I shudder. Usually the way Andrew sounds so sure makes me feel comforted, but this . . . isn’t. “I don’t know how I could know anything the police don’t.”
“You talked to Sterling.”
“A lot of people talked to her.” Meeting Teresa’s mother was painful. She wasn’t cold, but she had reached the point of self-delusion. It was embarrassing to watch. She’d claimed that her daughter was dating a “criminal element,” and he was obviously convincing her daughter to stay hidden. On some level, Sterling Morris was certain that her daughter wasn’t the victim of a serial killer—and her parting shot that I looked like his type, too, made me hate her more than pity her.
A folder with photos of another body is under my hand. I tap it. Opening it without warning is not kind to do to people who are not in the business of dead bodies. “Ana Mendoza died at least three months ago.”
Andrew gestures to the file. “What do you know?”
I open it. The photos aren’t the best, but they still show more details than I’d like. Ana suffered. It wasn’t only the tattoo that made clear that she was one of the Carolina Creeper’s victims. She had bruises in varying states of healing and internal scarring where no woman should ever have scars.
“She was definitely one of his.” I don’t share all of the pictures, but I point at the tattoo and the bruises on her arms. I point out a stab wound that is visible without showing her private areas. I do my best to respect the dead’s right to modesty.
“He hurt her,” Andrew says. It’s a question as much as it’s not. He might not care about the dead women in the same way I do, but he’s squeamish about how they’ve been hurt.
I think of the autopsy notes. “Hurt” isn’t enough of a word for what had been done to Ana. The M.E. could tell that she had sustained injuries for weeks. Not all of the women had revealed as many details, but Ana was found before all of the evidence was gone.
The door to the coffee shop opens, and Henry walks in. It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, and it’s not just because the shop is near the police building. The reality of having a protective detail is that someone always knows where I am.
It’s not like vanishing in the age of technology is easy. Most people are a text or call away twenty-four hours a day. There’s still the illusion that we can ignore those calls, that we can escape the world for even a few moments. It is an illusion all the same. I always check my messages. In my job, I have to.
I have accepted that reality, but looking at messages isn’t the same as having my location be traceable at all times. Everything in me tenses at the admission to myself that until the killer is caught or I am dead, I will be a person who can be found in an instant.
My hate for the Creeper grows.
But he is not here to face my temper, and Henry is.
Andrew tenses as Henry approaches. “Revill.”
Henry nods, but he doesn’t speak to Andrew. Whatever politeness they sometimes manage is absent today.
There are only two reasons that Henry would approach me when I’m with Andrew. Whenever he’s seen Andrew with me in public in the past, he's simply nodded and kept moving. Today he approached, and that means this is either about a case—or my safety. “Is there a call?”
“No.” Henry meets my gaze in that way that says he realized most of what I was thinking. “No calls.”
I take a breath, let it out, and try to force a smile to my lips.
I want Henry, the whole department really, to let me have the illusion of privacy. “Do we need to do this?”
“You know that answer.” Henry’s voice, a deep weighty thing at the best of times, makes his words feel ominous.
Arguing with Henry in front of Andrew—or with Andrew in front of Henry—is on my list of things not to do. Ever. I can pretend their discord is simply that they don’t like one another, and undoubtedly, that’s part of it. So is jealousy. I’m not sure whose jealousy, and I’m not fool enough to ask. All I know for sure is that they both care for me. Beyond that, I’m not opening the discussion with either man.
“Jacobs has to go over to court, so I’m around this afternoon.” Henry shrugs like it’s not a big deal, but he should be off duty today.
I doubt Andrew knows that, though, so I don’t mention it. “So . . .?”
“So, I thought if you wanted to go over those files of yours this afternoon, we can put in a few hours.” Henry glances at the folder that Andrew had closed at his approach. “Maybe I’ll see something you missed.”
“Andrew?” I reach out for the file. “I need to head home anyhow, and there’s no sense in you driving and Henry following us.”
Andrew gives me the same false smile he had earlier when I asked about his black eye. “You know I don’t mind.”
“I’ll see you . . . tomorrow . . . though?”
With a wry twist to his lips that feels like an invitation to argue, Andrew stares at me, and then at Henry, and then stands. “Sure.”
Despite Henry watching us with undisguised curiosity, I grab Andrew’s hand. “Henry? I’ll meet you at your car.”
Both men pause. Andrew’s smile evolves into something closer to genuine, and Henry gives me the same implacable look he reserves for any time he disapproves but doesn’t want to say that. I ignore all of it and gather my things.
“I’ll be out front,” Henry says as he leaves.
Once the shop door closes behind him, I step closer to Andrew. “I hate this.”
“Move in with me. Let me guard over you. Shelter you.”
I close my eyes and lean my head against his chest. “I don’t want to fight with you. Not about this or whatever you’re hiding or any of it.”
He tilts my face upward and kisses me, gently not possessively. “He’ll keep you safe. Revill’s good at his job . . . but be careful. Okay?”
I nod.
These days, Henry is my colleague, my sometimes friend, and that’s all he can be. The past is over, and there is no future with a man who needs and wants things that I am not, no matter how much I'd wished I could be her. I’m not able to let go of my fears, and unless I can, Henry will only ever be my friend. I’m not sure Andrew believes that, and I’m fairly sure Henry doesn’t.
I used to think I’d be his, and after we got passed the flinching at folks’ issues with a white woman and a black man—and in the South, it is still a point of tension—I thought we were done with our obstacles. I am the obstacle now, though. My fears. My refusal to let myself be consumed.
Andrew is the safer choice. Andrew, steadfast and kind. Andrew who is staring at me in love, but not rage as I go off to spend a few hours alone with Henry.
A woman doesn’t get very far in this world if she looks to men to keep her safe. Not that men don’t try. Not that they’re all bad. But I’m not a delicate blossom to be protected. No one who succeeds in this world is—and I will succeed.
Andrew switches gears. “I can call my cousin over at the N & O.”
The News and Observer is the paper in Raleigh, one third of the so-called Triangle.
“I don’t think—”
“I’ll just see if they’ll circulate Teresa’s picture again, maybe get one of those digital progression things to show ways she could look now. That’s how we’ll find Tess if she’s alive. Someone will see her. They’ll recognize her, and then . . . we’ll have a lead.”