Page 18 of Pure Killers

I hesitate.

“If you lie to me, I swear to god…”

“Yes.” I wouldn’t be the first agent to have a drinking problem. Silence. I can't meet his gaze. “Are you going to report that?”

For long enough that my palms start to sweat, Dirk says nothing, only stares out his window. I stay as quiet as a mouse, like a naughty child who hopes current good behaviour will forgive them of past bad behaviour. Then, without a word, he turns the ignition. “I'm taking you home," Dirk says, deadpan, as he pulls away from the curb. "And you’re going to stay there. Call in sick, don’t, I don’t care. But I better not see you in the office until next week. You'd better come up with something good to tell Tawill by then. I'm not going to cover for a drunk.”

That’s better than I could have hoped for, even if his words, the fact that he won't look at me hurts. My eyes sting a little and I bite my lip, but swallow down anything that might come up. "Thank you. My car…"

"Figure it out." Dirk's tone tells me that’s the end of our discussion. So I keep my mouth shut for the rest of the drive.

Thanks to my using Dirk’s car radio and patching through to the house line, Olivia meets me outside our building, and though my legs are working again, my balance is far from ideal. As a rule, she doesn't ask me about my work, and that stays true now as she slings my arm over her shoulder and beams through my open door at Dirk. "Thanks for the delivery!"

I'm facing the wrong way to see his expression, but Olivia taps the door closed and takes us towards the lobby. "Alright! Let’sget you in front of the TV with a hot water bottle, huh?" Olivia starts chattering and doesn't stop until she's done exactly as she said. "Feel like a bath? I'll run you one. You smell like you need it, no offence. Your partner is cute! You never told me that. Is he single?"

Chapter three

Ihad a therapist after my husband died, though I didn’t find it all particularly useful. Too much moving past things. I wasn’t ready. I stopped going.

In hindsight, it seems like I had everything. The house, the career, the loving husband. We met at work, though he was newer on the scene, a detective like me. For a time, we both worked the Cocooner case. Most detectives worked that case in some way or another back then. But when we married and moved out to the suburbs, he started working more, and I became less involved in that world, which was fast becoming his more than mine. The murders were getting more brutal, the killers more numerous. And most of them target women. But I thought we were safe.

In the end, it wasn't me we should have worried about. And it wasn't the Cocooner, either. It was someone new, the Needler. When Caleb was murdered, I lost everything. Everything was repo’ed, and I sank into debt that I could only get out of by selling all that we’d ever had together. I didn't even want to go back to work, just to sit in a dark foreclosed house andthink instead, a fuzzy, directionless kind of thinking. His mother blamed me. Caleb was always her precious boy, and I wasn’t good enough even when he was alive.

A week is too long to sit with my thoughts, especially sober. But I know thin ice when I'm on it, and I sweat it out, not touching a drop. In every way other than mentally, I feel good. But that’s some omission. I have enough sick leave at work, having not taken a break basically since I came back.

I see the reports on TV, about Masker’s murder. The camera cuts to the families of Masker’s victims. They're praising Needler, all tears and clasped hands, thanking him for bringing them justice. Then there are quick shots of parties on balconies and banners over nightclubs.Come Raise a Glass to the Death of the Masker.People are celebrating the kill. Celebrating Needler.

And sure, I have little grief for the man that died. His method was slow and cruel. But I saw it happen, came face to face with the man that did it myself. Face to face with the man who killed my husband.

By Friday the draw is too much, towards that cupboard above the fridge. I know I should go and pull the bottles down, then pour them into the sink. But having them in my hands is too close to just one sip, then another. The sudden ringing of the housephone jolts me out of my deliberations. Something tells me it’ll be Dirk, and I lunge out from under the blanket I’ve been stewing under on the couch to snatch the receiver out of the cradle before the first ring is up.

“So, he taunts them,” is his opener.

I let out a breath. He’s letting me back to work. “Yes. With their crimes, their victims. He takes his time.”

“Right. Good. See you Monday.” And he hangs up.

***

If it was up to me, I'd sit in my room studying case notes, ready to go back on Monday. But Olivia can be persistent when she gets an idea in her head.

"You've been cooped up all week! Come on! Please? Come with me. It'll be fun."

"It’s really not my scene," I tell her, again. And it’s true. Usually, I drink alone, not pressed between three hundred other bodies.

"All the more reason to give it a go."

Somehow, persistence mostly, and the fact she was nice enough to go and get my car last week, I wind up squished into a booth of sticky leather seats, Olivia shouting across the table to a man with five piercings in his face, including a painful looking one in the middle of his chin. That one is inflamed, either new or infected. The music is too loud for me to make out exactly what she's saying, but the guy gives her his number, so I assume it went well.

True to myself, I stick to drinking lemonade, meaning I'm much more sober than anyone else in here. Olivia is tucking the small piece of paper into the top of her boot, which comes up to her knee. Then there's a lot of free space after that, all the way up to her black miniskirt. "You know," I yell, leaning towards her. "You should be more careful. There's a lot of crime in this city." And she's exactly the type on the receiving end of most of it, I don't say.

Olivia grins widely, sucking more of her candy-coloured drink up through the straw. "You need to be less careful!" she counters.

Given my last escapade, I sincerely doubt that. In the darkest time of each night since, it’s been impossible not to think about lying there on the cement floor, utterly vulnerable. Every sound seems to wake me now, leaving me too alert to get back to sleep.

"Have fun a little! Get laid."

I snort.

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