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"Congratulations, Cami," Connor said, walking up to her once again. He was looking better by the minute. "You acted with extreme courage. And opening the bathroom door like that was a master stroke. Without a doubt, your actions saved Dylan's life and allowed us to catch this killer."
"Thank you. I guess I've picked up a lot from you, to be able to do that," Cami said, giving credit where it was due, but also feeling pleased and proud that the person she cared about was now there to hear this praise.
“Well done, Cami,” Ethan agreed.
Cami was standing next to him by the car. Ethan had arrived with the first wave of the police. Looking anxious, he'd sprinted straight over to Cami to check that she was okay. Now, they were going through the work that was needed to wrap up this case, including getting background on the killer himself.
“I’m just so relieved that he’s caught. Shall we find out who he is, now?” Cami said, wanting to confront the real identity of this man who’d made such cowardly efforts at anonymity.
"Interesting," Ethan observed, showing Cami the ID he'd called up. "It says here that this killer's name is Jack North, and from the case history here, he’s a repeat offender who’s been in and out of psychiatric wards for years. He’s psychotic, with a history of violence, though highly intelligent. He apparently lives in an alternative reality, and for years, he's tried to act out stories and fairytales in gruesome and violent ways."
"That's exactly what he was doing here," Cami said. "It was as if he was living out the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, only in a way that saw him kill all the bears."
"Twisted," Ethan said, with a shake of his head. “It seems that for a while a few years ago, he held down a job with an alarm company, but he was fired after the clients reported ‘creepy’ behavior. I wonder if that created the psychotic break that started him on this path.”
“It also explains how he had some knowledge of the alarms and how to bypass them,” Cami agreed, shivering.
"He won't be getting out of jail again, ever. Most likely, he'll be kept in a state psychiatric hospital under top security."
"I guess that must be a creepy place, well suited to him," Cami admitted.
Ethan shrugged. "It's only going to get creepier when he arrives," he said.
"True," Cami agreed. She felt a vast sense of relief that he would no longer be a danger to society. They'd solved the crime and done so within the deadline that Fraser had given them.
"You mentioned that we were going somewhere, sometime soon?" Ethan asked her in a quieter voice, as if sensing that they were now talking about something that should stay off the radar. "I've been curious about it. What are you getting yourself into, Cami? And when and where are we going?"
From the satisfaction of solving this case, Cami's mind was jerked straight back to her other circumstances.
Liam's laptop needed to be unlocked and explored. Having it in her room was like a weight in her mind that was there all the time, pressing down, a cause for worry and concern.
"I'm going to find out," she said, knowing that it would depend on where Liam was, and what she was able to pick up about his movements. "We might need to be ready to go at short notice."
Ethan raised his eyebrows. "I'll wait for your call," he said.
EPILOGUE
The bar was a dark, grungy place, Cami saw. Seething with customers, it was wedged in between a vacant warehouse and a block of high-density, low-income apartments in a bad part of town.
Music throbbed from inside. At ten p.m. on a Friday night, customers spilled out, shouting, swearing, holding beers. The ground glittered with smashed glass. On the right, a fight erupted between a group of leather-clad men.
Cami gave the fight a wide berth as she approached, feeling nervous and out of place here. She was glad she had Ethan with her as she walked up to the bar's entrance.
"Why are we here, Cami? This is, like, a dive of note," Ethan said, staring around, fascinated, but with worry in his face.
"I am looking for someone who should be here," Cami said. "One way or another, I have to get close enough to do what I need to do," she said, as Ethan looked even more intrigued.
She'd been doing painstaking research over the past couple of days, trying to trace and track Liam's actions online and in real life, and to find out where he would be.
Cami had gotten a lead from a message thread on social media. Liam didn't interact there much, but friends of friends did. Through this, with slow and careful piecing together, Cami had concluded that on Fridays, Liam came to this bar.
It wasn't the sort of place she would have thought someone like him would go. But then, she'd already realized that he wasn't the person she had thought he was.
There was a darker side to him, for sure. And there must be a reason why he drove several miles across town after work, which she'd figured out was now in IT security, to this bar.
"So, what do you need to do?" Ethan was no longer smiling. He knew, Cami saw, that this was not a fun mission, but something more serious.
"I need a voice recording from him. Without him knowing," Cami said.
