“What else do you know about him?”
“He was seen at Cypress Cemetery,” he says, pulling another picture from his briefcase. This time, it’s of the search party—with Tyler in the distance, glasses off, baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead. “Murderers can be known to revisit their crime scenes, especially repeat offenders. It seems Tyler took it a step further with you. Not only revisiting the scenes, but getting involved in the case itself. At a distance, of course. It’s not unheard of.”
Tyler had been there, been everywhere. I think back to the cemetery, those eyes that I could feel on my back, always. Watching as I pushed through the headstones, crouched in the dirt. I imagine him holding Aubrey’s earring in one gloved hand, crouching down to tie his shoe, and leaving it there, waiting for me to find it. That picture of me he had shown me on his phone. He didn’t find it online, I realize. He took it himself.
And then it hits me.
I think back to my childhood, after my father’s arrest. Those footprints we had found around our property. That nameless kid I had caught, staring through our windows. Propelled by a sick curiosity, a fascination with death.
Who are you? I had screamed, charging forward. His answer was the same then as it was last night, twenty years later.
I’m nobody.
“We’re processing his car now,” Detective Thomas continues, but I can barely hear him. “We found Diazepam in his pocket. A gold ring that we assume at this point belongs to Riley. A bracelet. Wooden beads with a metal cross.”
I pinch my nose with my fingers. It’s all too much.
“Hey,” he says, dipping his head so he can see my eyes. I glance up, weary. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But it is, though,” I say. “It is my fault. He found them because of me. They died because of me. I should have recognized him—”
He holds out his palm, gives his head a little shake.
“Don’t even go there,” he says. “It was twenty years ago. You were just a kid.”
He’s right, I know. I was just a kid, only twelve years old. But still.
“You know who else is just a kid?” he asks.
I look at him, my eyebrows raised.
“Who?”
“Riley,” he says. “And because of you, she made it out alive.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Detective Thomas rests his hands on his hips as we walk out of the station, as if he’s standing on a mountain peak somewhere, not in a parking lot, surveying our surroundings. It’s six a.m. The air is somehow both muggy and cool, an early-morning anomaly, and I’m keenly aware of the chirping birds in the distance, the cotton-candy skies, the first few motorists on their commutes to work. I squint my eyes, feeling foggy and confused. There is no sense of time inside of a police station—no windows, no clocks. The world creeps by around you as you’re being force-fed caffeine at four in the morning, smelling some off-duty cop’s slightly sour leftovers heat up in the break-room kitchen. I can feel my brain struggling to understand how it’s sunrise, the start of a new day, when my mind is still stuck on last night.
A bead of sweat drips down my neck, and I reach my hand back, feeling the salt water run between my fingers like blood. That’s all I can seem to think about—blood, the way it pools, snaking its way across the path of least resistance. Ever since I looked down and saw Tyler’s stomach, that dark puddle expanding slowly across his shirt. The way it had trickled across the floor, creeping slowly toward me. Enveloping my shoes, staining the soles. It just kept coming, like someone had taken a pair of scissors to a rubber hose, letting the liquid gush.
“Listen, what you said earlier.” Detective Thomas breaks the silence. “About your fiancé.”
I’m still looking at my shoes, at the line of red at the bottom. If I didn’t know better, I could have stepped in spilt paint.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “There could be an explanation—”
“I’m sure,” I interrupt.
“That video on your phone. You can’t really get a good look at what’s in his hand. It could be anything.”
“I’m sure.”
I can feel him looking at the side of my face before he straightens up, nods to himself.
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll find him. Ask him some questions.”
I think of Tyler’s final words to me, echoing through my house, my mind.
He made me do it.
“Thank you.”
“But until then, go home. Get some rest. I’ll have an undercover patrolling your neighborhood, just in case.”