“Absolutely. That’s not why I’m distracted.”
“Great. Great. So was anything discussed about the circumstances of your case? Any red flags that came up?” Chief Davis was looking for something.
“No, nothing like that.” Megan eyed him. “It was just about the wrongful imprisonment settlement.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” He seemed relieved. “So you were compensated fairly?”
“I was.” Megan wasn’t that comfortable talking to the chief about finances, but she hoped if she answered him, he would leave her be. Like comedy, talking about her personal life wasn’t something she considered one of her strong suits. “As I’m sure you know, Vermont offers between $30,000 and $60,000 for every year of wrongful imprisonment, and since I missed out on…well, life…I mean, high school, college, planning for my future, those kinds of things…” She was so uncomfortable that she was rambling. “Point is I got the full reward for the eight full years.” She waved her hands in front of her as soon as she said it. “God, it’s not a reward, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay, Coulis. I’m happy for you.”
“Yah, so, um, it’s good. I can buy my mom a house, and my healthcare is covered for the next ten years, so that’s great.” He was still standing there, waiting for more information. “Oh, and they offered to pay for me to go to college.”
“That’s wonderful. That’s really…wonderful.”
“Yeah…yeah, it is. But um, I doubt I’m going to take them up on it. I can’t imagine going to college now.” Megan fiddled with the pencil on her desk.
“Why?”
“Ha, well, I’m twenty-six.” She began to doodle on the notepad in front of her. “Who goes to college when they’re twenty-six?”
“A lot of people do, Coulis. Don’t let someone else’s mistake stop you from living the life you deserve.”
She looked up at him, after that. There was an appropriate lull in the conversation after his counsel. The way he said it, the tone of his voice…it was as though he actually cared. She wasn’t used to people actually caring.
“Thank you, sir. That’s really good advice.”
“That’s why they made me the chief.” He smiled as he straightened up.
“I don’t think that’s why they made me the chief.”
His smile became a chuckle. “No, that actually had nothing to do with it. But I felt like it worked well in the context of our conversation.”
“Nicely done, Chief.” She smiled back at him, but he still stayed glued to the front of her desk, fiddling now with a stack of papers on the corner. “Are you sure you didn’t need anything from me, Chief? It’s you who seems distracted now.”
“Ha.” He looked away. “I guess you’re right. But no; I’m fine, as well. Keep up the good work, Coulis.”
It was nice to free herself from the obsession of the tape recorder for a few minutes. She didn’t feel so weighted down from the torture of Dr. Covington’s voice, of his words. Davis did have some good advice, for once. She was so focused on righting the wrongs of her past, that she wasn’t paying any attention to her future. Her future was coming at her every day, and yet, she was doing nothing about it. After all, she was only twenty-six years old. She still had so much life ahead of her.
She thought she had it figured out; she thought she had made a plan. Three months in the dungeon, three months manning the phones, and then six months in traffic before she would move on to Cold Cases. That’s when she would have her shot at the files she so desired. But then what? Did she really want to be a cop for the rest of her life? Did she really want to stay bound to the town that ruined her?
No, she didn’t. She couldn’t. There was only one option: she needed to speed up her timeline. She needed to focus all of her attention on solving the case so she could finally move on with her life. After the payout from the state, she would have almost a half of a million dollars. She could go to school, then graduate school…she could do something meaningful with her life.
But all of it would have to wait until she found out the truth. She needed that. She needed to bookend that era of her life. Without that closure, she would always feel as though something was missing.
There was no more time to hang around twiddling her thumbs. There were answers she needed, and if she couldn’t get to the files, she would just find a different way. Megan pushed back from her desk and walked across the hallway to Chief Davis’s office. It was slightly opened, but she knocked anyway.
“Did you miss me, Coulis?”
“No, sir.” She didn’t even hear him; she was on a mission.
“That was a joke, Coulis.”
“Oh, right.” She politely giggled, obviously too focused to realize he was trying to lighten the air. “It’s just that you’re right. I am distracted.”
“I figured as much. Do you need to bounce something off of me?” He leaned forward, placing his forearms on his desk. “Come in, sit down.”
“Thank you, sir.” Megan closed the door behind her, and sat down, in front of her chief.
“What can I do for you?”
“I know this is completely not kosher, and in normal circumstances, I would never ask you this, but, well, with the whole future thing we were just talking about, I was just wondering…” Her mouth became dry in anticipation.
“Spit is out, Coulis.”
“Well, sir, I was just wondering if you happened to be on the force when I was arrested.”
Davis blew air out of his nose, and leaned back in his chair. He cracked his right knuckle, then his left, and then two cracks to his neck, before turning back to her.
“I was, Coulis.”
“You were?” She knew she would have to be prepared for that answer. He was in his mid-thirties. It would make sense that ten years earlier he was one of the new guys. “So you…you know what happened that night.”
“I do.”
“Um, okay. Okay.” She stood, all of a sudden not knowing how to continue. She was lost.
“Coulis, sit back down.”
“Yes, sir.” She swallowed hard as she found the chair again.
“I know what happened that night because I was the one who arrested you.”
Megan closed her eyes. Yes, she remembered.
“Is someone there?” Megan awoke quickly from a deep sleep, as if she was no longer alone. She felt a presence…as if someone else had been in her room.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
“Mom?”
She must have imagined it, or the sound she heard stemmed from a dream. Either way, the possibility of someone being in her room was next to nothing. It wasn’t as though she had anything of value to steal. She was just being paranoid, as she had been so often over the last year.
The room filled with a gust of wind, sending chills up her spine.
“Why is my window open?” She whispered to herself. There was no way she would have opened it, being as it was December, and yet, who else would have done it? Maybe she had been sleep walking, a talent she had acquired along with the night terrors.
She pushed her covers off of her legs and stumbled her way to the window. She quickly peered outside, but couldn’t see a thing: the moon was hidden by a thick winter cloud. Darkness was all she saw.
Still convincing herself that she was being paranoid and had nothing to worry about, she twisted the lock on her window, just in case. Then she laid back in her bed.
Four hours later, she heard a knock on the front door.
“Police, open up!”
Police? What were the police doing here…? Had someone broken in? She opened her bedroom door in time to see her mother unlatch the chain lock.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Ms. Coulis?”
“I am.”
“Is your daughter home?”
Megan’s mother frantically grabbed her chest. “I believe so. She should be. I only got home an hour ago. I didn’t even check her room. Is som
ething wrong? Did something happen? Did you find my daughter?”
Megan stepped forward, not wanting to alarm her mother. “Mom, I’m right here. What’s going on?”
Five police officers stormed in, three went into her bedroom, and the other two surrounded her.
“Megan, what happened?”
“I have no idea, Mom.”
“We found it!” One of the police officers emerged from Megan’s room holding a gun in his gloved hand.
“That’s not mine.” Megan yelled, trying desperately to puzzle together what was happening in her home at five in the morning. How would they have found a gun in her room? She had never even touched a gun before.
The other officer flashed a light on the pistol, turning it a florescent shade of blue.
“And there’s blood.”
“That’s enough. Let’s take her in.”
“Megan!”
“Mom!”
They tried to reach for each other, but Megan’s arms were pulled behind her back and clasped into handcuffs.
“Megan Coulis. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…”
Megan opened her eyes.
“You arrested me.” She whispered, almost trance-like.
“I did.”
“You didn’t have a mustache then.”
“I didn’t.”
“I think I’m going to take the rest of the day off.” Megan slowly stood and delicately stepped toward the door.
The latch closed, leaving Davis alone. He rested his elbows back on the desk and his chin in his hands.
“Poor kid.” He said under her breath. “She has no idea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Megan, still in a trance, got in her car and pressed the play button on the tape recorder.
He began to speak.
Then the gun went off.
She pressed play again.
He began to speak.
Then the gun went off.
And again.
And again.
And again.
When Megan looked up, she was sitting in Evan’s driveway. She didn’t remember turning the car on. She didn’t remember driving down the road. She didn’t remember choosing to go to his house instead of her own.
Still playing the file out loud, she stepped out of the car, walked up the steps to Evan’s secluded mansion, and rang the doorbell.
The gun went off.
She pressed play again.
“…And, believe you me; that little Megan Coulis is better for it.”
“Megan, what are you doing?”
She looked up to see Evan standing next to the open door.
“Why did you ring the doorbell?”
She didn’t have any idea why she rang the doorbell. She never did. His house had practically become her own over the last few months. “I don’t know.”
The gun went off.
Evan pulled the recorder out of her hand. “You’re still doing this? You’ve got to stop this. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, although she didn’t hear him. She was still in her daze.
“Megan, look at me. Goddammit, look at me.”
He took her chin in his palm and lifted her eyes to his.
“Do you see me?” His voice was determined.
“I do.”
“What did I just tell you to do?”
“Look at you.” But her voice remained monotone.
“Before that.”
Megan opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. She hadn’t heard him.
“I told you that you have to stop this…Megan!” He cradled her cheeks in both of his hands, hoping the added tension would break her from her gaze.
Slowly, her hands lifted and her fingers wrapped, ever so gently, around his wrists.
“I’m so close. I can’t stop.”
“What do you mean that you’re so close?” Evan felt a chill run up his body. Did she know?
“My chief…Chief Davis. He was the one who arrested me. He was there. He knows something, Evan. He does. I could sense it. I just need to break him.”
She sounded perfectly psychopathic, speaking to him in her sing-song way, with her eyes glazed over. Evan felt his skin tighten and his chest collapse.
“Okay, get in here.” He pulled her inside and slammed the door behind him. He pushed her up against the wall and lowered his face to hers. “You need to drop this. You need to drop this right now. Do you see what it’s doing to you?”
“I’ll figure it out. I will. And then…then it will be over. Then I can have closure.”
“And what if you don’t figure it out?” He growled at her.
She slowly shook her head. “That’s not an option. I will. I have a plan.”
“Breaking your boss is a plan now?”
“It’s a step.”
“God, Megan!” He screamed as he pushed her out of the way, to the floor, and jammed the heel of his hand against the wall. “This is never going to be over, is it?”
“It will be when I find an answer.”
Evan threw his arms in the air, surrendering to her.
“Fine. Then, get out.”
“What?” She questioned him, still from her spot on the floor, but finally snapped out of her trance.
“I said ‘get out’. I can’t be with you if you’re going to be like this.”
Megan began to laugh, and then she kept laughing.
“For the love of God, what is so funny?”
“I told you it would get to be too much.”
“No, Megan.” He crouched down beside her. “This has not gotten to be too much. You…you have lost your mind.”
Megan, in a fit of fury, brought her hand across his face, but he caught her wrist a split second before she made contact.
“You weren’t just about to slap me, were you?”
“I was.” She spit her determination at him.
“Oh, no, no, no.”
Evan felt rage building up inside of him, the same rage he couldn’t control. He felt the fire take over. He grabbed her frail body and tossed her over his shoulder, holding her legs tight so she couldn’t flail about. He brought her upstairs, two steps at a time, and made his way down the darkened hallway to his bedroom.
“Put me down!” She screamed, though unable to really move.
“My pleasure.”
He threw her down on the bed, and watched as her body bounced on the mattress. He crawled over her, pinning her shoulders down with his knees.
“Evan, what are you doing?”
But he didn’t answer her. He reached over to the nightstand to the left of him and grabbed a handful of rope from within the drawer. He slung a strand around the one post, tied it into a tight knot, and brought the other end to her wrist.
“Evan, please say something.”
But he still said nothing. Instead, he moved to the other post, and her other hand. She begged for his attention, but her pleas were lost on him. He moved to her right ankle, and then to her left.
Megan had no idea what to do. This was a side of him that she had yet to see…a side she was fairly certain she created. He was emotionless. There was no way to reach him. Evan was gone. She had turned him into a monster.
What she hadn’t realized was that he had the opposite effect on her. Sure, she was still obsessed with finding out the mystery behind her nine years in prison, but now she finally saw an end date. With him, she began to see a future. She began to trust. She began to feel. Their sex games had become just games, because with him she felt safe. She knew he would never hurt her.
She wasn’t sure of that any more, now, she wasn’t quite sure what he would do. She felt real fear fill her body when she looked into his eyes. She saw what he was capable of. She saw what she had driven him to.
Attempting to slap him must have been the trigger. Attempting to take the power away from him was what pushed him over the edge.
“Evan, please, look at me. This is a game, right?
We’re playing here. Please tell me that we’re playing.”
He pulled the ropes tighter, and she felt the twine twist into her skin.
“Evan, that hurts.”
He raised his eyes. They looked so dark. “So you can feel that?”
“I can.” She nodded viciously as she said the words.
“Good.” He pulled tighter.
Megan yelped at the burn against her skin, and watched as her cries put a fiendish smile on his face. There was a time when that smile would have excited her, it would have made her yearn for more, but something had changed, and she hadn’t realized it. Now, she yearned for the man who cringed slightly every time he made her whimper. She craved the man who didn’t know what that kind of power over someone could feel like.
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