Page 21 of Pure Killers

Dirk grins. "Shouldn't have become a detective if you didn't like questions."

***

Seb is, once again, running the lab solo.

"Rosie off to the Cocooner scene?" I ask as I step in.

Seb turns, lifting his head from where he's leaning over a microscope in the corner. Bringing his thick glasses back down, he squints at me. "She is." He smiles a little, staying in his seat, and it gratifies me somewhat that he's become less awkward around me. For me, Seb has become a nice break from the usual cop persona- that specific way of being over-confident and world-weary at once. Somehow, he's escaped absorbing the cynicism so far.

"H-heard you were off sick. Glad to see you b-back."

I smile and prop up on Rosie's chair. "Yeah, just needed a break."

"You here about the m-Masker?" he asks.

"Yeah."

"It’s him. Matches the DNA at his scenes, and the boot size."

"Of course," I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. Needler gets his guy.

Seb is smiling at me with that endearingly quirked mouth. "You s-seem like you wanted to hear he got the wrong person."

That gets a short, sharp laugh out of me. God, is he right? For a minute there, I forgot what that would mean. "No, no. You're right. Better that he's getting the right people." Oddly, I feel the urge to linger. So when the conversation lulls and Seb starts to fidget, I find a new avenue of conversation. "Heard back from Rosie at the scene yet?"

"Nothing yet."

"I guess that’s a bad sign."

Seb tilts his head. "If Cocooner had left his address somewhere, we'd probably hear about it p-pretty quick, yeah."

The idea makes me smile. "Rosie didn't send you."

"No, she h-hates Cocooner the most."

I nod slowly. "She lost a friend to him. When he decided to target female detectives one year. Back before…" I trail off, then straighten my shoulders. "Rosie has seen a lot."

"W-we're all g-getting that way."

***

I stay late. Just because I missed a week, I tell myself, as though I don't regularly stay two to three hours past the end of my shift. The crew comes back from the crime scene, and I get caught up on what they found. Which is summed up as more of the same. No leads yet.

By the time I'm back on my street, having parked my car around the block, I'm exhausted, both mentally and physically. Over a week clean, and I'm barely even thinking about having a drink to top the night off. All I want is to climb into bed. Which makes it even more soul-crushing when no amount of ferreting through my bag turns up my housekeys. I must have left them on the hook inside my front door.

I try calling Olivia as I stand outside the building, locked out from even accessing the stairwell, though I know full well she usually works night shift Mondays. Then, to add insult to injury, it starts raining. I curse and press close to the front of the building, looking up through the droplets to ascertain that it’s setting in to stay. A quick urge to cry washes over me. But like most emotions, I push it down.

My only option is seven flights of cold exposed fire escape to hopefully be able to jimmy the window open at the top. At least there will be a hot shower waiting for me, I tell myself as I head down the block to get around the back of the building.

Climbing the stairs takes an age. I'm soaked through by the time I get to the seventh floor and the small window that looksinto our living room, the rain only falling harder in the time it took me to get here. And then, as I try to lift the window open, it doesn't budge. I can even see the latch at the top, turned closed. Swearing loudly into the rain, I rest my forehead against the glass, my breath fogging it. What now? Call Dirk? God, as if I need him to think I'm any more incompetent lately. I could break the glass.

It's while I'm running through everything that I have on me, working out what will work best for that task, that I realise I'm not alone. The landing sways softly, attached by bolts to the wall, and the rain masks any other sound, including the heavy rattle that any footsteps elicit. Rather, it’s the shape in my peripherals that I register first.

When I turn my head just enough to see him there, on the far corner of the landing, leaning against the rail by the stairs, I gasp and jump back to the edge. Briefly, looking at that mask, and the blackened mouth smudged an even darker black with wet, I consider going over the side, trying to catch the window ledge a meter away. But he doesn't react to me noticing him, doesn’t move, not an inch.

I grip the bars, pushing myself into the corner and farther from him. My chest rises and falls fast. He knows where I live. Of course. From when he’d followed me. He didn't just stop after he took out my other tail.

"This could help," his voice comes, even more obscure through the rain, hand lifting to hold a flat iron bar out to me. The kind that petty thieves use to unlock windows just like mine. I don't reach for it, don't even look at it. My eyes stay firm on him. Hand dropping, his mask tilts, watching me. “You're hunting me," he says.

---