He burst into tears and collapsed into her arms.
~
“It’s been… incredibly difficult,” Jasmine said, her eyes focusing on the glass of tea cupped in both hands. “Particularly for Suze.”
Drake looked down at his own steaming cup and wished that Jasmine had put something stronger than Orange Pekoe in it.
He thought back to the morning he had waited outside Hockley Middle and High School, to how visceral Suze’s reaction to his presence had been.
How obvious her hatred for him was.
No, Suzan hadn’t taken her father’s death well, not that any child should. But Clay had been particularly close with her.
“How are you holding up?” Drake asked softly, trying to steer the conversation.
Jasmine didn’t raise her gaze.
“I get up every day,” was all she offered, and Drake felt himself nodding. Sometimes, getting up was the hardest part.
For others, for those like himself, it was closing his eyes that proved most difficult.
Jasmine finally looked up, and he noticed that her eyes were red.
“Suzan’s applying for college this year,” she said, pulling the conversation back to her daughter. “Wants to do pre-med.”
This surprised Drake; he had known that Suzan was interested in medicine—Clay had talked about it ad nauseum—and in becoming a doctor, but going from high school directly to medical school?
It felt odd knowing that the world continued on even when your existence seemed to cease.
“Good for her,” Drake managed after a short pause. “I’m glad that she’s continuing to…” he scrounged his mind for the right words, eventually settling on Jasmine’s own. “…get up every day.”
Jasmine nodded and then took a sip of tea.
“I want to thank you, Damien,” she said without warning.
Drake frowned.
“Thank me? For what?”
Jasmine seemed to consider this for a moment. Then she sighed and said, “I know that you were the one behind the article in the Times. While you were on leave and before it was published, I asked around the precinct, trying to get more information about Clay’s death. Everyone I asked said the same thing: the report is sealed; it’s for internal affairs only. If there is an arrest, you will be notified. I mean, Clay had many, many friends in the precinct, across the city even. But when he died… when he was murdered, everyone handled me with kid gloves, if they would handle me at all. I could see it in their eyes—they were terrified of me. Scared and sad. They wouldn’t even tell me where you were, if you were okay, if you still worked there.”
Drake felt himself nodding.
The time immediately after Clay’s murder had been, and still was, hazy to him, but he remembered picking up his cell phone, hearing Jasmine’s voice and being unable to do anything but listen. He couldn’t speak—no words would be sufficient to express his sorrow.
It had taken six months and basically his career to be over for him to muster the courage to come here.
“And then the article came out,” she continued. “It was you who leaked the information about what happened, wasn’t it?”
Drake swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
While he had been unable to formulate words to express his condolences to Jasmine, he had reached out in the only other way he knew how.
He had picked up the phone and called the Times, knowing full well that if he spoke to a reporter, his career would effectively be ruined. More than that, he was breaking a cardinal rule in the NYPD world, and was going to alienate himself from every other police officer in New York City.
But Drake was compelled to tell what really happened that night; he just couldn’t live under the guise, the collective narrative that Rhodes and the press liaisons were spouting.
The lies about how he and Clay had been ambushed, and that Drake himself was a hero, taking out the Skeleton King after he had shot Clay.
Drake knew better.
After all, he had carried Clay’s bloody body into the rain and collapsed on the porch.
He swallowed again. His throat suddenly felt incredibly dry and he reached for his tea.
Before he could answer, before he could confirm Jasmine’s suspicions, the front door opened.
“Mom?” Suzan’s voice drifted to them in the kitchen. “I’m home, mom,” there was a short pause. “Whose shoes are these?”
CHAPTER 64
Chase left Patty’s Diner shortly after Beckett, and found herself driving aimlessly while she thought about the Butterfly Killer. She had done this often as a Narc in Seattle; driving around, watching the wet city sluice by while her mind struggled to silence distractions.
It was clear that Rhodes was in Ken Smith’s pocket, something Chase had known even before seeing the man drive to SSJ. It was the reason why he was so reluctant to link Chris’s case to the others, knowing that the FBI would show up and start poking their noses into places that he didn’t want them looking.
But Rhodes wasn’t the only one who had taken bribes to keep his mouth shut: the high school teacher, Veronica, Raul, even Clarissa in a backwards sort of way were not talking because of the man’s influence.
It dawned on her that Drake might also be taking bribes from the man, but quickly dismissed this thought. After all, everything he was doing was in direct opposition to what Ken wanted: he was going to the press and dragging people involved with links to the Smith family down to the station.
As for their meeting? Chase probably should have seen that coming. After all, the two men were on a collision course, a concentric circle that pitted both of them in the center.
No, Drake’s destruction was self-inflicted.
And when the dust settled, Chase foresaw only one possible outcome, no matter the results of the case.
By week’s end, or perhaps even sooner, Damien Drake was no longer going to be an NYPD detective. This served everyone’s interests, including Rhodes and the rest of the detectives who loathed him as much for what he let happen to Clay as his exposé in the Times following his murder, and the Smith family.
The only one that would come to harm was Drake himself. And she had seen it in his eyes; he would go down without a fight. The man was broken, so shattered by his own guilt that he believed that everything that came his way was deserved.
Chase had told him soon after they had met that she wouldn’t go down with his burning ship, but she also couldn’t imagine letting him die with it. She might abandon ship, but Chase was not so career driven that she wouldn’t throw him a lifeline.
How to do that, however, and not drown in the undertow was still something that she was trying to work out.
Her first instinct had been to accompany Detective Yasiv to the teacher’s house, to see if she could extract more information about what happened all those years ago, but decided against it. She wasn’t in the frame of mind to interview anyone, let alone an elderly school teacher who had been paid off already.
Her second inclination was to go to see Officer Dunbar, to put pressure on him to find out what happened to Marcus Slasinsky after the accident. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything; the man already had enough on his plate, and her presence would likely only slow him down.
Instead, Chase eventually found herself on the outskirts of the city, turning down the winding, arbor-embraced street that led to the Smith Estate.
It’s for the case, she thought, but then immediately dismissed the lie.
It wasn’t for the case—it was for her. She needed a friend to talk to, something that never came easy to her.
And Clarissa Smith was the closest thing to a friend that she had.
Chase parked across from the iron gates, and took a deep breath before getting out of her car. She had only just pushed the intercom button when the door to the estate blew open.
Clarissa Smith rushed out, dressed in pajamas, her hair a mess.
“You promised!” she yelled as she rushed toward Chase.
Chase, so surprised by this outburst, took a step backward.
“Wh—what? Clarissa, I—”
“You promised!” Clarissa shouted again. She was pointing her manicured finger at Chase with such anger that in that moment it looked as dangerous as a loaded gun.
Chase shook her head, confusion washing over her.
“I don’t—I don’t know what—”
Clarissa grabbed the fence now, and Chase saw pure fury in her wide eyes.
She took another step back.
“I thought you were my friend! You come here, sweet talk me, play tennis, pretend to be a friend, and then you leave here and go right to the papers, didn’t you? They printed the prostitute’s name on the first goddamn page!” Clarissa shouted.
“N—n—no, I didn’t. It was—”
“You promised me that you would keep this quiet! My son—my eight-year-old son—was bullied at school, the other kids telling him that his dead father was cheating with a whore!”
Chase felt her heart thudding away in her chest.
“And do you know what that bastard Ken Smith did? Hmm? Do you know what he did to get back at me?”
Chase was nearing tears now. It had been a horrible, horrible mistake to come here.
“I don’t—”
“He froze everything! Every last dime I have, he froze. I have nothing now! Absolutely nothing!”
Chase licked her lips.
“He can’t—he can’t do that,” she stammered.
Clarissa’s eyes went so wide that they almost bulged.
“Oh yes he can, and he did!”
“I’m sorry,” Chase said. “I’m so sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“You stupid bitch,” Clarissa spat. “You came here and you tricked me. I thought you wanted to help, but the only thing you wanted to do is further your career.”
Chase was shaking her head so hard now that she could no longer focus on Clarissa’s angry face any more.
“No, it’s not true!” she exclaimed. “It’s not true! I just—”
“You’re only out for yourself,” Clarissa said quietly.
Tears started to streak down Chase’s face.
“It’s not true, I—”
“Get out!” Clarissa suddenly screamed. Chase took a step back, tripped, and fell hard on her ass. “Get off my property! Get off my property now you stupid bitch!”
Chase picked herself off the pavement and sprinted for her car, yanking the door open.
Once inside, she buried her face in her hands and started to sob.
CHAPTER 65
“What… what are you doing here?” Suzan gasped, her eyes locking in on Drake’s.
Drake lowered his gaze and started to stand.
“I was just leaving,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”
“Upset anyone?” Suzan said, stepping forward. “Upset anyone?”
“Suzan, please,” Jasmine said, also rising to her feet. “Drake was—”
Suzan’s eyes darted from Drake’s to her mother’s.
“He was what, mom? He was here to say sorry for what he did? Or maybe he was here to take out you, too, mom? Did you ever think of that?”
Drake reached for the young girl, but she recoiled.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me!” she screamed.
Jasmine strode forward, but her daughter pulled away from her mother as well.
“You don’t touch me either!”
“Suze, I’m so sorry—”
She turned to Drake, hatred in her eyes.
“Fuck you and your ‘sorries’. We were a happy family! A perfect family and you took that all away from us!”
“You still have your mother—you still have each other,” Drake said softly. He wasn’t trying to make excuses, but was at a loss for what else to say. Suzan had been incensed outside her school, but Drake saw that even then she had been reserved.
Now, her true feelings were coming to the fore.
“We have nothing! This—” Suzan motioned to herself and Jasmine, “—this is just an empty shell… a husk of a family. A fake. A phony.”
In his periphery, Drake saw Jasmine break down and begin to sob.
It was a mistake coming here. I’ve just made things worse.
“I’m going to leave now,” Drake said softly. He took a step toward the door, and Suzan slid out of the way, going to her mother. “I didn’t want to upset anyone.”
“Get the fuck out!” Suzan called after him. “You ruined everything! We had the perfect family and now we’re… we’re…” her voice broke as she started to cry too. “Now we’re just an empty shell.”
Drake stumbled out the front door, tears streaming down his face.
And yet despite the anguish that crushed his soul, his detective mind hadn’t shut off.
Not quite.
Something Suzan had said struck a chord with him, and it wasn’t until he had peeled away from the modest Cuthbert home that he realized why.
Empty shell…
He had heard someone say something like that before.
It had been Dr. Mark Kruk.
This picture? It’s much like everything else in the image we portray to others: just an empty shell.
There was a click deep within Detective Damien Drake’s brain, and he yanked the steering wheel to the left and pressed the accelerator.
He remembered what the psychiatrist had said, and he also remembered one of the files he had seen on the man’s desk when he had spoken to him.
MARCUS SLASINSKY.
CHAPTER 66
Chase’s phone buzzed and she used the heel of her hand to wipe her eyes and nose before answering.
“Adams,” she said softly.
“It’s Simmons. I interviewed the teacher again… Mr. Urso?”
She cleared her throat.
“Yes? And?”
“Yeah, you were right—just a little pressure and he broke. Said that Chris, Tim, Neil and Thomas used to bully the Slasinsky boy to no end. Somehow they found out about his mother, about how she had committed suicide and the whole butterfly in the mouth thing. When it came time for the class trip to the Butterfly Gardens, Slasinsky had been granted an exemption, but the other boys tricked him into coming along. They goaded him into the center of the garden, just before the butterflies were released. He started to cry, and they mocked him. When the butterflies came, he lost it. Started screaming and thrashing on the ground before eventually going silent. Fell into a coma. Mr. Urso said he called the police, but when he arrived the Smith clan was already there. They gave him twenty grand to keep his mouth shut, and he thinks that the officer might have been paid off as well. Urso says he took the money, because there wasn’t much to do anyway. What with the kids just bullying Slasinsky, it’s not like they could press charges or anything. I mean, back then bullying was just a part of life…”
Chase chewed the inside of her lip. At the time, nothing legally could be done to random boys, but to these kids in particular, especially Thomas Smith, their reputation was everything. And considering his past—with the auto theft and assault charges—maybe there was a lot that could be done.
“Did he say what happened to Marcus Slasinsky after he came out of the coma?” Chase asked.
There was a short pause.
“No—says he isn’t sure. He went to visit the boy in the hospital, but wasn’t allowed to see him. There were rumors that Slasinsky had hit his head and couldn’t remember much about what happened. Last Mr. Urso heard was that he changed his name and then left New York.”
Only to come back again, she thought with a chill. Who are you now, Marcus?
She was beginning to consider that Tim Jenkins wasn’t so much a suspect as a potential victim.
Just as Drake had suggested.
“So we know that the abusive father was out of the picture, and that Marcus’s mother committed suicide. Dunbar said that he got a hefty insurance settlement from his mother
’s death, but that was… what? Eight years before he fell into the coma? Seven? Ken Smith must have set him up as well.”
“Right, that’s what the teacher thinks, too. But how are we going to trace that money?”
“We can’t,” Chase responded quickly. Even if they could break into the fortress that was SSJ and find out where the money that Ken Smith had given Marcus Slasinsky went, which was unlikely, she was going to have to go through Rhodes first. And that wasn’t going to happen, even if it led to them figuring who Marcus was today.
Because they paid Rhodes off then, and they continue to pay him off now.
“I think I’ve gotten as much out of Mr. Urso as I can—there’s not much more to know. He actually seems genuinely sorry for the boy, and remorseful at not doing more to help him when he could. Do you think that this Marcus kid is the Butterfly Killer? Or should we still focus on Jenkins?”
Chase paused.
“Let’s stay on Jenkins. Either way, he’ll help us break this open, I’m sure of it.”
“Sounds good,” Detective Simmons replied.
“Good work, by the way. Now go home, get some rest. We’ll reconvene in the morning. Same time.”
Chase was met with only dead air.
“Simmons?”
“Are you sleeping at all, Detective Adams? Perhaps—” Simmons said cautiously.
“I’m fine. Go home, Simmons,” Chase replied quickly, then hung up the phone.
A quick glance at the clock showed that it was coming up to seven PM, and although she wasn’t supposed to relieve Detective Yasiv until ten, she thought that maybe she would let him go home early, too.
~
Twenty minutes later, she pulled up behind Detective Yasiv’s Blue Toyota and then got out of her car.
The crescent sun was bright as it dipped below the horizon, and she was forced to lower her over-sized sunglasses to deflect most of the glare. As she neared the vehicle, she made out the outline of a person leaning against the door.
Fearing the worst, she rushed to the door and tried to pull it open.
It was locked.
Inside, Henry Yasiv’s forehead pressed against the glass. His eyes were closed, and his mouth hung agape.
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