Caveman (Wild Men 1)

He has some.

“Alina Solokov,” John says. “Assuming it’s the same woman you dated at school, she has passed away.” He pauses. “Declared suicide.”

Fuck. “She’s dead.”

I can’t fucking believe it. My memories from that time are frozen in time like photographs, perfect stills of a carefree time, a time without any emotions I can remember.

No great love.

No bright hope.

No crushing fear.

And no dark despair.

An unreal time, shallow and fun, a bit too bright, as if the picture was overexposed, the film burned.

Another woman I dated dead. It’s like I’m cursed, passing death to the women who come near me.

Christ. I am cursed. Fucking haunted and shit out of luck. As if I didn’t already know. Though when Octavia’s face flashes through my mind I wanna smile, and my luck doesn’t seem all bad.

“Hansen.” John clears his throat. “Matt. My apologies, I know this must be painful for you.”

“It’s not painful,” I snarl, then

try to regain control of myself. “It was a shock, but I haven’t seen her in many years. We weren’t that close.”

“I see. Yes, you’ve said that before.”

I clench the phone in my hand until it creaks, close to breaking. “And? What else? Spit it out.”

It wasn’t Ross. I accused him, and punched him, and it wasn’t him.

He deserved it, though, for bullying Octavia all the years. He fucking did.

“You were right about the other matter,” John says. “Probably what led to her decision to end her life.”

“When was that?”

“In the year after you both graduated from school.”

Shit. The time frame fits. I don’t want this to be true. I don’t fucking want to be right about this.

But I am.

“Anything else? Any clue who might be leaving the messages and harassing Octavia?”

“Well, Alina wasn’t married, and there doesn’t seem to have been another boyfriend after you. Her parents live in St. Louis. There is a brother and a sister living in St. Louis and Tucson, respectively. No criminal records.”

“Christ, she never told me anything about a brother and a sister.”

John hums. “Different mother. And like I said, they live in a different town. In any case, Hansen, your theory doesn’t answer the question of why here, why now.”

No, it doesn’t.

“It has to be one of the siblings,” I tell him, thinking out loud. “My money’s on the brother. Check where he is at now, and I dunno, his bank activities, or whatever else you can think of.”

“So, what, you’re a cop now? Gonna tell me how to run an investigation?”