arm but I pull back sharply.
“It’s fine.” I say, but my tone deceives me.
“There’s probably a reason. Wasn’t that the day you overslept? Yeah. It could have been,” he speaks quickly. “Peter probably just forgot to show you. That’s all.”
I wish I could believe what he’s saying, but the dull, bitter part inside of me screams the betrayal.
He’s withholding information from me.
I stare at him. “What did the pictures show?”
He swallows hard.
“Blood.” He says quietly. “Lots of it. More than should’ve been possible. He made sure it was everywhere. Floor. Ceiling. Walls.”
I feel dizzy.
I smooth my expression as best as I can. “Where did it happen?”
His shoulders jump up in a shrug. “Some type of basement, I think. He must have built it for the purpose of killing.”
I wipe my palms against my trousers. My head moves slowly.
“Anything else I should know?”
His lips purse tightly.
“Tell me.” I press.
“It’s...grim.”
I lean forward. “I can handle it.”
His lips open, and then shut again, eyes falling closed for a beat too long as he turns over the decision in his mind. Just as I think he’s going to refuse, he looks at me again.
“He...violated the victims’ hearts.”
The world stills. “He what?”
His cheeks redden.
“He... violated a heart?” I echo. “What does that even mean?”
Mike swallows hard. There’s a pause before he lifts his hand slightly and juts his finger down at his crotch.
My eyes widen. “He had sex with their hearts?”
“Yes.” He says breathlessly.
Sexual sadism. The word flashes across my mind like a headline. Psychosexual deviation.
My fingers curl around the pen, too hard.
“I’m sure Peter just forgot.” Mike repeats quietly.
My thoughts sour.
Forgot to tell the Doctor but remembered to show the guards.
Not likely.
“You don’t want to see those pictures anyway,” he says, his eyes finding mine. His cheeks lose their colour. “I can’t get them out of my head.”
My eyes snag briefly on the filing cabinets lining the wall and my stomach tightens immediately.
I should look away. Something colder settles inside of me instead because suddenly I realise I need to see them properly. All of it. Every photograph. Every detail.
I need to know what things a man can do...and yet sit still beneath interview lights looking untouched by them.