“When you were investigating my case,” I begin.
“Let me stop you there,” she says, raising her hand. “Like I said before, I violated protocol already because, well, you know why.”
I do.
“But that’s it. I can’t give you more.”
“I know.” I make sure the smile reaches my eyes. “And I appreciate all you’ve done. Really. I was just curious about what else you might have learned.”
For the first time, I see doubt color her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do this type of thing a lot,” I say. “Don’t you?”
“That’s not relevant.” Katherine’s words come out now in nervous hitches. “I can’t say any more. I broke protocol. I shouldn’t have. But I can’t do it again.”
“I have a confession to make,” I say.
“Oh?”
“You have to understand,” I say. “I couldn’t just sit on the name.”
The smile drops from her face like an anvil. “What do you mean?”
“I had to go to him.”
“Oh Christ.”
“For answers. I mean, how could I not?”
“But you promised—”
“Just having the name—that wasn’t enough. You must understand that. I needed to confront him.”
Katherine’s voice is a low hush. “Oh no.” She closes her eyes, takes a second, clears her throat. “Did you talk to McAndrews?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That he worked alone,” I reply.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. That’s why I need to know more, Katherine. As someone who has been so supportive and did so much research for me, I have to ask: Did you find more?”
Katherine stays silent.
“You have a nice house and an office at FBI headquarters,” I continue with the slightest head tilt. “And yet you keep this little dingy office that no one knows about. Why?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Do you keep the secrets here? Is that why? Are the secrets on that computer?”
Her mobile phone is on the desk. She reaches for it. At the same time, I unzip my yellow windbreaker and pull out the gun. I really haven’t practiced, but I make the move smoothly. I’ve always been a pretty good athlete with good hand-eye coordination. Perhaps that’s it.
“Put the phone down,” I say.
Katherine’s eyes are two dinner plates.
“Henry McAndrews is dead, Katherine.”
“Oh God. You…？”
“Killed him, yes. Don’t you think he deserved that?”
She is too smart to answer. “What do you want?”
“The rest of your names.”
“But he was the main culprit here.”
“Not just the ones involved in this.”
She looks confused.
“I want all the names that you deemed not worthy of punishment.”
“Why?”
I think it’s pretty obvious, but I don’t go there. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell her in my most soothing voice. “Have you heard of mutually assured destruction? That’s us, Katherine. That’s you and me. If you try to pin McAndrews’s murder on me, it will be bad for you. You gave me the name in the first place. You would be revealing yourself. So you see? You have something on me, I have something on you.”
“Okay,” she says with an overly dramatic nod. “Just go then. I promise I won’t say anything.”
She thinks I’m stupid. “I need the names first.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Please,” I say. “Lying to me is not in your best interest. Didn’t you agree that McAndrews should have been punished?”
“Punished, yes, but—”
I raise the gun. Katherine stops talking and stares at the weapon in my hand. That’s how it is. She barely has eyes for me. Her whole world has shrunk down to the size of the muzzle on my gun.
“Oh—okay,” she stammers, “you’re right. I’ll give you the names. Just please put the gun down.”
“If it’s all the same, I’ll hold on to it until we’re done.” I motion with the gun toward her computer screen. “Open up the files. I want to see what you have here.”
We humans are such a melting pot of behaviors, aren’t we? So I can’t help but wonder: If it wasn’t for Reality Ralph’s podcast and the horror of that exposure, where would I be right now? My guess is, I would be living my “normal”—I think of that word in air quotes—life instead of preparing to commit my second murder. If it weren’t for that podcast, I would never have sought the identity of the man who sent those awful messages and pictures. I would never have bought a gun. I never would have taken a life.