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Peter jumps with a start as he flips on the light, finding Dougy sitting on the couch in his living room. He freezes on the threshold, mind racing as he scrambles for an explanation for the bundle of bloodstained towels in his arms and shoes tied around his neck.
Despite his disheveled appearance, Dougy doesn’t get up. “Took you long enough.”
“I had a few errands to run after work.”
“You didn’t go to work.” The inspector’s voice is flat and tired. He picks up Peter’s pocket notebook, left behind when he flew out the door before his rampage. He flips slowly through the pages.
Feet twitching beneath him, Peter wants to run. He looks around the apartment but doesn’t see any sign of Special Agent Jones. “I needed to clear my head.”
“My contact says you drove erratically.” Inspector Douglas pauses, gazing at one of the pages. A moment later, he moves on.
“It’s hard to concentrate on the road with your shoes tied around your neck,” Peter jokes.
Dougy sighs. He slouches against the couch cushions. The last of the prizes have been gathered in the living room. The inspector rests his head on a giant stuffed caterpillar stretched out across the length of the sofa. He closes his eyes. For a minute, Peter thinks he’s fallen asleep.
A tsunami of nausea undoes his gut as he realizes how little a threat the inspector thinks he is. But Dougy doesn’t know what he’s done. Peter drops the towels and walks to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The shoes get in his way at the sink, so he unwraps the laces and sets them on the counter as neatly as a person can arrange blood-soaked sneakers.
“I could have helped you.” The strength of Dougy’s voice fills the apartment.
Retrieving his glass, Peter returns to the living room. Between the inspector’s broad body and the stash of toys, there isn’t room for Peter on the couch. He sits, cross-legged, on the floor beside the coffee table and takes a long drink of water. “I thought you were helping me.”
The inspector’s eyes open and fix on Peter. “I helped you maintain contact with your father. The rest of this...” He gestures to the collection of gifts. “I would have helped if you’d asked.”
Weighed down by desperation, Peter shakes his head. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I’ve done. I wasn’t giving away presents for charity.”
The smile hanging on Inspector Douglas’s lips amplifies his fatigue. He looks like a parent at the end of a long day chasing a toddler. “I know.”
Peter gulps, choking on his water. He sets the glass down as he sputters, “You do?”
Dougy closes his eyes again. “You’ve been under surveillance since Oliver asked to work with you.” One eye opens a slit and peers at Peter. “Though my team didn’t have to work very hard at it. You’re a terrible criminal.”
Looking over his bloodstained clothes, Peter takes stock of himself. His bare feet stink with the smell of death. As messy as he looks, Glen and his house are even worse. He nods, agreeing with the appraisal.
“Beyond all that, your dad kept me up to date on what you were planning every step of the way.”
A stab of sedition pierces Peter’s heart. “Why would he do that?”
“It was a test, Henry.” Dougy’s expression flattens, his face passive and unreadable. “Oliver wanted to find out what someone with no criminal history would do under his influence.”
Heavy with the admission, Peter rests his head in his hands. He curls into a ball beside the coffee table. Dougy is the closest thing Peter has to family aside from his father. His regret at disappointing the inspector is so rancid, he can taste it on the back of his tongue. “I’m sorry, I failed.”
“You didn’t fail, Henry.” Inspector Douglas’s voice is low, just above a whisper. He removes himself from the couch and kneels beside Peter, covering him in a powerful embrace. “You succeeded.”
“I don’t understand.” Peter’s words are muffled by his hands.
Dougy pulls him by the shoulders until they look at each other, eye-to-eye. “Your father has a plan for this terrible world of ours. It took me a long time to understand how important his work is. But now...” his eyes glass over and his features relax. He abandons whatever insight he was about to share and returns his focus to Peter. “You helped solidify his ability to execute his will, even from within his cell. I didn’t think you’d do it. Even encouraged him to focus on someone else. But Ollie always knew you’d be his first success.”
Peter falls from Dougy’s grasp. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts. “What are you talking about?”
“The Godless Killer still lives... in you.” Dougy’s voice is thick. He thrusts his hand toward Peter in an offer to help him up. Peter looks at the thick fingers and wonders at what the gesture represents. For so long, he regarded the inspector’s hand as one that offered protection. Sometimes, it was firm like a vise. But it always brought justice to those the world lost.
Only now does Peter see it as a hook, dragging him into a plot to unleash pain on the world.
Looking around the apartment with disabling unease, Peter notices the bloodstain smeared in the carpet. His evidence-encrusted shoes rest on the kitchen counter. Dougy shifts and Peter sees the glint of handcuffs dangling from his belt. He finds his voice. “What will happen to me?”
“You’ll be tried for murder.” Inspector Douglas retracts his hand, leans backward, and settles against the edge of the coffee table. “I’ll oversee the arrest. Once your case moves through the system, I’ll work it out so you can continue meeting with your father so we can get back to looking for bodies.”
“Why would Dad keep giving up victims after all this?” Peter looks down at his hands. A jumbled rush of emotion fogs his mind. Grief and uncertainty overwhelm him.
“To keep seeing you, Henry. You may not have met his challenge the way he’d expected, but now that you’ve proven yourself, he can teach you so much.” Dougy’s eyes shimmer. “It will take some doing. But there are more than a few people who want to see the old cases closed. Oliver has plenty of victims to keep us busy. It’ll buy him time to instruct you in how to continue his work.”
They stare at one another for a few minutes, Peter afraid to say anything to the ghastly man beside him. The silence is interrupted by Peter’s phone. He fishes it, and the bloodstained sock, from his pocket. He uses a clean patch of the stocking’s fabric to wipe damp streaks off the screen before touching the button to answer.
Press the star key to accept the charges...
Oliver’s voice fills the line. He sounds cheerful. “I hear you’ve had a busy day.”
“I killed a man,” Peter confesses.
“I know. Inspector Douglas sent me a message as soon as it was done. I’ll be honest son, after seeing you last time, I wasn’t sure you’d make the leap. You’ve always been soft towards others.” He clicks his tongue in the phone’s speaker. “Too quick to forgive.”
“I’ve never wanted to kill anybody before. I wanted to be a good man...” Peter’s voice catches in his throat. He feels hot tears gathering behind his eyelids. He understands what he’s let them do to him. Peter thought he was in control, but his father and the inspector molded him to fit their desires.
“You are a good man. A better man than that gluttonous freak you took care of today. Why would you question that?” A ribbon of victory runs through Ollie’s voice.
“I didn’t want to hurt anyone, Dad. I just wanted you to love me.” Peter squeaks the statement out like a child. Tears break free and a sob rolls through him. He almost drops the phone as he hiccups with the effort of speaking. It’s only now that he realizes how alone he is. How far he’s strayed from the person he wanted to be.
“We can only have one love, Hen. People think they love many things, or many people. It’s an illusion. Generally speaking, people love themselves. They play at having families and hobbies because that’s what society tells them to do. Addicts and crooks are the only ones honest about it. Crackheads love crack. Gamblers love to play the odds. They put their loves above anyone and anything else. That’s what love does.
“The people you cling to can’t give you what you want. They already have their one love.” A sniff of satisfaction whooshes over the line. “Most of them can never love you, because they’re already faithful to me.”
The room is frigid. Peter presses his free arm across his chest and hugs himself to ward off the chill. He balls his hand into a fist to keep his trembling fingers from bouncing against him. “I hate you.” Peter spits the words out.
Dougy moves to his feet and stretches his back. He rolls his neck to loosen tight muscles, then unhooks the handcuffs from his belt. They glint in the light. Peter pulls the phone away from his mouth and speaks to the inspector. “I thought you were my friend.”
“He is a friend, Henry,” Oliver’s voice whispers in the phone’s speaker. “But Inspector Douglas has dedicated most of his life to me. He’s been tied to me longer than he’s known his wife. We bonded before his children were born. He’d rope the moon for me if I asked him to.”
The inspector’s nod shows he can hear every word of the quiet conversation leaking from the cell phone. The movement is jerky, but unquestioning.
“I consider him to be my most devoted follower,” Ollie mutters. “Always there to lend a helpful hand.”
“What about me?” Peter wipes traitorous tears from his eyes.
Oliver’s voice strengthens into the patriarchal tone of a disciplinarian. “You needed to be put in your place. Somebody had to teach you a lesson and show you what you’re capable of.”
“What exactly was I supposed to learn?” Peter demands.
“You needed to learn to understand.”
Peter holds the phone tight against his face while he fights for the will to speak. “What do you want me to know?” He winces at the unsteadiness of his own voice.
“I need you to realize how death happens. How someone’s very existence is in your control, and suddenly you’ve gone too far. It happened to you the same way it happened to me with your mother.” His tone softens as the words come. The cocky ego fades. His voice has taken on the emotion of a loving father guiding his favorite child.
Peter wipes his eyes with hands covered in another man’s blood. In his mind, though, the blood is hers. Peter’s breath escapes his chest, but it’s his mother’s breath. She dies in his arms all over again. Peter growls with grief. “I won’t ever forgive you for that.”
A soft cry comes from the other end of the line.
“Can you at least understand how a person can get so terribly beyond restraint? Understand the way the thing you think can never happen, does, and your whole world ends?” Oliver’s voice drifts into cryptic mumbles. “Will you at least accept that?” he utters a moment later.
Peter thinks over the last few months. He pretended to plan a murder to feel closer to his father, even though he didn’t want anyone to die. Pieces fell into place until they primed him to kill. He’d been so sure he could remove someone from existence and make everything else in his world better.
Glen caused him to cross an unforgivable line. He hurt people Peter would have protected. “Yes. I understand. But it isn’t right. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
Oliver’s cry fills the phone. Dougy leaps forward, taking the device from Peter. He presses it to his ear and whispers tender assurances into the mouthpiece, countering Ollie’s grief. His voice comes out of the speaker beneath Dougy’s grip on the phone. He suddenly seems so far away, trapped in a world Peter may never be part of again.
Peter lifts himself from the floor. His father’s crocodile tears can’t fill the hole in his heart or lighten the shadows cast upon his soul. But something in his voice reminds Peter of his own raw sorrow. His longing for the life his family should have had.
Inspector Douglas turns his back on Peter as he whispers, “It’s all right, Oliver. He’ll come around. Give it time. Don’t worry. I’m taking care of everything.”
Topping the cake of despair decorating Peter’s mind is a pang of jealousy over the way Dougy cradles the phone. He doesn’t know how to share in their intimate familiarity. He reaches his hand out to meet the inspector’s shoulder. His shirt is cool and smooth beneath the grime of Peter’s skin, but a feeling of comforting finality radiates past the bloodstains.
There’s a knock at the door.
“It’s open,” Inspector Douglas calls.
“Goodbye, Dad,” Peter whispers, even though he’s sure Dougy’s already hung up the phone.
Special Agent Jones enters. The length of her jacket is pushed back on one side, her hand on the holster underneath. A grim expression clouds her face when she sees Dougy. “Fancy meeting you here.” She waves an arm and a city cop follows her in. She tips her head to the rear of the apartment and the officer lifts his side-arm to check the rooms. Mac’s eyes don’t leave Dougy’s. “I just got the call. How’d you get here so fast?”
Inspector Douglas shrugs as he grasps Peter’s hand and pulls it to his side, wrapping the cuff around his wrist. “I was in the neighborhood. You don’t have to clear the apartment. I’ve already checked. It’s empty aside from us.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Mac tells him, looking around the room with an ominous expression. When her eyes fall back on Peter, she says, “Time to go.”
Peter nods.
The inspector pulls Peter’s arm behind his back and pairs it with its mate, tightening the frigid metal handcuffs around his wrists. The uniform returns to the living room, holstering his handgun. “All clear.”
“Thanks. Walk with me while I take our friend outside?” Mac doesn’t wait for the officer to respond. She takes Peter by the elbow and guides him toward the door. Inspector Douglas stays where he is.
“Wait,” Peter says, tugging lightly against Mac’s grip as he turns to talk. “Dougy, you said if I asked, you’d help me. Is that still true?”
Inspector Douglas tilts his head. “I’m sorry, Henry. There isn’t much I can do. You killed that family. Even if you convince a judge their deaths aren’t your fault, you killed Glen. The evidence is everywhere.”
Special Agent Jones shifts her weight toward the door, and Peter almost falls over as he fights to stay. “You promised you’d take care of me.”
The soft edges around the inspector’s eyes sharpen, piercing and cold as they were when Peter was a kid. His entire demeanor changes. He seems bigger than he had while cooing into the phone to Peter’s father. He grumbles to the officer, “When the pair of you get him in the car, find out if forensics is sending a photographer. Don’t let anyone in here until photos are taken, even if it’s just one of your guys.”
Dougy looks at Mac. “As soon as they’re done snapping pictures, get some evidence bags in here. Make sure whoever collects gets the towels on the floor. And tell them when they collect the shoes on the counter, to not smudge any tread prints.”
He tucks his thumbs in his pants pockets and looks to where Peter was seated. “I’ll get the blood on the carpet triple swabbed. It’s going to match a homicide victim in Tanasbourne.”
“You said you’d help me!” Peter’s anger pushes him toward Dougy, even as Mac tries to hold him back. When he reaches the end of his restraints, he’s rewarded with a shove against the doorjamb by the city’s officer. He thrashes against the uniformed body, wild abandon taking over. Peter feels as though his rage could spew forever, but the cop’s arms and legs wind around him until they lock his limbs into place.
Striding toward Peter, Inspector Douglas smirks. The inspector pats him on the shoulder. When he does, Peter feels the weight of something slip into his shirt pocket. Dougy winks, then looks at Mac. “Get him out of my sight.”
Special Agent Jones and her companion march Peter outside. His neighbors stand in the falling rain, leaning over balcony rails and lined on the sidewalk with curious expressions. He can feel their eyes bore into him and hears an old lady with a walker say, “It’s always the quiet ones...”
Inspector Douglas follows a few paces behind them, shouting orders to get Peter into a car and out of contact with the good residents of the apartment complex.
They push Peter to a black SUV with reinforced windows. He slides into the vinyl-clad interior. Special Agent Jones closes the door without a word and heads back into the crowd. Peter’s alone in the vehicle for the moment. Dougy is outside, leaning against the hood, chatting with another city cop.
“Henry.” Oliver’s voice is small but clear. It leaks through the damp fabric on Peter’s chest. Dougy didn’t hang up the phone. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Peter looks through the water droplets collecting on the window. When the cop turns toward the driver’s side door, Dougy says something. The pair of them walk away. Peter looks at his pocket. “Why put me through all this instead of talking to me like a normal person?”
“Would you have granted me forgiveness for killing your mother if I had asked?” Oliver’s question hangs in the air.
Peter considers the years he’s harbored anger toward his father. The pain of his lack of restraint. The unfairness of Oliver’s hobbies. Everyone in Peter’s life has abandoned him because of their blood relation. “No.”
“I had to show you how being special feels, Henry. It’s an incredible sensation, isn’t it? Tomorrow morning, everyone in the nation will know your name. They’ll see your face and recognize the greatness in you. You’re famous, Henry Roberts. The famous son of a famous man. Maybe now that you know how special you are, you’ll find it in yourself to let go of your anger at my transgressions.”
Peter shakes his head. The simple motion strains the muscles in his neck and shoulders. Every part of him aches. The flashing police lights compete with the drop of his adrenaline and make him woozy. “I can’t. It’s too much. You used me.”
Silence fills the cabin of the SUV. Peter checks his shirt pocket. The phone’s screen has turned off, but the tiny green light at the top of the device still glows bright against the fabric.
His father sighs. “We’ll have plenty of time to work this out once the trial is over. My guys will push them to house you here, in Sheridan with me. Once you’re here, I’ll introduce you to the others. I’ve told them all about you. They’re delighted at what we’ve accomplished.”
Peter’s struck with the absurdity of what his father is saying. He twists his face in confusion. “Is that supposed to be some kind of consolation prize for losing everything? Why the hell would I want to hang out with you and your buddies in prison?”
“Because, Son. It’s not hand holding and swapping Girl Scout cookies here. We have influence on the other inmates. A strength together that none of us could have realized on our own. We’re a brotherhood.” Oliver chuckles. “The warden calls us The Killers Club.”
Peter’s stomach rolls when the gravity of the offer sinks in. “No. I can’t. I’m not a killer. I made a mistake.” The call goes silent as hot tears roll down Peter’s cheeks. He whispers, “I’ve made so many mistakes.”
Peter looks at the phone in his pocket. The light has gone out. Outside, Inspector Douglas returns. They exchange glances and the inspector holds his hand up to mime a phone against his face. He mouths, Still talking? Peter shakes his head. Dougy waves the city cop over and shakes his hand. The officer climbs into the driver’s seat with a grumble, then brings the engine to life. Inspector Douglas moves to the side of the vehicle and his arm reaches toward Peter in a silent farewell.
They make it halfway to the parking lot exit when someone walks in front of the SUV and holds up their hands. The pulsing police lights highlight the frown lines on Mac’s face, amplifying the severity of her expression. The cop stops the vehicle. He sighs as Mac approaches. He rolls down his window. “What now?”
“I need a minute,” Mac says as she gestures toward the back seat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The rear window pulls halfway open with the mechanical whine of a worn motor. Mac leans against the door and stares at Peter, leaning forward with his hands still cuffed behind his back. After a few seconds, he’s so uncomfortable he has to fill the silence. “Do you need something, Special Agent Jones?”
Her eyes dart to the backside of the driver’s head. “Time will tell, I suppose.” She pulls a card from her coat pocket. “Unlock the rear for me?” she asks the driver. The locking mechanism clicks. She opens the door and reaches into the backseat. She tucks the card into Peter’s front shirt pocket. It slides easily between the fabric and the cell phone. Her eyes bore into his.
“I know you’re close with Inspector Douglas, but I wanted to make sure you have my direct line. If there’s ever something you need to get off your chest,” she pauses, leaning closer and lowering her voice, “anything you don’t feel comfortable talking to the inspector about... call me.”
Peter puzzles over the invitation. “Okay.”
“Day or night,” she insists. “Call collect if you have to.”
He nods and Mac closes the door. She turns her attention to the driver. “Thanks. Have a good night.”
The windows roll up. Mac disappears into the growing mass of people outside Peter’s apartment and the cop puts the SUV in gear. As they creep slowly off the lot, a petite blonde bursts out of a van across the street. She races to shove a microphone into Inspector Douglas’s face while a camera man trails behind to catch the shot. Peter watches Dougy push the microphone down. He turns the woman away. It’s Elsie.
Dougy kept his word. She will get her story, but she has to piece it together from across the street like everybody else.