Where You Can Find Me (10 page)

“
O
h
, my God, Jack! What the hell happened?” I grabbed the sleeve of his black leather bomber jacket and tugged him inside. He scrunched his eyes, adjusting to the lights in the house and then wincing in pain. Upon closer inspection it looked as though he took a hit to his cheek. A small cut appeared along his cheekbone. I closed the door and waited for an explanation.

“Just had a disagreement. I’m sorry it’s so late. It’s just been a long ass day and I was hoping seeing your face would make it better.” He looked down at me with a small smirk before leaning in to peck me on my lips. “I have to say, it definitely is.”

I stood there with a what-the-hell-is-going-on look on my face. “As happy as I am to see you, I’m going to need a little more explanation than that.”

He took his jacket off and looked at me with some hidden amusement in his eyes. He turned to hang his jacket on the coat rack and with his back turned to me he said, “Well, I guess as my girlfriend you have every right to be concerned and want a better explanation.” At the end of his declaration he turned to see the reaction his words caused.

I raised both eyebrows in a little bit of shock. Just a little shock.

He reached out to lace his fingers through mine and tugged me toward the couch. His blue eyes glinted with the challenge for me to deny what he just said. “Do you have a problem with that word? Do you not want to be my
girlfriend
?” He dragged the word out teasing me with its meaning. I continued to look at him skeptically as he sat on the couch and pulled me down to straddle his lap. He brushed my hair back from my neck and leaned in to place kisses where my shoulder met my neck. “Hmm? I’ll tell you a secret.” He moved up to place a kiss on my jaw and ran his nose along my cheek before his mouth rested by my ear, where he whispered, “I want to be your boyfriend.” After a quick bite on my earlobe, that made me gasp in a quick breath of air, he leaned back to look in my green eyes. Humor mixed with challenge as he asked me, “Luella King, will you go steady with me and be my girlfriend?”

I let out a laugh as I rolled my eyes. I took one last look at him and saw seriousness in his features. He said it as a joke, but I knew he was serious and I could feel myself panicking at the idea of calling him my boyfriend. How lame. I knew what I felt for him so why the sudden increased heart rate? I didn’t want him to think I was a complete basket case, so I pushed aside my dumb panic and grabbed hold of his cheeks in both hands. His goatee had stretched across his cheeks after not shaving since the day before. In my best breathy voice I gave him the answer he was looking for. “Of course I’ll be your girlfriend.”

“Oh thank goodness!” He let out an exaggerated sigh of relief as he fell back on the couch. “I was sure you were going to turn me down and I was going to have to ask Betty-Ann to go to prom with me.” I fell forward on his chest as I laughed at his joke. He wrapped his arms around me. “Does this mean we get to have sex now?” he asked hopefully while moving to get up.

I shoved him back and firmly told him, “No. It means now you get to tell your concerned
girlfriend
what is going on.”

His hands rested on my hips as his eyes lost their humor. His lips fell into a flat line as he took a deep breath. “I can’t talk about it, Lu. It has to do with the case.”

My eyes widened as various possibilities began racing through my head. The fear must have been written all over my face because Jack squeezed my hips as he tried to reassure me. “Stop. Stop right there. Don’t let your mind wander to all the crazy ideas I can see going on right now. It’s nothing to worry about. I had a disagreement with this little punk-ass cop today. He rubs me the wrong way. He’s the same—” Jack stopped talking and ran his hand down his face. “Shit. I can’t talk to you about this, Lu.”

I tilted my head and tried to look as encouraging as possible. “I can listen. I know you aren’t supposed to talk to me but I’m smart and I can listen and I would never tell anyone anything. Just talk to me about your day. You don’t have to tell me any details.”

“You’re so damn tempting.” He paused to suggestively raise his eyebrows. “I mean that in every way possible. But I could really use someone to talk to. I talk to Grayson, but he knows me too well and anticipates what I’m going to say and think. He knows the case well, too. It wasn’t intended for him to know, but as the case progressed, we brought Grayson in to help out. I’m now unofficially working with the police on the case. I could use someone with a fresh head to talk things through.” He scrunched his eyebrows and looked at me intently as though considering the possible outcomes. “Fuck it. I need someone fresh to talk to.”

I moved off his lap and settled next to him with my legs still laying over his. “Do you want a drink or anything to eat? Maybe some ice for your face?”

“No. I’m fine, thank you. We don’t have to do this now, Luella. I know it’s late and we can always talk tomorrow. I just wanted to see you. Maybe…” He paused as if weighing his words. “Maybe stay the night again. Hold you?”

An uncontrollable smile came over my face at his hesitance and the red that invaded his cheeks. “Are you inviting yourself over?” He gave me a small shrug and I decided to put him out of his embarrassment. “Of course you can stay. I would love to sleep in your arms. And we can talk now. I fell asleep earlier, so I am up now. Talk to me.”

He leaned his head back on the couch and gave a heavy sigh. “I don’t even know where to start.” His hand rested on my knee and I dragged my finger along the veins running through the top of his hand extending up his fingers and back to his wrist.

“Start with what troubles you the most.”

He blew out a big breath and began telling me about meeting some of his contacts in the criminal world. He explained that he learned none of the usual suspects seemed to have anything to do with the murders. No one mafia-related or any new crime rings trying to gain traction in the area. “At least that’s what my contacts have been saying to me. They’re not always the most reliable people, but usually when you throw enough money around at them, they’re willing to talk. It also doesn’t hurt having Grayson hanging around. He just has this aura of I’ll-fuck-you-up, so that usually adds pressure to these guys to not bullshit me.”

“I’ll have to meet this Grayson sometime soon.” Jack turned to look at me and leveled a serious look as though judging my sincerity. I just shrugged, confused.

“Yeah. Maybe sometime soon,” he answered vaguely. I didn’t know what to think of his evasive answer so I let it slide and settled back for the rest of his explanation. “So we’ve been doing a psychological work-up of this killer based off of the small amount of information that we’ve collected.” He paused and gave me an assessing look with lowered eyebrows. “Are you sure you won’t get freaked out by this? I don’t want to scare you.”

My eyes widened as I tried to be supportive. “No. I mean, I don’t want details, please. But I said I would listen and so here I am, listening.” I tipped my lips up in a flirty smile and raised an eyebrow. “Besides, I have you to hold me tonight and keep me safe. Right?”

“Of course,” he responded with a wink. “Okay. Good.” He took another breath and continued. “The murders have been picking up in the past year, but even more in the past four months. Now the murders are assumed to have been going on for about three years. But much less in the first two years. Maybe two to three victims in the first two years and then six in the first six months of the year. In the last six months there have been eleven.”

“Jesus…” It came out as barely a whisper. A feeling of nausea crashed into me at the thought of those poor people. I didn’t know any details about the murders, but I knew enough to remember that they were gruesome. Thankfully, Jack had his head rested on the back of the couch so he couldn’t see my face. His hand gave a small squeeze to my knee before continuing.

“The psychologist thinks that something has pushed the murderer to another level which is causing an increase in victims. Maybe something drastic happened that altered his thought process. She also thinks that the murderer wants to be discovered. Not so much to be stopped, but to maybe get recognition for what they have done. And they don’t think he, as a person wants to be discovered, but maybe his murders. They think he wants to gain notoriety, like Jack the Ripper. I can’t say that I don’t disagree.”

I wanted to say something to sound like I knew how to help. To clear the silence, but I often word vomited in times like this, so I clamped my mouth shut and forced any dumb thoughts to remain silent. Thankfully he continued without giving me a chance to make a fool out of myself. He turned to me and asked, “Do you remember when we first talked to Shane? Detective Daniels?” I nodded my head remembering the large, imposing man. “Do you remember how he talked about the newbie cop that put the pieces together about the murder?”

“Yeah.” I nodded my head again, starting to feel like a bobble head. “You wanted to check him out because it was weird that he discovered the connection.”

“Exactly! And there lies my issue. The kid, Aimes Bennet, is a fucking weirdo and he rubs me all the wrong ways.” Once Jack began talking about him he started to get fired up. He sat up on the couch and began using his hands to talk. “I mean, who randomly falls upon a serial killer? Why was he looking in the homicide paperwork when he is just a beat cop, when he could get in trouble for digging through files he has no authority over?”

Jack looked hard at the table with his eyebrows drawn together, as though trying to solve a puzzle that wasn’t there. “The thing is, every time he talks about the murders he’s almost excited by the details. He talks about how perfect they are. How untouchable and unsolvable they are because of how random it all is. He is amazed that no connection can be found between the victims or how or why they are murdered. We can barely link them together. And every time he talks all I can think about is that psychologist report. How the murderer wants people to notice his work and be impressed by it. This kid, this Bennet just rubs me the wrong fucking way. It doesn’t help that he hates me for working this case. Thinks I’m going to steal his ‘thunder’”

A sinking feeling settled in my stomach as Jack turned to look at me. A serious look came over his face, his eyes hard and unflinching, and I could imagine that it was the same face he used while working a case and talking to the criminals he mentioned before. “They say the best place to hide is in plain sight. Everyone is looking around corners and in shadows and there you are standing right in front of them, where they can find you. My gut says that the killer is right in front of us. What if my gut is trying to tell me something about Aimes? What if I’m missing it?”

His eyes held worry and sadness, like he regretted not being able to solve this case. I felt a stinging behind my eyes and a clog in my throat that hurt to swallow. Jack needed me to listen, to be a sounding board. Not someone who fell apart at the tragedy of the situation. That wouldn’t be helpful. So I took a breath and held it together, hardening my face to be one of intent listening.

“After the past month of seeing all the connections and this kid acting like an excited puppy every time he gets around the case, I kind of lost my cool today. I got in his face and I didn’t exactly hide my contempt. He kept pushing my buttons and asking what the hell I was doing there anyways. He has his panties in a twist that Shane talks to me about the case more than him. I taunted him with it and may have shoved him a little bit. Things escalated quickly, but he took a swing at me and landed a punch. I actually let him land the punch in hopes that I would be able to pummel his sorry ass into the ground, but Grayson stepped in and pulled me back while Shane got Bennet under control.

“I just … I just don’t know right now what to do.” He leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair before turning back to me. “What the hell do I do, Lu? Am I just at the end of my rope and trying to pin this on someone or do I go with my gut that’s telling me I’m closer to this killer than I think? My gut has almost always pushed me in the right direction, but right now I’m just not sure which way to turn. I feel like I’m grasping blindly at straws hoping one of them is what I am looking for.” His eyes pleaded with me to give him answers that I just didn’t have. I felt a tightness in my chest at my uselessness. Other than listening, I didn’t have anything to offer him.

He dropped his head into his hands with his elbows propped on his knees. I reached out and rubbed his back, trying to soothe him as best as I could. “I’m sorry, Jack. I don’t know what to say. If your gut is telling you something, maybe you shouldn’t ignore it completely, but also not act on it until you have more solid details.”

His hands fisted in his hair with frustration. “That’s the problem. There are so few details. This guy is so clean. Absolutely no trace left behind. It can only mean he knows the ins and outs of a case and what the police would be looking for. He knows what he is doing.”

“So you know it’s a guy?”

He lifted his head and turned it just enough to look at me. His eyes held the hesitation to explain more. “The victims … their bodies showed signs of … of forced penetration.”

I couldn’t prevent the tears that coated my eyes. I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm, but it was too much. It’s one thing to think you know about what is going on, or to think you know because you watch crime shows. It’s completely different to have direct knowledge of an actual case that was happening around you. I took a few more deep breaths, trying to calm down.

“Shit, Luella. I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have talked to you about this.” Jack reached over and wrapped both arms around me, bringing my head to his chest. I could hear his heart racing and knew this was harder on him than me and I needed to get it together to listen like I said I would.

“No, it’s fine. I’m fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten upset like that. It’s just … real.” I scrunched my eyebrows and sat up shaking my head to clear it. “I said I would listen and not let it bother me. So I am. I’m just sorry that I couldn’t be of more use to you.”