Page 94 of A Forgotten Mistake

“I want to hear him admit it,” I decide.

“I… I can record him but that’s risky. Even after deleting it, there could be traces of it left on my phone. I guess I can go get a burner?—”

“No, I want to hear him confess… in person.”

Liam stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have. “You… want to come… I’m sorry. You want to be…present? Like in the room. Like you want me… to bring youintothe same room as the killer?”

“I just want to hear him confess and then I’ll leave. I’m not saying I don’t trust you. I do. I am well aware that you’d never have the wrong guy; that didn’t even cross my mind. I just… I want to hear what he has to say… for some reason. I want to hear it…”

He continues staring at me like I’ve turned into an alien myself. “Gabriel… you don’t?—”

“Liam, you and I have been in so many rooms together when people have confessed. This is no different. But I just… I want to know what he has to say. Please? I’m not going to start… joining you on your… adventures. I just… want to hear his confession.”

He falls silent and I realize that it’s really quite rare for this man to be at a loss for words. Instead of jokes or humor or anything else he generally uses to exist, he seems anxious. “Gabriel… I’ll call it in anonymously. I’ll go call it in.”

Liam looks nervous. Twitchy. He’s back to staring at the phone like it has all the answers, but he doesn’t seem to know how to move.

“He will just claim he was at the mall if we send someone over. You can grab him, and I’ll meet you there. I will leave after I hear the answers,” I say.

“Yeah, and what happens when you don’t like what you see or hear? Me… telling you about it is completely different from you being there. What happens when you decide that you can’t do this?”

I grab his face in my hands and force him to look away from that phone and meet my eyes. “You are going to go get him and I’m going to meet you at the silo. Do you understand? This isn’t an ‘Oh, this is to make sure I trust you’ thing. This is a… a… something for me thing. I want to look the guy in the eyes. I want to know the man I’m going to hate. I want to be there when he tells you why he did it. Does that make sense? Do you understand?”

“I do, but?—”

“Hurry.”

Liam bites his lip. “I can’t lose you over this.”

“Then you follow what I’m asking you to do,” I say. “Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” he repeats with a disbelieving laugh. “No part of this feels simple.”

“Life is never simple. I’ll be at the silo when you get there.”

“I’ll send you my location so you can track me and know when to arrive,” he says, and I know he’s wanting to show me that he trusts me enough to let me see where he is at any point in time, but he’s far more worried than he should be. I don’t distrust him—none of this is about that. This is about me feeling comfortable with him doing what he has to do.

Now, I just need to get my family to leave.

TWENTY-ONE

Liam

What the fuck is this?

Is it a whole “Oh, Liam, I trust you, but I want to torture you first” scenario? What the fuck? Isn’t the fact that Caleb is sitting outside of her house enough proof?

No… no… it’s not the proof he’s wanting. Gabriel’s never needed proof for any of my wild accusations. He’s always trusted me. He’s the only one who has unquestioningly trusted every theory I’ve thrown out there. It’s that he wants to feel okay with me killing them, and I know that. He wants to hate them enough that he also believes they deserve to die. But it’s still enough for me to fret that I’m fucking up somehow.

My knuckles are white as I squeeze the steering wheel far too tight for the entire drive. I don’t realize until I arrive that I’ve been so fixated on Gabriel that I haven’t thought a fucking thing about how I’m going to doanyof this.

No, no, no. I’m thinking about this all wrong. Completely wrong. I’ve never been more wrong about something in my life. This is no different from any interrogation we’ve done together.And we’ve done so many! Yeah, the setting might be a tad different. And the outcome might be significantly different, but that’s all this is.

A simple, smooth sailing interview.

It’s not too hard to find Caleb’s car a little way down the road. He’s parked in the parking lot of the shopping mall, which makes it ridiculously hard to get him intomyvehicle without anyone else noticing. I feel like the teens leaning against an old beat-up SUV might have something to say if I just pop Caleb in my trunk and head off. Yes, my license plate has been swapped out for a fake one, but I still would rather not draw any attention to myself.

I drive by his car and pull into my own parking spot as I watch. He does have a pretty clear view of the grandparents’ house here, and we even get to see them get in the car and head off. But it’s not until the uncle walks Leanne over to his house that Caleb starts his car and moves it to a more secluded area in the alley behind the house. It’s almost like he wants to help me out a bit, which is awfully kind of him. He must have scouted the area out well enough that he parks out of sight of any cameras that I can see.

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