AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The mood in the woods is somber. Everything is quiet. Cara watches Deakin sit in the open door of her car, smoking, staring at his feet. He’s still wearing Roo’s raincoat, and the cheerful bright red and blue feels out of place and wrong.
Dr. Ross calls her over to where the man’s body slumps in the door well.
“Say you have something, please? Anything,” Cara says, and Ross frowns. “Just give me your best guess. I won’t hold you to it. But this is one of ours, Greg.”
He nods. “First thoughts, this looks like a murder-suicide.”
Cara stares at him. “Pardon?”
He points to the gun, lying in the mud, a small yellow triangle marking it as evidence. “Likely fell out of his hand,” he says, then points to the hunched body in the driver’s seat. “And the injuries he sustained to his mouth and head are consistent with a gun being fired upward.” He mimes shooting, his hand in his mouth, pointing to the sky. “SOCO have confirmed gunshot residue on his right hand, with no signs of a struggle. I think he shot Libby, then turned the gun on himself.”
“Do we have any ID on him?” Cara asks.
Ross reaches down, patting the dead man’s pockets. He detects a lump in one and awkwardly pulls out a small black wallet. He places it into Cara’s gloved hands.
She realizes she’s shaking as she opens it and pulls out the driver’s license. The face in the photo is sulky, pale. Dark eyebrows, dark hair. And the name on the license: Sharp, Michael.
She takes a quick intake of breath and Ross looks up.
She stares at the photo, comparing it to the dead man’s face. “This is our drug dealer from Wednesday,” she says.
“The guy with all the dead bodies in the fridge?” Ross asks, and Cara nods. “Then it looks like you’ve got a closed case, Detective,” he finishes.
Cara walks away from the car, shaking her head. Griffin comes up next to her, and she holds out the driver’s license, now enclosed in a plastic evidence bag. He holds it up to the light to read it, then stops, his mouth open.
“That body there?” he says.
Cara nods. “Ross says it’s murder-suicide.”
Griffin looks at her in disbelief. “What? He goes to all that trouble to kill man after man, woman after woman, then blows his brains out in a fit of—what? Guilt?”
“Or none of this is related after all,” she mutters.
“But what about his apartment? All the dead bodies? That’s not a fucking one-off, Cara. That’s months, years of planning, killing, and it all looks like Dahmer purely because of coincidence? Is that what you think?”
Cara’s suddenly very weary. “The only thing I do think, Nate, is I’m going home to bed.”
She turns and walks toward her car. She knows she should stay, as Griffin probably will, but nothing makes sense to her. It’s too late. She’s cold. She’s wet. The rain has started up again, edging into her clothes, freezing against her skin.
Deakin looks up as she stands next to him.
“I’m going home,” she says. “You coming? You can stay in the spare room.”
He shakes his head. “Drop me off at mine on the way back.”
“You shouldn’t be alone, Deaks.”
He flicks his cigarette into the darkness and swings his legs into the car as she goes around to the driver’s side, shutting the door. “This is no different from any other day. It’s always someone’s loved one. Someone’s daughter, someone’s ex-girlfriend. We catch this guy, same as we always do.” He sees the look on Cara’s face. “What?” he asks, and she fills him in on Ross’s prediction.
She sees his eyebrows crease, the look of incomprehension. “I need some fucking sleep,” he mutters.
Cara starts the engine, and they drive away from the crime scene. As she goes, she glances in her rearview mirror at the car, the lights, the pathologist’s van getting ready to take the bodies away.
She remembers Libby’s face, excited at the prospect of going on a date. Had it been with this guy? With Michael Sharp? And when she’d realized something was wrong, she’d tried to run. And he’d gunned her down before turning the pistol on himself.
Cara drives through the empty streets, pulling up outside Deakin’s house.
“Do you want me to come in?” she asks, but he shakes his head.
