Page 13 of The Shadowed Oracle
“Kyle,” Dean said, seeming confident it would soothe whatever tension Ingrid had built up.
But it hadn’t. It made it worse. So much worse.
“Kyle what?” Ingrid hissed. “Twyker?! Was it Twyker?”
The shrillness of her question caused Dean to flinch, sending him back slightly in his seat. He took a moment to refocus and recalibrate.
This was twice now, within just a few minutes, that Ingrid had shared information she wasn’t supposed to know. Information only someone heavily involved would know. Ingrid could feel him scoping her out again, but she didn’t possess the awareness to explain, to try and recount the series of events that led her there.
All she could think about was what that last message had said.
I’ll take care of him.
His eyes hardening, Dean nodded. “Kyle Twyker. That’s his name. Or,washis name. It was Kyle Twyker.”
Chapter Six
The San Brunopolice station was crowded. Handcuffed drunks, teenagers waiting on their parents to pick them up, overworked desk-deputies typing up report after report. There was an alertness brought on by the noise, but Ingrid also felt a haze slowly haloing around her head. Something more than exhaustion, and more than any post-traumatic fugue she’d experienced before.
“Ms. Lourdes?” The officer sitting in front of her repeated himself.
A few fragments of sentences would sneak through her addled brain, but not enough to pierce the part of her that engaged a desire to respond. She had to force herself to open her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said. “What was the question again?”
The officer sighed, remaining steadfast. He wore a blue suit with a coffee-stained checkered tie, and his eyes were beady behind thick glasses as he stared at her. Ingrid deduced that by his age, his composure, he’d been doing this job for a long time. Not to mention, he seemed far more competent than any of the other officers she’d spoken to since arriving three and a half hours ago—or was it four now?
She didn’t know.
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through, Ms. Lourdes,” he went on, trying to find better footing. “But every detail, no matter how small, it might be the difference in catching this guy or finding another body.”
“I understand,” she said apologetically. No matter her prejudices, the man was trying to do his job. To help her. To help people like her all over the state. Judging by the way the uniformed officers treated him, he wasn’t employed at the small San Bruno station. Even Dean seemed to be wary of him, uncomfortable and studious.
Every question he asked seemed pre-written, robotic. She answered them to the best of her knowledge, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t satisfied with the information. And the more she spoke about the strange messages, the more insane they seemed.
After all she’d put up with, all she’d been through…and now this.
“Ms. Lourdes?” the detective asked. “Are you still listening?”
Hours later, Ingrid sat on her couch staring at the dark screen of her phone. Down to the spot and the method in which she lounged, it was the same scene as the previous night. Only foggier.
Time stalled. A movie she couldn’t remember choosing was on her TV, and she couldn’t think of any reason to keep it playing other than the fact she’d lost her remote. The single police cruiser stationed outside her home was the only thing she could focus on anyway. She wondered if the officer, Matty—or maybe Marty, she couldn’t remember—was out there payingclose attention to his surroundings, intently surveying the street, or if he, well, wasn’t doing any of that.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he resented being assigned to her, tasked with the girl supposedly being stalked by a serial killer. She’d met cops like that, years ago, in that time of her life that she didn’t think about, didn’t linger on. It was her experience that young single women claiming that men were harassing them wasn’t something the police prioritized.
“Not a frugal use of the force’s time,” one of the uniformed officers tasked with her case had said. Like it was some kind of unwritten rule. Women would be followed, pestered, harassed—and that was unavoidable.
It had taken a very clear link to a serial killer to get them to take any kind of action. Dean had offered to stake out her street himself, and Ingrid was so surprised, so caught off guard, she declined out of habit. She regretted that prejudice now. For the first time in her life, she accepted the fact that she couldn’t do this alone. That she was only holding herself back.
And so, as she stared at her front door from the corner of her living room, she gave in to the urge. She let those iron walls dissolve within her, and then she reached for her phone.
Dean had given her his number right before she was escorted back to her apartment. With a shy and almost boyish mumble, he’d said, “In case you need me,” then shoved a crumpled scrap of lined yellow paper in her hand. The same hand that was now hovering over that same set of numbers.
A minute, two, then three passed before she finally pressed the button.
“You alright?” Dean asked abruptly. His voice was at once kind and commanding.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Much better. I’m sorry about how out of it I was, back at the station. Things hadn’t really settled in.”
