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He might as well be describing my own life. I grew up in a tight knit family with my mom and my grandparents, but that all ended when my grandfather died just after I turned sixteen. My grandmother died less than two years later and my mother married and moved to the other side of the country, so I was pretty much left alone at eighteen. I didn’t join a gang, but I did join the army, for much the same reasons he’s talking about.
“I believe you,” Eva says. “And I will help you.”
I was going to ask him a couple more hard questions just to see how genuine his fear and panic of being wrongfully accused is, but this works too. I don’t see guilt in him. And if I’m wrong, then our investigation into the case will soon show that.
“Did you see anyone else on the river bank?” I ask. “Or the sidewalk?”
His face tenses as he thinks about it. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “I saw a man in a long dark coat crossing the street up ahead. Could’ve been a tall woman too, I suppose. They reminded me of those bus inspectors, you know, the ones who ride around checking that you paid the fare. I also saw a couple of cyclists passing and a woman pushing a stroller. It was late but there are always people around in that area. There are a lot of apartment blocks around and the general hospital is near, plus the all-night gas station… I don’t know.”
“Did anyone pass you as you were walking up to the crime scene?” I ask.
He shakes his head and looks dejected. “No. And I would’ve seen them. The path is very narrow. But it wasn’t me, I didn’t do this. Someone else had to have been there. Maybe they had a boat or something…”
“Not with the river flowing as fast as you say it did,” I say.
“I believe that these murders are… ” Eva says, but stops talking as I lay my hand on her arm. I shake my head as she looks at me sharply. It’s not a good idea to tell him she thinks this murder was the work of a serial killer. We don’t know enough about the case yet.
“They kept me up for the whole night, asking all sorts of questions, insinuating I was dealing drugs last night and that I killed that woman because I wanted to rob her, or rape her, or both,” Milo says exasperatedly. “I’m not a rapist. I’d never do a thing like that to a woman. Sure, I used to deal drugs, and I robbed a few people. But I did my time for that. I did my time, and I turned a new leaf in the book of my life. And I didn’t do this.”
He’s nodding as he looks at each of us in turn, as though trying to force the idea into our minds physically.
“We’ll look into your case,” I tell him. “And we’ll prove your innocence if you are innocent.”
It’s as much as I can promise him right now.
He leans back with a loud sigh. “Thank you. That’s all I’m asking for. A fair shake, you know? Being presumed innocent before being found guilty and all that. It’s not what I’m getting now.”
I stand up to call the officers so they can take him back to his cell. “You’ll get that, I promise. We’ll probably be back to talk to you again soon.”
He thanks me one more time, and I open the door to tell the two officers standing out in the hall that we’re done.
Milo thanks Eva too, then goes with them docilely.
“Hopefully he’ll get some sleep now that we’ve calmed him down,” Eva says once we’re alone again. “He looked dead tired.”
“He did,” I say and offer my hand to help her stand up, which she accepts. She’s tired too.
“You do believe he’s innocent, don’t you?” she asks once we’re face to face. She looks almost as agitated as Milo. “You weren’t just saying all that.”
I debate how to answer, so as not to give her too much hope, but dismiss that line of thinking almost immediately.
Honesty and truth. That’s how Eva and I always communicate and no reason is valid enough to change that now.
“Yes, he seems innocent to me. It seems he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong kind of past,” I tell her and she looks relieved. “But we’ll have to investigate to know for sure.”
The smile she gives me is bright enough to light up this whole room like the shades opening on a sunny morning.
“So you’ll take the case?” she asks happily.
She means in a package with all the serial killer suspicions she has been trying to get me invested in for more than a month now.
“Yes, I’ll look into this Riverside Slasher, or whatever you’ve been calling him,” I say and grin.
“The Riverside Reaper,” she says. “But I don’t like that name. I have to come up with a better one.”
I don’t like naming serial killers, period. It gives them the glory and immortality they all narcissistically seek and absolutely don’t deserve. As far as I’m concerned, they should all die in total anonymity and completely forgotten by the world.
But Eva’s made a successful career of uncovering serial killers and writing long books on their lives and crimes. I’ve learned to respect her need to do that. Plus, we’ve had this conversation slash argument many times and we’re both still stuck in our opposite opinions on it.
