“So…why are you still angry?” I ask.
“Because I’m angry at you on a personal level, not a professional level,” she says. She jots down words on a pad of paper: self-absorbed, jealous, vindictive. I can only pray that she’s writing about the killer and not me.
“Well, are you going to return to my apartment?” I ask.
“No,” she says. I clench my fist.
“It’s not safe anywhere else,” I say. “Jasmine’s murder clearly shows that.”
“Jasmine thought she could trust her killer,” she says. “I’m not going to let some stranger into my apartment.”
I slam my fist so hard against her desk that her cup of pencils rattles.
“Cody Moore got into your apartment. This is back to being professional,” I say. “He kills you and that’s a problem in my professional life. That’s a dead partner on my hands.”
“My death wouldn’t be your fault,” she says.
“Tell that to my first partner!” I yell. The whole station goes quiet. Lauren looks at me, her forehead furrowed.
“He died?” she asks. “I thought he retired.”
I shake my head, rubbing my face. I stand up.
“I can’t talk about this right now.”
I begin to walk away. She grabs my wrist.
“Tell me,” she says. Her voice is soft enough that I can feel my hard shell cracking, but I don’t have the time to shatter right now. I unwrap her fingers from my wrist and let her hand fall away from me.
“I can’t,” I say. I walk away from her and out of the station. As soon as I’m outside, I turn around to face the brick building. I curl my hand into a fist and hit the bricks until my knuckles are lined with blood and regret.
~~~~~
I sip more coffee as I sit in my Taurus outside of Lauren’s apartment. I imagine this is how she trailed me to Mallory’s townhouse, but I’m not trying to keep tabs on her. I just want to make sure that the killer doesn’t attack her. I just need reassurance that she is safe.
Her lights go out around midnight. Three hours later and I have to lower the window so the cold wind will help me stay awake. Still, sleep is a Greek siren, luring me to close my eyes and let unconsciousness take over.
I dream that I take the steps up to Lauren’s apartment. I make my way to her bedroom. She begins to rouse from her sleep as if she can feel my presence. I walk up to the side of her bed and touch her shoulder. She opens her eyes. At first she is surprised to see me there, but I see the hidden relief too, as if all she had been waiting for was for me to come to her. She sits up and her fingertips trail down my arm. I bow my head and kiss her, tasting the sweetness of her lip balm. She lifts her sheets, inviting me to join her under the warmth. And I want to because it’s so cold and I can hear someone knocking, knocking to steal away our moment of peace.
I jerk awake as the knocking becomes louder. A policeman in uniform stands outside of my Taurus.
“Sir, you can’t sleep here,” he says.
“I’m a detective,” I mumble. I try to look at the cop, but sleep is still clouding my vision and his flashlight is hitting me right in the eyes.
“That doesn’t matter, sir,” the policeman says. “You can’t stay. There’s a killer on the loose and we have to take all precautions.”
I start my car with the policeman’s flashlight still blinding in my eyes. The policeman walks away as I begin to drive. I figure I’ll drive around for a few minutes before returning and hope the policeman isn’t still there. I’ll have to figure out who he is and tell my captain to get him to give me a break. Then again, I might have to explain to my captain about how the killer has been focusing on Lauren and why I didn’t tell him this when I first found out.
Something creeps at the edge of my tired thoughts. I keep driving as I try to figure it out. As I grip my steering wheel, I realize what it is: Detroit police have a Ford Model T on their patches. I had only caught a glimpse of the policeman’s patch, but I remember the star stripe across it. That was a New York police badge. There is absolutely no reason the New York police would be in uniform down here, much less bothering a man sitting in his car.
I take a sharp turn and speed down the road. I don’t care if a real police officer pulls me over. I might need their help at this point.
As soon as I’m in front of Lauren’s apartment, I park the car, but I don’t take the time to turn it off. I jump out and try to pull open the building’s door. It doesn’t budge. There’s a Knox Box, which allows the fire department or the police in if they have the master key, but I don’t have time to go back to the station. I slam my hand on all of the buttons on the intercom system. I keep pressing all of them. If it doesn’t wake someone up and force them to let me in, at least it might scare away the PVP killer.
“What?” an old lady’s voice creaks through the intercom. “Do you know how early it is?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, but I need to get in.” My words crash against each other as I try to speak quickly. “I am a detective of the Detroit police department. This is a police emergency.”
“How do I know you’re not some pervert or scoundrel?” she croaks. I grit my teeth.
“Because if I were a pervert, I wouldn’t need to break in,” I snarl. “Anybody can see straight through the windows because half of you don’t have shades.”
“You’re not a very nice policeman,” the old lady says. I bang my hand against the intercom.
“Let me in or so help me God, I will charge you with obstruction of justice.”
The door clicks as it unlocks. I jerk it open and run up the stairway. I reach Lauren’s door and bang my fist against it.
“Lauren! Lauren!” I yell. “Open up!”
I dial the police station between knocks on her door. Nobody answers the phone. They’re probably on their 10th coffee break.
“Lauren!” I yell. “Open the damn door!”
As I’m about to try to break down the door, it swings open.
~~~~~
Lauren
TOBIAS STANDS OUTSIDE of my apartment door with sweat clinging to his temples and his breath labored. He pushes past me with his gun raised and his eyes scanning the apartment.
“Tobias, it’s…3:15 in the morning,” I say. “Why are you here trying to break into my apartment?”
“I wasn’t trying to break in. Somebody else was,” he says, his eyes scanning my bathroom and jerking the shower curtain open. I straighten up.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I was…” He shakes his head. “There was a man pretending to be a police officer outside of your apartment. It was the killer. I’m sure of it.”
“So, you know what he looks like?” she asks. “Who is he?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t get a good look. I’m pretty sure he had brown hair, but he was pointing the flashlight right in front of his face. He was smart enough to hide it from me.”
“Tobias…people impersonating cops isn’t unheard of,” she says. “What makes you so sure it was the PVP killer?”
“Well, did you plan on getting married soon?” he asks.
“No. Why?” I ask. He gestures into my living room. I step into the doorway and for the first time, I notice a white wedding dress—ivory with a low-cut neckline and a skirt/train made of sheer fabric so that the bride’s legs could be seen through it—hanging from the ceiling fan. As I step closer, I see that there is also a small diamond ring hanging from one of the fan blades by a piece of string. I turn to Tobias. “Where did this come from?”
“I would start looking for a note,” he says. We get some rubber gloves from my kitchen and begin to search through the layers of the dress. When we don’t find anything, we look through the living room—under the cushions of the couch, between books, under magazines—but there isn’t anything.
“Maybe he thinks the message is clear enough?” I guess.
“What is that message?” Tobias asks. “It wasn’t too long ago he was ang
ry at you for being around me.”
“Yeah…but, I haven’t spent the last few nights around you at all,” I tell him. “Maybe he thinks something has changed.”
“Something did change,” he grumbles. He shakes his head. “There has to be a note. This is a guy who doesn’t shut up.”
“Why would he put the dress here and a note somewhere else?” I ask. Tobias rubs his five o’ clock shadow.
“Okay, let’s pretend I’m the killer,” he says, walking back toward the entrance. “I sneak into the apartment.” He pauses in the hallway. “With the wedding dress and ring—likely stored in some kind of bag in order to avoid suspicion.” He pretends to put the dress up and the ring. “My display is done and I want to leave a note. Why wouldn’t I leave it with everything else?”
“Because you’re psychotic?” I guess.
“This isn’t so much psychosis as obsession,” he says. “He didn’t come here for his usual reasons, he came here specifically to…see you.”
He turns to me.
“He left the note in your bedroom.”
“What?” I blurt. “I think I would have noticed if he was in my bedroom.”
“You didn’t notice that he was creating a wedding proposal in your living room,” he says, walking to my bedroom.
“That’s different,” I say.
“Not really,” he says. He yanks the sheets off my bed and searches through them. He doesn’t find anything.
“I told you,” I say. “I would have noticed.”
He picks up my pillow in frustration and thrusts it against the wall. I grab his arm.
“It’s okay,” I say. I sit down on the bed. He steps in between my legs. When I don’t protest, he leans down to kiss me. The kiss is simple—the slightest pressure of our lips touching. As he pulls away, I notice the book I was reading is flipped over, so the back of it is up instead of the front of it. A corner of a notecard sticks out of it. I grab the book and take out the notecard.
Do you know what soul mates are? They are two entities that see their own reflection in each other. When I look at you I see a world that had been unjust to you, but instead of breaking down under the weight of who you are supposed to be, you arose from it. I have always wanted to become part of the system in order to destroy it from the inside out, but you did it better. You are the best parts of me—like the rib taken out of Adam to create Eve. Keep fighting against the ignorance of society and one day we can unite without the law breathing down our necks. I love you. We will unite soon.
“That’s not creepy,” Tobias says, reading over my shoulder. “I’m surprised that there’s not more of a Silence of the Lambs speech in there.”
I close my eyes. “How did he get into my bedroom and I didn’t even notice?”
“At this point, I think this guy is quite good at covert work,” he says. “Plus, you’re a pretty deep sleeper.”
“What?” I ask. “No, I’m not.”
“Lauren, I’ve slept next to you,” he says. “You’re a deep sleeper.”
I glare at him. “That’s great. Now I have to stay awake all of the time to make sure a serial killer doesn’t break into my apartment.”
“Or…you could stay in my apartment,” he says. “And I can watch out for serial killers.”
I shake my head. “This guy wants to marry me. I guess a relationship doesn’t escalate much quicker than that.”
“Clearly, your apartment is no longer safe,” he says. “I thought there were supposed to be FBI agents here.”
“…There was one,” I say. “I sent him away.”
He pinches the bridge of my nose. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“The killer…we both know it isn’t Cody Moore. He doesn’t have the right personality for the killer. The killer wouldn’t pretend to be stupid. He’s proud of his intelligence,” I say. “We still don’t know who he is. I thought he might come by…which apparently he did.”
“And you could have died,” he says.
“He’s in love with me,” I say. “He’s not going to kill me.”
Tobias walks out of my bedroom. I follow him into the living room. He sits down on my couch.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“If you’re not going to stay in my apartment, I’ll stay at yours,” he says. He looks up at the wedding dress, his eyes critical. I sit down next to him.
“I’ll let you stay if you tell me what happened to your last partner,” I say. We stare at each other, each of us wanting the other to back down. Finally, he hangs his head.
“He was going to retire. He had a month and three days left. He kept exemplary track of it and he told me every day how many days he had left,” I say. “Then we get a call from Delray, this little crappy town. The caller said that there was a dead body in this insurance building. So, my partner…Michael…and I, we head down there with the usual team. It was a trap. The caller was a sniper…a good one with military background. He killed Michael and another police officer. He killed a medical examiner, a forensic science technician, and a civilian. I took a bullet in my pelvic bone, but otherwise I was pretty much unscathed. I pretended I was dead to survive and when the shooter came running out…David Wright…I shot him in the head. A couple of months after Michael’s death…I began to visit his wife, Mallory, and we just…talked about Michael like he was still alive. It was our way of keeping him alive. I didn’t tell you about it because…I didn’t want you to know about the massacre. It’s the worst day of my life and I didn’t want you to see me as the man who lost his partner and shot the murderer too late for it to matter.”
He rubs his eyes and takes deep breaths, trying to remain in control of his emotions. I wrap my arms around him.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say, kissing him, his body feeling cold under my touch. He grabs me so suddenly that I have no time to resist. He rolls me underneath him on the couch. He keeps part of his weight on the arm that’s braced against the couch, while I feel the rest of his weight along my body. Between every few kisses, he bites my bottom lip. I keep my fingers in his hair as I feel myself falling into a kaleidoscope of emotions. I am Alice going down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Thrill and fear follow me down.
~~~~~
Tobias
I WALK OUT of the break room and stop by Lauren’s desk.
“The ring seems to be an antique,” I say. “But the wedding dress is designed by Oscar de la Renta, and considering those dresses cost you an arm and a leg…”
“The FBI might be able to track down who bought it,” she finishes
“They’re looking into their database right now,” I say. “They’re going to look into who has bought video games with credit cards and debit cards too. It’s a lot more rare to buy video games that way, but maybe they will get lucky, especially if we find someone who has bought the games and the dress.”
She presses her pen against her lips. “After all of this is done, we should go on a vacation.”
“I haven’t gone on vacation in over a decade,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. She leans forward, so her lips brush against my ear as she speaks. “We could go to the Bahamas and you could see what I look like in a teeny bikini.”
I smile. “Lauren…let’s focus.”
“I am very focused,” she says, leaning back into her chair. “I can almost feel the sun on me already.”
I run my fingers down her arm and kiss her temple. “I can almost feel your sun-kissed skin.”
I move my mouth to her ear and nibble the top of it. She laughs.
“Okay, okay,” she says. “Let’s try to act professional.”
“No, you guys should keep going,” Jacobs says, walking up to us. I clench my jaw. The fact that he tried to convince me that Lauren was a killer is still grating on me. He sets a printed list onto Lauren’s desk. “There is a list of everyone who has bought that dress in Detroit. I split it up into people who have bought it in the last month, which is two people, and
people who have bought it in the last six months, which is sixteen people.”
“Why are there so few buyers in the last month compared to the last six months?” I ask.
“Because it’s almost winter,” Lauren says. “And people tend to get married during the summer.”
“Okay, for the two people who bought it in the last month, there is one man and one woman,” I say. “Look up Joshua Lee.”
Lauren brings up his driver’s license on her computer. He’s thirty-seven years old with dark brown hair, brown eyes, 6’2” and weighs 250 pounds.
“That’s not our guy,” I say. “Or at the very least, it’s not the guy from the airport, and I don’t think he could sneak into your room.”
“Well, maybe the woman is married and her husband took the dress,” Lauren says.
“You said the killer would be a loner.”
“Well, I’ve been wrong before,” she says. “Like when I said I would be safe in my own apartment.”
“The woman’s name is Shaila Potter.”
She types the name into the database and Shaila Potter’s license pops up. She’s a blonde woman with blue eyes, 5’4” and weighs 120 pounds.
“Can you find out if she married someone yet? Or who she is engaged to?” I ask.
“Sure,” Lauren says. She types into a search engine and an engagement announcement shows on the screen. I stare at the photo.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
~~~~~
Lauren and I stand outside of the apartment building. I hit the buzzer again. Lauren rubs her arms.
“Are you cold?” I ask. “I can get my coat from the car.”
She shakes her head. “What are the chances? Could we be getting setup again?”
“If this is another set-up, so help me God, I will burn this apartment building down,” I tell her. “Seriously. I feel like a dog chasing my tail while there happens to be a serial killer laughing the whole time.”
“You would be a cute dog,” she says. “When we first met, you were like a German shepherd, but now you’re more like a sheepdog.”
Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance Page 11