“Where do I come in?” I asked again, eyeing the stack of folders on his desk.
“Well, I figured after the job you did with the Roberts case, this would be right up your alley. I thought we could plant you in and see what we come up with.”
The Roberts case. My own personal albatross. Over the course of eight months last year, three high school students had been murdered, one after another.
“That was different,” I protested. “You knew Roberts was the killer; you just couldn’t prove it. Something like this is out of my league. Don’t you have anyone in the Bureau to do it?”
“I’m a man who utilizes my assets. What I have before me is a twenty-three-year old police officer with almost three years on the force who looks like she’s eighteen. I could stick you in any school in the country and you would blend in.” He leaned forward, palms down on the desk for the clincher. “On the other hand, your youthful looks are a liability on the streets. Who wants to be partners with someone who looks like she should be at cheerleader practice? I’ve been there; I know. I’m offering you a chance to do some good here.”
“What about manpower shortages? We’re averaging a shooting a day right now. Do you think my department supervisors are just going to let you take me off on some—”
He waved his hand, dismissing the words right out of my mouth. “I already have permission from your commissioner to grant you a leave of absence. The local county district attorney is on board, although he won’t know your identity. The Bureau will pick up your regular salary, plus expenses.”
I sank back into my chair. I wish I could say I was stunned, but I was intimately familiar with Bill’s style. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”
He smiled again and ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I think my clearance rate proves I know how to close cases. And I know how it is to be where you are.” He added gently, “I see you being wasted as a police officer. Are you really happy writing tickets and pushing papers?”
“I didn’t get this from pushing papers,” I said angrily, touching my eye.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’ll tell you what, look over these reports I’ve got for you on the case. I have a feeling you’ll be interested in this without my having to convince you.” With that he pulled a large manila folder out of his desk and tossed it to me. I glanced down at it, leafed through the paperwork, and looked up.
“Couldn’t you have just emailed these to me?”
He shrugged. “Call me old-fashioned. I want you to really look at these reports, not scroll through them on your iPhone.”
The folder was thick, but not thick enough. “Where’s the complete file on this?”
“You don’t get any of that. I want you to go in practically blind. No preconceived notions. I want to see what you can come up with on your own. Most of this you could get on the Internet.”
“No backup. No surveillance. You’re throwing me in without a net. Again.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you’d be safe. But there’s always an inherent risk when you’re trying to track a killer.”
“I thought you said they were missing.”
“No bodies. It’s been ruled a kidnapping due to the insistence of the parents and the circumstances of the disappearance. Is it a kidnapping? Human trafficking? A triple homicide? Who knows at this point? The county attorney approached the FBI for assistance because the local authorities and state police have come up with absolutely zero. I don’t think these girls up and ran away. Once you read the file, I’m convinced you’ll agree with me.”
I folded all the papers back in place and got up, trying to seem noncommittal. “Okay, I’ll take a look at these.”
As I was walking to the door, Bill said, “When this is all over, we’ll see about you coming to work for the Bureau. We’d love to have you.”
I wanted to say No thanks. I wanted to say Go screw yourself. I wanted to throw his old-fashioned paper files back at him and storm out of his office in righteous indignation, but instead I reached for the doorknob and muttered, “We’ll see.”
“Take care of the eye, Shea O’Connor.”
I walked out.
I managed to keep my composure as I strode across the steel-gray carpets that lined the pictureless, sterile walls. I gave the security guard my visitor’s pass and walked back through the metal detector to the side door. As soon as I made it across the parking lot and into the sanctity of my car, I burst into tears.
Bill knew what buttons to push on people, and he had hit every one of mine. I knew I looked like a kid. I knew no one wanted me as their backup. Every cop has the moment where they’re tested and you either pass or fail under the eyes of your peers. I’d had my moment and I’d passed, I’d survived, but no one knew about it. The judge had issued a gag order on all parties so as not to taint the jury pool because of the depraved and extreme nature of the crimes. Until Terry Roberts’s sanity hearings were over, no one would know what I’d done to catch that sadist fuck, or that it was even me who’d done the catching. If the court decided Roberts was fit to stand trial, they’d go forward with the evidence and the people’s case would be open to discovery for all the world to see.
Until the gag order was lifted, I had to struggle every day with my own reflection in the mirror. Along with the emotional and the physical scars, the case had left me drained and isolated.
I drove home knowing that Bill had won, but not knowing whether I should be grateful. It was only a five-minute drive from Bill’s office over to my apartment in Allentown. Closing my eyes and practicing the breathing technique my roommate had taught me, I got myself together after I parked my car behind our building.
I lived on Elmwood Avenue, considered to be the trendy, artsy Buffalo neighborhood. People were snapping up the old Victorians and had reinvented the area as The Elmwood Village. Our landlord had renovated an old shoe store that had stood vacant for almost a decade into two oversized apartments.
The downstairs tenant/landlord was shoveling his walkway. “Hey, Shea,” he called as I sifted through my keys. “I did yours, too.”
“Thanks, Marcus. You always come through for us.”
“I’m out here anyway. Just keep me safe, girl.”
I laughed. “Will do.”
My roommate, Karen, was already home when I walked in, lounging on our couch, watching the news with the remote in her hand. “Who dotted your eye?” She clicked the remote, turning off CNN. “Boy, you look like crap.”
“Thanks,” I groaned, and threw my things over the armchair. My scarf slid off my coat and pooled on the floor. I just left it. “I got decked at work.”
“Pretty.” She moved her feet so I could sit down next to her. “What’s that?”
She was eyeing up the case file I still had in my hand. I put it down on our coffee table. “Bill Walters called me today. He left a message for me at the station house, and of course I ran right over to see him.”
“What did he want?” She propped herself up on one of our throw pillows. “To gloat over the raise he got for the case you solved?”