Page 91 of The Guy Next Door

“Can you just sit down? You standing there is stressing me out.”

I don’t feel like fucking sitting, but I accept that making her comfortable is the best way of getting more details from her. After my ass hits the cushion of the chair in front of her desk, she says, “I want to remind you before I tell you what happened that I never had an obligation to tell you anything. Everything I shared with you before was because I saw a grieving kid who was trying to find his missing brother. And I sympathized. I knew I should have had more boundaries. I shouldn’t have entertained your visits as much as I did, but I cared, and I realized that I enabled you.”

“Do we have to get into what you and your therapist have been chatting about?”

“I’m only trying to let you know that even right now, what I’m about to tell you, I tell you because I understand why you’re distressed.”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re not the only one who’s ever lost someone, Zane,” she snaps, and that shuts me up. “There’s a reason I chose this job, and just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I haven’t had my own shit to deal with.”

I quiet.

In all the times I’ve spoken with her, she’s never mentioned this.

She shakes her head. “Over the weekend, a hunter’s dog came across the body along the shore of a creek not far from the dam. It was weighted with rope and cinder blocks. From what the coroner has been able to make out, the state of the body suggests it was submerged for at least a couple of months. There was a storm last week that we think caused enough of a stir in the creek to shift part of the body out of the rope so that it surfaced.

“Because of how much of the body had decomposed by this point, we knew it’d be hard to get a positive ID off just that. A skeletal and dental examination suggested the age we were looking at was right for Jason Kilbourne and Mike.”

“That couldn’t have been enough for you to think it might be them, though.”

Her gaze wavers. “While searching the area, we discovered ashes nearby. Among them, there was a bit of plastic, and one of the officers on the scene recognized the style because it reminded him of his son’s WCC student ID.”

Fuck.

“The body didn’t have any wisdom teeth,” she says quickly, as if trying to chase away my concern. But that’s not fucking happening. “Kilbourne’s records show he’d already had his removed, but Mike didn’t, which ruled out Mike to my satisfaction. I didn’t broadcast this information around the department because in the past we’ve had an issue with leaks from people with political motivations. Given the nature of the crime, we didn’t want anything out until we knew what we were looking at.”

It’s hard to miss how she said that last part. “What do you mean bynature of the crime?”

She breaks eye contact. “I’m not getting into those details with you, Zane. You can follow the news, same as everyone else. The only reason I mentioned any of this is because our attempts at discretion around this are what caused the confusion.Inadvertently done by one of my colleagues, in an effort to obfuscate the truth and keep anything from being made public early. That’s how this mess came about. And I’m sorry for that.”

Her apology sounds sincere, but… “I know you mean that, but it doesn’t change how it felt to see that article pop up on my phone.”

She gulps. “I know. But because of the nature of the crime, and the fact that we knew we were on the verge of a media frenzy, we managed to rush the genetic testing, and they confirmed what we already knew. It’s Kilbourne, not Mike. And the moment I was notified about the post, I called you. I really thought we only had to keep it together for another day.”

In some ways, it’s easier to breathe knowing theGwinnett Daily Postgot it wrong. But now I have very different worries.

That maybe they just haven’t found his body yet.

Or maybe he’s being held captive by a man who plans to kill him.

Nothing good.

“Well, I appreciate you telling me now,” I say, since I owe her that much. “Do you have any leads?” I press.

“That’s not your concern.”

“What do you mean that’s not my concern?” Now I’m back to being pissed.

“I’m not letting you Hardy Boy your way around this again.”

“Have you checked if Isaac Tolle has a connection to the place where the body was found? Maybe he used to work around there? He’d need to know the area to feel like he could dump a body without getting caught.”

“As I already said, I’m not getting into this with you.” She steps around her desk, as if using it as a physical boundary to make a point. As she settles in her chair, she says, “Now that we’ve gotten all that out of the way, there’s something else I’m interested in discussing. Something you’ve avoided since youstepped in here. Why are you dating the kid who was in my office a couple of months back, who told me you approached him about your brother’s case and a letter he’d received?”

“Well, look at where we are now. There’s a body. Someone did something with it. Doesn’t this mean there’s a possible serial killer who also took Mike, who’s maybe keeping him alive somewhere so that they can do this to him?” As soon as the words escape my lips, I feel like shit. Because a part of me can’t believe he’s being held anywhere. A part of me knows that he’s—

No, I can’t think that! I have to have hope. For him.

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