Page 83 of Long Way Down

“Right. Anyway, I wanted them, I followed them, I took them. I didn’t know their names, or how they liked their coffee. They weren’t dates who’d rejected me. I didn’tcareabout them, is my point,” he’d said, drumming his fingers on the table for emphasis. “They brought in all these shrinks to talk to me, back before the trial, and they kept asking if I hated women, or if I’d asked those girls out before. Tried to twist things around and make it sound like my mom didn’t breastfeed me or something. Like I got abused as a kid. Did my step-father ever touch me? one wanted to know; he must have asked me two dozen times.” He’d tsked. “None of them would believe that I’d just wanted to do it. That there was nothing wrong with me. That I just…was.”

It had been raining by the time they left, the clouds flat, heavy, and stationary overhead; a straight-down rain that drummed on the asphalt the way his fingers had drummed on the table. “Jesus,” Contreras had said with a deep exhale when they were inside the car, rain hissing over the roof, pouring down the windshield in thick curtains. “Let’s get lunch.” She hadn’t argued, though she hadn’t felt like eating – hadn’t felt like much of anything, really. They’d ended up at a riverside seafood place near the prison, The Boathouse, comfortably weathered and shabby. There were tables out on the deck, umbrellas closed and dripping in the rain. They sat inside a mostly-empty dining room, fogged window offering a glimpse of dark sky and darker Hudson.

Across from her, Contreras had already put away half his burger and reached for the basket of fried calamari sitting between them. “Okay, then. Walk me through what ‘scary-crazy’ means, exactly.”

She was grateful for the chance to set aside her food, though she noted the way his eyes tracked her hands and he frowned disapprovingly in response. “I don’t know what someone with a psychology degree would call him – a sociopath, maybe – but he doesn’t have one ounce of empathy for other people.”

“What, like, he gets off on hurting them?”

“No. The opposite, really, I think, based on the way he talked about himself. He knew what he did was wrong, and that he hurt his victims, but he doesn’t care that he did. He only cared about what he wanted in that moment. It wasn’t a fit of violent passion.” She frowned. “I think that might be why it took so long for them to catch him. The detectives on the case were searching for someone with a personal connection to the vics, for someone who might have loved them, or hated them, or had reason to harm them. Osborn, in his own words, just wanted them, and he took what he wanted.”

“Damn. That’s some cold-blooded shit.”

“Yeah.” She repressed a shudder at memory of his placid, easy expression. The way he’d shrugged and spread his hands as if to saywhat can I do?

“He was an electrician, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. Worked on everything from shithole apartments to dorm rooms to brownstones to commercial properties.”

“Explains the variety of vics. And access.”

“Speaking of…” She made a face. “He thinks we ought to track them down and ask them all if they’ve noticed anyone hanging around their houses or offices lately.”

His brows went up. “Why?”

“He has a theory about our perp. He wasn’t obsessed with his vics, and he doesn’t think our guy is either – but heisobsessed with Osborn. He’s convinced the notes and the message prove that.”

Contreras looked doubtful. “He been spending a lot of time in the library up here? Thinking he’s a shrink or something?”

“He’s been studying,” Melissa said, and realized a beat too late that she’d sounded defensive. On his behalf. She skated a look across the dim, rustic interior of the restaurant to avoid her partner’s incredulous gaze. “That’s what he said, anyway.” She tried for casual and feared she fell short. “He was interviewed by a lot of psychiatrists before, during, and after the trial. There’s lots of time to research and he’s got nothing better to do.”

There was a pause. Then wax paper crackled as he dug more calamari out of the basket. “Okay,” he said, slowly, and she snuck a glance to find his face set in lines of concern. “Remember how I told you not to let him get to you?”

“Ididn’t.”

“This guy’s sick, Dixon,” he continued, all Serious and Adult, the Experienced Partner Who’d Seen It All. It madehersick…sicker, given the way her stomach had been churning since the heavy metal door of the ward had slammed shut behind them. “When they first arrested him, he tried to get inside the head of every woman around him, from the detectives, to the lawyers, to the damn judge at trial. He played shit up to the jury, even. He knows how to manipulate people.”

She gave him her flattest stare. “Iknowthat.”

“Okay. Well–”

“No ‘well.’” Anger lent a vibration to her voice – an anger she used to mask the clammy-palmed, internal buzz that had only intensified over the past half hour, rather than receded. The cool, chemical smell of the prison clung to her, oily on her skin and hair – blonde like all of Osborn’s victims.

She snapped the tie off her wrist and scraped her hair back into a hasty ponytail, wincing as it pulled tight on her scalp. “I went into that interview fully warned and with my eyes open. I knowexactlywhat he is.” Venom, now, dripping off each word.Good, she thought, savagely, hands dropping to the table edge, gratified by the way his expression had smoothed with surprise. “He didn’t charm me, or put some sorta spell on me. It’s a little late to be wondering if he did, or if I fell for it. The whole point of talking to him was to get his insight, right? So don’t go full Dad Mode when I passed it along.” The last she said with a huff, chest pumping on each harsh breath. Her insides quivered, but her hands clenched tight on the table, nails scoring the old wood. She was itching for a fight; fighting was so much more satisfying than what she’d done as a child: waiting in silent dread, hoping someone would believe her, too frightened to tell anyone what had really happened out in the swamp that awful afternoon.

Slowly, his expression shifted. She wanted to think the tilt of his head and the glint in his gaze was respect. “Alright,” he said. “Fair enough. Tell me what he thinks, then.”

She’d already told him, but his tone now said that they were starting over; that he would truly consider all that she told him.

A shallow, bittersweet sort of victory.

She took a deep breath and regrouped. “Osborn says our guy has an obsessive personality.”

“Like OCD?”

“He said there’s no way to know without us having him sit down for a psych eval, but – and this is just him talking, for what it’s worth – he thinks no. OCD is about rituals. Hitting light switches a certain number of times. Compulsive handwashing. Going back to make sure you unplugged the iron five times, even if it makes you late for work. Based on what forensics found, this guy was careful, but if we factor in the girls from the Dirty Dog and Cool Down–”

“Cool Down?” he asked. “That skeevy place that shares a parking lot with Gone Thriftin’?”

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