by Jo Macgregor
“Button your lip, boy, or I’ll do it for you.”
He nodded frantically, silently.
At that moment, he looked so much like a hurt little boy that I almost forgot the horror of who else he was, what he’d done. I wanted to hold him, to rock him in my arms and assure him that everything was going to be alright. That he was a good boy. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk him coming out of this child ego state and becoming the cold killer again, so I shed any remnants of mercy and made myself become his tormentor.
“You’ve been a bad boy, and you know what that means?”
His panicked eyes were wide and white in the darkness.
“It means the cage,” I snarled. Had those words come from me, or through me?
“No, Grandpa, please!”
“Get into the cage like the filthy little animal you are!” I bellowed.
Whimpering, he turned onto his stomach and crawled on his belly, using his good leg to push himself inch by inch across the dirt, back into the gloom where the cage was, back into his worst memories. I walked behind him, whipping him on with ruthless words, increasingly unsure where I ended and his grandfather began. When he crept into the cage, I slammed the door down with a grating screech and jammed it shut with the rake.
He screamed and bayed. He rattled the bars of his prison, begging to be let out, promising to be a good boy, a real man. I staggered over to a nearby pillar and slid down weakly against it. My own deep sobs joined his in a discordant chorus of misery. What had I done?
“Garnet! Garnet!” Ryan was shouting from above. How long had he been calling me? How long had I, too, been absent from this present?
“I’m okay,” I called, then mumbled softly to myself, “I’m okay.” Just too exhausted to move another inch. Just dirty, outside and in. Just hating myself for crushing another human being. I was chilled that, even in self-defense, I’d been capable of doing such a thing.
Safe! Mine. Always and forever.
Colby’s voice was loud and fierce in my head. Above me, Ryan was still shouting, demanding to know what was happening, whether I’d been shot. In the cage, Derek’s howling and wailing subsided into hoarse whispered pleas. Then he curled up into a tight ball, and his high-pitched keening sliced through the night, and through me, until it was drowned out by the wail of approaching sirens.
– 53 –
Sunday, May 6
The chair to my left was empty, but then, so were most of them. Six o’clock on a Sunday morning wasn’t the busiest time of day for a police station. In the corner of the waiting area, a drunk was sleeping off his bender, while a cleaner pushed a broom around the floor, sweeping up the dust and detritus of the night before and filling the air with the sharp scent of Pine-Sol. Somewhere, a phone rang, and a door slammed.
The media was already gathering outside, hungry for more details, but inside the Montpelier Police Department, most of the hustle and bustle came from cops and FBI agents. Ryan and I had given our statements, answered a thousand questions, and dozed in our hard plastic chairs, waiting for permission to leave. Half an hour earlier, Ryan had excused himself. I figured he was going to try to find some painkillers for his bruised ribs and aching head, but instead, he’d returned with a Big Mac, fries, and a tall cup of hot chocolate. It was probably the most delicious meal I’d ever had. The burger and fries were hot and salty and comfortingly bland, and the drink was tooth-achingly sweet.
“You’re a fine man, Chief,” I said and leaned against him, welcoming the weight of his arm around my shoulder.
Tyler Washington, now in one of the station’s back offices with Singh, had spent time with me in the night, listening to my account of what had happened, writing up my statement, and thanking me for helping to apprehend the killer. It felt good to have used my gift — and my brains — to track down the Button Man, to be the reason why he was now in an interrogation room or perhaps a holding cell inside this building and no longer out there killing innocent people. There was satisfaction in knowing that my gift had practical value and that I could do some good in the world, that I’d helped bring about justice for Jacob and all the other victims.
But I was less pleased about what I’d had to do, who I’d had to become, to take down Derek Kehoe. I’d hunted him, and when I had him in my sights, I’d taken the shot, using my words as bullets. What I’d done to him — reopening his wounds, deepening them — had been abhorrent, a kind of soul murder, and I’d spent much of the night wondering if I could possibly have done things differently. Letting him go to kill another man hadn’t been an option, but it probably would’ve been kinder to have shot him.
The TV mounted in the corner of the waiting room was tuned to a news channel, and when they cut to a reporter covering the serial killer story, I got up and turned up the volume. The drunk startled awake with a grunt, mumbled something incoherent, and then subsided back into soft snores. I watched the news coverage of “The Gay Slayer” with growing cynicism. Knowing almost nothing about the killer or his crimes hadn’t stopped them from compiling inaccurate reports, and they were still tossing around simplistic theories about Kehoe — that he was gay or schizophrenic or part of a cult.
“I guess ‘Man raised in dysfunctional, abusive family and societal culture of toxic masculinity attempts to police men with non-normative sexuality in an a futile and murderous attempt to win approval from his long-dead abuser and atone for his guilt in killing him, while channeling the rage and helplessness he experienced in repeated childhood trauma into deadly violence so as to try feel powerful and compensate for his insecurities’ doesn’t make for as click-baity a headline,” I said.
“Welcome to the wonderful world of how the media reports on law enforcement and murder investigations,” Ryan said tiredly.
“I mean, I know he was a victim, abused and damaged in so many ways …”
Ryan yawned. “But at the end of the day, it was still a choice he made, not a destiny cast in stone. Nobody forced him to kill.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall. “Why do people have to judge others for being different? Why are people so scared of those who don’t look or act or sound the way they do that they feel entitled to end them?” I sat up straight and glared at the TV, though I no longer really saw it. “And it’s not just crazed killers who try to shut down others. Everyone’s got an opinion on someone else and feels like it’s their duty to tell them how to live their lives just because they don’t like having to deal with someone who deviates from the norm. Or because they’re afraid of it, or don’t believe it’s real. Why can’t the world just let people be who they are?” I was close to tears.
“Are we still talking about Kehoe?” Ryan asked gently.
I bit down on the rim of my cup, leaving indentations in the curled cardboard and thought about Ryan’s comment. I felt a sudden rush of love for my parents. For all her frustrating foibles, at least my mother believed in me and my abilities. And my father loved me enough to allow me to become whoever and whatever I wanted, even when that was something he didn’t understand and wasn’t fully on board with.
Remembering how close that bullet had come to killing me, I resolved again to improve my relationships with them. Life was fragile. No, scratch that. Life was robust and tough and determined. But it was also impermanent, and good parents were worth holding onto. As were good men, I thought, tightening my hold on Ryan’s hand.
Outside, dawn was staining the sky with ruby and scarlet streaks. I wanted nothing more than to go home to Pitchford, shower until the hot water ran out, and fall into my bed to sleep for a week. Even the prospect of doing more filing for Henry, while arguing with him about my odd eyes, sounded appealing.
I was eating the last of my burger when Singh emerged from a back room and walked down the hallway toward us. His tie was loose, his collar open, his jaw unshaven, and he wore a nice shade of purplish-blue under his eyes. So the man was human, after all. Good to know. Stopping in front of us, he stared down
at me with an unfathomable expression. His fingers played with a set of keys while his mouth opened, closed, then opened again. He said nothing, but finally, he gave me a nod. I don’t know if I imagined it — I was tired enough at that point that hallucinations were a distinct possibility — but I thought I detected respect in that nod.
He left via the staff exit — a glass door opening to the side of the building — and a police officer came to tell us we were free to go.
“Finally!” Ryan said, but I made him wait until I’d eaten my last fry and drunk the last of my hot chocolate.
Licking salt off my lips, I shoved the trash into the brown bag, squashed it into a rough ball, and lobbed it into a trash can on the other side of the room. “She scoressss!” I said.
Ryan was impressed. “You’re a lot better at junk food sports than darts.”
“I’ve had way more practice.”
As I stood up, I heard a noise coming from down the hallway. Turning around, I saw Derek Kehoe. The shackles around his ankles and wrists were connected to a chain around his waist, and he shuffled along slowly, escorted by an armed guard of four officers. As he drew closer to us, his eyes sought mine, and there was something wild in his gaze. The tortured boy was gone; the urbane button expert was no more. In their place was a man burning with hatred.
“You think you got me good, don’t you?” he said, his hoarse voice sounding almost amused. “You think you’re saving lives.”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. The savage light in his eyes pinned me on the spot.
He stopped when he drew level with us, resisting the tugs on his elbows to move him to the side exit, where his transport waited.
“Well, I’ve got news for you.” He took a fettered step toward me.
Careful! Colby warned as Ryan tugged me back.
“I’m not alone,” Kehoe whispered. “There are more of us.”
Then he turned and hobbled away, stepping out into the scarlet glow of dawn.
“Red sky at morning,” I murmured, watching him go, “shepherd’s warning.”
Dear Reader,
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- Jo Macgregor
Other books for adults by this author
The First Time I Died
The First Time I Fell
Dark Whispers
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the FBI Office of Public Affairs for their extremely useful assistance with the FBI aspects of this book. Any errors are my own.
Thank you to my fabulous beta and expert readers: Emily Macgregor, Heather Gordon, and especially to Nicola Long, Edyth Bulbring and Chase Night, who always push me to deliver my best, even when it nearly kills me! You all help improve my writing immeasurably, and I deeply appreciate each one of you. I’m also grateful for my expert Vermont reader, Cameron Garriepy, and for author Teri J. Dluznieski’s assistance with local setting research in Rutland.