Chapter 18
The pizza arrived at seven forty-three.
Haven paid before Marcus could get his wallet out, which wasn't an issue; she was just faster.
He'd brought the beer. A six-pack of something local he'd picked up on the way over, which meant he'd stopped somewhere between the precinct and her apartment and thought about what she drank, which she noted and thought was sweet.
She put the pizza on the kitchen table and moved the files to the counter. Not away. Just to the side. There was a version of tonight that was all work and no food, and they'd both done that version multiple times already. This one was going to have food first.
“Plates or straight from the box?” she said.
“Box,” he said.
“Right answer.”
They ate standing at the counter the way they'd eaten Chinese standing over the map because sitting down still felt like giving up momentum, and neither of them was built for it.
The pizza was from the place on Fatherland Street that had been there since 1987 and had no interest in updating its decor or its recipe, and they were correct not to change on both counts.
She'd been ordering from them since she’d moved to East Nashville.
She watched Marcus eat a slice and a half before he said anything, which she appreciated.
People who talked through food were people with poor prioritization skills.
She opened two beers and set one in front of him.
“The photos,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She'd printed them before she’d left the precinct.
Four headshots from the personnel files, professional photographs.
The kind companies kept on file for credentialing purposes.
All four pictures were clear and reasonably current.
She'd put them in a folder and carried the folder home in her bag. She’d not looked at them since.
She got it off the counter where she’d put her bag and then put the folder on the table between them.
They sat down, and Marcus pulled the folder to him. “Are you ready for this?”
She shrugged and admitted, “I saw them briefly when they came off the printer.” She nodded. “I’m ready.”
Four faces. Four men. Different ages, different features, different everything except the basic professional sameness of a credentialing photo. Neutral expression. Neutral background. The blankness of a face standing for a badging system photo.
She looked at the first one.
Her brain did what it always did. Noted everything about it.
Assessed it. Ran it against what she had.
Average height, lean, brown hair, pale eyes, forgettable.
The specific kind of face that didn't give you anything to hold onto.
That was what she'd told Marcus in her apartment weeks ago, and it was what she'd told every subsequent interviewer.
It was what she had, which was not enough, and she knew it.
The first photo. Dark hair, heavier build. Wrong.
“No,” she said. “Not him.”
Marcus moved it aside.
The second photo. Lighter build. The right general age range.
She looked at it for a long time. Picked it up.
The eyes were dark brown. She was less certain about the eyes than anything else from that morning.
The light had been wrong, and she'd been running on sixty percent function due to the whack on the head, but she was certain about pale. Gray or blue. Not brown.
“Maybe,” she said. “The build is right. The eyes aren't.”
“Eye color can be hard to confirm from a credentialing photo,” Marcus said. “The lighting flattens them.”
“I know. Still, his are too dark … but the build is right.” She set it to the side. Not eliminated, a maybe.
The third photo.
When she picked it up, something shifted in her chest. Not recognition.
Not the clean certainty of That's him that she'd been waiting for since the first time someone put a photo array in front of her.
Something smaller and less useful. A maybe that had more weight than the first maybe.
Average features. Lighter hair. She couldn't see the eye color clearly in the photo, but they weren't dark.
She held it.
“This one,” she said.
Marcus was very still beside her.
“I'm not certain,” she said immediately and glanced over to him. “I want to be clear about that. I’m not certain. But something about the—” She stopped.
Tried to find the word for what her brain was doing.
“The proportions. The way his face is arranged.
There's nothing specific I can point to.
It's not the eyes or the nose or the jaw.
It's just”—she set the photo down—“something.”
“That's not nothing,” Marcus said.
She sighed and dropped her head to her hands, rubbing her forehead. “It's not enough either.”
“No. But it's not nothing.”
She looked at the fourth photo. Older than the others, closer to fifty. Wrong age range. She set it aside without ceremony.
Two maybes, one eliminated for age and the other for build.
One maybe with less weight than the other.
Nothing she could take into a room and call an identification.
Nothing that would hold up. Nothing that would give Marcus what he needed or give a prosecutor what they needed or give the women on the murder board what they deserved.
She closed the folder.
* * *
The pizza went cold. Neither of them moved to reheat it.
Haven had her beer in both hands and was looking at the folder on the table. The kitchen was quiet. Outside, East Nashville was existing at a medium hum that she'd stopped hearing years ago, but tonight, she heard it. Tonight, everything felt louder than it should.
“It's not enough,” she said. Not to him specifically, just to the room.
“Not yet,” Marcus said.
“I saw him.” She set the beer down. “I was right there.
Less than a second, I know, and the light was wrong, and I had a head injury, but I was right there, and I looked right at him, and I can't—” She stopped.
“I can't give you anything useful. I've been trying to give you something useful for weeks, and what I have is pale eyes and forgettable features and two maybes that aren’t even close to being certain.”
“Haven.”
“I know what you're going to say.”
“What am I going to say?”
“That it's not my fault. That I did everything right. That the conditions were impossible, and nobody could’ve done better.” She looked at him. “And you'd be right. And it still doesn't help those women.”
Marcus was quiet for a moment. He turned his beer in a slow circle. She'd seen him do that when he was deciding something.
“You want to know what haunts me?” he said.
She waited.
“Every murder on that board happened while I was working this job. I was working other cases, I was building other profiles, I was doing my job.” He looked at the folder.
“The pattern was there for anyone who looked at it the right way.
Nobody did. Hell, I didn't until Grandpa Frank asked me to look.” He paused.
“Seven women were already dead before I started counting.”
They were quiet for a while.
“It haunts me,” Haven said quietly. “That he's out there right now.
That we have four names, and he's somewhere on his route doing his job. He’s sleeping fine, and we can't touch him yet.” She looked at her hands on the table.
Her nails. French manicure, the same routine she'd had for years.
She'd thought about stopping the indulgence after the attack, but she hadn't.
She wasn't going to let him take that from her, too.
“I run the attack in my head. All the time.
Not the whole thing. Just the part where I turned and found nothing.
Where my brain said it's fine, and I believed it for a couple of seconds.” She looked up.
“Why did I believe that? Why did my mind even think that?”
“You heard him,” Marcus said. “You turned. You fought. You screamed for help. You survived.”
“I know.”
“No one else did.”
“I know that, too.” She was quiet for a moment.
“I haven't run since.” She looked out the window.
“I'm going to get a treadmill. Or a gym membership. Something with walls and lights and other people.” She said it plainly, without drama, the way she said things she'd already made peace with.
“I'm not going back on a trail. Not until this is done. Maybe not after.”
“That's not giving up.”
“No,” she agreed. “It's not.”
“It's being smart.”
“It's being honest.” She picked up her beer.
“I'm not afraid of him. I want to be clear about that.
I'm pissed. There's a difference. But I'm also a cop, and I know what he is, and I know what he's capable of, and I'm not going to pretend that running alone in the dark is the same thing it used to be.” She paused.
“It's not the same thing it used to be.”
Marcus set his beer down, stood up, and offered her his hand.
When she took it, he pulled her up, leading her into the front room.
Sitting on the couch, he pulled her down beside him, and his arm went over her shoulders.
The warmth and comfort of the move made her feel vulnerable, and it felt so … right.
“I can't stand the thought of him coming for you again,” he said. It came out level. The voice he used for things that mattered. She glanced up at him.
“He's not finished with me,” she said. “We both know that.” She couldn’t help the full-body shiver.
The knowledge that she was still a target had always been present.
She’d just never admitted it … out loud or to another person.
But she felt safe telling that secret to the one who pressed her against his chest.
She lay her head on his shoulder as he whispered, “I know.”
She’d opened that door now and let her fears out. “He can't leave it unresolved. That's what Wheeler said. That's what the profile says. The job he wanted to do on me is incomplete.” She paused. “He'll come back to Nashville eventually. He'll try for me again.”
Marcus’s arm tightened a bit. “Not if we find him first.”