Steve is on his third cup of coffee and his second dose of Advil. He didn’t sleep last night, his burden too heavy, Denise swimming in and out of his thoughts. She called last night, but he didn’t answer, his thoughts too muddled and still too unsure of what to do.
“Memphs was picked up last night.”
Steve looks up to see Anthony Briggs, the young agent who covered for him while he was in California.
“I thought you’d want to know,” Briggs says.
He stands in a deliberate pose of cool, his hands loose at his sides and his weight shifted to his left leg. Steve remembers when he first started at the agency and the effort it took to act over the bad moments of the job. The kid’s shoulders are too high, and he can’t quite decide how to position his mouth.
“Picked up?” Steve says, leaning back and taking a slow breath through his nose. He doesn’t act anymore. He doesn’t have to. Twenty years on the job has made him genuinely tough.
“He kidnapped a sixteen-year-old, then raped and killed her in a trailer he’d rented. And get this, the police show up on a tip from a neighbor, and Memphs answers the door with the legs of the girl sticking out in plain sight behind him.” Briggs guffaws and shakes his head.
Steve doesn’t see the humor.
His burden delivered, Briggs leaves.
Steve unearths Memphs’s case file from his stack and drops it into the “To be Filed” bin. Beneath it is the Parsons file. He pulls it in front of him and leafs through it, pausing on the note Parsons sent Denise from prison:
Dear Denise,
Congratulasions. I understand you had a boy! Isn’t that lucky? For you and for me. I can not wait until I am out of this place so I can meet him. Thanks to you I have so much time to think and plan. Take care of him for me and enjoy the time you have. It goes so fast.
Otis
Steve stares at the ugly scrawl and thinks about how Denise must have felt when, at eighteen and a new mom, she got the letter, and then when Parsons was released and her beautiful son was eleven.
His phone buzzes, interrupting his thoughts and letting him know he has a message.
He swivels toward the window before looking at it.
He runs his thumb over the glowing words as a lump forms hard in his throat.
He texts back:
Her reply is instant.
He swivels back to his desk and places the Parsons file on top of the Memphs file, and for the first time in a day, his heart unclenches, and for the first time in a long time, he remembers how it feels to be alive.