Every movement is a razor blade.
Every waking minute is a lesson in regret.
“Why are you sharing this, detective?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.” She smiles at me again, and this time it’s not so disingenuous. “Also, and you’ll forgive me for saying this, you look like you need all the help you can get.”
This is the kind of breakthrough I’ve been praying for. I can use it to crack Luca’s case. So why do I feel like she just shoved a rag of fear and panic down my throat?
“Who else was your department investigating?” I rasp, clutching at the sink. If I look up, I know I’m going to see blood droplets gathering in the ceiling joints.
If Luca and Cain didn’t kill the ten Disciples, who did?
“Enzo Vincent didn’t murder anyone, counselor. He’s talking a load of shit. He’s a copycat-in-waiting.”
“A what?”
“I’m guessing Vincent figured out who the killer was before us. He stalked him for a while, watched him, studied him, hence the fingerprints and tire tracks—”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he admires the killer’s work,” she says, shrugging. “Maybe he admires their methods and has a sick fascination to fast-track himself to a lead headline scenario. Vincent fits the profile, Miss Bailey. He’s a loner. Lives out of his pick-up truck mostly... No wife. No family. Smart—”
“How can you be sure about this?”
“Instinct,” she says simply.
“Instinct?”
“And the fact he snoozed on Cyrus Molesey’s murder. Forensics put the time of death around three a.m. We know for a fact, as does the DA, that he was in an all-night bar a couple of miles away at two fifty-seven a.m. Not even Superman on eight tabs of speed could travel that distance in three minutes.”
“What else?” I demand, needing more, needing every scrap of evidence as I watch the detective dip her hands under the running faucet again.
She reaches over to the towel dispenser and pulls out exactly three sheets. Wiping herself dry, she tosses the used sheets in the trash. “Conclusively?”
“Conclusively,” I whisper as the clean, white bathroom spins faster.
“We found a new body approximately four hours ago underneath the Seventeenth Street Causeway Bridge.”
I knew it.
“He was a former member of the same cult, same markings on the victim’s chest.” She checks her reflection again. “Vincent’s gonna be pissed he missed this one, Miss Bailey. Footage has him locked up in the Broward County Hole for throat-punching a fellow inmate when it happened.”
CHAPTER TEN
Madigan
On day five, Cain and Luca were acquitted. The case was closed and heads started to roll, just not the ones Judge Harris had in mind.
He’d been foaming at the mouth when I’d taken a trip to his chambers to present him with a motion to dismiss due to insufficient evidence of guilt. I’d made his decision easy. After my chat with Detective Hunter, an anonymous package had turned up at my apartment containing the security footage from the bar that night. Turns out, Luca’s one-time drinking buddy was none other than Cain Moseley, not that Anderson ever bothered to check. The evidence was so conclusive, there was no way the prosecution could appeal.
A couple of days later, the press caught up and drew a line under the whole trial. Turns out the smug son of a bitch DA was screwing the lead detective on the case—the price of police corruption these days being a little anal play in the stalls of a cheap restaurant off Commercial Boulevard.
Every major news outlet in Florida received photographs of the two men devouring each other’s assholes like they hadn’t eaten in a decade. It was front page for a week. No one cared about a couple of damaged kids from a disbanded sex cult, though. The noise around the murders lost its volume after revelations of child rape came to light. Middle-class America doesn’t want to associate with that kind of tawdriness. They’d rather keep it hidden, while victims like me, Luca, and Cain are left to flounder in the darkness, fighting memories that bleed our souls dry, drip by painful drip. Instead, they’re happy to let others, like that bastard Jackson King, take advantage of our weakened state. They pay their taxes to sweep society’s problem children away from them.
Cain dealt with the verdict in his own way. Some people aren’t meant for the agonies of this world. Eventually, it becomes too much of a burden, and their backs break under the strain. His landlord found him swinging from the railing of his own staircase a couple of weeks after the trial. There was no note. No one to mourn him. His ending was as sad as the life he’d been dragged into twenty-five years ago.
I was the only person who attended his funeral.
No loved ones.
No Luca.
He’d walked out of the courtroom a free man and he’d never looked back—just like I’d begged him to—disappearing back into the shadows, and leaving me more alone than ever. Overnight, he’d switched from being the accused to the sole witness, but he wasn’t hanging around to play nice with the people who’d falsely arrested him.
Determined to prove her copycat theory, Detective Hunter tracked him to another state, but after that, his trail dried up. I guess he’d finally had enough of Florida tainting him with the crimes of others, even if he did invite her wrath in there for a while.
I know now that was for my benefit...
What I don’t know is why.
IT’S BEEN TWO WEEKS since the trial ended. Time enough to toast a hollow victory, and a further fourteen days of losing my grip on reality.
My nightmares are worse. They’re spilling into my every waking thought. I find myself searching for trickles of blood in every room, and Jackson’s face has become a sick amalgamation of all the others—twisting and shapeshifting into a single demon’s. When I shut my eyes, though, all I see is my stupid self, chasing a ribbon into the arms of destruction.
I’m tired.
So damn tired.
I used to think that ribbon represented the bond between Luca and me. It doesn’t. It’s nothing but a cruel joke. He keeps yanking the truth out of my reach, no matter how quickly I lunge for it. He came back into my life for a reason, only to leave, and now the revelations are falling like snow in Vegas.
I need to know what happened that night.
Who’s really targeting the Disciples?
These unanswered questions consume me. I can’t concentrate on my caseload. I don’t hear the shitty names my colleagues call me anymore. I don’t see that rapist bastard, even when he’s sitting ten feet away—taunting me to report an assault he knows I never will. My silences will always be my weaknesses, and some men get the measure of that. Those are the ones who exploit and harm.
They’re the ones I dream of hurting the most.
Grady keeps asking if I’m okay. I swear he and his boyfriend think I’m on drugs, and I’ve noticed stuff is being moved around my room while I’m out. I wish I could tell them that this is far worse than a coke habit, that what’s inside me is killing me much faster and in the most horrible ways imaginable. It’s like torture from the inside out, and most of the time I’d rather be dead than alive.