Headlights(6)

“Don’t run away from this,” Jack says. “Help us. Please. There’s a reason it was yours.”

Because of that thing, what he thinks I can do. That thing that is a complete fantasy.

My shining boy.

Jack Murphy in my apartment. Birds cawing louder through the window.

Sand in my eyelids, the brush of starched new fatigues. The weight of an M4, ushering civilians to safety.

A cabin in the mountains or forest. New friends. A dog to share my dinner. The birds ripping meat from the carcass.

Blood in my eyes. My eyes in the mirror. Blood on the tiles, my skin and my hands, and— John Denver’s voice tearing through the air.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.



* * *



I close the trunk of my car on the boxes, my remaining life packed inside.

I follow Jack all the way back to Colorado.





3



We stare through the one-way glass into the interrogation room.

The fastest route between Salt Lake and Denver is the one that cuts up through Wyoming, avoids the Rockies altogether. We stopped for a meal halfway through the driving day, small-talked to catch up. Neither of us there, not really. A shadow moved in the corner of the diner, the first I’d seen in so long. Stress response, coming back here. I pressed my hands to my eyes.

We hit traffic, a protest clogging the streets. Colorado Subarus—the back of them caked in mud, like always—stalled in front of the protestors. One of them holding a sign that said PROTECT OUR ECOSYSTEMS. Another with a photo of a wolf that said STOP THE SLAUGHTER.

Every mile heading back, an ounce of hope undone.

Now, standing here again, it’s like none of the last four years happened at all. How many times have Jack and I stood side by side in this very spot? How did I ever think I could escape any of it? Shadows I pushed past on the way inside the building.

Not real. My brain just …

Before us on the other side of the glass, another bewildered killer, another victim. A kid. He’s terrified. Not small, by any means, he’s gotta be six five, but the personality, the himness, more sensitive than the linebacker physique would suggest. It doesn’t help that he’s crying.

“I told you,” he says to the agents sitting across from him. Tillman, if I have to go off the back of his head, and Garcia, the prosecutor on the case, who’s letting Tillman do the talking. “I don’t remember anything,” the kid says. “I can’t … There’s no way I did it. I couldn’t have.”

Jack turns the volume down on the speaker between rooms, slides a file over to me.

“Name’s Pete Noland. Pretty beloved kid. Last thing he remembers is climbing out his girlfriend’s window in Greeley to walk to his car he’d parked in a field. No record, lives with and takes care of his grandmother. Waived rights to a lawyer, called the police right when he came to. Did the polygraph on him, not that we needed to. Same as the others.”

“Let me hear him,” I say. Jack turns the volume back up.

Pete Noland studies his hands on the table, shuffles his feet on the floor. His eyes travel up slowly from his hands and meet Tillman’s. “So this is it, right? I’m one of them now. Somehow, I’m…”

He trails off, but his gaze doesn’t falter. I feel it. He’s a strong kid, an important kid, as much as any kid can be. The kind of kid who grows into the kind of man who can make a difference in the world.

“One of who, Pete?” Definitely Tillman. He’s always been the worst.

“I don’t want to say it. They say it’s bad luck to say it.” Pete leans back in his seat and shuffles his feet again. “Though I guess I can’t imagine my luck getting any worse.” He tries for a smile, but falters when he sees Tillman’s face.

“Let’s hear the order of events, Pete. One more time, if you don’t mind.”

“Um, yeah, okay. I can…” He sits up. “So I said goodnight to Lucy, and I climbed out the window, and then…” He shifts in his seat again. “And then I’m walking on the side of the highway like fifteen miles from her house, and I’m naked and barefoot, and there’s this … thing on my shoulders.”

“What was the thing on your shoulders, Pete?”

Pete clears his throat, and his eyes fill up again. He uses the back of one cuffed hand to brush a tear away. After a moment, he says, “My uncle hunts.” He takes a breath. “I’ve never had the stomach for it, but … you know, I know a hide. I mean, who doesn’t?” His voice cracks on the last word. “But human skin, it doesn’t…” His skin goes pale. “It feels different.”

“Did you realize immediately that you were wearing Ramona Lopez’s skin?”

“Please,” Pete says, leaning back and choking on a sob. “Please don’t say her name.”

“When did you first meet Ramona Lopez, Pete?”

“I told you, I never met her in my life! I have no clue who she is or why—”

He doubles over onto the table.

Pete’s sobs echo through the interrogation room and through to us, bounce off the walls and the floor and ceiling and my brain. The kind of unselfconscious anguish that humans only experience a handful of times in a life after the toddler years, if they’re lucky. When they are reduced to nothing but a singular pain, when they would do anything, truly anything, to get away from themselves. All the sobs of all the killers. Every one of them.