Cheryl Bradshaw - Sinnerman

“About 99% of the time.”

“And the other 1%?” she said.

“I’m working on that one right now.”

She gave me a look to indicate her confusion but didn’t say anything.

“So what happened to you?” I said.

“I took my beagle out for a walk this morning, and this guy comes out of nowhere and just starts up a conversation with me. So we’re going back and forth about where we live and how long we’d lived there, and I look down at my dog, and the next thing I know the guy grabs me and he’s got a rock and he’s about to smash the side of my head with it. I let go of the leash and he wrestled me to the ground and when he raised his hand to strike, I clocked him. Right in the eye. Then I grabbed my dog and ran like hell.”

I found it interesting that she claimed she attacked him since she was the one with the shiner.

“Where were you assaulted?”

“Right in my own neighborhood, if you can believe that. The nerve of the guy—it was like eight o’clock in the morning.”

“Today?”

She nodded.

“Did you get a good look at him?” I said.

“He had his face shielded with a—”

“Lemme guess,” I said. “Hoodie.”

“How’d you know?”

“Let’s just say I’ve heard that word a lot this week,” I said.

“I’d recognize him if I saw him again though. He was about my height and had a certain way that the walked, like one of his legs was longer than the other or something. It was weird.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out a tissue and handed it to her.

“What’s this for?”

“Your nose,” I said. “It’s bleeding.”

She glanced down and a drop of blood dripped from her nose and splotched on the white flecked vinyl tiles on the floor. She snatched the tissue from my hand and turned away.

“There’s a bathroom through those doors to your right,” I said.

The woman nodded and stood up and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. When she returned, I advised her to talk to the cops and then gave her my card and asked her to come by my office the following day.

The conference room door opened and Coop walked out with various other men who I suspected were part of Agent Luciana’s minions. There was no sign of Giovanni or his brother and no sign of Nick either. Coop looked my way for a brief moment and then spun around like he hadn’t seen me, even though it was obvious he did.

Another minute went by and the chief walked out of the room followed by a man in handcuffs and Agent Luciana, who rounded out the back.

Trisha bolted out the bathroom door and seized my arm with her hand.

“That’s him!” she said.

“Him who?” I said.

She pointed in the direction of the man in cuffs.

“That’s the guy who attacked me!”

Before I could form any words she was halfway across the room and on a mission. Coop spotted her and made a move to tackle her like he was going for a 1st and 10, but he was about two seconds too late. She slipped past him and raised her hand into the air and slapped the cuffed guy across the face. And for the first time since exiting the room, he raised his head but his eyes didn’t meet hers, they met mine. For a few moments it was like time stood still and that the only two people in the room were him and me. Trisha spewed all sorts of expletives while Coop and the chief tried to keep her at bay, but I couldn’t hear any of it. It was like someone hit the mute button in the room and our eyes remained locked in some sort of a trance, and I had only one thing on my mind: Was I looking into the face of my sister’s killer?

Someone touched my shoulder, and I jerked back.

“It’s just me,” the voice said.

Sound returned to the room and my eyes settled on Giovanni who stood next to me with a look of genuine concern on his face. I flipped back around, but Agent Luciana had ushered the guy almost all the way out of the room. Before they traveled through the doorway into the hall, the man turned and glanced at me once more. He had the strangest expression on his face and it threw me off.

I turned to Trisha who was still clutched tight within Coop and the chief’s firm grip.

“That is the guy from this morning?” I said.

She nodded.

“What is she talking about?” the chief said.

With Trisha shaken up over being presented with a visual of her aggressor, I gave him a brief summary of what she’d just told me.

When I finished he turned to Trisha and said, “Are you sure?”

Coop and the chief loosened her grip but advised her not to make a move.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “That was him.”

The chief put Trisha in a room with a couple of his guys and then whisked me over to his office. Giovanni waited outside. I wasn’t sure if he was there for his brother or for me.

“What in the world is going on?” I said. “Is it really him?”

The chief sighed.

“This morning we got a tip from someone who said they saw a guy that matched the description of our sketch. Man said it was his neighbor. We’ve received tons of calls like this. Difference is, when we got to this schmucks house to question him, we found all kinds of evidence in his car.”

“What kind of evidence?” I said.

“He had Polaroid photos of the last two victims in plain site on the passenger seat of his car, and we also found two different strands of hair which we’re running now.” The chief looked me in the eye. “I know this is hard Sloane, but it looks like we got him.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m sure you’re in shock,” the chief said, “no one can blame you for that.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not that. I need to think. I suppose I can’t see him?”

The chief shook his head.

“It wouldn’t do you much good anyway, he hasn’t said much to us since we picked him up.”

“What has he said?”

“Two words. I’m innocent.”

CHAPTER 28

After I finished with the chief Giovanni met up with me in the hall.

“Dinner?”

“I’m exhausted,” I said. “But thank you.”

“Some other time then?”

I nodded and made some lame excuse about how I had to leave. I needed to be alone tonight.

I arrived home, changed into a tank top and some grey yoga pants, and then fell back on my bed. With my thumb and pointer finger, I rubbed my temples in a circular motion. Lord Berkeley hopped up on the bed with his miniature-sized tennis ball in his mouth and dropped it three inches or so from my hand and rolled it over the rest of the way with his nose.

“Not tonight, Boo,” I said. “Mommy has to think.”

He looked at me, and I imagined if he could have frowned, he would have. After a couple minutes of staring me down, he decided I wasn’t going to budge and opted for the next best thing—he curled up next to me and took a nap. I stroked his white fur and closed my eyes. The cuffed man’s face was still ingrained in my mind, and I imagined it would remain that way forever. He looked different than I thought he would, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

I remembered back to a time before I started dating Nick when Maddie, tired of seeing me alone, felt the incessant urge to sign me up on a dating site on the internet. Resistance was futile, and after several months had gone by, I agreed to correspond by email with a guy named Charles David. He only had a couple of profile pictures posted on the site and one was blurry, but the other—his main photo, drew me in. His hair was ash blond and fell to both sides of his face in a perfect wave just like a Ken doll, and his blue eyes reminded me of the water in the Bahamas. But what hooked me was his smile. It was the kind of smile a person could look at forever. We emailed for a couple weeks until I was brave enough to meet. I set the time and place, and while I sat at the restaurant and waited, I tried my best to quell the nerves inside me. And then it was time; he walked in dressed in a white polo shirt just like he said he’d have on and a pair of jeans. But there was just one problem. He didn’t look a thing like the Charles David in the photo, and after a couple minutes of interrogation, he admitted the picture was of his brother—his married brother, Simon David. And that put an end to our date and my stint at online dating.