Page 91 of Miserable Marionette

Her name in his mouth makes the buzzing louder. Distracting even. My need for her pulsing harder than the beat of my heart. I need to make it there. Make it home, hold her.

“Bell!”

I look up, finding his face disturbed, wondering how long I’d been out of it.

“Where is Jessica Jordan? We have you on that last victim. The others are being exhausted now.” He slams his binder down between us, flipping it open to a page containing some court document I barely glance at. “Faked autopsy reports, washed away the evidence, running off interns. The witnesses. We’ve fucking got you.”

I don’t respond.

“Bryan Johnson was clever. You could’ve gotten away with that one until I saw what you did to him. Just couldn’t help yourself, could you? You get off on that, huh?

I give him a withering glance.

He knows it wasn’t about that.

It never was, despite his taunting in that press conference.

“Why Gideon? Why not just come home if you needed her that badly?”

That gets my attention.

“You love her. Why not just come get her? Why hurt all these other women for your next-door neighbor? I didn’t get it at first. Hell, it almost made me second-guess my gut there for a while. Until I saw her, and she was the spitting image of them. The way you held her, orbited her, watched her… I knew. I knew it was about her. For her, even. Did she tell you to do it?”

“Of course not.”

He pauses, not having expected a response. Me not having fully expected to give one either.

“It was your mama, right? She’s the one who started it, that threw me for a loop too. She’d hung herself, but it wasn’t the rope that got her. It was the fall from the banister. Her head hit the ground, but in the pictures,” he flips open his binder and there she is, Abigail Bell’s pitiful, crumbled body in the foyer that looks no different than it did today. I don’t bother to fake a reaction, just staring dispassionately at the photo, already knowing what he’s going to point out. “There’s no blood under her head. A wound like that? There’d be blood and a lot of it.”

There was, I quip internally. In the woods, on me, the dirt, the steps, the porch. Pain in the ass getting blood out of porous wood. I’d wager she’s still in there, soaked in really deep like her misery soaked into every fucking thing she touched.

“Did your dad know?”

I consider staying quiet, keeping up the uninterested, stoic thing, but the point is moot. He’s got me; we both know that. This is a waiting game now, and I’m just killing time. So I lie, a last kindness delivered brutally to the man who raised me. “My father was an idiot. Very eager to write off his depressed wife after she hung herself. A good enough excuse to get out from under the family business he always hated.”

He buys it easily enough, nodding along as if it all makes perfect sense. He starts flicking through his binder, letting me watch my career, my every move. His entire case flicks before my eyes, shoving my face into it like a dog that pissed in the house. Pictures of me outside my house in Piedmont, at the hardware store, an impressive witness sketch. He’s had me for a while. Weeks? No months.

I smirk, no longer interested in watching him display all his files. “You knew I would kill her.”

“Who?”

“The Jordan girl. What was it that pushed you to it? The prosecutor didn’t feel comfortable indicting on circumstantial evidence? You aimed her in my direction—"

“That poor girl was lost and heading your way, regardless.”

I shake my head, tutting. “A bit underhanded, don’t you think?”

“I had no idea you’d hurt—"

“Don’t lie. You had meetings with her, pumped her head so full of your bullshit that she was bursting with it. You give her money for her fix too? Keep her close? What would the FBI think, Detective Altman, about your little chess piece being chopped to death for nothing?”

His face reddens as he charges me, and I can see it; the weight this has taken. The confirmation of what he knew. Jessica is dead and he’s at least in part responsible for letting it happen, for toying with a drugged-out, grieving girl. For making her mother alone in the world. “I had no idea—"

“It’s a shame about their mother. Wonder how long she’ll make it with both of her children gone.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

I raise my eyebrows, glancing at his finger pointed at my chest. “If you insist, I was under the impression we were here to talk.”