“No, but I will be giving you the cold shoulder in front of Tanner and Shaw. I can’t let them think you got off easy.” They’re new to the prosecution team. Shaw used to handle defense and Tanner is fresh out of law school.
“I was serious when I asked you if Jill bringing up that case got to you,” Claire states although it’s meant to be a question.
Eating up time by hiding behind a sip of coffee, I deny the stomach drop and the pounding in my veins. “I’m fine,” I answer her and then give her a tight smile followed by a distraction. “My mother called this morning, I got a ticket, and I smashed my hand in the door.” Holding up my hand as evidence, Claire winces.
“All before coffee?”
With a nod and a click of my tongue, I answer, “Without a single sip.”
Within half an hour, she’s out the door, my coffee is gone and all of it goes to the back of my mind as I force myself to actually get work done and make today productive at the very least.
Time slips by as I catch up on a case that goes to trial next week. I’ll be looking over Tanner’s shoulder and he’ll be pissed because of it, but it should be an open-and-shut case. The evidence is damning. It would take one hell of a defense or one hell of a fuckup for Tanner to lose this one.
I was so wrapped up in it that I didn’t see the missed call from my mother. There’s not a chance in hell I’m calling her back until I talk to Cadence. They got into it again.
If Cadence implied that she dates men who hit her because of what we saw when we were children, then my sister crossed a line. And that’s exactly what my mother said she told her. I’m not her psychiatrist, but I don’t understand why she’d say that. Mom said Cadence was drunk, but I just can’t see that and it was hard enough to decipher it all through my mother’s tears.
Intent on getting a cup of coffee from Brew House down the block, I head off, checking my phone and noting that my question to her from this morning asking if she’s okay has gone unanswered.
I have two more cases to prepare for and one of them is first-degree murder.
This … tension between my mother and my sister can wait until tonight. That thought is what’s on my mind when I’m aware of the familiar prick. The feeling like someone’s watching me. The same one I felt last night. A glance over my shoulder proves no one’s there as I pass under the awning of a bookstore. That doesn’t change my gut feeling though and that fear lingers the entire walk down the block.
I make it there in under four minutes, the insecurity forcing my pace to be fast enough to get my heart racing.
Ordering the flavor of the day with cream and sugar, two of each, I convince myself it’s just the case being mentioned. The case from five years ago has never left me.
It should have stayed in the past. It did stay in the past. One little blonde reporter with a camera behind her can’t bring back ghosts long dead.
I slip the change the barista gives me into the glass jar for tips and listen to it clink as she thanks me and then I make that decision firm—the case is long over with and long gone—and that decision is not to be overturned.
The cold case is dead and there’s no one watching me. All the confidence of that statement vanishes about halfway back to the office, when I swear I feel eyes on me again.
Cody
I know there’s a pile of letters in that locked file cabinet by my feet. Creased from the mail and some crumpled from anger, they stare at me from beyond the thin old metal that keeps them locked away.
What haunts me isn’t the past when they were first mailed to me, it’s the fact that I got another today. A crisp new letter to join the others.
How long has it been since I last knew he existed? Years, I know, but almost five years ago I sent him one after the next and our tenuous relationship became one sided. For a year, we exchanged information. He stopped returning the letters, he stopped giving me hints that started as a taunt and changed into a mutual decision of execution.
Rumors on the street suggested he hadn’t died. When the letters stopped, I had nothing left to go on but the fear of kids and a name people spoke of as if they were naming the devil.
A part of me wished it had all ended, but a piece of me that’s far too truthful, too primitive and brutal knew one day he’d reach out again.
One day the story we started would pick back up … I simply don’t know how it will end.
The metal goes thunk when I kick it, staring at the old dent in the side. The memory flashes in front of my eyes, prompted by the sound. A vision of me kicking the cabinet that held the only pieces of Marcus I had when he didn’t respond.
For days. For weeks. Months passed with no word as the case went cold and I lost it. But hadn’t I lost everything long before then? Who was I to feel anything at all but relief when Marcus stopped interfering, stopped taunting me, stopped the long-held conversation we had between right and wrong and who was next on the list.
Whiskey licks my lips and the empty glass on my desk suggests that thoughts of the angel of death serial killer will beg me to fill the glass to the brim once again.
I’ve picked apart the letter, every word and the unique cadence in his writing. I used to think his poetic nature meant he felt highly of himself. But when I realized who he really was, everything made so much more sense.
Knock, knock, knock, the door bangs in time with a friendly rap.
“Yeah?” I question.
“We’re going to Bar 44, you coming?” Steve’s voice is boisterous. As far as everyone else knows, the case is still cold. They don’t know there’s been another murder with the same MO.
I can’t give them one letter without letting on about the others. And in those, I’m just as guilty as he was. Not in the beginning. Not until I realized…
“Be there right behind you. Just wrapping up something,” I call through the door. Feeling far too sober than I’d like, but grateful that I haven’t reverted back to the raving lunatic I felt like years ago when Marcus left me all alone to dwell on what we’d done.
Steven is off with an “all right, see you soon,” and it doesn’t take me long to follow. Getting a hold of myself and convincing myself that this letter doesn’t change anything.
After all, there are no bodies. No list of names that he’s given me.
There isn’t even a riddle.
He only gave me a simple message and it’s one I agree with. Ghosts come back and I wish they didn’t. He started again.
Maybe he’s gotten as lonely as I have. Maybe he’s simply using me again. Although I can’t blame my part on him.
A deep inhale then a slow exhale makes my chest rise and fall before I take off my jacket and change shirts to go out to the bar tonight, all while pretending those letters don’t exist.
What would they do if they knew?
What would she do? The beautiful woman with deep eyes and a smile she holds just for me, what would she do if she knew I played a part in a case that nearly destroyed her before her career had truly begun?
The thoughts plague me the entire walk to the bar. Even the drum of laughter as I open the heavy doors doesn’t stop it.
She wouldn’t look at me like she does if she knew. I’m far too aware. Far too stung by the truth that she’d see me as a monster if only the letters were in her hands and not mine.