Page 31 of The Heart of Midnight

“We have an eyewitness who swears she saw you sitting in a white 1998 Pontiac Sunfire in the parking lot where John Vega and Angelo Taylor were murdered. She also claims she saw you pulling off Muerte’s signature mask. Do you have anything to say about that?”

Shit. There was a fucking witness? I was so scattered that day because shit with that girl went sideways that I must’ve gotten sloppy. “I don’t have a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire, white or any other color. If you check, you’ll see the only vehicle I have is the bike I followed you here on. I also wasn’t anywhere near the office that day. I was at home sick.”

“You may not have one, but we found one in the back lot of the garage you work at. Busted bumper and all. Are you telling me that’s a coincidence, Mr. Solis?”

“Do you know how many of those are around here?” I ask. “Every junkyard from here to St. Andrew’s and back has at least one. I’m pretty sure the one we’ve got doesn’t even start.”

“Oh, it starts,” Lange smirks. “We checked.”

God fucking damnit. I should’ve pulled the goddamn spark plugs when I parked it last time. “Okay, great. Guess I’m a better mechanic than I thought, then.”

“Mhm. I’m sure you are. I’m also sure you can understand that we’ll need a DNA sample from you, and we’re requestingto search your home. If you have nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Except I have everything to hide and a fuckton to worry about. DNA is so fucking hard to clean up that I’ll never be 100% sure that I got it all, but I was always extra careful with the bodies I left to be found. I buried the ones I had questions about. And Avery, well... they clearly don’t know about what I’ve done to her or they’d be arresting me outright and demanding to know where she is. “Yeah, okay. You can have my DNA, but I decline the search of my property. You guys make such a mess when you do that shit and I don’t want to clean it up. I’m afraid you’ll have to get a warrant for that since you’re accusing me of something I didn’t do.”

Harbough pulls a folded up stack of papers out of his suit jacket and tosses them on the table in front of me. “Oh, we got one. Just always a little easier when we do this the friendly way. Lange, get his DNA.”

I could kill them both in less than ten seconds, but what if we’re being watched? If they really think I’m Muerte, they probably have five people on the other side of that glass waiting for me to do something. I can’t kill them, not here. Not now. It leaves me with no choice but to open my mouth and let the little twerp swab my cheek.

“See?” I say, standing up. “I have nothing to hide. And if I’m not under arrest, I’ll be following you back to my house to make sure you don’t touch anything that isn’t included in this warrant.”

Harbough looks pissed like he didn’t expect me to see that their warrant only covers things in plain sight, which means they won’t find the Muerte mask unless they break the warrant. They’ll find some of my tools, my gun, and most of the weapons I’ve used, but not the fucking mask. They’ll also find an abusednaked girl tied up downstairs, but if Avery meant a single word she said, I can work with that. Some people are into kinky shit.

“Right this way,” he growls. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I roll my eyes as we make our way back to the parking lot and a team of lab geeks follows us. He wants to see my hands in case I somehow managed to sneak a weapon past the metal detectors, but if he knows anything at all about my crimes, he knows I prefer to use my hands when I kill someone. It’s much more satisfying that way.

The ride back is eight times as nerve-wracking as it was on the way there because I know I’m about to be arrested. If I’d have just killed her last night instead of promising her time, this wouldn’t be happening. I’d already be gone. All my back and forth bullshit means nothing now that I’m down to two options and only two options: prison, or suicide by cop. I’d rather die than go to prison, so I slow down just a little and lift the visor on my helmet. If this is my last day being alive, I want to feel the sun, feel the wind. Smell the air around me. I never appreciated these things before and it’s hard to give a fuck now, but I have to latch onto something.

I wonder how many shots it’ll take to end me. One, if they’ve got good enough aim. Two if they go for the body probably, and who knows how many more if they’re not paying attention to what they’re doing. The story will be all over the news and they’ll play the bodycam footage a thousand times, touting how the SCPD brought down a killer in his own front yard, saving a helpless girl in the process. I bet they’ll even make a documentary about it one day. I wonder if Avery will watch, or if she’ll get to be a part of it herself. She is, after all, my first, last, and most important victim.

At least now she’ll get to live whether I will it or not.

Parking, I slide my helmet off and wonder if I should just rush the cops right now to get it over with. Die without having to see them prove who I am.

But I need to see her one more time. It’s cruel, I know, to make her watch me die... but I can’t leave this world without looking into her eyes one more time. I want the last thing I see on this earth to be her face, no matter how disappointed she looks.

So I wait.

It takes them almost an hour to come back out, and Harbough looks almost disgusted. This is it.

“Cat, huh?” he snaps. “You don’t have a damned cat.”

What? “No, I don’t,” I admit. “I hate them.”

More people come out with absolutely nothing in hand.

“I’d advise you not to leave town,” Harbough mutters. “Wewillhave more questions for you. I know it’s you. You may have scrubbed your house, but we’ve got your DNA. You can’t hide forever.”

I’m so fucking confused I nearly fall over. The basement door is open, I’m sure of it, meaning they could’ve gone down there as legally as they could’ve walked into the kitchen. How didn’t they see the monitors, the weapons, the ropes, the fucking naked girl covered in bruises and pleading for her life?

I’m lightheaded and disoriented as one by one, everyone leaves. I watch their trail of tail lights until they’re out of sight, then sprint into my house and down the basement stairs.

Avery is gone and the box I kept under the bed has vanished too. There’s a trap door underneath it where I kept the masks, and somehow, I know before I even open it that they’re no longer there. It still slaps me in the face to see it.

Somehow, Avery got free and figured out exactly who I am.

But where the fuck did she go?

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