“Chloe, come on,” he says, moving closer. He’s only a few feet away from me now, close enough to touch. “Let me explain.”
“Why did you do it?” I ask, my hand still shoved deep into my purse, my lip quivering. “Why did you kill those girls?”
The minute the words escape my lips, I feel it again: the déjà vu, washing over me like a wave. The memory of me, sitting in this very room, twenty years ago. My fingers pressed against the television, listening as the judge asked my father the exact same question. The silence of the courtroom as everyone waited, as I waited, desperate for the truth.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he says at last, a dampness in his eyes. “It wasn’t.”
“It’s wasn’t your fault,” I repeat. “You killed two girls, and it wasn’t your fault.”
“No, I mean … It was. Yes, it was. But also, it wasn’t—”
I look at this man, and I see my father. I see him on my television screen, arms chained behind him, as I sat on the floor, drinking in his every word. I see the devil that lives somewhere deep inside of him—a wet, pulsing fetus curled up in his belly, growing slowly, until one day, it burst. My father and his darkness; that shadow in the corner, drawing him in, swallowing him whole. The silence of the courtroom as he confessed, tears in his eyes. The voice of the judge, disbelieving. Full of disgust.
And you’re telling me that this darkness is what forced you to kill those girls?
“You’re exactly like him,” I say. “Trying to blame something else for what you did.”
“No. No, it’s not like that.”
I can practically feel my fingernails digging into my palms, drawing blood. The anger and rage that had surged through my chest as I watched him that day; my indifference at seeing him cry. I remember how I had hated him in that moment. Hated him with every cell in my body.
I remember how I had killed him. In my mind, I had killed him.
“Chloe, just listen to me,” he says, taking a few steps closer. I look at his arms, reaching out toward me, soft hands outstretched. The same hands that had touched my skin, intertwined with my fingers. I had run into his arms the same way I had run into my father’s, looking for safety in all the wrong places. “He made me do it—”
I hear it before I actually see it, before I can even register what I’ve done. It’s as if I’m watching it happen to someone else: my arm, emerging from my purse, the gun in my hand. One single gunshot, exploding loud like a firecracker, jerking my arm back. A flash of bright light as his legs stagger back across the hardwood, glancing down at the pool of red expanding across his stomach before he looks back at me, surprised. The moonlight as it stretches across his eyes, glassy and confused. His lips, red and wet, parting slowly as if he’s trying to speak.
Then I watch as his body slumps to the floor.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I’m sitting in the Breaux Bridge police department, the cheap bulbs fastened to the ceiling of the interrogation room making my skin glow a radioactive algae green. The blanket they had draped over my shoulders is scratchy like Velcro, but I’m too cold to take it off.
“All right, Chloe. Why don’t you take us through what happened one more time?”
I look up at Detective Thomas. He’s sitting on the other side of the table alongside Officer Doyle and a Breaux Bridge cop whose name I’ve already forgotten.
“I already told her,” I say, looking at the unnamed officer. “She has it on tape.”
“Just one more time for me,” he says. “And then we can take you home.”
I exhale, my hand reaching for the paper cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of me. It’s my third cup of the night, and as I bring it to my lips, I notice microscopic specs of blood dried to my skin. I put the cup down, pick at one spot with my fingernail, and watch as it flakes off like paint.
“I met the man I knew to be Aaron Jansen a few weeks ago,” I say. “He told me he was writing a story about my father. That he was a reporter for The New York Times. Eventually, he claimed that his story had changed due to the disappearances of Aubrey Gravino and Lacey Deckler. That he believed it was the work of a copycat, and he wanted my help to solve it.”
Detective Thomas nods, urging me to continue.
“Throughout our conversations, I started to believe him. There were so many similarities: the victims, the missing jewelry. The anniversary coming up. Initially, I believed it could have been Bert Rhodes—I told you that—but later that night, I found something in my closet. A necklace that matched Aubrey’s earrings.”