about it.
She takes it more calmly than I expected, although her face drains of all color.
“Holy crap,” she whispers and insists on coming outside to see, although she gets even paler when she does.
It goes quickly. The two cops, not the same ones who came when Cole went missing, remove the cat from the door and bag it, as well as the knife.
“Does the cat mean anything to you?” one of them asks, a huge black guy who could easily deck me with a flick of his fingers. “Does it have any special meaning?”
“The kids love cats,” Octavia says, her voice shaky.
The guy shakes his head, because this means nothing.
Or does it?
Something is nagging at me, but for the life of me I can’t fucking figure it out.
The last message asked what’s most precious to me. And that’s my kids. And my kids love cats. Cole followed a kitten when he went missing.
Kids. Cats. Precious. Who you left behind.
What the hell could the point of all this be? Except give me an ulcer, that is. Why the riddles and the little scares?
Then I have to remind myself that a psycho doesn’t have to make sense. Because by now it’s pretty clear this isn’t a prank played by kids.
At least it’s clear to me, and I hope the cops see it that way, too.
I call the security company, and they tell me the issue seems to be at my end. Maybe damage to the camera? Or a technical problem.
Someone will come by tomorrow morning to check the cameras. No, they can’t come tonight. Busy, busy. Closing up now. See you tomorrow.
Christ.
Either I’m just that unlucky, or the psycho is cleverer than any of us give him credit for. And although I’m unlucky all right—losing your wife so young isn’t a good fucking sign of fate being on your side—something tells me it’s the latter.
The cops leave with their gruesome booty, and Octavia grabs her coat from the hanger, preparing to go, too.
And I don’t want her to.
I’m at her side, taking the coat from her hands before I even realize what I’m doing. “Tay…”
She lets me, her eyes uncertain. “What is it?”
What am I doing? I don’t need her to hold my fucking hand. I’m a big boy. “It’s just that…” I lick my suddenly dry lips. “You wanted me to talk. To you. More.”
Way to go, Matt. That was real eloquent.
But her eyes clear. “Yeah, that was one of my conditions. You’re already better with the kids, so I didn’t want to push you today.”
“You’re not pushing me.”
But maybe pushing is the only way to get me going, like a broken-down truck. I’ve been stuck in one place for far too fucking long. Stuck inside my mind.
Inside the past.
Push me, I want to say. Shove me headfirst into the present. Into the future.
But like always lately, the words get stuck in my throat. I pull back. Away. Sinking into my mind, my breathing doing that funny thing again, my lungs struggling to pump inside my chest.