The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) Page 22

  My first call isn’t to Eddison, or to Mum or Finney; it’s to Hannah Randolph, Gunny’s granddaughter. Since we learned about Landon’s murder—or rather, since the men learned about all the circumstances surrounding his murder—the vets have very emphatically requested that I not walk to and from chess on my own. Hannah offered to give me rides, considering that she waits in the car the entire time anyway. With all the other vets there to watch Gunny, she can easily swing the mile and a half to my house.

  They were clearly prepared to argue with me about it, or so I gathered from their shock when I said yes and thank you. It makes sense, though, and I am grateful for it. Around the time I would normally leave for chess, I call Hannah to let her know if I’m coming.

  Or in the case of this morning, not coming.

  “Do you mind if I come sit with you?” she asks immediately. “At least until the agents arrive? I don’t like the thought of you being alone right now.”

  “Gunny—”

  “Will be just fine with Pierce. If something happens, I am less than five minutes away.”

  “It would make me feel better,” I admit. “Thank you.”

  “I’m on my way. Call your agents.”

  I text Eddison, then make some hot chocolate as I call Finney. When Hannah arrives, she steps carefully around the flowers to avoid disturbing anything and accepts the mug with a smile, nodding to the phone at my ear. As I pull up the camera feed, she settles into the armchair with her knitting.

  I should learn how to knit. It seems very calming.

  “What’s the camera show?” Finney asks wearily.

  “It blanks out at nine thirty-eight,” I answer. “After that there’s nothing.”

  “Snow?”

  “Nothing. Like it’s not getting a signal but the network is fine.”

  “Back camera?”

  “Happily recording the movements of the fattest squirrel I have ever seen.”

  “Do you feel safe enough till we get there? I can ask the local PD to send someone out.”

  I think of Officer Clare and shudder. “Hannah is here with me.”

  “All right. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  For about ten minutes, Hannah and I sit in a silence as comfortable as it can be, given the circumstances. Her needles clack sedately, and there’s a soothing, almost meditative quality to it.

  Then there’s a knock on the door.

  It’s definitely not my agents, not this quickly. Not even with the way they drive.

  Oh, God, it’s probably—

  “Miss Priya? The boys said you had a mite of trouble?”

  Officer Clare. He’s taken to swinging by the chess pavilion without his partner, checking up on me, he says. He’s been told not to, by both Lou and their captain, but it hasn’t stopped him. He just claims it’s on his way to the store, or to lunch, and we happen to run into each other.

  “Miss Priya, I know you’re home. I can see Miss Randolph’s car. I just want to make sure you’re all right till the feds get here.”

  Hannah carefully sets her knitting aside. “I’ll send him off, shall I?”

  “Please,” I whisper.

  She heads down the hall to the door and opens it just enough to be seen, her body blocking me from view. “We’re just fine, Officer,” she tells him politely. “If you don’t mind stepping away from the evidence?”

  “I can stay with y’all—”

  “The thought is appreciated, but it isn’t necessary.”

  “I was there, you know, when she lost her sister. Poor kid. When I think of my own sister . . . little sisters need protecting.”

  “Officer Clare. Your assistance is not needed at this time. Please leave.”

  He raises his voice. “Now, Miss Priya—”

  Pulling up my call log, I find the number for his captain and tap on it. The man answers with his last name and no greeting. “Captain, this is Priya Sravasti, and—”

  “Please tell me Clare is not bothering you again,” he growls.

  “He’s at my door and refusing to leave.”

  “My apologies, Miss Sravasti. I’ll take care of it.” As he hangs up, I catch a grumble that sounds a bit like “fire his sorry ass” and wonder if that’s what will happen.

  Hannah eventually shuts the door in Clare’s face, twisting both locks. After a moment, she hooks in the chain for good measure. “That man is not quite right,” she says, taking her knitting back up. “There’s no reason for him to be so focused on you.”

  “Apparently it’s something about this type of case,” I sigh. “Mercedes explained the psychology of it once. Sometimes, an emergency responder can get a little stuck on a case that disturbs them, especially if something else is going on in their lives. Some get obsessed with solving the crime, but others latch on to checking up on the family.”

  “Did he do that in Boston?”

  “Not that I recall, but if he was back in Boston, he could have been a lot more subtle about it.”

  “If?” she echoes.

  “It wouldn’t be the weirdest way a fan has pushed into a case, according to Mercedes. She’s doing a full background check on him.”

  Hannah shakes her head. “I know humans are complicated creatures, but this seems a bit excessive.”

  Finney and Sterling arrive not very long after. Finney looks a little green as he steps out of the car. On the driver’s side, Sterling manages to look both sheepish and proud.

  “Having fun with the lights and sirens?” I ask dryly.

  Sterling grins at me before tucking it back behind a more professional expression. “We lost time behind an accident; I didn’t want to leave you waiting.”

  Rolling his eyes, Finney turns to Hannah and offers his hand. “Thank you for staying with her, Miss Randolph.”

  She shakes his hand. “Do you need me to stay? For after you go, I mean.”

  “Actually . . .” He glances up at me. “Your mother asked us to bring you up to Denver, if you don’t mind. I think she’ll feel better if she can keep sight of you.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you so much, Hannah.”

  “Anytime,” she says, giving me a brief hug. “Be safe, Priya.” It’s the same thing her grandfather tells me instead of goodbye, only he calls me Miss Priya, and somehow Officer Clare hasn’t ruined that.

  Speaking of whom . . . I tell Finney about Officer Clare, then head upstairs to change and toss some things in a bag to take with me. I don’t know if Mum’s office has general Wi-Fi, so schoolwork might not be an option.

  “Knocked out the camera with the EMP, then cut the wires again,” Sterling announces once I’m back downstairs.

  “So what now?”

  “Now we get you to your mother,” answers Finney. “Then we’ll discuss your protection detail.”

  Protection detail, in this case, means Archer is going to stay with me during the day, Sterling is going to stay at the house each night, and everyone is going to pray that Section Chief Ward doesn’t find out. It’s technically off the books—a personal favor—which is its own can of worms. If anything does happen, the agents could face hell for it. We move in a little over a week but it feels like forever, especially with that rotation in place. Mum arranges a rendezvous time with Sterling, because we’re probably safe enough at her office, and the agents head out.

  I settle into a corner of Mum’s rather sterile office with my laptop. I should do homework—she gave me the network key—but instead I pull up the photos from Gunny and Hannah’s church. It was a lovely afternoon with them, and interesting windows were a definite bonus. The scenes were painted onto clear panes, rather than being a mosaic of stained glass, and even with the semi-translucent paint, it changed the way the light filtered through.

  Beneath a portrait of the women and the empty tomb, Gunny ran his gnarled fingers over a tiny brass plaque with his wife’s name on it.

  The church secretary was even older than Gunny, and she knew the history of each window and who had s
ponsored it. When I mentioned my love of windows, she gave me an info card for a small chapel about an hour away. “Some say God gave us the ability to create art so we could glorify Him,” she said with a smile. “The windows at Shiloh Chapel make that easy to believe.”

  I very much doubt I’ll get to find out.

  I snap the laptop shut with a frustrated sigh. I’d hoped looking at the pictures would cheer me up, but they just depressed me. Reaching down into my bag, I pull out the envelope that was sitting in our mailbox, Inara’s neat handwriting across the front.

  Dear Priya,

  Desmond MacIntosh is dead, has been dead almost a month now, and I’m still not sure how to feel about it. Everyone expects me to be sad, because we were “star-crossed lovers” or whatever bullshit gets spouted by people with insufficient understanding of what star-crossed actually means. Or they think I should be happy, because hey, look, one of my tormentors killed himself, as if seeing suicide among the girls should make me glad to see it in him.

  Mostly, though, I’m just relieved, and what the hell kind of reaction is that?

  I’m relieved that I don’t have to see him across the courtroom, that I don’t have to feel his eyes on me as I testify against him and his father. I’m relieved that I won’t have to spend hours upon hours seeing his kicked-puppy expression. I’m relieved that his fate is resolved, so I don’t have to stress about it anymore.

  I’ve always known I was a generally terrible person, but this drives it home in a way I didn’t expect.

  Especially when I consider this: I would be so grateful if the Gardener would get his shit together and die of his injuries, or something of that nature. I don’t feel the need to kill him, or even for him to kill himself. I just really want him to be dead.

  The trial probably won’t start until the fall, and while I’m not pessimistic enough to think he’ll be found innocent, there are still a lot of suboptimal outcomes. I don’t want him taken care of in a psychiatric hospital or nursing home. I want him caged, stripped to nothing like we were and forcibly remade into something horribly fragile.

  But even more than that, I just want him dead. The cage is appealing, but he still has enough money to make it comfortable, or as comfortable as it can be given his injuries. I don’t want him comfortable.

  I want him dead, but people keep looking at me like I should be better than that, like I should rise above, and goddamn it, I don’t want to rise above. He hasn’t earned that kind of grace.

  If you ever get the chance, Priya, just kill him if you can. Self-defense, and then it’s done.

  Well.

  Now I’m all kinds of cheered up, thank you, Inara.

  As long as I’m going to wallow, though, I might as well do it right, so I open my computer back up. All of my bastard’s victims have memorial Facebook pages, even the ones who didn’t have Facebook when they were alive. They’re most active in the spring, people posting memories or prayers as the anniversaries roll around, though birthday messages pop up too. The various mods are pretty quick to remove comments by assholes.

  I start with Julie McCarthy and work backward, reading the new stories. There are new photos, too, put up by friends and family and classmates reminiscing. I skip Chavi’s.

  I’ve never looked at Chavi’s since she died. I don’t begrudge the people who post there, many of them genuinely her friends. Josephine moderates it, so I know it’s respectful. If it helps them mourn and move on, more blessings to them. I just don’t want to let other people’s memories of Chavi intrude on my own.

  When I get to Darla Jean’s—the first victim—there’s a post from her mother, Eudora Carmichael, dated on this year’s anniversary of Darla Jean’s death. Eudora talks about missing her daughter’s light and laughter, how Darla Jean was all the joy in the family. She talks about missing her son, who never got over his sister’s death. After a prayer for justice, she concludes with a picture, a family portrait from that last Easter.

  Darla Jean is all blonde prettiness in white lace, and beside her, Eudora is plump and pleasant with the kind eyes she gave to her daughter. Her son stands behind them, and holy shit, seventeen years later I know that face.

  I know that face.

  “Mum!” I croak.

  She looks up sharply from her computer. “Priya? Are you okay?”

  “Come look at this.”

  “Priya?”

  “Mum, please. Come look at this.”

  She slowly gets up and crosses the room, sitting next to me on the rock-hard couch. She glances from me to the screen. “Your face says this is important, but I don’t follow.”

  I pull up one of the folders of pictures I’ve taken this spring, clicking through until I find the one I want. I crop the window so I can place it next to the picture of the Carmichaels.

  She stares at the picture for a moment, a muscle jumping in her jaw. This is him, she knows it, too, this is the man who killed Chavi, almost certainly the one who’s been leaving me gifts.

  She swallows hard, blinking away the sheen of unshed tears, then looks back at me. “You don’t have your phone in hand. Are you just in shock, or are you hesitating?”

  My mother knows me entirely too well. “I’m hesitating.”

  “Why?” She sounds curious, not accusing. She’s also not reaching for a phone to report it herself.

  I hand her Inara’s letter and watch her eyes scan back and forth over the page.

  “I think I might like Inara,” she notes when she’s done.

  “I think you’ve just described Eddison’s personal hell.”

  “This is Inara’s view, though; what’s yours?”

  I take a deep breath, give myself the time to truly think it through. There are moments I realize just how unconventional my relationship with Mum is. Moments I have to admit that she probably has sociopathic tendencies and simply chooses not to use her powers for excessive evil.

  And I am my mother’s daughter.

  “How much proof do you suppose there is?” I ask eventually. “Seventeen years without getting caught, he’s clearly not an idiot. We give this name to the FBI, how much do you think they’ll find that isn’t circumstantial? If he had any interest in confessing, he’d have done it years ago.”

  “You think if there’s enough to go to trial, there won’t be enough to convict.”

  “If they try him for it and he gets acquitted, that’s it. They can’t try him for the same murders again. No justice for Darla Jean straight through Julie McCarthy. No justice for Chavi.”

  “Landon,” she murmurs thoughtfully.

  “Landon was a pedophile; I’m not interested in justice for Landon.”

  Her lips twitch in a proud smile.

  “What stops him from following us to France?” I ask.

  “So you want to what? Trap him into confessing his past sins so you can record it? Make a conviction more likely?”

  “No.”

  It takes a moment for it to sink in. I’ve never really been the savage one. “You’re serious,” she says.

  “I want this done,” I tell her softly, little more than a whisper. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder or wondering who else he’s killed. I don’t want to move with this still hanging over us. I just want all of this to be over.”

  She takes a deep breath, clasping her hands in her lap. Her knuckles are white with the strength of her grip. “So how do we do it?”

  The laptop slides to the floor with a thunk as I wrap my arms around my mother. “I love you.”

  “But?”

  “But that part has to be me, not we.”

  One eyebrow tilts dangerously. “You are going to explain that.”

  “If I do it, it’s self-defense. If you do it, you’re a vigilante, Mum. Maybe you get a sympathy acquittal, but not without losing your job and rendering yourself basically unhireable. If you’re there, the Quantico Three will never believe it’s accidental.”

  “You think they’ll
believe you?”

  “If I’m completely alone? No, that’s an obvious trap.” From my bag, I pull out the postcard for Shiloh Chapel. “But if Agent Archer is with me and happens to leave me alone?”

  “You’re going to let him use you as bait after all.”

  “Yes.”

  “You trust him not to tell the others?”

  “Shit no, that’s why I’m not telling him.” I smile in spite of myself at her laugh. “His apology was sincere; that means he feels guilty.”

  “And when a good man feels guilty, he wants to make up for it, not just apologize.”

  “So I’ll ask Archer to take me to the chapel. If you’re still playing paperwork catch-up from the days you took off for me, you can’t drive me down. And Saturday’s my birthday. This bastard has run through all the flowers now, which means whatever he’s got planned for me is next; he just needs an opportunity. We can give him that.”

  “Good Lord, I have taught you well, haven’t I?”

  “You’re up here, safely away from suspicion, and if he is watching me as closely as we think he is, he’ll follow.”

  “And our young, enthusiastic Archer will see a chance to catch a serial killer making the attempt, solve the case, and prove himself. He’ll leave you alone, but he won’t go far.”

  “Which gives me backup if I chicken out or something goes wrong. It minimizes the risk.”

  We sit in silence, both digesting the possibilities.

  “You know if anything happens to you, it will shatter Brandon.”

  I give her an incredulous look. “You never call him Brandon. No one calls him Brandon.”

  “It would destroy him. You have to know that, Priya.”

  “I do. That’s why I think Archer is a good idea.”

  It wouldn’t destroy Mum, though neither of us says it. It would shred her, maybe even shatter her, but the pieces would come back together sharper and stronger, made of purer steel, because if there’s one thing Deshani Sravasti will never be, it’s defeated. No matter what happens, she will never let the world break her permanently.