“Shit,” Maeve said and her stomach dropped. “Did they say what happened? What’s on fire?”
He paused, hesitated, and spun, getting his bearings and said, “I don’t know. My life, I guess. Hey,” he patted his pocket and procured his keys and paused. Derek took a deep breath and when he raised his eyebrows and put out his hands, supplication and apology on his face, Maeve stepped forward.
“You want me to come with you?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” he said, face-straight, her stomach jerked. “I’m gonna need you to drive.”
And he didn’t need to ask Maeve twice.
Gloria’s warning rang loud and clear; and so did the female caller from the other day. If he was just a cute ER nurse, maybe it would be different. But he wasn’t just a cute nurse. He was a true crime fantasy, a boy people loved to love, a mystery wrapped in silence, protected and rooted in people’s national consciousness.
But there was a Derek that was just for her—a Derek that he didn’t share with the world.
If Maeve followed him, if she allowed herself to see where this boy could take her, she’d have to get used to other people having an opinion about whether or not she should follow. Those who knew Derek from the conspiracy sites on the Internet were too intellectually lazy to deal with—there was no conspiracy; she was not dating a killer. Dating. A killer.
Dating.
She wasn’t even dating him. She was flirting with him, following him to fires, imagining being there when he got home after a long shift, helping him out of scrubs, serving him a hot meal. When she thought of her role in Derek’s life, she wondered if she would always be along for the ride.
That wasn’t usually her style.
Maeve was the ride.
She tried to imagine a time when the sight of him walking up to her didn’t give her an immediate chill; when he wouldn’t stop her dead in her tracks, his penetrating stare, focused and sincere. If her sister were there, she’d tell her to stop chasing boys and go home. She was too old for this shit. Except she wasn’t. This was the perfect time to chase boys and fires. Also, she thought with bitterness toward those who wanted her to pump the brakes, she was too single not to see where this could lead.
She wasn’t fourteen. She wasn’t Juliet obsessing over a love-crazed Romeo. He wasn’t a bad boy on a motorcycle offering her cigarettes.
Maeve pocketed her phone and trotted along after Derek and climbed into his truck. She wordlessly maneuvered them out of the city and on to the freeway, gliding blissfully away from the urban center, the little city at their back, Portland’s largest building, Big Pink, towering in the background.
With fires on their mind, the two rode in virtual silence.
At one point, Maeve reached over and simply put her hand on his knee. Derek put his right hand on top of hers and rested it there—and there they sat, a picture of comfort and calm before the storm.
Chapter Seventeen
By the time they arrived at the property in Boring, the fire department’s lights illuminated the dirt road and surrounding trees with cascading blues and reds, and white spotlights. Black and gray smoke plumed from the wreckage of what used to be Derek’s trailer.
They parked, and Derek approached the smoldering lump of his former home, not able to fully comprehend what he was seeing.
The armchairs outside were desecrated with black soot and ash, and the canopy above lay wet and broken, folded across the remnants of his belongings like a war-torn, tattered flag. A tall first responder with giant bug-like eyes and sweat on his brow walked Derek and Maeve over to the wreckage to explain. Maeve’s arms remained crossed over her body and she was quiet, taking in everything.
Timothy was dead and Derek’s house was set on fire—the timing didn’t go unnoticed by anybody.
“It would appear there was use of an accelerant. Poured on the chairs to start,” the fireman said. “We have arson coming out to get a statement for the police. But, hey, I hate to be the one to let you know this, but there was one more spot on the property damaged…a secondary location.”
Without waiting for the fireman to elaborate, Derek shook his head and stared out into the darkness ahead of him. The moon shone down, casting enough light to see the damage and understand the purpose behind it.
“They got the chess set,” Derek muttered with a lost faraway look in that direction. “Mother fuckers.” His outburst was quick and intense; he kicked the dirt in front of him and it floated off in a plume into the night and Maeve stepped back, giving him space to be angry. He started to wander off to see his artwork as ash before changing his mind and turning back. The trailer was insured and his most treasured items were in storage anyway. The destruction was an inconvenience more than anything.
But the chess set was a different sort of violence.
“Did you have any security? Any cameras?”
Derek shook his head. He stood with his arms on his hips, eyes unblinking.
“We can get you set up with your insurance, get you a hotel,” one fireman said, but Derek waved the offer away.
“I’ve got places to stay.”
Maeve turned her head but he didn’t return her gaze—it didn’t need to be her place, he had options. But if she offered, he wouldn’t mind a bath and her couch and someone who could understand his mood. Snuggling with that dog Roger could be a bonus. The buzz from his endless supply of bourbon had dwindled to a dull aching throb in his temples and the only remnants were the rolling remembrances of shitty things he’d said at the Alibi. Although wasn’t he entitled a night like that? A night to feel desired and powerfully important. Maybe that was what his father was chasing all those years.
That thought, that image, hit him squarely in the chest and he rocked a bit and felt a swell of tears push on the back of his eyes and work their way to his chest, where he caught them and held them until his whole body ached. He blinked away the watery remnants and cleared his throat.
He’d lost his dad and now his house, he wondered if the universe felt entitled to take everything away. Maybe it would come for his job, his mind, his friends. Maybe he was Job and God was fucking with him.
Don’t try, he warned whoever was in control up there.
An hour ago, they’d been flirting, touching. Now Maeve kept her distance, a few steps back, with an understanding that he was not okay. The men and women tending to his property continued to work on the smoke and the heat and left him alone to process the magnitude of his loss by himself.
“Are the past three days even real?” Derek asked with a shocked laugh when they were alone. He’d amassed a pile of business cards and solemn handshakes. It was depressing to watch the trucks roll away as the realization that now he was on his own to deal with the aftermath dawned on him. “The chess board. That’s personal. No one knows that it’s out there and then sets it on fire unless…it’s some kind of message.”
He felt her fingers in the palm of his hand. Then she held him. She grabbed him from behind and laid her chest down into the divot in his back and held on.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his wrinkled shirt.
“It doesn’t feel real,” he answered.
She slid backward and rested a single finger on his elbow. With a tap, she said, “Just tell me how to help and I’ll help.”
He wished he could tell Maeve how to help, but the truth was he didn’t know himself. Call his insurance? Make a list of lost items? When he thought of the fire, he was filled with rage and sadness. The land was his baby and his burden; not many people knew where he lived.
Derek knew his father’s death could unleash a lost secret or two, but he wasn’t prepared for his grief to end up compounded.
“I have people, so don’t feel burden—”
“You can stay with me. It’s tiny, but you won’t have much luggage.”
The joke slide between them unnoticed until Derek turned and let out a small snort. “Too soon,” he chided and touched her on the arm.
Sh
e saluted and adopted a look of solemnity. “You can, though. Stay. If that’s not a super odd and weird thing?”
“Do you think it’s weird?” he asked and began to make his way back to what was left of his trailer.
“I think Gloria already gave me a nice and stern message about what happens to girls who seduce guest speakers.”
“Shit,” Derek said and kicked a small patch of grass, soggy from the hoses. “No fraternizing with the cult-weirdo who serves mostly as a pop culture trivia question. God knows he doesn’t need any help meeting women.”
Maeve laughed. He shrugged. “You are joking,” she said and laughed again. “Like ten minutes ago you were telling me about your vanilla doctor sex.”
“I didn’t say the sex was vanilla,” Derek answered and he walked a bit ahead. With permission from the fire crew, they exited to his truck and began the dark drive back to her place.
It was just a hop, skip and a jump, hovering near the East Bank of the Willamette River and down again until they stood outside her apartment building. It was dark and the lobby was well lit beyond the glass doors. Safe and secure—home sweet home.
“I’ll look into more permanent housing tomorrow,” Derek said as she punched in her code and pulled back on the door as it unlocked for her with a tiny buzz.
“No rush,” she said, and stepped into the lobby, her high-heel shoes, he now noticed, caked in mud and grass, clapped across the tile floor. Mud had spread up the back of her legs from walking his property and as she turned to face him, he noticed she’d smeared mud on her chin. He wiped it off with his thumb. Her mascara had clumped and slid off, leaving her with raccoon eyes. He refrained from leaning in and wiping the makeup away.
“It was a disaster out there. But,” he paused, “it wasn’t the house, right? It wasn’t anything of—”
“We can remake the chess set. I’ll help carve.”
“We definitely can. I’ll let you.”
She hit the elevator button and the doors pulled open. Maeve grabbed Derek’s hand prepared to walk in with him side-by-side, but she stopped and growled deep in her throat when she looked up. Honestly, she should’ve been expecting it.
“Shit,” she sighed and spun on her heels. “We’ve got to go get my dog from Hugo.”
She gave him pillows and blankets and directed him to the couch. Roger popped up and made himself at home at Derek’s feet, putting his head against his shins and looking up with his perfected canine pout.
Maeve felt uncomfortable and anxious. She shoved her laundry pile into her bedroom, shut the door and did a once-through the bathroom, scanning for the most embarrassing items and shoving her hair removal cream into the back of the cabinet. She wasn’t inherently opposed to boys knowing the various mechanical ways she allowed herself to be vain, but it seemed too early to divulge all her worst quirks.
“Do I get to know?” Maeve asked when she returned to the living room.
“About what?” he asked.
“I mean, someday, will you let me into that world of yours?”
It took Derek a long second to answer and when he did, he rubbed his hands through his hair and let out a shaky breath.
“Nah. I’m going to save it until I’m buzzed and surrounded by fans,” he joked.
“I can get you a beer and invite the neighbors over. If it will help.”
He pretended to consider it.
Then his face softened and he dug the toe of his shoe into the carpet, stalling. “You have to let me talk about it in my own time.”
“Derek, your dad was murdered and your trailer was set on fire. I don’t think you can pretend anymore that the drama is in the past. It’s now…it’s here. Now’s a good time to talk about it.”
He visibly turned and stretched away from her, shaking his head. She didn’t understand. She’d never had her life written for her and she’d never know what it was like not to know, not to remember. There was a black hole where the biggest pieces of his life were supposed to reside and Derek
“I shouldn’t have even asked,” Maeve said quickly.
“No,” he said. “It’s not that simple. I don’t know what I remember about that night because I’d been told a story and I believed it.”
“You don’t still believe it?”
“My dad called me the night you stayed over.” He closed his eyes. Maeve held her breath. “I didn’t answer and he left some rambling message on my phone about his one big regret or whatever. But he’s always like that. How do you know when it will be the last time you’d get to talk to someone?”
“You don’t,” Maeve answered. She felt foolish for trying to explain grief to someone like him.
Derek glossed right over the advice. “His one regret he said was not owning up to his mistakes. He trusted that I could make it right when he was gone.”
“That sounds like a suicide call to me.”
“No murder weapon at the scene.”
“He called someone to come get the gun?”
Derek pondered that question and followed the logic through. His dad wanted to die; he called and left nebulous messages of friendship and love and secrets on his son’s voicemail, then he’s dead the next morning, gunshot, no gun.
“That…” he looked at Maeve and tilted his head, “…is entirely possible.”
“Why?” Maeve asked, squinting. “Why make your suicide look like a murder? And who does something like that?”
Derek could only smile.
“My dad. That’s who,” he replied. For all of their research and knowledge, nobody knew his father the way he did.
Timothy Shelton believed he was attacking the Woodstock Killer the night he stabbed Peter with the gardening shears in the basement bedroom, Derek’s semi-unconscious body a few feet away.
He told Derek he believed he’d stumbled upon the serial killer hovering over his son ready to finish him off when he’d grabbed the garden tool from the ping pong table and launched forward.
By that time, he knew the girls were dead. Strangulation for the babysitter. Gunshot for the child. A new method and expansion for the killer. No gun was ever found at the scene.
The stories of the Woodstock Killer began in earnest in the weeks before the anniversary date and Timothy believed he’d discovered the monster red-handed, and he stabbed the gardening shears into his back, thirteen times, one for every year that Derek had lived on the earth.
When Derek was roused, he believed what he was told.
He repeated it. Of course, of course.
Peter attacked him.
Yes, it was Peter—Peter’s face—as he crawled across the basement floor toward Derek’s bed.
His father saved him.
His memories of his attacker were so unclear. The crawling and crawling, and then becoming a monster of a man, his face covered in every memory he recalled. Derek didn’t see his attacker. He knew he never truly saw the beast’s face.
And without any additional murders in the following months and years, the story held. Timothy Shelton stopped a serial killer.
Only, Derek knew it wasn’t true.
He didn’t know the whole truth, so help him God. He only knew he couldn’t account for the truth he was encouraged to tell year after year.
It started when he pulled back from the public eye ten years ago.
Every month, on the fifteenth of the month—the day of the attacks—Derek received a letter. For many years, it went unsigned. It taunted him. Thank your dad for my new life.
One time, one of the letters included a drawing of a woman floating in a pool. Two days letter, he heard of the death of a mother, found floating in their pool, and that was all Derek could stand. He retreated from the story and from the public life entirely. The real Woodstock Killer was alive and they were getting enjoyment out of tormenting him with that nugget of truth.
Derek was powerless and the person knew it.
If he brought the information forward, he would undo his father’s entire empire. They�
��d be liars, opportunists, murderers. So, Derek did the only thing he knew he could do and keep his own conscience clear. He slid off the grid.
Peter was innocent. And so, his father killed an innocent man and spent his life profiteering from the lie. Whether or not his father believed his own falsehoods were something else entirely, but for a long time Derek thought he was protecting his father by staying quiet. His dad was wound a little tight, always assuming he was some victim; if only he could protect his family from the truth.
The truth that Peter had been leaning over Derek’s body to check his vitals after arriving to check on Ginny who hadn’t called him when she said she would. Or so Derek pieced together after reading the statements from Peter’s mom and sister, who held his innocence for all those years. He saw the same statements printed out in the woman named Holly from the club.
Derek never told anyone about the letters.
If the Woodstock Killer was still at large, he’d refined his practice to that of a ghost. Maybe he now murdered with heart-attacks, accidental drownings, and overdoses of prescription pain pills, things that never roused suspicion. But Derek could only assume.
“That’s messed up,” Maeve whispered when he was done. “He wanted you to live your whole life as a lie, to protect his own life. That’s totally fucked up, Derek. I mean…” she trailed off and then looked back at him, brows knit tightly together. “That’s really… you have a therapist, right?”
“For sure,” Derek answered with a laugh. “Since forever.”
Maeve opened her eyes wide and appeared totally taken aback. “Why? Why’d he do it?”
“That’s not the right question,” Derek said. He brushed a piece of hair away from her face. They sat closely together, touching gently. “Everyone lies out of fear. It’s all fear-based, deep down. The question I always wanted to know was why did he continue to choose to profit from the lie. Why did he get off telling the lie again and again? That’s psychopathic.”
Forgotten Obsessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 1) Page 12