Page 33 of Promise of Destruction
Looking up at the screen, I see Soren standing on the tips of her toes, trying to crane her neck to see her front porch from there. She’s dressed now in a robe that matches her towel.
She’s clearly nervous. Probably thinks that whoever’s texting her is the same person knocking on her door, trying to lure her out to them.
I didn’t have her house mic’d yet, and we’re too far from the neighbor’s home for the cameras to pick up any audio other than the occasional passing car. These damn cameras can spot a fly on a leaf blowing in the wind, but they’re useless for hearing anything. When I’d initially told Collins to get the cameras set up, he had warned me the audio wouldn’t have the capability I would likely need. Since I was in a bit of a rush to get them installed, I simply told him that we’d order an audio enhancer if we needed. I hadn’t expected to need it.
Did she call them herself? Maybe she wants to report the incident from last night.
Soren is just stepping away from the window, drawing the robe tighter around herself, when the computer pings in front of me. I turn my attention to the Illinois driver’s license that best matches my screen capture of his face.
Officer Cody Barnes of the Covington P.D.
Born January 3rd, 1999.
He’s just a baby, but that means nothing if he’s mixed up with the wrong people. I check the list of known associates to see if any of them stick out, but it seems to be mostly family—Carol Barnes, Richard Barnes, and Becky Gillum, married to Noah Gillum. They live in the suburbs, and not one of them has so much as a speeding ticket notice in public record, though I do see a citation for a broken tail-light on Noah’s 2014 Camry.
Cody Barnes doesn’t set off any alarm bells, but I watch him carefully as Soren opens the door. It’s just a crack—enough forher to poke her head tentatively through to see who’s waiting on the porch for her. She relaxes at first when she recognizes the uniform and then tenses again.
Her lips move, but I’m not a goddamn lip reader.
Soren opens the door a bit more, giving the officer a better view of the empty inside of her home.
And then I don’t care if Cody Barnes is a fucking boy scout, because Soren just answered the door in her fucking robe.
twenty-three
Soren
“Ascream?”Iblinkdumbly, my brain trying to handle all of the things that had come into it in the last few hours.
“Yes ma’am.” The officer—his nametag reads BARNES—cranes his neck a bit, obviously trying to see past me into the house. “Is everything alright?”
Unease spills over me like a bucket of cold syrup being poured over my head. It’s slow and viscous, but it’s there.
Everything is not alright. Not even close.
I have a stalker—at least one. The jury is out on whether my boss, who I caught outside my window watching me touch myself, is the same as the man who is texting me right now. Unless those text messages came from this scrawny-looking officer who looks like he’d rather spend a night in the woods than be here talking to me, someone is watching me right now.
“I’m fine.” I find myself saying. My tongue knows exactly how to move to say the word without choking on it. It’s got plenty of practice. I’ve been fine for the last year.
“Are you home alone?”
His question makes me narrow my eyes on him, and he seems to recognize that it could be taken the wrong way, because he shakes his head. “I mean, is there something I can do for you? Do you need help?”
I need more help than one officer can give.
My own therapist wasn’t up to the task of helping me, and the police department has already proven themselves to be genuinely and pathetically useless. I open the door a little more, letting him see that there’s no one holding a gun to my head making me say that I’m okay. I guess I should appreciate the effort, but it feels like a waste of my time to be here talking to him right now.
“So, there’s no sort of… domestic dispute?”
Bite your tongue, Ren,I tell myself.
If I don’t follow my own advice, I’ll probably tell the officer no domestic dispute since I already killed my husband. That’s what they all think. I’m not even sure that Detective Fremont has given up on looking into me. When he questioned me last, he told me not to skip town… a warning that I was considering disobeying given my current situation with Declan.
“No.”
“The scream was reported…” Officer Barnes glances down at the watch on his left wrist and takes a second longer than he should need to read it. “About two hours ago.”
Two hours ago, and they’re just now showing up?
