A Flicker in the Dark(96)

“I know you don’t believe me,” I say, looking up. “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth. I had no idea—”

“I believe you, Chloe,” Detective Thomas interrupts. “I do.”

I nod, trying not to show the relief that I feel flowing over me. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this. I was expecting an argument, a demand for proof that I can’t produce. And then I realize: He must know something that I don’t.

“You know who he is,” I say, understanding dawning on me slowly. “Aaron, I mean. You know who he really is.”

The detective looks back at me, his expression unreadable.

“You have to tell me. I deserve to know.”

“His name was Tyler Price,” he says at last, leaning over as he pulls his briefcase onto the table. He opens it up, pulls out a mug shot, and places it between us. I stare at Aaron’s face—no, Tyler’s face. He looks like a Tyler, different without the glasses magnifying his eyes, the snugly fit button-ups, his hair buzzed short. He has one of those generic faces that seems recognizable to everybody—bland features, no easily identifiable marks—but there is a vague resemblance to that headshot I had seen online, to the real Aaron Jansen. He could pass as a second cousin, maybe. An older brother. The kind who buys liquor for high-schoolers then shows up to the party, slinking off to the corner. Sipping a beer in silence, observing.

I swallow, my eyes drilling into the table. Tyler Price. I scold myself for falling for it, for so easily seeing what he had wanted me to see—but at the same time, maybe I had seen what I had wanted to see. I had needed an ally, after all. Someone on my side. But it had only been a game to him. All of it, a game. And Aaron Jansen had been nothing more than a character.

“We were able to ID him almost immediately,” Detective Thomas continues. “He’s from Breaux Bridge.”

My head snaps up, eyes wide.

“What?”

“He was already in their system for some smaller stuff a while back. Possession of marijuana, trespassing. Dropped out of school just before the ninth grade.”

I look back down at his picture, trying to conjure up a memory. Any memory of Tyler Price. Breaux Bridge is a small town, after all—then again, I never had many friends.

“What else do you know about him?”

“He was seen at Cypress Cemetery,” he says, pulling another picture from his briefcase. This time, it’s of the search party—with Tyler in the distance, glasses off, baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead. “Murderers can be known to revisit their crime scenes, especially repeat offenders. It seems Tyler took it a step further with you. Not only revisiting the scenes, but getting involved in the case itself. At a distance, of course. It’s not unheard of.”

Tyler had been there, been everywhere. I think back to the cemetery, those eyes that I could feel on my back, always. Watching as I pushed through the headstones, crouched in the dirt. I imagine him holding Aubrey’s earring in one gloved hand, crouching down to tie his shoe, and leaving it there, waiting for me to find it. That picture of me he had shown me on his phone. He didn’t find it online, I realize. He took it himself.

And then it hits me.

I think back to my childhood, after my father’s arrest. Those footprints we had found around our property. That nameless kid I had caught, staring through our windows. Propelled by a sick curiosity, a fascination with death.

Who are you? I had screamed, charging forward. His answer was the same then as it was last night, twenty years later.

I’m nobody.

“We’re processing his car now,” Detective Thomas continues, but I can barely hear him. “We found Diazepam in his pocket. A gold ring that we assume at this point belongs to Riley. A bracelet. Wooden beads with a metal cross.”

I pinch my nose with my fingers. It’s all too much.

“Hey,” he says, dipping his head so he can see my eyes. I glance up, weary. “This isn’t your fault.”

“But it is, though,” I say. “It is my fault. He found them because of me. They died because of me. I should have recognized him—”

He holds out his palm, gives his head a little shake.

“Don’t even go there,” he says. “It was twenty years ago. You were just a kid.”

He’s right, I know. I was just a kid, only twelve years old. But still.

“You know who else is just a kid?” he asks.

I look at him, my eyebrows raised.

“Who?”

“Riley,” he says. “And because of you, she made it out alive.”





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR




Detective Thomas rests his hands on his hips as we walk out of the station, as if he’s standing on a mountain peak somewhere, not in a parking lot, surveying our surroundings. It’s six a.m. The air is somehow both muggy and cool, an early-morning anomaly, and I’m keenly aware of the chirping birds in the distance, the cotton-candy skies, the first few motorists on their commutes to work. I squint my eyes, feeling foggy and confused. There is no sense of time inside of a police station—no windows, no clocks. The world creeps by around you as you’re being force-fed caffeine at four in the morning, smelling some off-duty cop’s slightly sour leftovers heat up in the break-room kitchen. I can feel my brain struggling to understand how it’s sunrise, the start of a new day, when my mind is still stuck on last night.