Chapter 3 #3
“They’re that blatant about it?” Leroux asks. “Man, you’d think they would at least try to cover their own asses a bit.”
“Yeah, corruption is the loudest secret that no one here can keep.” Hart scoffs.
“But going back to Trudeau, it’s been a couple of weeks now, and I’m still in awe of how much that congregation adores him.
They fell right into line the second he opened his mouth.
It was like …” He pauses, trying to find the right words.
“Like a cult?” Leroux finishes for him.
“Like a cult,” Hart agrees. “It was the first time I’ve seen something like that up close. People just opening their brains up and allowing this guy to program their thoughts.”
Leroux scoffs. “The only personality I got from him was a smug asshole trying to playact as a soft-spoken man of God.” He thinks back to the few meetings he had with Trudeau.
The second they first locked eyes, they both knew the other one was faking any sincerity that happened to tumble out of his mouth.
They were like wolves, watching each other for the next attack.
“Listen,” Leroux says, sighing, “keep me in the loop. I’ll be meeting with Rose at Dead Creek Penitentiary tomorrow. I’m hoping he will fuck up and reveal something that helps us with Trudeau.”
“The Butcher himself, huh? I imagine he didn’t willingly put you on the visitor list.”
Leroux smirks to himself. “Oh, I filed enough paperwork to qualify as a contributor to deforestation. There’s no way I would let Muller go in there alone.”
“Whoa, Dr. Muller is going to be there?”
“Yeah. I honestly don’t know whether it’s the best idea I’ve ever had or the worst.”
Hart’s response is tinged with a bit of excitement. “You’ll have to let me know how that goes.”
Leroux hangs the phone up without a proper goodbye, instead choosing to let the conversation stay suspended in the air like smoke.
He slides the phone away, wanting to put distance between himself and the dirty department up north.
It skids across the desk, stopping when it collides with a rack of folders stacked in the corner.
The sound of a throat being cleared makes him look up to see Wren walking through his office door, as if she had been summoned by his conversation with Hart.
“You all right?” she asks, sliding into the chair across from him. Her auburn hair is knotted on top of her head; a few stray strands hang loosely in front of her ears. “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He can’t help but notice how tired she looks.
It’s the kind of tired that comes only from deep sorrow, the kind that slowly takes from you until there is nothing left.
She’s living through a death by a thousand paper cuts.
The deep circles under her glassy eyes tell the story of an overworked overachiever, but Leroux knows that grief has taken up residence in his friend, and it’s going to fight to stay there.
Luckily Wren has never allowed a predator to get the best of her before; she’ll fight.
Leroux scoffs, dragging the phone back toward him. “I wouldn’t give a shit about seeing a ghost.”
“A ghost with unpaid parking tickets, maybe?” she asks, a smirk spreading across her face.
He can’t help but chuckle, sitting up and rubbing his head with one hand. He hopes that if he rubs hard enough, the pressure will erase the chaos outside. Maybe if he rubs straight into his skull, everything will stop. “Just had a chat with Hart,” he says.
She straightens a bit, her interest piqued. “And?”
“Just more bullshit, but he’s staying on it.” He skirts around the complete truth, not wanting to pile more onto her plate before the meeting tomorrow.
He watches as she seems to deflate a bit.
Committing to the lie makes his stomach knot.
Despite her attempt to keep a stoic exterior, he can read the stress across her features.
He hears her knuckles crack and sees her teeth chewing at her lip.
She knows about Leroux’s suspicions, that another set of DNA was found at the crime scene of her husband’s murder.
He’s already wrapped in guilt for dragging her back into the rancid world of Jeremy Rose and doesn’t think the revelation of Trudeau’s AWOL status will do her any good.
But he can’t help but wonder if he’s being an asshole for keeping her at least partially in the dark.
Is he leaving her vulnerable by giving her only a taste of the information swirling around?
Bringing her into this visit with Rose seems like playing with fire, and now he can’t stop the nagging feeling that he’s sending her into the inferno without the protective gear she needs.
She has to come, though. Rose would refuse the visit without her.
Besides, Leroux is confident that Jeremy’s thirst for her will make him sloppy, possibly sloppy enough to reveal something he shouldn’t.
“Well, at least Hart seems to be trying to bring that department up to standard,” she says, pulling a paper clip apart and bending it backward with her fingers.
Leroux scoffs. “I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t think there’s hope for that kind of rot.”
“Valid point. It’s like the Titanic. Doomed,” she says.
“The well is poisoned,” he says, tapping on his keyboard to wake up his monitor.
“I’d come up with another analogy, but I wasn’t prepared.” She grins, teasing him. She and his husband, Andrew, always love to bully Leroux back to reality when he gets too tightly wound up about a case.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, shifting around in his seat. “About tomorrow.”
The look of amusement on her face morphs into an expression colored with anxiety. “I feel like I want to throw up.” She instinctively reaches for her wedding rings, touching them like a lifeline.
“You hold the power here, Muller—”
“I know. Maybe I can just throw up on him. You know, really show my power,” she says, a grin pulling at the edges of her mouth while her eyes betray her simmering unease.
He laughs, rubbing the bridge of his nose, a weary exhaustion beginning to settle in. “Well yeah, I think that would certainly make a lasting impression.”
“Honestly, I’m okay, John.” She lets herself relax back into the chair. “After losing Richard, it’s like nothing can hurt me anymore.”
The confession hits hard, forcing her underlying grief to the surface and laying it bare for him to see. His heart aches for her, and he can’t help but feel that familiar pang of guilt for urging her to dive headfirst into the nightmare again.
“We will get to the bottom of everything for him,” he says, letting a heavy silence fall over the room.
He watches her absentmindedly trace the contours of her rings again, a blanket of dread seemingly draped over her shoulders.
“Philip Trudeau had a hand in Richard’s murder, and we aren’t letting him get away with it.
If we play this right, Rose will spill something valuable to us.
He isn’t infallible. Not by a long shot. ”
He watches her for a moment, not knowing exactly how to make the risk feel worth it.
She’s disassociating, staring into a void only she can see.
His own gaze scans his desk, looking for a vessel and finding one in his old, stained coffee mug.
He grabs it, raising the mug in a toast, stale coffee sloshing around the bottom.
She looks up at him, shaking her head with a soft smile at the gesture. For a second she just stares at the mug, but then she holds a finger up. “Wait!” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a water tumbler, raising it to meet his.
“To Richard,” Leroux says, the weight of this meeting suddenly taking its toll, stirring up his own anxieties.
She clinks the bottle against his mug, flinching slightly at the sharp clang of stainless steel meeting porcelain. Her voice trembles only slightly as she quietly echoes, “To Richard.”