by Cole McCade
“I don’t fucking know,” he said. “I don’t. He had that mask on and he was talking all funny, and I know a lot of the guys in the block but I couldn’t figure out who it was. I just…why…why the fuck would he make me…?”
“You have to know something,” Aanga interjected, slapping his hands down on the table, leaning in, watching Arnsford intently. “Tell me who that man is.”
“Aanga,” Seong-Jae bit off.
Damn it, shut up and let Malcolm work.
His old wolf had a process.
Seong-Jae did not know if he could follow his usual methods at the moment when he was so sluggish, so slow, unable to act as Malcolm’s counter and foil…
But he could at least rein Aanga’s need for control in and stop him from interrupting Malcolm’s process.
What the hell was going on with Aanga?
He did not normally make this so personal; he would often remain very hands-off with his BAU teams, allowing them to work by their own methods and trusting them to know their own strengths. He did not interject himself or override anyone unless they were struggling or in danger.
So why, so frequently, did he seem to feel the need to take the reins from Malcolm when Malcolm had it under control?
This is not our case, he reminded himself. Technically we are working under Aanga’s supervision on his case, and yet Malcolm’s natural talent for authority has made him take point at several moments.
That did not make it…sensible, not to Seong-Jae, but perhaps…
He did not know.
He felt as though whatever insight he had once had into Aanga Joshi was gone, and he did not understand the man whose tense back went even more stiff now at that call of his name.
Aanga sat back in his chair, letting his hands fall.
He did not look back at Seong-Jae.
But at least he did not say anything else, either.
Malcolm waited several long moments, then continued, “Can you remember any details, Kevin? Anything at all? Height, any marks on his hands or arms?”
“No.” Arnsford shook his head miserably. “I mean, we were about the same height? But all I could look at was that rabbit head and the blood all over his jumpsuit, I just…I wasn’t paying attention, everything just went foggy and white when he said…he said he’d kill my daughter.” Arnsford swallowed hard, throat bulging, eyes too wide as he stared at the mask, then stared up at Malcolm. “How did he know I have a daughter? What if he…what if he did things to her, like…like what he did…”
“We won’t let him,” Aanga said—more calmly, now. “We can do something to protect her.”
“But we need you to help us too,” Garza added. “You willing to testify with everything you can remember?”
Arnsford shifted his gaze to her. “Will it save my daughter?”
She fished into the breast pocket of her uniform and came up with a notepad and pen, then laid them both on the table within easy reach, no sudden movements, slow and careful.
“You write down her name and address, I’ll send out a detail to get her into protective custody immediately. Relocate her somewhere safe under full guard.”
Almost eagerly, Arnsford bobbed his head, his hostility completely vanished. Into the bargaining stage, indeed.
He scrabbled up the pen and wrote quickly, then pushed the notepad back across the table. Garza snapped it up and scanned it, sharp eyes darting back and forth, before she spared Aanga a clipped nod.
“I’ll go get on this. Keep me in the loop; I’ll review the tapes later.”
Aanga returned her nod, even if he was communicating with her back as she turned to stride briskly from the room—while Malcolm kept his attention on Arnsford.
“Now you don’t have anything to be afraid of,” he said. “He can’t make you do anything else. So talk to us. Tell us everything you can remember. Tell us what happened.”
“I’ll…I don’t know much, but…” Arnsford made a thick, choking sound in the back of his throat. “I’ll tell you what I can. I just…where do you want me to start?” His gaze suddenly flicked to Seong-Jae, pupils jittering nervously. “And why is he just staring at me?”
Seong-Jae could not help a faint smile. “Typically, it is my job to be the bad cop,” he said. “Or at least the somewhat intimidating cop. However, at the moment you do not need a bad cop. You need support and safety. Therefore I am simply an observer.”
Right now, for him, there was more value in listening anyway.
Because even if everything was blank at the moment?
There was a place, deep inside him, where the shadow of the Golden Ratio Killer lived. Just a ghost, an impression, a shape that had no clear definition, but with every new thing he learned about how he operated, the choices he made…
The more that impression filled into something with weight and clarity and the sharpest of sharp red edges.
Arnsford cocked his head, brow quirking. “You’re weird.”
Seong-Jae snorted. “You have no idea.”
“So,” Aanga redirected, folding his arms over his chest, “why don’t you start from when you realized something was wrong?”
“Um.” Arnsford twisted his mouth up. “When…I looked up and like, there was just this guy standing outside my cell with that creepy mask staring at us. Me and my cellmate, Simkin, we were just, you know…I mean there’s not much to do in a cell, you just stare at things and read and shoot the shit, you know?”
“What happened to Simkin?” Malcolm asked.
“The guy in the mask didn’t want him at first,” Arnsford said. “He just told me to come with him. He had a key. Like, I think I heard a thump before, like maybe somebody got hit and a little sound, but I didn’t think anything of it until there was this guy talking to me in a baby voice, looking like some kind of fucking nightmare with blood all over his oranges and that goddamned mask on.” He swallowed hard. Again his gaze flickered to the bloody mask again, almost compulsively, lingering this time. “I really thought I was fucking dreaming for a second, ‘cause he called me Kevin. He knew my name. And he knew about my daughter.”
“Is that why you agreed to go with him?” Seong-Jae asked. “Because he mentioned your daughter?”
Arnsford nodded, gaze darting nervously to Seong-Jae. “Like, Simkin wasn’t about to go anywhere with no fucking weirdo in a bunny mask, but when he brought up my Rebecca, I…fuck, I had to, you know? I know I’m a fucking convict, yeah maybe I got some weird fetishes, stuff that got me locked up ‘cause I can’t seem to help myself…but I never brought any of that weird shit around my kid, you understand? I love her. I love her and nothing’s gonna happen to her. She’s in college now and she’s gonna grow up and have a good life even if her dad’s a loser.”
He stared at Seong-Jae as if desperate for him to understand, trying to impress those words on him.
Seong-Jae had nothing to offer him, save for his silence.
Malcolm continued speaking—smoothly, that soothing rumble that had calmed so many. “You don’t have to justify yourself, Kevin. Anyone would have cooperated under those circumstances. So he took you outside the cell? Was there anyone else?”
“No.” With a shaky breath, Arnsford continued, “Just me. He just took me out, and like…when we were walking down the row everyone just stared at us, and there weren’t any guards and that was fucking weird. And he took me to like, a little break room, I guess where the guards have lunch or something, and he sat me down and made me a cup of tea and told me what was going to happen, and what he wanted me to do. I felt like I was in some kind of weird business meeting. Like he wanted to talk about buying stocks, or something. Not about stabbing people up.”
That was interesting.
Interesting indeed.
It would seem their suspect was very fond of rituals, including observing polite social formalities. He was confident in himself, confident enough that after he had just murdered several guards and possibly several inmates, intending to murder many mo
re…
He would take the time to pull his chosen ones aside for one-on-one tea.
More, he was…manipulative. Knowing.
He understood what he was doing, by making this personal and just surreal enough to be jarring, off-kilter.
He was maintaining control.
And he was impressing on each and every one of his targets that he would hunt them down individually and make them suffer, if they did not obey.
What a strange mind, Seong-Jae thought.
Stranger still that the suspect had ever been captured at all, even over minor infractions.
What kind of person was so methodical and controlled, so tightly composed, so well-planned…and yet could not control compulsions to minor crimes and found himself incarcerated against his will?
Was it? he wondered. But if it was part of his design, to spend over fifteen years in prison…
Why?
The slowly forming shape of a killer inside him had no answer.
“So tell us,” he prompted. “Tell us what he wanted you to do.”
Arnsford faltered. “He…he said I was special. That I was one of the special ones he’d chosen, and that was creepy as fuck. Just this mask staring at me and this tiny little baby voice telling me ‘You’re special, Kevin. I’m going to make you just like me.’” He shuddered. “Don’t wanna be nothing like that sick fuck…but he told me…he told me he was gonna let everyone out, and the alarm was gonna go off, and I had to run before the guards came. And that some people weren’t going to make it, but that I was. That I had to get out, and I had to go find a mask, and I had to do his work.” That shudder deepened, turned into a bone-sick tremor. “…he said it had to be a knife. And…and I had to do it out in the open, but…I didn’t…I didn’t want to kill no one, I was trying not to, but that kid lunged at me and then…”
He made a blubbering sound, curling in on himself, his eyes welling over, his lips turning rubbery and quivering.
“…he just…he just like…f-fuckin’ opened up like some kind of tomato, I…I ain’t never seen nothing like it, like I didn’t know a neck could feel that soft but I’m not a fucking killer…”
No one said anything.
No one at all.
Because there was no denying that even if it was against his will, even if the recording devices in the room would speak his testimony on the stand and say that Kevin Arnsford had committed murder under duress…
Duress did not bring that young man back to life.
There were no reassurances. No condolences.
So they only waited, and let Kevin Arnsford cry in thin, shuddering, jerking motions until he was silent and sniffling and no longer breathing in wet, dripping gasps.
Once he was done, Aanga retrieved his silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Arnsford. Arnsford eyed it uncertainly, then took it with a hesitant nod, scrubbing at his reddened nose with a mumble of, “Thanks.”
“Do you think you can keep talking?” Malcolm asked. “Do you think you can answer a few more questions?”
Arnsford nodded. “I think so, yeah.”
“Thank you.” Malcolm settled his clasped hands against his knee. Sitting the way he was, on the table, positioned so far above Arnsford…he had established a position of authority, holding himself above him not necessarily in judgment, but simply as someone who must instinctively be answered; Seong-Jae doubted it was unintentional, knowing his partner, just as settling himself where Arnsford had to acknowledge the presence of the bloody mask was not unintentional. “Do you know if he spoke to anyone else? Any of his other ‘special ones?’”
“I don’t know,” Arnsford said mournfully. “He talked to me by myself and then he put me back in my cell and went away for a while. I didn’t see him walk by with anyone else, but then the alarms were going off and our cells were open and we were all running. Last thing I saw was…I got a look inside the warden’s office before I got pushed out into the hall, and…fuck, I nearly threw up.”
Aanga frowned, rubbing at his chin. “He kept them separated so no one would guess who he was by process of elimination. If all the escapees saw and could identify each other, then we’d know the one they couldn’t pick out of their mug shots was our guy.”
“That is the most logical conclusion,” Seong-Jae agreed.
“Did he say anything else to you?” Aanga asked. “Did he ask you anything?”
“He just…” Arnsford’s brows drew together. “He told me to sing a nursery rhyme, but I forgot which one.”
“Ring around the rosey,” Seong-Jae supplied, and Arnsford winced.
“Yeah…yeah. That one. Creepy shit. I think I messed that part up with the wrong song ‘cause I was panicking and scared. And…he asked me what year I got locked up, but he asked me like he already knew.”
“Two thousand and one,” Malcolm said. “That’s why he picked you, Kevin. Because you were incarcerated the same year he was, and he doesn’t want us to figure out who he is until he’s too late.”
Arnsford’s eyes widened. “Too late for what?”
“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Malcolm answered.
“I…I can’t. That’s really I can remember. That…that he wanted me to go, and I had to do the things he said.” He sagged in his chair, face falling; Seong-Jae supposed that was the next stage of grief. Depression. “I shoplifted the mask from a costume store. Fuck, not even out a few days and already got me doing crime. I was just a fucking weird pervert before, now I’m a goddamned murderer.” He smiled, then—a sad, fatalistic smile, heavy with pained acceptance. “I was just a few months off from getting out…but now I never am, am I?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Malcolm said, and in that deep, growling voice was genuine regret—the compassion he always seemed to find no matter the situation; the compassion Seong-Jae loved. “But you’ve cooperated on a critical federal case, and we’ll make sure that’s taken into consideration in your trial, Kevin.”
Arnsford only nodded, morose and slow, then bit his tear-swollen lower lip. “He did…he did tell me I had to say one more thing. But you ain’t gonna like it.”
“What is that?” Seong-Jae asked.
“He said…” Arnsford’s breaths rattled. “He said ‘follow the leader.’”
Aanga’s upper lip curled. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“That he knows you’re coming for him,” Arnsford said—his voice hollow, his voice dark with dread. “And he wants to play.”
C
THEY RECONVENED OUT IN THE hall—where they found Garza waiting for them, watching through the observation glass; to Seong-Jae, though, she seemed to be looking more at her own reflection, something lost in her expression that Seong-Jae innately recognized even if he did not understand it.
The moment the door to the interrogation room closed, she turned her head, watching them wearily. “I’ve already sent someone out for the daughter. What are our next steps?”
“I don’t know,” Aanga said. “We’ve still got five on the loose and no leads as to where someone’s going to crop up next. We need to get started on putting together that information about backgrounds, checking next of kin…and getting alerts out to every point of interest in the country.”
“I can get started on the local shit. Leave this to me and you do what you need to do.” She pulled her hair down, shaking it loose and running her fingers through it; only with the tumble of her hair combining with exhaustion to soften her features did Seong-Jae realize how young she was, and wonder what she had had to fight through to earn her role as county sheriff. She glanced at them with a faint smile, tired. “It has been a fuck of a day and I still have a lot to organize before I can go home to my husband and my kid. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get to work and will hit you up on the horn when I’ve got something.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, Sheriff Garza,” Aanga said—but he was already talking to her back as she strode away.
“Shove your coo
peration up your ass, Joshi,” she tossed over her shoulder, almost airily. “And get your mess out of my county.”
“Pleasant,” Aanga muttered, while Malcolm just snorted, eyeing Seong-Jae.
“She remind you of someone?”
“Mildly.” Seong-Jae shrugged. “I suppose she and Captain Zarate would require similar professional presentation considering the pitfalls of the field, but…” He cocked his head. “They would likely get along quite well expression their frustrations with us.”
“Yeah.” Malcolm half-smiled, rueful. “Makes me a little homesick.”
He was not the only one.
“I don’t think anyone’s really going home for a while,” Aanga said. “There’s still a lot to do to work the scenes here, and I’d say to be on the safe side we have to assume there’ll be four more decoy attacks to keep us distracted while our suspect is on the move.”
Seong-Jae could not miss the subtle way Malcolm’s shoulders drooped, at that.
His omr-an was likely already missing Baltimore, with his strange quiet love for the city—and his family there.
And once again, Seong-Jae wondered what he had done to Malcolm, by dragging him in his wake like this.
He forced his focus back onto Aanga; back onto the case. “If the suspect is en route to Los Angeles as we surmised…”
“Hey may be,” Aanga said. “He may be on the way anywhere. And those kill sites, if he gave the others instructions too, could pop up anywhere and at any time.”
Malcolm grunted, tangling his fingers in his beard and glowering down at the floor, at his polished dress shoes. “So do we stay here, work these scenes, watch…or do we spread out?”
“I don’t know,” Aanga said with a frustrated sound, turning away, burying his fingers in his hair, and shaking his head. “I need to think.”
Before he abruptly whipped about, fixing a fierce, dark-eyed stare on Seong-Jae, sudden and sharp enough to make Seong-Jae flinch.
“Are you going to stay with me on this case?” he demanded.
“Do I have a choice?” Seong-Jae shot back—and he did not miss Malcolm moving closer to him, as if he would shield him with his bulk.