CHAPTER 52
"Can you believe the mayor wants to call in the FBI?" Gerald said.
Gerald's
knuckles were turning white; he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. Megan sat in the passenger seat beside him. They were driving back from an emergency meeting called by the mayor after the fourth killing provided no hard leads.
"Maybe they can help,"
Megan said, meekly.
"I don't need any more help
!" Gerald shouted.
After listening to
a twenty-minute tongue lashing by the mayor and the six city council members, Gerald had to explain that even though hairs were found and the killer was actually caught in the act by Ms. Sharp, they had to admit that they still had nothing. And right now Gerald was taking it out on Megan.
"What I need is a partner that's working the case."
Megan said nothing.
"Andy's following up with the neighbors
, and running down Karen Sharp's co-workers and Rachel's school teachers. Kennedy's running down Rachel's friends and schoolmates. The other guys are still working the first three vics. What are you working on, Detective?"
Gerald
stared across at Megan, as if waiting for her to look at him. But she didn't move.
"I'm waiting," he said.
Megan could feel his stare.
Fuck it
. If she was ever going to say anything, this was the time. She had to just say it and get it over with. She'd planned on saying it at the station so she'd have witnesses. But she knew she couldn't wait any longer.
Just say it.
Tell him.
"I'm putting in for a transfer
," Megan said.
It felt to Megan as if the temperature suddenly dropped ten degrees inside the car
. The silence was thick. It was a foreboding silence that scared Megan more than having Gerald shout at her. She braced herself, but still nothing came. He still didn't say anything, but Megan knew he was contemplating what to do, throwing his analytical mind into overdrive. She was sure he'd heard her correctly.
That's right asshole, I want out.
Gerald sucked air into his nostrils and held it for a second before exhaling back through his nostrils, then let the last half of the breath travel through his mouth. If he weren't a grown up, you'd think he was a six-year-old getting ready to throw a tantrum.
He was.
He whipped the wheel to the right and the tires squealed as he pulled into a commercial parking lot, accelerated into a parking space next to a black SUV, and threw the car into park. He didn't bother to cut the engine. Megan stiffened, gripping the right side of her seat, preparing for the worst…and the worst came when Gerald reached across, grabbed a chunk of hair on the back of her head, and yanked backward until Megan was staring at the overhead light. He pulled her close, leaned his face over hers, and through gritted teeth said, "You're not fucking going nowhere, you hear me? Nowhere. We have a job to do here and it's not finished."
He shook her head on every other word for emphasis.
"You think you're going to pack your shit and just walk away from me? Huh? We got a killer to find. How would it look if the fucking reporters got wind of this? Huh? Homicide detective quits in the middle of the investigation," Gerald said.
"I'm not quitting,"
Megan said.
Gerald
yanked again and shouted, "The hell you're not! You just want to go off and fuck your doctor friend all day. That's what you want to do."
"He has nothing
—"
Gerald
cut her off.
"I don'
t need to hear this. Not now. The subject is closed," Gerald said.
He shoved her head away like he was tossing an empty coffee cup in the trash
, gripped the wheel again, sucked in another gulp of air, and dropped the car into reverse, pulled out of the parking spot, cutting off an oncoming car which laid on its horn. Bell threw his left hand out the window and flipped off the driver as he punched the gas and sped out of the parking lot and back onto the street, where he gunned the car and sped down the boulevard.
Three minutes later
, they were parked behind a large glass and plastic recycling bin located behind an Albertson's grocery store. It was seven thirty in the evening and darkness had fallen. Gerald had Megan bent over the back of the cruiser. Knowing what was about to happen, Megan had grabbed her cell phone out of her pants pocket before she was yanked out of the car. Now, as she lay hunched over, with Gerald inside her, rocking her forward with each deep angry thrust, she tapped the text key on the phone, and then tapped John's name from the contact list. Up popped a blank page ready for a new text message. Megan struggled to keep hold of her phone while she tapped out a short message, sending it just as Gerald finished with her.
Twenty seconds later, as Megan was zipping up her pants, John's cell phone chirped on his kitchen table. He set his spoon into his bowl of chicken soup and flipped open his phone to read Megan's name. He smiled and clicked the button...and the message appeared.
I love you. More than you know.
CHAPTER 53
John stared at his scarred face in the mirror, imagining what it used to look like before the scar. There was still a faint hint of the black eye, the black replaced with deep pink, which would itself be replaced by normal flesh tones soon enough. The swelling had disappeared too, so all that remained was the four-inch scar. He lightly touched the skin next to the former laceration and noted how it turned white, then pink again after he released it.
A good sign.
He'd spent the day rereading all his serial killer notes and studying the wall map, showing the four killings, each located within seven to ten miles of one another. John didn't feel as if there was truly anything to be gained by looking at the map. It created no symmetry, no rhyming of street names, no parallelogram. No pentagram was created when he drew a line from one point to the next.
No structure whatsoever
. Just random locations. The files he had on each girl showed a fairly typical teenage life. They all attended middle school or high school. Three were good students, one not so good. All of the mothers had jobs, no welfare. One even worked two jobs. Two were on good terms with their ex-husbands, one wasn't. The last, Karen Sharp, had lost her husband to cancer. There didn't seem to be any connection at all between these girls, their mothers, or the murders. More than anything, John wanted to understand why.
What made him choose these girls
?
He laid down the pages he'd been reading: notes on Colleen Hans
on, and stood to stretch his sore lower back, the kinks and pops that sprang from his body told him that he needed to get back to the gym. He was a regular for many years, but after "the accident" he'd stopped going. He'd gained fourteen pounds in the past year by sitting around and doing not much of anything except visiting with Dr. Larson once a week.
John lay down on his back on the living room
floor and reached his right leg across his left, stretching his lower back. He felt a vertebrae pop, and rolled in the other direction to repeat the process. It was harder to reach out with his leg than in the past, and this confirmed his thoughts about getting back to the gym. He realized what a good thought this was. If he hadn't met Megan, he…well, a lot of things wouldn't be if he hadn't met Megan.
Breathing, for one.
As if she were reading his mind, John heard a knock on the front door. He stood, walked to the door, and opened it to find Megan smiling at him. He smiled back and said, "Come in." Megan walked in and pecked him on the cheek, as she passed.
"How are you
?" she asked.
"I'm good,"
John said, closing the door.
"Your bandage is gone."
"Yeah, had the stitches removed yesterday."
John's mind flashed back to
the bookstore—and how that day had ended. He'd called her later that night but she was either working or didn't want to answer. He left a message—somewhat benign, just saying, "
We should talk
." He didn't want to scare her away and had hoped they could just have a heart-to-heart and see where each of them stood. For his part, he didn't want it to end. Sure it was going to be different, but they could easily build on what they had. Build to what, he didn't know. He wasn't thinking too far ahead, but to say he hadn't imagined marriage would be wrong. He had, but it was not so much a fantasy as simply the question,
What if
?
In an attempt to stay away from that subject for as long as possible
, he brought up his meeting with the mothers.
"I was thinking of meeting with the moms again
. I won't if you don't want me to," he said, remembering her last reaction when she'd learned from Karen that they had gotten together. But Megan only smiled and said, "Go ahead."
"You don't mind
? Are you sure?" John said.
"Positive," she said, then added, "I don't care anymore."
It was that last statement that scared John. If she hadn't added that, he would have pushed on to discussing the subject of the planned meeting with the moms—maybe inviting Megan to come along.
She surprised John a second time by reaching up and gently touching the skin around his scar
. As always, the sensation of having her close, smelling her perfume, and feeling her breath on his cheek, brought him to a mild erection. First gear and ready to accelerate. Then she leaned up and kissed it softly, her lips lingering on his newly formed skin. Before he could stop long enough to process his feelings, Megan moved from his scar down and across to his lips, and they parted as she slipped her tongue inside his mouth, letting their wetness mingle before reaching her arms around his waist, and pulling him close. They held their kiss for a long time, slowly rolling their tongues in a game of mouth twister. Then Megan reached her hand down into John's shorts and took hold.
She pulled away, took a deep breath with a low moan
—he knew her passion was taking control—but as she was just about to drop to her knees, John gripped her by the upper arms and held her tightly in place.
"Wait," he said, lifting her up to face him.
"What's wrong?" she asked, feigning ignorance. But she knew. Didn't have to ask.
She knew.
John took a minute to catch his own breath, all the while his libido questioning his own sanity, and then walked Megan over to the couch and sat her down. He looked into her eyes and studied her face, realizing just how much he was getting used to seeing it, and liking it more and more. So it was with great warmth of heart that he took her hand in his and said, "We need to talk about the other day."
Megan said nothing, but shook her head slightly as if to say,
what happened the other day
?
"The bookstore
…" John said, not wanting to play innocent about what she knew…that he knew.
"That was nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Yeah, I've been working so
—"
"Megan
, please."
She stopped
. Now it was John's turn to shake his head.
"Don't
. We've been so open with each other and it's been really good. But, I saw the book."
Still not wanting to admit to anything
, Megan smiled and shook her head again as she said, "I not sure—"
"You're an addict, Megan
. Why else would you have stared at that book title for so long? Why else would you start crying, and then just walk away and leave me without saying good-bye?"
John watched as
Megan's composure dissolved and she clenched her teeth and stood.
"I'm not addicted
…to anything!" she shouted.
"I can get you help,"
John said.
"I don't need help."
And there it was. The
I don't need help, cry for help
that every addict uses at least once. John knew he was right. Not so much what she was saying, but how she was saying it, with such anger and denial. She stormed away from John, but there wasn't anywhere to go in his small home. John followed her into the kitchen, where she came to a dead end, swung around, and said, "So I like sex. Lots of people like sex." She pointed her finger at John. "You like sex."
"I do,"
John said, "And I've had more sex with you in the past two weeks than I can ever remember having in any two-week period in my entire life."
"Most guys would thank me."
"Do they?"
Megan swung at his face, but John ducked in time as he heard Megan
yell, "Fuck you!"
He stood back up watching for another swing that never came.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
"You should be."
"I am. But please don't pretend that—"
"I'm not pretending
. I enjoy sex. My life is hectic; my schedule is all over the place. Sex helps me unwind. Some people drink a glass of wine when they get home. I screw. Is that so wrong?"
John said, "It can be argued, and often is, that the person that comes home every night and has a glass of wine is an alcoholic
. They can't just come home and not drink. They need that drink…and I think you need sex."
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
"I just want to…"
"Leave me alone, John
!" She shouted and pushed past him, heading for the front door. John dashed past her and blocked the front door. He didn’t want to lose her. He didn’t want this exchange to push her so far away he would never get her back. But he knew it all had to be said.
"I'm not saying I want us to end
. I don't. I love what we have. I love us."
John reached out
, took her hands in his again, and said, "I love…you.”
Megan stood still, unsure if she'd just heard what she thought she'd heard. She decided it was just too good to be true because she pulled her hands from John's, and nudged him aside, and opened the front door and walked out. John stood at his door looking out as she walked down his front path.
"Megan, please
. Come back inside."But Megan didn't.