Laura nodded, and then remembered Rosie couldn’t see her over the phone. “Trina’s dead. Addy texted me. She found her in her apartment. Strangled, apparently.”
“Oh my God.”
“I got the message right after I spoke to you. After that man came to the hotel and threatened me.” Laura forgave herself this small lie to Rosie. She didn’t have the energy to tell Rosie earlier when they spoke. She looked out the window and thought she saw a light flicker, somewhere deep in the woods. People knew where she lived.
“Come over now,” Rosie insisted. “You can stay with me. Or we can stay in a hotel.”
“Okay.” Laura wasn’t sure where she’d be safe. She was mainly certain she couldn’t be in this trailer for a second longer. “I’m on my way.”
“I should have told you to come over as soon as you were done with work,” Rosie chided herself.
Laura thought about the coffee pot she’d left on. If she’d gone straight to Rosie’s, her trailer would have surely burned down. No, she was glad she’d come home for the few moments that she had.
But it was time to leave.
She told Rosie she was headed over and ended the call.
Laura went out into the freezing night again, but before she stepped off the makeshift porch a stream of headlights shone from the end of the lane as a car swung onto the drive.
Fear lit up through her spine. She couldn’t go back inside until she knew who was there. The only certainty she had was that it wasn’t Rosie.
Or Dermot. Terry. Trina.
The list was so long.
It was freezing outside. Laura’s feet were shod in sneakers. Her coat was from three Christmases ago, a gift from the foster parents she was living with at the time. It had fur around the hood, but the seams were coming apart and the zipper gapped if you didn’t close it just right.
Laura made a decision. She slipped back into the trailer and grabbed a flashlight. She disappeared into the dark, just as the car pulled up in the drive and two figures in long coats slinked out the doors. It was like Laura had never been there, except for her footprints in the snow.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE SIMON
If you asked him, he couldn’t tell you when it started. Not the feelings—those had been there as long as he could remember. But the actions, that was all a blur in his mind that wouldn’t clarify, no matter how hard he tried to remember. It was after he came out of his depression, his body singing again like it wasn’t trying to just wither and die. He remembered being at the grocery store, and having another man purposefully bump into him in the bread aisle. He was gorgeous, dressed like a summer island in cashmere and chinos, his hair combed just so. The man had beautiful green eyes, and Simon followed him into the back alley behind the store and kissed his perfectly plump lips. It wasn’t the first time. There had been other men, but that was in the fog of alcohol and dark bars he’d stumbled into after a long shift at the hospital. He could barely remember what happened in those places, except for the soreness of his lips and legs the next day.
Simon thought about that man in the grocery store—he didn’t even know his name, and yet his face was indelibly marked in his memory despite everything Simon had done to forget him—as the detectives asked Simon for details about his confession.
But, of course, he couldn’t give them anything. Not that that made him any less guilty.
It was after a question regarding Dermot’s body, asking about where he’d struck Dermot and with what, that Simon knew it wasn’t going to work.
“Just lock me up. I don’t deserve my freedom.” Simon was being maudlin, but there’d always been a flare for the dramatic inside him. If this wasn’t the time to let it out, he didn’t know when was.
Detective Bechdel rolled her eyes. “This is getting us nowhere. He didn’t do anything.”
“Why did you come here?” Detective Kirkpatrick straightened his posture.
“I have a drinking problem,” Simon said. “I black out. I can’t remember things I’ve done. Places I’ve been. Entire evenings are lost.”
The two detectives shifted in their seats. Kirkpatrick made to leave, but Bechdel held out her hand as if she were going to touch her partner’s shoulder, and he settled back in.
Simon wondered if perhaps they were lovers, the almost-touch was so tender. But, then again, they worked together in high stakes situations. Life and death. Simon did the same thing with countless colleagues, seeking out a platonic closeness with them after an eight-hour surgery, bumping knees under the table while getting something to eat from the lackluster cafeteria.
“So you knew Dermot before he met Trina?” Bechdel tried again. She’d decided to go back to the beginning, as though they hadn’t been speaking in circles for the last thirty minutes.
“Yes. We’d been intimate, several times.” Simon’s last several texts to Dermot were ignored. He’d become more distant over the last week or so, ignoring Simon’s calls and messages. It wasn’t the first time Simon had been ghosted—such a strange, perfectly descriptive word. Like a person had never existed. Even though you’d seen each other naked, and smelled their scent after they’d woken up, suddenly they were gone. At least from the world you lived in.
“Sunday evening, I was lonely. Joyce was out, and I’d spent the afternoon doing paperwork in the office, drinking myself through a very expensive bottle of Scotch. I wanted to see him.” All of that was true, Simon noted.
“So you and Dermot had been together?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“Not together, as in a couple. He didn’t want that.”
“Where did you meet?” Bechdel’s eyes flicked to the side. Something was bothering her.
“I frequent a few online forums. Dermot had an account at one of them. They cater to older men looking for younger…” Simon paused on the word. “Friends,” he finally settled on.
“And you messaged him first?” Bechdel was taking the lead on this interview now.
“I did.”
“Can you show us your account?”
“Yes, of course.” Simon waited while Kirkpatrick pulled a laptop out of his bag, opened the lid, and slid it over the table to Simon.
Simon tapped a few keys and his account showed up. He’d taken the photo himself with his phone, in their backyard. Roses bloomed behind him. He wore a crisp white shirt, and he’d filtered the photo to make his eyes seem bluer.
“Would you like to see our messages?”
Simon turned the computer around so the detectives could view his conversations with Dermot.
