by PJ Fernor
What she didn’t know - and what nobody else knew - was that it was all my work on the case about The One.
While everyone else considered the case to be closed, or at least used the excuse that we did all we could, I refused to accept that as the answer.
There was always more to be done.
So I did it on my own time.
I traded in my midnight walks for midnight work.
Sitting in the pantry with notebooks, pens, markers, sticky notes, newspaper articles, and my phone, searching as far as the internet would allow to try and track down anything about The One.
I turned, exited the pantry and went to Lo’s door.
It was unlocked.
As I entered the room, she jammed a thick textbook into her bag.
She looked at me then looked down at her bag.
“I told you it was work,” I said.
“Why wasn’t it covered up?”
“The blanket must have fallen.”
“Why do you have to do that here?” she asked. “I thought this was home for us. I can’t believe you… wait. Why are you working on that stuff at home?”
“That’s something I’m not going to talk about with you, Lo.”
“Of course not. I’m just a baby to you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“He put me in a cage!” Lo screamed.
She covered her mouth and ran from the bedroom to the bathroom.
My heart shattered into thousands of pieces again.
Jerry had manipulated both Lo and I so badly. Making me believe he was a good man and that he and I were getting close. All so he could get closer to Lo to the point where she left the apartment to go with him.
He put her in a cage.
And he almost killed her.
My teeth chattered for a second.
Slowly, I moved to the bathroom to find Lo hanging over the bathroom sink.
“Why don’t you stay home today,” I offered. “I’ll talk to Miss Kesslier. Have a day off. Sit in bed, eat junk food and watch movies.”
“No,” Lo said. “I’m not going to let it defeat me. I’m not going to hide from it.” She looked at me. “I just don’t want it rubbed in my face.”
I swallowed hard again. “You were never supposed to see that, Lo. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything…”
I reached for her back and Lo pushed my hand out of the way.
“I have to leave,” she said. “I texted Megan. She’s on her way now. She’s going to drop me off at Millie’s.” Lo put her hands up. “For the record, I’m meeting Trevor there. Okay? We’re going to have breakfast. Is that allowed?”
The attitude was crisp and fierce.
“That’s fine,” I said. “I have no problem with Trevor.”
“Now you don’t,” she said. “But you hated him. You accused him of murder.”
“I never did that, Lo. I…”
I stopped myself. She needed to be angry at me. Me defending myself was only going to make it worse.
Instead, I went into my bedroom to put my gun away and to get Lo some money.
I gave her more than enough for breakfast.
She threw her bag around her shoulder as I blocked the doorway.
“Just let me go,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Lo.”
“Whatever. It’s fine. I just… I was going to get breakfast, I turn on the light and I’m staring at his face, again. I could still hear his voice. So calm and soothing. Saying everything right. Telling me I was getting better. Making me feel safe.”
I nodded. “He did the same to me too.”
“Then maybe you should talk to Dr. Deb too,” Lo said. “Right? If you’re going to be bringing that stuff home to stare at…”
Lo’s phone beeped with a text.
“I have to go,” she said. “Megan’s here.”
I moved out of the way.
She hurried by me without a hug or a goodbye.
Not that I deserved one.
I had crossed the line between my personal and work life in a bad way.
When Lo left I walked to the pantry again and pulled the flannel blanket off the whiteboard.
Everything was there.
Pictures of the house. The cages. The articles that were in the paper and on the internet. The case made nationwide news for about two minutes because the story wasn’t strong enough to keep reporting on.
And then there was the picture of Jerry.
Dr. Jerry. Gerard.
His handsome face, warm eyes, and kind smile.
A man that was nothing but sad evil.
Sad because he was sucked into the world of The One. Evil because he stayed there and did what he did.
Lo was right. I shouldn’t have had this here. This was our home. Not just my home. But hers too. That was my mistake.
But this man… Jerry… what he did to Lo…
Jerry got his punishment. He was dead.
But The One was still out there.
What was I supposed to do?
Just let it all go?
I couldn’t.
The scary part was…
I wanted to catch The One bad enough that I didn’t care what it cost me.
Chapter Eight
The day Laura told me about Jerry’s death, I had to see it for myself.
She already knew I was going to want to see him and made sure the scene was left secured and as-is.
We arrived a short while later and when I saw Jerry on the ground, his eyes open and lifeless, I shook my head.
The small bullet hole in his forehead. The mess from the back of his head.
As Laura said, there had been a gun in his hand.
Maybe it was supposed to look like a suicide.
The only problem was the note in his other hand.
The One says… WE’RE ALL HIS…
Now, could Jerry have written that note, held it tight, and shot himself?
Of course it was possible.
The positioning of his body was interesting too.
On his back, his legs and arms evenly spread out.
To me, there was no way Jerry shot himself and fell so perfectly.
Of course, that was part of the mind games.
The One seemed to be a master at it.
He used guys like Jerry as his buffer. They did the dirty work, terrified they’d be killed if they didn’t listen. Just like what happened to Jerry. The One didn’t want Jerry to get caught and start chirping, so he killed him.
I knew it was murder.
I told Laura that and she just gave the same line that everything would be explored. Meaning there was no definite answer one way or another.
Sadly, I would never get one either.
It was somehow ruled a suicide.
Jerry killed himself.
His life and story were unraveled before everyone’s eyes.
And I had to be honest - it did make sense.
A normal guy that ended up getting too deep into gambling debt. That debt somehow connected him to The One. That’s when Jerry was told to find girls and help The One kidnap and traffic them.
That’s where the Carla incident came into play.
The campus felt they did all they could - and maybe they did. Ben and I had been there, but the stories that lingered around the college warranted more than just a sweep it under the rug mentality.
Which is what everyone did.
When I went down to the bridge on Depot, it was empty.
There was some trash and nothing else.
I hung around for an entire day and not a single soul.
I went by every day for a week and it was the same.
Quiet. Empty.
Scary.
As though the girls down there somehow knew things were tense.
Like someone told them that Jerry was dead and that The One needed them to vanish.
And they did.
Now, was I making all of this up in my head?
M
aybe.
That’s where the whiteboard came into play.
A few weeks after Jerry’s death, under the bridge was cleaned up and the bridge itself was repainted. Gone was the ugly, dead skin gray color with its spider cracks and looming threat of collapse. In its place was a warm, inviting white color. It was new, fresh, and most of all, it covered up what had been there for so long.
When that happened, the case was forgotten about.
Jerry’s death was a suicide and there was no proof that The One was real. And even if he was, there was no way to find him.
Laura said we had exhausted all we could on it and that it was already passed along on a federal level.
Her loving way of nudging me to let it go.
I didn’t let it go.
That’s why I was standing in the pantry closet staring at the whiteboard.
Looking at my notes, following the scribbled lines that all pointed to Jerry.
From Jerry, those lines pointed to a question mark that represented The One.
I had nothing to go on.
Other than my own memories.
I could still hear the calmness in Jerry’s voice as I stood in his apartment and he told me I had to make the choice… arrest him or save Lo.
There were times I thought about what would have happened if I had arrested him.
Would he have talked? What would he have said?
I thought about the room in his apartment. The second bedroom that was a vault of evidence. Of names, dates, places… everything that tracked what he had done.
All of it was taken, gone through, and still, nothing happened.
That’s how good and organized The One was.
Nothing seemed to point back to him, yet he was the mastermind of it all.
Just like with Steph (slash-Leslie-slash-Lea).
She told her story to me and to anyone who would listen.
And all she had was what The One looked like from afar.
The times she had seen him face to face, she was too afraid to remember any features. Nothing stood out.
It was either that, or she was too afraid to tell the truth for fear of being killed while in protection.
Which meant… yeah… my mind had gone through the motions of thinking about corruption.
There were parts of the case that just didn’t make sense.
How it got swept away so fast. And why.
How it was never talked about.
How it wasn’t a bigger story locally and nationally.
Yet there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Other than work on it in my spare time.
In my pantry.
In my apartment.
Where I had hoped for so long that Lo would never find it.
But she did.
I stood there and shook my head, mad at myself even more.
As if Lo hadn’t been through enough already.
I put the blanket back over the whiteboard and made sure it was on there enough that it wouldn’t fall again.
In my heart I knew I needed to get rid of it.
All of it.
In my head it was a battle.
I wanted to find The One. I wanted to expose everyone and everything. More than anything else, I wanted to save the girls who had been kidnapped. And I wanted to save girls from getting kidnapped.
A guy like The One wasn’t going to stop. He would just calm for a bit. Or shift gears somewhere else.
This wasn’t going to end unless I ended it.
But at the same time, like Ben had told me dozens of times already…
There were other cases to solve too.
Chapter Nine
The alarm is set to go off at exactly six am on the dot.
His eyes have been open since five-fifty-two.
He stares at the time on his phone, waiting.
Getting out of bed early isn’t a smart option. It’ll just throw the entire day off.
The smell of coffee bleeds into his room and tickles his nose.
He smiles.
This is what life is supposed to be.
A good routine that functions like a well-oiled machine.
When that occurs, then plans can be made.
There’s too many hands in the kitchen…
His kitchen is far too small for that statement to make sense.
But those words were the ones that changed his path in life.
Changes were okay, as long as they balanced out.
When the alarm on the phone begins to play some gentle tone, he shuts it off and sits up.
He stretches his back, stands, and walks over to turn on the bedroom light.
On the corner desk, that has no real use, the leather bag rests.
Just to make sure this is all real, he opens the bag and reaches inside.
He’s not going to lie to himself.
Touching another human’s severed hand is kind of gross.
His stomach turns for a second.
It’s not a clean cut at all.
There’s loose skin, strings that look like crimson spaghetti but are probably muscle and tendon, just dangling there. The obviously white pearl color of the bones, jagged from the small toothed saw he used to cut the woman’s hand off.
It was his first time… so…
He takes a deep breath.
He shuts his eyes.
The woman kind of fell into his lap.
Not literally, of course.
But she was a sign to him.
As he walked that park, wondering what to do next… there she was.
On the ground.
Knocked out. Sleeping. Hurt. But not dead.
All he wanted was her hand.
He took it and then did his best to wrap up the stub of her wrist and rolled her off of the main pathway.
Just to give himself a little time to really think about what’s next in all of this.
The can of worms has been opened.
The first is out.
The second is right behind it.
He looks at the hand.
The fingers are soft. They’re small, dainty and cute. The nails are perfectly manicured. The ring fingernail is white while the others are a dark pink.
“Hmmm,” he says.
This must be something new women do now.
This isn’t a woman thing.
This is about balancing life.
Remember… one plus one must equal two.
He places the hand back into the bag and shuts it.
His next stop is the bathroom to wash his hands and then take a shower.
After that, it’s his normal morning routine.
Coffee. Toast. Eggs. Turkey bacon because the doctor a few months ago told him to be careful with his weight.
The newspaper outside his door.
Which is all hot air about local and national politics.
But it’s a routine by now.
The well-oiled machine working.
Speaking of which…
He goes back upstairs into his bedroom and opens his closet to get dressed for the day.
The same dress pants. The same button-down shirt. A different tie, just to mix things up.
They love his tie collection at work.
For the holidays, he has a vast collection that draws plenty of attention from the women at the office who want to see what he’s wearing.
Then there’s Rebecca.
The office sleep with anyone who likes to get drunk at work events and whisper to him that she wants his tie on her bedroom floor.
After he’s dressed, he goes back to the bathroom to floss, brush his teeth, and fix his hair.
There’s temptation to go back into the bedroom and look at the hand again.
To touch it. Hold it. Rock it like a small child.
To feel alive.
Because this shirt and tie routine feels like death.
The tie is like a noose facing forward, always ready to be pulled back and end it all…
<
br /> “End it all,” he whispers.
That was a possibility.
In fact, it was the one real answer he had.
Walking in the park, that was his way of planning it out.
Of course he’s not the type to just make a rash decision.
This stuff requires deep thinking.
Last thing he needs is to try to end his life and mess it up.
But none of that matters now.
Because of the woman in the park and her beautiful hand.
It’s the first of many to come.
But before that…
He has to tow the corporate line.
Chapter Ten
As I walked through the station, Garrison met me with a cup of coffee.
I took it from him and eyed it more than a few times as I kept walking.
“I pulled Harry over again last night,” Garrison said.
“For what?”
“He was crossing the yellow line.”
“Drunk?”
“No. Tired.”
“What was he doing driving?”
“Said he needed to think,” Garrison said. “He might be losing his job. Harper’s is looking to lay off one third of their staff. And seniority doesn’t mean a thing. They’re doing it by computers.”
“Computers?” I asked.
“Yeah. They are making everyone take assessment tests and then they run it through a computer.”
“Poor Harry,” I said.
He was a bit of a regular for us. Always getting in trouble for one thing or another. I was told he lost his wife a few years ago to a fast-moving cancer and he missed her dearly. Not that I could blame the man since they were married for forty years, plus she took care of the house and food, laundry and… everything.
Harry worked to provide money and that was his end of the deal.
More times than I could count Garrison was pulling Harry out of the bathroom in a bar or getting a call he was asleep on a bench. Or walking in the middle of the road, crying for his wife.
I opened my office door and Garrison entered first.
“You can drink that coffee, you know,” I said. “I didn’t do anything to it.”
“I didn’t think you did, but now I’m definitely not drinking it,” I said.
“It’s the good coffee,” Garrison said. “I got it just for you.”
I took the lid off and smelled it.
It was the good coffee.