With a heavy heart, Hanna left through the still open gate and retraced her steps upstairs to the main lobby. It had been busy when Dunbar had come to get her, but now it was so packed that Hanna had to actively push her way through the crowd. The good news was that with this many people, she didn’t think that anyone would notice or recognize her.
She was wrong.
Hanna had nearly made it to the door when someone shouted.
“Hey!”
Hanna kept on walking.
“Hey!”
This time, she was positive that the person was calling out at her, so Hanna responded by picking up the pace.
Someone grabbed her arm and Hanna instinctively, and violently, pulled free.
It was the man in the tartan blazer.
“Sorry,” he said, holding his hands up.
“What do you want?”
The man frowned.
“Relax, you just dropped something.”
Hanna looked down at her hands and her heart skipped a beat.
The suture was gone.
“What? Where?” she gasped.
How could I have dropped it? I was squeezing it… holding it so tight…
The man’s frown turned into a smile and he dangled something between two fingers.
“What is this, anyway? A shoelace? Hippy bracelet? Ha!”
Hanna snatched the suture from him.
“It’s nothing,” she said, and then slipped into the crowd.
The man grumbled something about her being a bitch, but she ignored it. Hanna made it to the doors without further incident and then burst outside.
It was a relief to breathe fresh air after being holed up in the basement for so long. Hanna inhaled deeply while hurrying to her car. There were two parking tickets on her windshield, which she promptly crumpled and threw to the ground.
She had no time for tickets.
There were only a few hours of light left and there was still one more thing she had to do before the sun set.
***
Hanna got as close as she could to the park before pulling over. For some reason, she was inclined to look at herself in the mirror and instantly regretted it. Usually not one for much makeup, Hanna had gone a little heavier than usual in preparation for her trip to the precinct. Her tears had caused it to run, and she spent a few minutes doing her best to correct the damage. The end result wasn’t perfect, but if anybody saw her, she doubted they would run away screaming, thinking she was some sort of escaped mental patient.
The last thing Hanna did before getting out of her car was wrap the suture around her fingers.
It hurt, but it also felt good and comfortable.
The park looked different than it did in the photograph, which was to be expected given that it was taken more than a decade ago. The one tree that was in the image was more mature now, but Hanna had no problem finding it: she’d memorized the position of the body, the shape of the land beneath it, and the way the tree was nestled in the grass.
Hanna removed both her shoes and socks before stepping into the park. She left them on the side of the curb and reached out with her bare toes.
The grass itself was soft and cool beneath her feet. Hanna moved swiftly, but not desperately toward the tree in the photo, which was located near the rear of the park. When she reached it, Hanna had to touch it. And the instant she felt bark beneath her fingers, her eyes slowly closed.
In her mind, she pictured Hanna Whitmore, the real Hanna Whitmore, not as the girl had been in the cage, naked and terrified, but when she’d been smiling after they’d robbed the pervert with the mustache.
Eyes still closed, Hanna turned and lowered herself slowly onto the grass. She shifted her body a little, lay down, and then finally opened her eyes.
No, not quite—this isn’t quite right.
Hanna slid her torso to the left, looked at the tree, then shimmied a little more.
Yeah, this is it. This is the exact spot that the Straw Man left Hanna’s body.
Still gripping the suture tightly, she stared up at the sun until it dipped beyond the horizon. And then, after the moon had risen and the stars came out to play, Hanna shut her eyes again.
She slept more soundly that night than she had in decades.
Chapter 65
A door opened and Drake jolted awake. He made some sort of cross between a grunt and a groan and tried to stand but failed. His legs were numb and his back ached.
Where the fuck am I?
“Problems at home?” Hanna asked as she stepped into DSLH. Her voice was hoarse, and it didn’t look as if she’d gotten much sleep last night.
“Something like that,” Drake replied in a tone that matched hers. He tried to stretch, but his back spasmed. “How about you?”
“Problems at home,” Hanna answered.
“Fair enough.”
Drake eventually got some feeling back in his legs and then managed to knead the knot out of his spine.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Hanna offered. “I’m pretty sure we could both use it.”
As she prepared their drinks, Drake picked up the pieces of the smashed USB key from the floor and tossed them in the garbage. Either Hanna didn’t notice this or didn’t care. In addition to fancy new computers, someone, Screech, probably, had purchased a state-of-the-art instant coffee maker that was rarely used. For some reason, they all preferred to get their caffeine fix from one of the many shops that lined the street leading to DSLH Investigations. Drake wasn’t sure if this was because their coffee was better—it probably wasn’t—or if they just used the short drive as an excuse to get out of each other’s hair for a bit.
Today, however, he was grateful for the shiny gadget. Within minutes, Hanna returned to his desk with a piping cup of coffee in hand. He took it, and despite the steam rising from the black mug, he took a sip. Hanna did the same, and they both silently drank for several minutes.
When Drake was three-quarters done with his cup, Hanna reached into her pocket and pulled out something that Drake was familiar with.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
Hanna turned the object over in her hand several times before wrapping it around her fingers and making a fist.
“62nd precinct,” she replied casually.
Drake waited for Hanna to expound, but she appeared lost in thought and added nothing further.
“You gotta give me more than that.”
Hanna sighed and looked him right in the eyes.
“Dunbar let me into the cold case room, and I did some searching. I know what you were thinking, that what happened to me isn’t related to the Straw Man, that it can’t be. But I’m right, and this is proof.” As she said this last part, Hanna dangled the tan-colored suture in front of Drake.
He resisted the urge to grab it.
“You got that from evidence? Hanna, didn’t we have this chat before? If you take evidence…” When it became clear that his words were becoming a lecture, Drake stopped himself. “Fuck it.” He sighed. “Just… you don’t have to be like me, you know.”
In an attempt to get comfortable, Drake shifted in his seat and he heard shrapnel from the USB key that he must have missed crunch beneath the chair leg.
Did you think of the potential consequences of what you did to Tobin Tomlin? What that might have done to the case? To you?
Hanna hadn’t said the words, but she might as well have.
“Don’t be like me,” Drake repeated.
Hanna, who had been staring at what was left of her coffee, suddenly looked up, a confused expression on her face.
“What?”
Drake shook his head.
“You could have just taken a picture of the suture. And, for the record, I believed you.”
“I needed to hold it,” she said softly.
They fell silent for a moment, and despite knowing that he’d already said enough, Drake just couldn’t help himself.
“I made mistakes,
Hanna, mistakes I can’t take back. Don’t do—”
Hanna’s expression hardened.
“You’re getting pretty good about this lecturing thing, aren’t you, daddy?”
“Fuck, I just—”
“No, stop. Just fucking stop. I don’t give a shit about a trial or evidence about what happens to me.” The words were so much like ones that Drake might have said that he was taken aback. “What this animal did to her, to us… he’s going to pay, Drake. He’s going to pay in the worst possible way.”
And there it was again, Hanna’s use of the word us.
“Who was there with you, Hanna?” Drake asked, trying to change the subject. “And what happened to her?”
She looked away.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does.”
“Well, it fucking doesn’t, alright? The only thing that matters is finding this asshole.”
Drake exhaled loudly, trying to force his frustration out with the breath.
“We’re not vigilantes, Hanna. We have to do this the right way, because if we don’t—”
“Really? Like we did with Tobin? Like we did with Ken Smith? Tell me something, Drake, why is it that when a case is personal to you, we do whatever it takes to fix it, solve it, whatever. Remember Dr. Kruk? You came to me, asking to help break this fucking psycho out, and I did it. I didn’t even ask why. I just knew that you needed him out, so I helped you.”
“That was different. I was different.”
“Oh, yeah? Let me guess, you’re a changed man now,” she adopted a mocking tone. “How pathetic. How clichéd.”
Drake lost his cool and jumped to his feet so quickly that the chair fell over behind him.
“Yeah, I’m fucking changed,” he shouted. “You know what fucking changed me? Telling a mother and father that their kid was skinned alive, and their flesh was sewed together with two other girls and put on display. If that doesn’t change a person, then you weren’t even fucking human to begin with!”
Despite his anger, Hanna refused to back down. She extended a finger of the hand with the suture wrapped around it and pointed to his chest.
“You wanna talk about change? How about being left at the side of the road when you were eleven with no money, no house, no food, nothing—nowhere to go. That changes you. You know what else changes you? Being stripped naked and locked in a fucking cage! That fucking changes you! Watching your friend being carried away to be skinned alive changes you! That all fucking changes you!”
Hanna’s face had gone beyond red to a shade of purple and Drake knew that he should go to his friend, hold her, comfort her, but that somehow felt fake. Hanna’s haunting words also seemed to have a paralyzing effect on him.
The spell was broken by a heavy thud on the door.
Instinct took over and Drake reached for his gun as he moved around Hanna. She didn’t meet his eyes as he passed.
“Yeah?” he hollered as he approached. There was a tall figure on the other side of the door. “Who is it?”
“Yasiv.”
Drake let go of his gun and opened the door, wondering if the sergeant was here for Hanna, if he’d found out about her theft and was coming to arrest her.
Yasiv looked exhausted but didn’t have his handcuffs out. Still, out of precaution, Drake blocked the open doorway as he said, “What is it?”
“Lab results came back,” Yasiv informed him, his eyes drifting to the several sheets of paper in his hand.
“And let me guess, Robert Tiedeman had nothing to do with this,” Hanna snapped.
Confident now that Yasiv wasn’t here to arrest either of them, Drake let the man inside.
“Well, I don’t know if he had nothing to do with this, but it wasn’t his DNA on the mannequin.”
“Fuck,” Drake cursed.
“It’s not all bad, though,” Yasiv said. He flipped to another sheet of paper. “Robert gave us a description of the man who paid him to go to the art gallery. Didn’t know his name or anything, but here’s what our sketch artist came up with.”
Drake was closest to Yasiv and he managed to get a glimpse of the image before Hanna did.
It showed a man in his mid- or early 50s, with short hair that was brushed back, a square jawline, and light-colored eyes. He was handsome if a little generic.
“Let me see,” Hanna demanded.
Drake was hesitant to let her see, thinking that it might further aggravate her PTSD, but there was no reasonable way to stop her. Especially now that she’d found a link between what happened to her and what happened at the gallery and the mall.
He reluctantly stepped aside, and Hanna snatched the paper from Yasiv. Drake watched as she scanned the image and the blood drained out of her face.
This time, Drake did reach for her, but she pulled back.
She didn’t need to say that this was the man who had taken her and her friend—it was written all over her face. Before, Drake had wanted to keep Hanna’s story from Yasiv because he was unsure if they were connected. But now, his motivation was different.
He wanted to keep his partner’s story a secret to protect her.
Thinking that Hanna might say something in her current state that would raise questions, Drake quickly changed the subject.
“Hanna, the Wilson girl and her friends were probably taken from a campsite just outside the city. I was thinking of heading there with Yasiv this morning. You can either join us or wait for Leroy and Screech to arrive. Up to you.”
Yasiv was in the process of taking the sketch back from Hanna’s fingers when his phone started to ring.
“They’re expecting us,” he said as he answered the call.
While the sergeant was distracted, Drake sidled up next to Hanna.
“It’s him,” she whispered.
“I know.”
Hanna looked up.
“It’s his eyes, Drake. It’s his fucking eyes. It was so long ago, and I was so hungry and thirsty that I couldn’t remember what he looked like—but I can remember those eyes.”
Drake didn’t know what to say but thankfully didn’t have to come up with anything because Yasiv ended his call.
“Yeah, I don’t think the campsite visit is going to happen,” the sergeant said with a snarl.
Drake swallowed hard, his thoughts once again turning to the stolen suture. He subtly moved in front of Hanna.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Yasiv continued, a look of gloom crossing his features, “that was Dunbar.”
“And? What’d he say?”
Drake felt Hanna tense behind him.
“He said that Tobin Tomlin just came out of his coma.”
Drake’s jaw went slack, and his heart seemed to squeeze the blood out of it like an iron fist juicing an orange. In his mind, he replayed the scene from the video that Mackenzie Hart had sent him.
“Yeah?” he said dryly.
Yasiv nodded.
“Yeah. The man just woke up and guess what? He says he only wants to talk to you, Drake.”
Chapter 66
“What the hell does he want with me?” Drake asked, trying to ignore the thrumming in his chest.
Yasiv held up his hands as if to say, ‘I’m just the messenger’.
“That’s what Dunbar told me.” Yasiv shrugged. “If I had to guess, Tobin probably overheard someone saying that you were the one who helped bring him in. Or not—I don’t know. Anyway, you don’t have to go.”
“Oh, I have to,” Drake blurted. Yasiv raised an eyebrow and he quickly added, “I wanna see this prick go down for what he did.”
In reality, Drake shared Dunbar’s sentiment that it was best if Tobin Tomlin never woke up. Best for him, best for the NYPD, best for everyone. But now that the little prick had come out of his coma, things had changed. If Tobin started running his mouth, talking about what Drake had done, and then the video surfaced…
“Fuck.” Drake rubbed his eyes. “What kind of timing—”
He tensed as the door behind Sergeant Yasiv opened, a feeling that persisted even after seeing that it was only Screech and Leroy.
Leroy took one look at him and said, “What’s up? What happened?”
“Long story,” Drake grumbled. He glanced at Sergeant Yasiv. “We were just leaving.”
“What? Where?” Screech asked.
“We—” Drake suddenly changed his mind. “I have something I need to do. Some old business I need to wrap up. Yasiv, why don’t you take Leroy with you to the campsite? See if anybody remembers our guy.” Screech looked confused, so Drake explained. “Robert gave us a sketch of our unsub.”
He expected Hanna to hold the image up for the others to see, but she still had a death grip on the page and didn’t raise it an inch.
“Drake, I should probably—”
Drake cut the sergeant off.
“Tobin Tomlin is chained to a hospital bed—he’s not going anywhere. Our unsub, however, is still out there. Which do you think takes priority?” He knew that this statement was hypocritical, given that he was the one leading the investigation, but he had to find out what Tobin knew. Drake wasn’t concerned about his own fate but had started to reconsider the consequences for his partners should something like the Tomlin incident blow up in their faces.
“What about us?” Screech asked. “Drake? Drake?”
But Drake was already out the door and halfway to his car.
***
“What the fuck does he want, Dunbar?” Drake asked as he and the detective walked briskly down the hospital corridor.
“I don’t know. I instructed the nursing staff to call me if he ever opened his eyes. He did, and they did. Not only that, but they also said that Tobin was moaning your name when he woke up. Then he said he wanted to speak to you, to the cop who arrested him.”
“I’m not a cop,” Drake remarked.
Dunbar let this hang in the air as they navigated the hallway, passing between several nurses pushing carts and a doctor with his face buried in a clipboard.
“And you have no idea what he wants?” Drake asked, for what felt like the tenth time.
“No clue.”
Straw Man Page 27