by Penny Childs
Climbing out of bed, she left her room, hearing Trevor’s gruff voice as she passed his room and went down the stairs to start the coffee. Hearing him coming down the stairs, she leaned against the counter and waited. “Bill call you?” she asked as he came into the kitchen.
“Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll just grab a quick shower and shave.”
Cursing him silently for coming down in only a pair of holey blue jeans, she grabbed two of the paper cups she had gotten from the basement the previous night and set them next to the coffeemaker. He was not making this easy for her, by any means. Though she suspected he had no intentions of taking it easy on her. “Towels are in the cabinet in the bathroom. The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.” She turned back to him and found him staring at her. “What?”
“I just forgot how good you look first thing in the morning.”
She had yet to run a brush through her hair and she knew her eyes were red and puffy. And she could have told him the same thing, but kept it to herself. He didn’t need to know he was getting to her. “A man and a bicycle chain,” she muttered softly.
“Bill is checking the guy out now, to see who the original serial killer was and if there is a connection to the bicycle chain.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure that will help us much though, unless the location of the kill comes into play somehow.” He stared at her hard. She could help, if she just would.
“I can’t,” she said quietly, not reading his thoughts this time, but seeing them in his ice blue eyes. Turning, she went back up the stairs to get a very quick shower.
Trevor had placed items on the wall for the man who had been abducted. They did not know if he was dead or alive at the moment. What they did know was when he did die, he would be hung with the bicycle chain.
Mel walked into the conference room to find him once again seated on the table top across from the wall, the sleeves of his dark button front shirt rolled up past his elbows, a frown upon his face.
He looked over at her as she entered the room. He was irritated with her. She could help. And the way he saw it, she refused to. “Bill sent me the information on the original serial killer. This guy has hell ahead of him, Mel.”
Swallowing, she stopped halfway to him. She could see the accusation in his eyes and hear it in his voice. But most of all, she could hear it in his head. He was thinking loud and clear and she didn’t think it was by accident. He wanted her to hear him.
“He’ll be hung with the bicycle chain. At first from his wrists, while the killer cuts off what fingers the poor bastard is left with after his first rodeo. The report says he had two cut off the first time. I wonder how many this guy will take?” He was being intentionally brutal.
“Stop it, Trevor.”
He shook his head. “The guy got lucky the first time. That’s as far as the killer got with him before the cops managed to put it together and find him.” He paused and looked from her to a photo on the wall. In it was victim previous to the current victim who had not fared so well. “After cutting off a few fingers, he’ll cut an ear off, then some toes. Just for fun, you know.”
“Trevor,” she said miserably, her hands shaking.
“Then he’ll play around a little, stabbing him in the kneecaps to see if he can pop them out.” He saw the pallor her face had taken on and he didn’t relent. “Then, if the guy is lucky and passes out, the killer will wrap the chain around his neck and hang him with it, leaving him to die of asphyxiation or to bleed to death. It varied which one killed the other victims first. I think it all depended on whether or not he got the chain in the right position around the neck, myself. Opinions vary.”
“Stop it,” she whispered.
“Why? So that you can deny all the bad things that are going to happen to this poor bastard? So that you won’t feel so bad about letting him die?” He saw anger flash in her eyes but knew he had struck a nerve. “Mel, I can’t do this in time to save this guy. Maybe you can.”
She shook her head, feeling herself in the beginnings of a panic attack. “Please Trevor, don’t.”
He came toward her, stopping just inches away from her and looking her in the eyes. “I don’t have time to be nice to you right now, Mel. This guy is going to die. I can’t stop that. I don’t have enough to go on yet.”
“What if I can’t?” she asked miserably, feeling her resolve weakening.
“Then at least you tried.” He wanted to take her face in his hands and reassure her but thought he might drive her away instead.
“What do you want me to do?” She was so scared she thought she might fall down. Her knees were weak and her heart knocked against her ribs to the beat of a galloping horse. He had no idea what he was asking of her.
“I want you to try and see if you can find him.”
Backing away from him, she found a chair and sat down in it. She watched him go to the door and close it. “All right, Trevor. I’ll try.”
“You did it once, for a second with the lamp,” he reminded her. The connection was forged now, she just had to open up enough to follow it again.
Taking in a deep breath, she tried to concentrate for several moments. She thought of the killer and tried to connect to the energy she had felt from the lamp. Then she shook her head. “It’s not going to work. I’m too…I’m terrified, Trevor. I can’t do it when I’m like this.” She stood suddenly, tears threatening. “I can’t force it and you should damn well know that.”
He backed off and sat down on the table top once again. She was right and he did know it. He had hoped to push her into it, but instead he had pushed her away from it. “We have to talk about what happened, Mel.” Now he saw real panic in her eyes.
“No. We don’t.” She moved toward the door now. “I know damn well what happened. I don’t need to relive it, thanks.”
“Mel, you’re going to be stuck in the same place forever if you don’t try and cope with it.”
“I have coped with it, Trevor. Alone.”
He let that accusation bounce off him, knowing she was trying to make him angry enough to drop the discussion. There was a time that would have worked on him. It had worked on the Trevor she had known seven years ago. “You haven’t coped with it, you’ve buried it. There is a difference.” He saw her hand going for the door knob.
“I’m not talking about it with you.”
He watched her leave, deciding this really wasn’t the time and the place anyway. But time was something they were running out of.
It was after seven when Mel came back to the conference room for the first time that day. She found him sitting at the table next to Renee, going over something on his laptop. They both looked up at her, Renee with a tentative smile, him with furrowed brows.
“I thought I’d better tell you that I’m calling it a night, since I gave you a ride in this morning.” She almost hadn’t. She’d almost given in to an adolescent need to punish him, but decided to be a grown up about it.
“Can you wait about ten more minutes?” he asked. “I want to make sure we have this right before I send it off.” His eyes bored into hers relentlessly. He wanted what he wanted from her and he wasn’t going to let up until he got it.
Swallowing hard under his close scrutiny, she said, “That’s fine. I need to make sure everyone here knows what to do tonight.”
“Good.” He finally looked back to the computer.
“You still like Chinese?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered without looking up at her.
“All right.” She stood there a moment, wondering about his attitude, then walked away. It had been a long day for everyone and she would not give him something he wanted from her. She caught herself rubbing the scars on her left arm with a thumb and stopped, only to start twisting her long hair around a finger. Another nervous habit.
“Boss, you okay?”Craig asked worriedly as he watched her walk into the main room which housed all of their desks. He had known her long enough to know when she was u
pset or distracted. She had been both all day.
“I’m fine, Craig. Just a little stressed out.”
“Okay.” He didn’t completely buy her answer but didn’t think he’d get much more from her either. The way he figured it, it had something to do with a particular federal agent. “At the risk of pissing you off, boss, if you don’t figure out how to get along with Trevor, you’re not going to be very effective.”
Widening her eyes, she looked up at the big deputy. “What is it you’re implying, Craig?”
“I’m not implying anything, boss, I’m telling you. Evidently I’m the only one here crazy enough to do it because everyone here sees it and feels it, that tension between the two of you. To be honest with you, it’s distracting, wondering if you two are going to argue every time you’re in the same room together. It’s even worse to be the guy that has to run back and forth between the two of you all day with messages because you can’t even stand to talk to each other.” He shook his head. He had been the guy today. Most days had been bad enough, but today had been terrible.
“Are you done, Craig?” she asked, caught somewhere between amusement and irritation.
“For now, sure. You pull this shit on me again tomorrow I might have more for you. We’ll see. I’ll probably blow a nut sooner. I don’t think I’ll make it till quitting time again before I do.” He looked over her shoulder as Renee entered the room. “I’m going to have dinner with Agent Marshall now. I’ll see you in the morning.” With that he stepped around her, leaving her staring at empty space and having nothing to say.
She stood there a moment, thinking about what he had said to her. The more she thought about it, the less she liked it. Because she knew he was right. And if he was right, so was Trevor. “Well, shit,” she muttered under her breath.
“Problem?” Trevor had come into the room, computer case in hand and was leaning a hip on a desk.
“I just got my ass chewed by one of my deputies. He doesn’t like my attitude.”
Trevor shrugged. Not his problem. “I’m ready when you are.”
Reaching in the pocket of her jeans, she pulled out a set of keys and tossed them to him. “You drive.”
She called a Chinese restaurant in one of the towns they would have to pass through on the way to her house and she directed him there, then ran in and got the food.
“I’ve got guys out searching, but there’s just too much ground to cover,” she said as she heard some chatter on her police radio.
“They might as well be looking for a body now,” Trevor remarked. He had meant to sting her with that comment and knew he had when he saw her flinch.
“Is this the way it’s going to be now because I won’t do things the way you want them done?”
Pulling into her driveway, he said, “You won’t get over the past. You’re standing in your own way. I’m not going to let you stand in mine.”
“Maybe it’s you that can’t get over the past Trevor. You seem fixated on it.”
“Because you need to be able to move on, Mel. In order to do that, you’re going to have to face it. You’re going to have to be able to talk about it.”
“You a shrink all the sudden?” she asked bitterly as he stopped the cruiser in front of the house.
“No. But I’ve seen one long enough to know how it works.” He saw surprise register on her face. “You know the bureau has them on staff. You think Bill let me walk away from that shit without weekly visits to the resident head shrinker?”
Getting out of the car at the same time as him, she glared at him over the roof. “Maybe I didn’t need that.”
“You won’t even let me touch you, for Christ’s sake! Yeah, you’re just fine!” Slamming the door he stalked to the house, jabbed the key in the lock and opened the door.
As she sat the food down on the table, he turned around, staring at her. “What color are my underwear?”
“What?” she asked.
“You heard me. What color?”
“If you don’t know, I…” But he did know. The color popped into her head and she sucked in a startled breath.
“See. You can do it if you want to.”
“Parlor tricks are different than getting into a psycho’s head.”
“I can help you and you know it. The problem is you don’t trust me.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” she growled. And she would not do what he wanted alone. Never again would she do it alone. And alone was what she had been for the last seven years.
“I have to be able to touch you for this to work, Mel. How do we get back there? You just tell me and I’ll do whatever it is.” Sticking his hands in the pockets of his pants he leaned back against the kitchen counter.
Rubbing her face with her hands, she shook her head. “I don’t know, Trevor.” Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? She had been fine not thinking about the past. That was a lie and she knew it as soon as she thought it. She had not been fine, she had been sheltered, hiding from the very thing that defined who she was now.
“Then tell me why you won’t let me touch you. I told you I won’t try to read you and I meant it.”
“That’s not it.” She closed her eyes. She did not want to talk about this. She also knew she had to. The time had come.
“Then what? Tell me. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“That day. The day you found me.” She stopped and hitched in a breath, old fear was coming back to haunt her. But worse, the pain. And not the memory of the physical pain. But the real pain she had felt inflicted upon her heart. The pain that was still present to this day.
He wished she wasn’t standing on the other side of the table. He wanted to gather her in his arms and hold her. He knew what she was going to say but knew she had to say it. It would pain him to hear it too.
“That day…he had cut my throat right before you shot him.” Her fingertips found the scar and traced it. “I was bleeding to death. You came and put your hand over it, to try and stop the bleeding.” She had been looking at the table top, now she looked up at him, locking gazes with him. “You were only there for a minute and you jerked away and told Bill he had to do it because you couldn’t stand to touch me.”
Trevor closed his eyes a moment, and then looked back at her. “I’m so sorry.”
“When I heard you tell him that I wanted Bill to just let me die.” The tears that had been threatening, spilled over now.
Still, he made himself stay where he was. She had to make the first move, this much he understood now. “Mel, you never let me explain.”
Swiping at her tears, she nodded her head. She had not thought that he could have an explanation for what he had done and said. The hurt had not allowed her to even consider he might.
“I couldn’t shut it off, Mel. When I touched you…I got everything. I tried to shut if off but I couldn’t. Between my own raw feelings and yours, the adrenaline…I couldn’t handle all of it. I would have lost it. I would have had a meltdown.” He sighed, she was staring at the table top again, leaving him looking at the top of her bowed head. “Do you understand now?”
She allowed herself to open to him just enough to feel it, what he had felt then and she knew he had done what he’d had to do. It was either that, or overload. And overload was something she understood well. “I understand,” she told him quietly.
“Can you forgive me?”
Looking up at him, tears still in her eyes she offered him a small smile. “I never should have blamed you in the first place. Can you forgive me?”
“Mel, I was angry and hurt at first, when you pushed me away.” He sighed again. “I was relieved in a way too. It got me off the hook.” It was a terrible thing to have to admit, but it was the truth.
“I can understand that,” she said. That was enough for now. “Get a couple plates and some silverware while you’re standing over there and let’s eat this before it gets too cold.”
Not sure where they were, but knowing they had moved ahead, he pulled
the paper plates out of the cupboard and the silverware out of a drawer. “We should probably stop somewhere and get you some real plates and glasses tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow will probably be a busy day.” She had a feeling they would have a body.
Eleven
At ten o’clock the next morning, they indeed had another body. That of David Wells. He was hanging from his neck by a bicycle chain in an abandoned barn just outside of town. It was a dairy farm that had been run into the ground by the drunken old man who had owned it. He had tried to make it into a feed mill after failing as a dairy farmer. Failing at the feed mill business as well, he had died in the house which sat by the roadside, his liver and kidneys shot. His kids had kept the place, presumably for the land, but had done nothing with it or anything that stood upon it in the years since the old man’s death.
The crime scene techs waited outside. Mel and Trevor had both said they wanted to see the scene before anything was touched.
“Who called this in?” Trevor asked. They were putting protective booties over their shoes and donning gloves just outside the barn door.
“Damn kids,” Mel told him. “They like to come here and hide out when they skip school. They have parties here at night too. You’ll see what I mean when we go in.” With that, she pushed open the door to a small office that was attached to the front of the barn and entered.
Looking down at the floor in there, Travis grimaced. Beer cans, bottles and empty cigarette packs littered the floor.
“No matter how many times we bust the little bastards here, they keep coming back,” Craig said from behind him.
“You get the same thing in the city,” Renee told him, “in the abandoned buildings.”
Craig nodded, but he was watching Mel and Trevor closely. Something had changed overnight. He wasn’t sure what it was, but they at least weren’t sniping at each other anymore. He could settle for this small miracle.