A Flicker in the Dark(95)

“You’re exactly like him,” I say. “Trying to blame something else for what you did.”

“No. No, it’s not like that.”

I can practically feel my fingernails digging into my palms, drawing blood. The anger and rage that had surged through my chest as I watched him that day; my indifference at seeing him cry. I remember how I had hated him in that moment. Hated him with every cell in my body.

I remember how I had killed him. In my mind, I had killed him.

“Chloe, just listen to me,” he says, taking a few steps closer. I look at his arms, reaching out toward me, soft hands outstretched. The same hands that had touched my skin, intertwined with my fingers. I had run into his arms the same way I had run into my father’s, looking for safety in all the wrong places. “He made me do it—”

I hear it before I actually see it, before I can even register what I’ve done. It’s as if I’m watching it happen to someone else: my arm, emerging from my purse, the gun in my hand. One single gunshot, exploding loud like a firecracker, jerking my arm back. A flash of bright light as his legs stagger back across the hardwood, glancing down at the pool of red expanding across his stomach before he looks back at me, surprised. The moonlight as it stretches across his eyes, glassy and confused. His lips, red and wet, parting slowly as if he’s trying to speak.

Then I watch as his body slumps to the floor.





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE




I’m sitting in the Breaux Bridge police department, the cheap bulbs fastened to the ceiling of the interrogation room making my skin glow a radioactive algae green. The blanket they had draped over my shoulders is scratchy like Velcro, but I’m too cold to take it off.

“All right, Chloe. Why don’t you take us through what happened one more time?”

I look up at Detective Thomas. He’s sitting on the other side of the table alongside Officer Doyle and a Breaux Bridge cop whose name I’ve already forgotten.

“I already told her,” I say, looking at the unnamed officer. “She has it on tape.”

“Just one more time for me,” he says. “And then we can take you home.”

I exhale, my hand reaching for the paper cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of me. It’s my third cup of the night, and as I bring it to my lips, I notice microscopic specs of blood dried to my skin. I put the cup down, pick at one spot with my fingernail, and watch as it flakes off like paint.

“I met the man I knew to be Aaron Jansen a few weeks ago,” I say. “He told me he was writing a story about my father. That he was a reporter for The New York Times. Eventually, he claimed that his story had changed due to the disappearances of Aubrey Gravino and Lacey Deckler. That he believed it was the work of a copycat, and he wanted my help to solve it.”

Detective Thomas nods, urging me to continue.

“Throughout our conversations, I started to believe him. There were so many similarities: the victims, the missing jewelry. The anniversary coming up. Initially, I believed it could have been Bert Rhodes—I told you that—but later that night, I found something in my closet. A necklace that matched Aubrey’s earrings.”

“And why didn’t you bring this evidence to us when you found it?”

“I tried,” I say. “But the next morning, it was gone. My fiancé took it—I have a video of him holding it, on my phone—and that’s when I started to believe that he may have had something to do with it. But even if I did have it, during our last conversation, you made it pretty clear that you didn’t believe anything I said. You practically told me to fuck off.”

He stares at me from across the room, shifting uncomfortably. I stare back.

“Anyway, there’s more than that. He’s been visiting my father in prison. I found Diazepam in his briefcase. His own sister went missing, twenty years ago, and when I visited his mother, she told me that she actually thought he might have had something to do with it—”

“Okay,” the detective interrupts, holding up a hand, fingers outstretched. “One thing at a time. What brought you to Breaux Bridge tonight? How did you know Riley Tack would be here?”

The image of Riley, ghostly pale, is still etched into my mind. Of the ambulance as it came flying down my driveway—of me, standing in the front yard, the phone I had retrieved from my car clutched in my hand as I waited, my body rigid and eyes unfocused. Unable to go back into that house, unable to face the dead body on the floor. The paramedics loading her into the back, tied to a stretcher, bags of fluids rushing into her veins.

“Daniel left me a voice mail, telling me he was leaving,” I say. “I was trying to figure out where he might have been going, where he could have been bringing the girls. I just had a feeling that he was bringing them here. I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Detective Thomas nods. “And where is Daniel now?”

I look up at him, my eyes stinging from the harsh lights, the bitter coffee, the lack of sleep. Everything.

“I don’t know,” I say again. “He’s gone.”

The room is quiet except for the buzzing of the lights overhead, like a single fly trapped inside of a tin can. Aaron killed those girls. He tried to kill Riley. Finally, I have my answers—but there is still so much that I don’t understand. So much that doesn’t make sense.