Lang waits until Becky finishes placing her order and then inclines his chin at me. “Mrs. Smith?” he says, just on the other side of the display. I inch forward and I can see her face between two bags of coffee.
“Yes?” she asks, and I don’t miss the dark circles that frame tormented eyes. Her eyes go wide. “You.”
“Yes. Me. My name’s Ethan Langford.”
“You mean Detective Ethan Langford.”
“Yes. And I promise you I will not approach you again if you just give me two minutes.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I think you’re scared, and I want you to know that I can protect you.”
“Like all the women who end up dead or deformed who trust the police to protect them?”
“That’s an admission of fear and his guilt,” I murmur to Lang.
“I don’t know about anyone but you and me. And I’m not a man to fail someone I vow to protect. I’d lose my badge rather than lose you to him.”
“You can’t touch him. The mayor and his money and—”
“Sign a form that lets us do electronic surveillance. He’ll never know. And if there isn’t anything for us to find—”
“There is. There is. I just—I’m afraid—he knows I know. He keeps his computer locked up.”
“What do you know?”
“Just—things.” Her voice trembles. “Bad photos of naked people.”
My heart starts to thunder in my chest. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for. Lang holds up the envelope. “Sign this for me. We’ll get the photos. We’ll get you out. Please.”
“I don’t think I can.”
I stand up and walk around the coffee display. “Move, Lang.”
He steps aside, with both of us in profile. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I need to say this to you. He tricked me into killing a young boy, a thirteen-year-old boy. I don’t want him to get the chance to hurt someone else.”
Tears well in her eyes. “The boy I read about in the paper?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Him.”
She breathes a hard breath, and her gaze shoots to Lang. “Give me the paper.”
Lang hands her the paper and a pen. She leans over to the bar, signs it, and hands it back to him, but she’s looking at me. “I didn’t want to file the restraining order. He found out I called you. I had to save myself.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s okay.” And then I do what I never do. I hug her and whisper, “You’re saving lives. You’re the hero here.”
“Just get him,” she whispers before she grabs her drink and rushes toward the door.
Lang and I watch her leave. “We got him,” Lang says, and I rotate to face him. “We got him.”
I want him to be right, but for reasons I can’t explain, something about this doesn’t feel like the end. Something feels wrong.
Chapter 79
Hours after we have that paper signed, the surveillance is already being put into place, and everyone is riding a high, which is why I don’t stomp all over them with any negative thoughts. We’re on the right path. We’re closer to catching The Poet. I let everyone celebrate. The only person who doesn’t jump for joy is Wade, who is presently stuck in meetings in Dallas for three days.
“Let’s hope Becky doesn’t go home and tell Newman,” he says during a short call we manage, despite me presently stuffing myself with takeout in the conference room at the station, with Chuck, Lang, and the whole team around me.
“Surely she won’t.”
“Happened to me once. I’ve learned to never count my chickens. Sometimes these spouses are so terrorized that the wrong look from the other spouse has them confessing things they didn’t have to confess.”
“What happened in your case?”
“The killer did what killers do. He killed his wife. Of course, we got him then, but it was not a happy ending.”
We hang up with my bad feeling clawing my insides. Is that what I sensed at the coffee shop? A woman so on edge she’ll give us up the way she did me? Since it’s his investigative team that’s handling the authorization and setup of the surveillance, I dial Evan’s cell phone.
“Good news tonight,” he says. “It’s about time, right?”
“Just move quickly. I have a bad feeling about leaving her in that house with him.”
“We’re moving fast. You have my word.”
A long time later, Lang and I walk to the parking garage together. “You want me to stay at your place tonight?” he asks.
“I don’t,” I say. “I need to be home and I need to think, which I do best alone and at home.”
“Call patrol.”
“I am. I will.”
“And text me—”
“I will.”
He doesn’t look pleased, but he’s known me a long time and he knows when to let things go. I climb into my car and text the patrol detail on my building, whom I’d alerted earlier today of my return. A necessary stop by the store is fast, which includes a call from my mother, in which I promise I’ll be home for the holidays. It’s August. She’s starting early this year. Once I’m at my apartment building, I decide to park in the garage. If The Poet doesn’t know I’m back, I’m not prepared to announce it. And I’m armed with my little Glock 43. If he gives me a reason to shoot him, this would really be over.
Once I’m in my building, the very fact that I’m dodging Mrs. Crawford tells me it’s time for me to face the facts: my job isn’t conducive to community living. I need to call a realtor, sell my place, and move to a stand-alone like Wade smartly purchased. I lock up, search my apartment, and it’s not long before I’m upstairs, my bowl of Frosted Flakes in front of me, jazz on the record player. I line up all the poems and grab my phone, dialing my grandfather. He doesn’t answer. Of course, he doesn’t answer. It’s after ten.
I start writing the same words on the page: Why me? Why me? Why me? Why is The Poet obsessed with me?
I’d never met this man before Roberts disappeared. We believe that he started killing long ago, so why me? What is it about me that’s drawn his attention? I stand up and start to pace. I’m missing something that feels important. What am I missing?