Page 89 of Good Guy Gabe

Chapter 36

Joss

“YOU SHOULD HAVEtold us sooner,” Officer Vega says, but he’s young. I bet he has no idea about my past or the history of this property. “We take vandalism very seriously here in Camden.”

Of course they do. We’re in the wealthy suburbs. It’s a boring area to be a cop, and they’d love to get more calls of any sort.

“I’m sorry,” I lie, swiping a tear of frustration away. I’m not scared, I’mpissed. I ignored Gabe, of course. Made the call about the vandalism, told them I was worried something serious was happening, and rushed down.

To find Gabe wearing bloodied gloves and carrying a wire kill trap in one hand, a trash bag with a dead animal inside it in the other.

There was only a half second of panic — but I can still feel that half second in my heart as I talk to the cop — before Gabe saw me and blurted out, “It was a possum, not Jerry.”

The lawn was covered in kill traps, at least a dozen of them, and although nothing else but that poor possum got caught up in them, Gabe had to assure me repeatedly that he saw Jerry in his little house under the new deck. The only reason he wasn’t still there was because Gabe ran him off the property so he didn’t have to keep an eye on Jerry while he disabled the traps.

It’s painstaking work. These things are brutal enough that he’s triggering them with a stick instead of risking his handsdisarming them. I keep one eye on him as Vega takes my statement, but he’s being careful.

“How long would you say this has been going on?” Vega asks.

“That’s . . . a trickier question than it should be.” I laugh, but it does little to temper the statement.

“Why don’t you start in the beginning?”

“You new to Wilmington in the last six years?” I ask. “This house doesn’t have a great past. I don’t have a great past. So there was a good three, four years where this was a regular thing, not worth addressing. And then it stopped, and I thought it was over, but then there were some incidents this past fall.”

“What changed?”

I nod to Gabe. “We started dating. My picture got in the news. People remembered me. It was bad for a while, a few times a month. But then they stopped again in January. Until this.”

“Did anything change this time?”

I shake my head. It’s been a weird couple of months. “I got pregnant back in October, everyone knew by December. Gabe and I broke up in December, too. But it still happened a few more times. And then nothing for the last two months . . . until Gabe and I started seeing each other again.”

Officer Vega looks over at Gabe, diligently clearing the traps. His eyes narrow. “So this has only happened while Gabe was here?”

“Well, notherehere. Sometimes he is, sometimes he’s—oh!Are you thinking Gabe is doing this? No. I mean, I know people are crazy, and trust me, I don’t take things lightly or ignore red flags. But he literally built a cubby for the raccoon that lives here. He wouldneverput these traps out.”

I can tell Vega doesn’t agree with this argument, and I get it. He doesn’t know Gabe like I do. He didn’t spend two months trying to convince himself that Gabe is a bad guy based on one incredibly inappropriate decision he made that reflects something far more important. He’s looking at a woman who might be easily duped by a man who could be a run-of-the-mill sociopath who feigned a humanitarian streak to manipulate her into thinking it would be impossible for him to harm an animal.

But it doesn’t seem impossible to me that he would lie to me to get me pregnant, and itisimpossible to me that he’d try to kill Jerry.

“And you have no security system to prove he didn’t leave your apartment while you were sleeping? No cameras out here?”

“I’m sorry. I swear, I was going to get one of those doorbell cameras, but then the vandal stopped and it slipped my mind.”

“And you?” Vega yells to Gabe. “Mr. Shaunessy? You didn’t see anything?”

The look Gabe gives me isn’t the one I’d expect right now. He’s gotten on my case numerous times about getting cameras, so this would be the perfect moment for him to look vindicated. But with the pregnancy, the threat on Jerry’s life, and everything else, I could really go for supportive right now and maybe save thetold-you-sofor a later date.

He’s looking oddly sheepish, though, as he says, “Well, not me personally, no.”

Vega raises an eyebrow. “Do you know someone who did?”

“Jerry did.” His phone buzzes in his hand, and he holds up a hand for patience as he answers it, putting it on speakerphone for us. “Jeff, buddy, tell me some good news.”

“I do, in fact, have good news. But good god, man, you could have warned me I was loading a snuff film.”

Gabe mutes the phone to explain, “He means the possum,” before unmuting and telling Jeff, “You got a good look at the vandal’s face?”

---