Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” She let out a small shiver. “I just needed to get out a bit. I’ve been thinking about Nicole Medina.”

Tatum nodded. After a few seconds he asked, “Why don’t you like swimming?”

She eyed him speculatively. “Didn’t you see The Wizard of Oz ? Water makes me melt.”

Tatum grinned at her, and she smiled back.

“I just don’t like swimming,” she said. “I don’t like cold water, and my hair gets all tangly after I swim. The chlorine in swimming pools makes my skin itch.”

“Gotcha. Swimming’s the worst.”

“Andrea was on her high school’s swimming team,” Zoe added. “She’d spend every day in the pool if you’d let her.” She fumbled in her pocket, retrieving her phone. Her lips pursed as she tapped at its screen; then she put it aside and gazed at the water.

“How’s Andrea doing?” Tatum asked, guessing that was what Zoe had checked.

“I wouldn’t know.” Her tone was testy. “She isn’t responding to my text.”

“Did she see it yet?”

“Well . . . no. But I’ve seen her ignore texts all the time. She doesn’t open the ones that she ignores. She’s sneaky like that.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.” Tatum knew fully well it was an empty gesture. He’d been present during the discussions about Rod Glover’s last letter to Zoe, his picture with Andrea. But since that day, no one had seen or heard anything from Glover. If Zoe heard his words, she didn’t give any indication of it. She checked the screen again.

“Andrea is a smart girl,” Tatum said. “She wouldn’t—”

“Andrea doesn’t know what people like Glover are capable of. If she did, she would never leave the apartment. But I know. And you do too. They construct elaborate fantasies and obsess about them, making them more intricate, more alive . Until the urge is impossible to resist. And then they act.”

“Yeah, but Rod Glover never trailed a specific girl. You told me that. He always acted on opportunity. Targeting girls who were alone. He didn’t stalk anyone .”

“He stalked me,” Zoe pointed out.

A month before, during the Strangling Undertaker case in Chicago, Glover had followed Zoe until she was alone. And then he’d pounced. Luckily, she’d managed to fight him off. Tatum knew that in Zoe’s position, he wouldn’t be able to calm down. To be aware that it was possible one of the people they routinely profiled could be targeting your family . . . it was a sickening feeling. Like an oncologist finding symptoms of a brain tumor in his child—knowing what those symptoms could potentially mean. Ignorance sometimes really was bliss.

He looked up at Zoe, noticing her rapid blinking, the tremor in her lip. Sitting at the pool’s edge, her feet in the water, she suddenly seemed like a lost girl looking for her parents.

“There’s an internal investigation on one of my cases,” he blurted, searching for a distraction. Any distraction.

It worked. Zoe focused her stare on him, her eyes widening. “What case?”

“Wrongful shooting of a suspected pedophile.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “I remember—you told me about it. The guy reached for his camera, and you shot him, right?”

“He reached for his bag , and I shot him. Later, we figured out he reached for the camera. He had no weapon in the bag.”

Zoe seemed to mull that over. Feeling a bit chilly, Tatum swam to the other side of the pool, then back.

“Why did they reopen the case?” she asked.

“There’s supposedly a new witness.”

“Could the witness have seen anything that would reflect badly on you?”

“No,” Tatum said flatly. “They’d have seen what happened. I had no way of knowing that he wasn’t going for a gun.”

“Did you say anything before you shot him?”

“Just told the man to put his hands up.”

“Did you call him by his name?”

“What?”

“Did you call the man by his name or simply tell him to put his hands up?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It’s perceived differently. Which was it?”

Tatum pulled himself out of the pool, the water trickling on the white stone. He grabbed his towel from the nearby plastic chair and dried himself while verifying his shorts stunt still worked. He tugged at them a bit, then sat by Zoe, towel over his shoulders. “I think I called him by his last name. It was Wells. So I said something like, ‘Wells, put your hands up.’”

“Just his last name? Did you say anything else? Were you speaking clearly?”

“It’s no big deal, Zoe. Someone’s just kicking up some dirt. Don’t worry about it.”

“If they reopened the case, they have a reason. It is a big deal.”

“No pressure or anything,” Tatum said irritably. He wished he hadn’t brought the subject up.

“You were chasing him, right?”

“Yeah. He grabbed a young girl on the street while we were watching.”

“How long did you chase him?”

“I don’t know. A couple of blocks. The guy wasn’t exactly an athlete.”

Zoe’s phone blipped. She snatched it from the ground, the screen lighting her face. Her shoulders sagged, and her lips twisted in a small smile.

“Andrea?”

“Yes. She’s fine. Your grandfather came by to see her today.”

“Yeah?” Tatum raised an eyebrow. “And she survived it?”

“She said he was a nice old man.”

“Then I don’t think it’s the same guy. It’s probably someone else’s grandfather.”

Zoe laughed. It was a surprising burst of happiness, and Tatum was aware it wasn’t due to his razor-sharp wit. It was a laughter born of pure relief. He smiled at her warmly.

“Do you want to grab something to eat?” he asked. “I’m starving.” And he was. His stomach gave a sudden rumble, cheering at the mention of food.

“Sure.” Zoe stood up, water drops trickling down her legs. She picked up her sandals from the ground. “Aren’t you worried at all? About the internal affairs investigation?”

“Nah. It’ll blow over. It’s just a bit of static.” He stood up as well, turning toward the staircase.

“Did you really think it was a gun?”

The question made him pause in utter surprise. He glanced back at Zoe. Her face was calm, but her eyes bored into his, unblinking.

“Of course,” he answered. “I shot him.”

“And he was a pedophile. You were working on the case for a long time. A difficult case. A sexual predator who targets children.”

“Yes.” The word dragged in his mouth. Tatum tensed, feeling the anger bubbling below the surface. He tried to contain it. She was just asking a simple question. “And I really wanted to catch the guy. I wanted him arrested.”

“Pedophiles are frequently repeat offenders. If he went to prison, he’d be out in a few years, free to molest kids again. You knew that. And then you cornered him. And he wanted to destroy the evidence he had with him.”

“I didn’t see—”

“Even in that moment, after chasing him, adrenaline pumping in your veins, you called him by his name. He wasn’t just a threat. He was a very specific threat.”

“Zoe, drop it.”

“You have conviction,” Zoe said. “You want to make a difference. It’s possible that when you had to make a snap judgment call, you made a rash action. Maybe you even convinced yourself that—”

“Are you . . . profiling me?” Tatum asked in disbelief. Up until that moment he’d thought she was talking about the way the case was perceived. But no, she was actually analyzing him .

“It’s totally understandable. If you believed he had to be stopped—”

“He was going for a gun.”