Headlights(66)

Walking back, a thought nags at me. I glance to the house while I still have it in view. It’s enormous, hulking on the mountainside. The idea of Hannah feeling like she owes something to this James guy, the uneven power dynamic of it. It bothers me. This Drifter case has always been about influence. If I’m right, that is. If someone outside is coercing the killers or convincing them to do it. If that same outside person is eating the victims’ bodies and putting his hair—because it can’t be mine—on them.

Who have we investigated with strong influence? Oliver Wright for sure. But being here, seeing this house, it occurs to me that anyone with money can do so much. Money is freedom, which is power. Freedom to use your time however you want. Your resources. This guy buying up two lots, building this behemoth on one of them, and preserving the other for the girl who is his … what? Mistress? Girlfriend? Pet? I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Why I’m judging it. I don’t know these people. But …

Everything here, since the moment we arrived in Aspen, just feels charged. Dangerous.

Familiar.

Why?

When I get back to the shelter, Hannah’s put out two blank sketchpads and pens. She means for us to take notes with them. The sun in the cabin, on her face.

“Here,” I say, setting down the files. The ones that I should not be showing to her.

She takes half of them, opens them before her on the floor, beside the fire. I sit down on the other side and start to do the same. What’s one more criminal offense in all this?

I open Oliver Wright’s file again, read through his interview transcripts from when Claire was first taken, back before I was even assigned to this and it was in DPD hands. It’s hard to read. A man who’d just lost his fourteen-year-old daughter the week before. Hard to believe a person can survive that. But … I wonder if we should be pulling his dental records. See if maybe he veneered or repaired a canine around the time of the sixth killing. It could make a man insane, losing a daughter. But then who killed his? Could he have hired someone to do it, and then eaten her after? Could he be that fucked-up? And Daphne’s right, what are the odds he’d go to a dentist in town if he broke his tooth on a human bone? Maybe we can bring him in. Or maybe it’s stupid. Maybe all of this is. I don’t know why I can’t let it go.

I feel something after a while. I look up. Hannah, watching me. Our eyes meet, and they hold, for just a second. She looks away, a little flustered. I swallow, don’t know why my heart is racing again.

We get back to it, and I try to focus on the files. Not on her. Not on Hannah, sitting right there. So close I could reach out and touch her.

After another ten minutes or so, I notice a shift in energy, some kind of feeling. I look up. Hannah looks …

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She swallows. Looks like she might faint. After a long second, nods. “Sorry,” she says on a breath. “I just, um…”

I look down to what’s in her hand. It’s one of the bite mark photos. Close-ups of one of the victims’ legs, the marks of human teeth and missing meat clear. I look back up to her face, drained of its color. Her eyes don’t leave the page.

“Yeah,” I say after a moment. “Probably should have mentioned. There are a lot of those.”

She nods, swallows.

“Sorry,” she says, closing the file and putting it away. “Um, vegetarian.” She opens another file, and I watch her. After a moment, I do the same.

We read. I try to think in a new way, will myself to see things I haven’t been able to see before now. It could be that an outside party has been setting this elaborate maze for me and put Hannah in as a part of it. Or she set this all up and put herself inside, as part of the game. Or she could be working with someone. For someone, even. That prickling feeling, that she’s keeping things from me. That there’s more here I can’t see yet.

I think of the house again. I can’t let it go.

“So … James,” I say.

She looks up, watches me. That intensity. “What do you need to believe me that he’s not a problem? Seriously, in no way is he a part of this. And it’s not your business.”

“Anything. That’s what I need. Give me any piece of information. I don’t know anything about you. You brought me here, and—”

“I am giving you information, I’m telling you everything! And I don’t know anything about you either, but I’m not wasting time on shit that doesn’t matter.”

When I don’t say anything, she says, “James doesn’t matter. Not in this. He’s not coming here. Now can we please try and figure out how we’re not going to go to jail forever for something we didn’t do?”

I search her face, look for anything I might not be seeing. Some relationships are mutually beneficial. Why does that bother me so much?

“Okay,” I say at last.

She grabs the pen. “Do you mind if I…”

At this point, why not. I nod. I start reading through the chat room transcripts again.

Another half hour. Movement catches my attention. I look up. Hannah chewing on the end of the pen. My eyes catch on it, on her. Her lips on the pen. I look back down, force myself to. Tell my heartbeat to slow the fuck down.

I think of Wizdumteller, their last post. I pull out the burner phone and refresh the chat room, use a new account to be safe with the logs. I can’t stop turning over their last line.