Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“Who’s Wells?”

“The pedophile I shot.”

“Then call him the pedophile, Tatum. I can’t keep track of all the nutjobs you shoot.”

“There were only . . . never mind that.” Tatum paused for a moment. “Would you mind talking about . . . that night?”

“Why would I mind?”

“The police got the basic gist of what happened from Andrea’s testimony and the evidence in the scene. But I want to hear about it from your point of view.”

“Hmph. Yeah, well, I woke up from the noise of someone knocking on the door. It took me a bit of time to get up, and by that time, Andrea was at the door. She opened it.”

“Did you hear him come in?”

“I don’t know what I heard, Tatum. The door closed, and there was some sound. Something that made me feel wrong. Maybe she called out or something; I don’t know. I opened the door of the room just a bit, saw this guy pushing Andrea to her bedroom. I stepped forward—”

“What were you going to do? Beat him up?” Tatum’s voice was much sharper than he’d intended.

“Look, Tatum, do you want my version, or do you want to lecture me? I did a lot more than the damn cops did.”

“Fine. Then what?”

“He hit me. Wasn’t too hard. Let me tell you: he acts big, but he hits like a girl, Tatum.”

“He broke your nose, stabbed you, and gave you a concussion.”

“Who’s telling the story, Tatum? Me or you? Were you there? If that’s the way you conduct your interrogations, it’s no wonder this fellow keeps getting away.”

“Fine. He hits like a girl.”

“Right. So I walk back to my room, get my gun, then follow him to the bedroom. I shot him once, hit him in the side. He turned to face me, so I fired a warning shot at the window.”

“You mean that you missed.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, Tatum. Yes, I missed. It was dark, it was a small room, my nose hurt, and I didn’t want to hit Andrea, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then he got away.”

Tatum leaned forward. “How?”

“Through the door, Tatum. He ran past me through the door.”

“How did he seem?”

Marvin thought about it for a moment. “You remember that time Freckle scratched my ankle, and I went after him with a frying pan?”

“And broke my TV set. Yes, Marvin, I have a vague recollection of that wonderful day.”

“I cornered him in the bathroom. And the expression on his face—that was how that guy looked.”

“Like a trapped animal,” Tatum said.

“Yes.” Marvin seemed satisfied. “Maybe I shoulda gone after him with a frying pan instead of a gun.”

Zoe had managed to wear the face of a supportive, loving sister until Andrea got into the Uber that took her to the airport. Then she let herself fall apart for a while. Fear lurked, waiting for her, its presence almost like an actual shadow stalking in the corner of a hallway or an unlit room or beyond a closed door.

She opened all the windows in the apartment. Went for a very long walk. Switched on the music in the apartment, turning up the volume to fill the empty rooms with noise.

For a while, she tried to force herself to work. She read the transcripts of the interviews with Clyde Prescott, frustrated that she hadn’t talked to him herself. Why hadn’t she? She’d done it with Jeffrey Alston. She’d interviewed several serial killers before. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to face Prescott.

She read through his partial autobiography. Though Tatum had pulled an act, deleting it from the laptop, he’d made sure to save a copy beforehand. The same couldn’t be said for the printed draft with the notes, which he had actually shredded. She wished she had those pages with Prescott’s handwritten comments.

It almost worked. She managed to spend long stretches of time—fifteen and twenty minutes—consumed by work, writing notes, tightening the profile, knowing it might be invaluable to another profiler someday. But then she’d realize she was staring into space, her body tense, breath held, the silence around her oppressive and consuming.

The sudden knock on her door nearly gave her a heart attack. She was about to run to the kitchen and grab her largest knife when Tatum spoke through the door. “Zoe, are you there? It’s me.”

She unlocked the door, letting him in, half hating herself for how relieved she felt.

“You’re reading that thing?” he asked, noticing the pages on the table.

“It’s fascinating,” she said. “Prescott could be quite articulate, and I’m learning a lot about him just by reading it.”

“The less I know about that monster, the better.”

“He’s not . . .” Zoe shook her head and swallowed the rest of the sentence. “I wish you hadn’t shredded his notes. I would have loved to have seen them.” To her surprise, her tone was angry, accusing.

“I was too busy saving your life to worry about that.”

“You could have shredded blank pages; you didn’t need to use the actual thing. You could have made a copy before. You could have—”

“What are you talking about?” Tatum blinked, clearly bewildered. “I was worried sick . . . do you have any idea what I was going through?”

“No!” she screamed—she didn’t know why, her mind short-circuiting. “But it wasn’t as b ad as what I was going through.”

She was frustrated by her own tears and irrational behavior. She didn’t want him to see her like that.

Tatum took her hand and pulled her, very softly, toward him. She let herself be pulled, and then her cheek touched his chest. He hugged her but did so gently, the touch feather light, as if he knew that she couldn’t stand being con strained by anything. She shut her eyes and listened to the beats of his heart.

After a while she let out a shuddering breath and pulled away. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

It was three p.m. She expected him to refuse.

“That would be perfect,” he said.

She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of Talisker Skye and two lowball glasses. She poured a bit of the amber liquid for Tatum and a much larger portion for herself.

“Is that my ration?” Tatum asked, holding the glass to the light.

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” Zoe pointed out.

“Your glass has four times as much!”

“I’m traumatized. I’m allowed.”

“Well, I’ve been visiting Marvin in the hospital. I’m traumatized too.”

Zoe added some more whiskey to Tatum’s glass. He took it from her and clinked it with her own glass.

“To trauma,” he said.

She snorted. “To trauma.”

They sipped from their glasses. She let the smoky taste linger on her tongue, then swallowed, feeling the warmness spreading in her chest. They drank in a comfortable silence, and Zoe found her thoughts just wandering around pleasantly, going nowhere in particular. It was refreshing.

But finally she sighed. “So. Mancuso told me that you’re on the Glover case.”

He looked surprised. “She did? She told me not to tell you.”

Zoe didn’t answer, her lip twitching upward. After a second, Tatum let out a soft curse.

“You were bluffing. She never told you anything.”

“She didn’t.” Zoe sipped from her glass, pleased with herself. “But you just did. I had a feeling you’d ask to be involved.”

“Okay, yes, I did.”

“Any idea how he got away?”

“The police think that he may have gone up to the roof. From there, he could have scaled down a drainpipe into an alley that wasn’t watched by the cops and fled.”