Page 54 of Pure Killers

“Ready for what?” I ask, more exasperated. When he doesn’t answer, I realise he truly does mean for me to take him at his word. “I won’t let you scare me off another case so you can snatch them for yourself.”

A pause, I feel him regarding me through his mask. There's a different set to his shoulders, his mood, today. Something reluctant and almost sad. "That’s your final word on it?"

My jaw sets, and abruptly I feel I’m signing some kind of death warrant.

Needler pulls back, standing. The train is rolling to a stop. “So be it.”

That ‘so be it’ hangs over me the rest of the day, though I come no closer to interpreting it. It hangs over me through a lunch I don't taste, a meeting I nearly sleep through, and the re-heated dinner that’s still cold in the middle when I fall onto my couch.

Without getting undressed, I collapse into my bed, utterly unaware that when morning comes, I'll wish I'd stayed awake longer, and savoured the state of relative bliss that I'd been enjoying, compared to what was to come.

***

I wake up, thinking the ringing is my alarm. But no, I slept through that already. In a haze, I stumble out to the phone on the kitchen doorframe, recognising Dirk's number on the little screen. It’s 9 am. Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I pick up. "Dirk? What…"

"El! Have you seen it yet?"

"Ugh, seen?" I frown, in my half-asleep state, trying to work out if Ihaveseen it. "I’m not sure what you’re…"

"Don't leave your house, don't turn on the TV, understand? I'm on my way."

I croak a laugh. He sounds downright panicked. And of course, the first thing I do, wobbling to the corner of the living room, tethered by the phone cord, is switch on the TV.

Dirk is still calling my name down the line, but his voice fades to an echo, the phone dropping away from my ear as what’s on the screen absorbs me. I don't know how long I stand there staring, how long that news story goes on. Longer than most. Then it starts again, told in a different way. But the same details, the same new reality. It feels like news just for me, like I’m theonly person in the world watching. Like they knew I’d need to see it twice.

When I look down, the phone is on the ground, slid back towards the kitchen, the line dead.

I don't even have the mind to get into my car. I just leave, stopping long enough to slide my shoes on, the heels rubbing against my skin for the lack of socks. But I don't feel that either, not the blisters walking four blocks like that incurs, not anything. Time passes too slow and too fast at once. The walk stretches on, towards something I don't want to reach, but not long enough for me to make sense of it.

I reach the memorial. The crowd is gathered around the yellow tape, cordoning him off. Everyone turns and stares at me as I approach, but I ignore them in the sort of daze I’ve just walked four blocks in. Someone lifts the tape for me, or I lift it for myself. I'm unsure. Someone else says my name, but I keep walking forward, away from it.

On the TV screen, it could have been false. But here, standing in front of it, there's no room for anything else. In the corner of my eye, I see Dirk, breathless, arrive. But he doesn't come closer. It’s too late now to break it to me easy.

The flowers are gone from around him. In their place are photo frames, all different sizes, nearly a dozen of them, all facing Caleb, accusing him from within white-plastered death cocoons.

We all know this arrangement, the victims facing the accused.

And it’s not just them, other photos are scattered around. I'm on my knees, that’s how I can reach them, how I can see the grainy security snapshots up close and recognise him in them. There are so many, a mountain of evidence. Of crime scenes, of the quiet streets leading from them and a single car, a car I used to know. And in the doorways, a man I know.

A man I thought I knew.

My Caleb. My Caleb and his victims.

The original Cocooner.

***

This time, it makes the front page. The letters seem bigger and bolder than usual.

'Martyred Detective the real killer all along’; ‘Needler exposes the truth, Copycat confirmed.'

And there I was yesterday, proudly reminding the world and the cameras that he was my husband.

Dean and Howie don't want to be across from me, questioning me. I can see it in their faces. For the brief moment that I have a mind to see anything. I've never been on this side of the table. "We've got to re-open those earlier cases," Dean tells me gently.

I nod, numb. Twelve earlier cases. Twelve kills now that the ones since his death aren’t counted. Twelve dead people. Not all of them cocooned, that came later. "I know." My face feels stiff with dried tears. I don't remember crying. I want to ask them, why bother? Needler has given them all the evidence they'll need. It’s all there, proof, undeniable. Needler is never wrong, haven’t I lamented that in the past?

"You really didn't know?" Dean asks again. Howie's mouth is a hard line. He hasn't said anything yet. He looks the most uncomfortable of all of us. He knew Caleb longer than I did. We all knew him. But it’s me who should have known.

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