Stone Cold (22 page)

‘It’s not me that’s come to see you,’ she said.

Kathryn turned and stood aside. Behind her, holding hands, Henry Wheeler and his wife Mary walked into the house.

Griffin leaped out of the old chair and stumbled back and away from the door as though physically struck. He fumbled with the bag that contained the bullet casing, stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket as he shot Kathryn an angry glance.

‘The hell’s this?’

Henry Wheeler was in his late forties, Kathryn figured, but he was a former soldier and he carried himself with the pride of his service still running in his veins. He let go of his wife’s hand as he approached Griffin.

‘Get away from me,’ Griffin said. ‘I didn’t mean to come here, I just…’

Kathryn saw the panic on Griffin’s face spread like a disease, his movements uncoordinated as his entire psyche lost the ability to maintain the wall of silence that he had constructed around his soul. Henry Wheeler kept moving toward Griffin until the detective was backed into one of the dusty old counters. Griffin’s face began to crease and crumble, folding in upon itself as his pain was likewise cornered and left with nowhere to go but out.

‘Get away from me, man…,’ was all that he could mumble.

He tried to look away from Henry but the old man stood resolute before him. One hand reached out and gently took the bag with the bullet casing from Griffin’s jacket pocket. Griffin did not resist, unable to decide where to look.

Henry Wheeler looked down at the casing, and then slipped it into his own jacket pocket. He looked at Griffin, stared at him for countless long seconds until Griffin was forced to look into the eyes of the man whose daughter he had killed.

Kathryn flinched as Henry Wheeler’s arm flicked up toward Griffin’s face, and then wrapped around the back of his neck as he pulled the detective close to him, wrapped him up as though he were a kid. Kathryn felt tears prick the corners of her eyes as Griffin collapsed into Henry Wheeler’s embrace as he cried great choking sobs. Griffin’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank toward the kitchen floor, Henry Wheeler easing the detective down as Mary Wheeler dashed past Kathryn and dropped to her knees alongside Griffin, her arms wrapping around the detective as they folded themselves protectively around him.

Kathryn backed away from the kitchen and turned, walking quietly out of the farmstead until she could no longer hear the sobs that echoed through the lonely farmstead, dredged out in big, heaving chunks of grief and cast out onto the wind. She checked her watch as she walked. Stephen would be home soon and Kathryn knew somehow that she could not continue her charade any longer. Just like Griffin, she needed to confront her demons face to face.

Outside, Maietta stood beside her car, her arms folded against the growing chill as she watched Kathryn approach. She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow and Kathryn nodded.

‘It’s done,’ she said.

‘Just like that?’

Kathryn sighed, the wind blowing her hair across her face in ragged strands that for a brief moment she felt represented the tattered fragments of her life.

‘It’s what he needed,’ she replied. ‘What he wanted. He just couldn’t see it.’

Kathryn walked past Maietta’s car and headed for her own.

‘You not going to hang around?’ Maietta asked, watching her curiously. ‘See how he makes out?’

Kathryn shook her head as she looked over her shoulder. ‘I’ve seen enough grief for one lifetime, detective. I’ll see him when he gets back to the office. Can you take him home for me?’

Kathryn got into her car and started the engine, then picked up her cell and dialled a number as she guided her car out of the track and onto the highway. The phone rang for only a second or two before Ally picked up.

‘Hey honey.’

‘Hi,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Listen, are you free to talk later tonight?’

‘On a Friday night?’
Ally asked.
‘After work, now that the unbearable dragging lethargy of the working week is over? Does the proverbial bear shit in the proverbial woods?’

‘Can I stay at yours, tonight?’

There was a long pause on the line.
‘Are you okay?’

‘Not really,’ Kathryn said, and unexpectedly a seething ball of grief shook her and she fought back tears.

‘What’s happened? Has he hurt you?’

‘No,’ Kathryn said. ‘But I need to end this. You were right, Ally. Stephen is not good for me.’

‘Good,’
Ally replied.
‘Glad you’re finally making some sense. Come straight from work, okay?’

‘I’ve got to get home and pack first.’

‘Don’t,’
Ally said.
‘Just leave, now, and don’t go back there.’

‘I have to,’ Kathryn insisted. ‘I can’t leave him piecemeal, I have to get out and never go back.’

‘Don’t do it, Kathryn. You never really know people until they do something that you don’t expect.’

‘I’ll make it quick,’ Kathryn said. ‘I promise. Call me as soon as you get out of work.’

Kathryn tossed the cell phone to one side, only for it to trill once again. She picked it up, and was surprised to hear Maietta’s voice on the line.

‘Is he okay?’ Kathryn asked.

‘He’s fine,’ Maietta confirmed. ‘He’s coming back into work. I think you ought to be there.’

Kathryn bit her lip as she glanced at her watch. ‘Okay, make it fast though.’

‘You in a hurry now, counsellor?’

‘Got another client booked in for this afternoon,’ Kathryn replied. ‘But I can make room for Scott. I’ll wait at the station.’

***

29

Kathryn drove back to the precinct and sat in Olsen’s office staring down at Griffin’s file, trying to force Stephen’s image from her mind. Calling Ally had in some way cemented in Kathryn’s mind that it was time to finish everything.

Stephen is history, she told herself. Focus on the future.

Griffin’s last proper appointment with her had ended with him storming from the office after making what amounted to a physical threat. For a moment, Kathryn had finally seen the detective for what he was: a man capable, indeed trained to kill who was living on the edge of an abyss of guilt, whose spouse had left him and who saw for himself no future other than one consumed by regrets. Then, she had seen his hardened exterior crumble and his innermost grief exposed for all to see before he had been shielded by the Wheelers’ embrace.

What difference, he and I? What grief did she harbour, festering and poisonous inside her?

Kathryn shook off her maudlin thoughts. While she had been sitting and waiting for the detective to show, she had thought long and hard about her own life. Yes, she had made progress. But no, there was no future for her, not here, not any more. Stephen was lost to her, of that she was certain, and no longer just because he was seeing another woman. No. Stephen was lost to her because there was something inside of him that she had not seen before, something rotten and awful that she realised she feared.

In contrast to Griffin, Stephen was not a real person but a façade and she knew it now.

There was nothing more that she could do for Griffin. His healing process would be his own now. He, like Kathryn, had been a slave to a past he could not change. Now was the time to sever her own ties with her past, and make a future of her own choosing.

It was time for her to leave. She had already packed everything that she could and jammed it into a suitcase, which she had then crammed into the trunk of her car, which was parked outside the precinct. There was very little left for her to do now that she had made up her mind. Sometimes, it was better to abandon something that was not quite right, than to labour it until it was sick and festering.

Time to go.

Kathryn got up from her desk and grabbed her handbag.

‘Counsellor?’

Kathryn blinked and looked up. Griffin was standing in the doorway to the office, one fist knuckled at the door. He must have knocked and she had not heard him.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’

He looked different. He was wearing a fresh suit and had shaved in the time since she had left him with the Wheelers – probably Maietta had run him home on the way. There were still dark rings beneath his eyes but there was a glint of light and life in them that had been absent before.

Griffin shut the door and sat down. There was a long silence which Kathryn was happy to allow to draw out. Griffin, his hands in his laps, stared at them for a few moments before he spoke.

‘That was some stunt you pulled there. Lawyers would be on your case if they ever found out.’

‘Seemed like the right thing to do,’ Kathryn replied.

‘That how they train all you shrinks? Sink or swim? I thought that you were all for the softly–softly approach?’

‘Tried that. It wasn’t working.’

‘I know.’

‘I figured you just needed to hear what we were saying from Amy’s parents instead. They…’

‘Kathryn,’ Griffin said. Somehow his use of her given name stopped her in her tracks. ‘I know.’

Kathryn felt a little of the tension slip from her own shoulders. She nodded, a smile melting her features as Griffin went on.

‘And I wanted to apologise, okay? I was out of order, blowing my top at you.’

‘It’s okay, detective.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Griffin said. ‘I could excuse myself for screaming at a perp’ I’ve arrested, or at a judge for releasing a convict on nothing but technicalities, or even myself for being an asshole, but you didn’t deserve that and I’m truly sorry.’ Griffin sucked in a deep breath before he continued. ‘I was trying to figure it all out up there, at the farm.’

‘And did you?’

‘Maybe,’ Griffin said, and then shook his head. ‘Not really.’

‘I don’t think that some things can ever be figured out,’ Kathryn said. ‘They happen, and we just have to pick up the pieces again and try to move on.’

Griffin nodded. ‘I’ve been acting like a dick for the last few days.’

‘That’s true.’

Griffin looked at her, caught the smile, and shrugged. ‘I’ve heard what you’ve had to say, and it’s stayed with me. It kind of comes back when things are quiet, y’know? Especially when I sit out at the barn in the dark and replay in my mind all that happened up there.’

A brief smile flickered across Kathryn’s features, gone as soon as it had arrived.

‘Are you going to keep going up there?’

‘No,’ Griffin said.

‘Why?’

Griffin’s gaze was as piercing as ever but his features were calm, his shoulders relaxed, his hands clasped gently in his lap.

‘Because there’s nobody there,’ he said.

Kathryn watched the detective carefully. ‘What about Angela? Have you spoken to her yet?’

Griffin shook his head. ‘I called her, asked if we could meet tonight. Just figuring out how best to go about talking to her.’

‘There is no best way, just talk to her,’ Kathryn said, ‘make it your priority. No conditions, no surprises, no arguments. Let her hear what you have to say. Make sure you take the night off to do it. I’ve got the sense that everything else you both need to happen will follow all on its own.’

Griffin nodded. ‘Seems simple if you say it quickly enough.’

‘It
is
simple,’ Kathryn said. ‘You’re good people, both of you.’

‘You’ve never met Angela.’

‘I don’t need to,’ Kathryn said. ‘She would never have married you if you weren’t the right guy, a decent guy, the kind of guy that all women wish they could have, because your problems are real and they make you all the more noble for it.’

Griffin watched her for a long moment. ‘You’ve got a real way of putting things straight,’ he said finally. ‘I should have met you when I was younger.’

‘So should I.’

A long silence filled the room and Kathryn felt herself blush as she spoke again quickly.

‘You both want this to work,’ she said. ‘You’ll both make it work, provided you talk rather than try to hurl each other out of a window.’

Griffin nodded. ‘Yeah.’

Kathryn stood and put out her hand. Griffin, keeping his pride anchor firmly in place, stood up and shook it with his free hand.

‘I gotta go,’ Kathryn said. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing now and everything will be okay.’

‘You leaving already?’

‘My work here is done, detective,’ Kathryn replied, ‘and there are other clients in need of my help. My case load is building up as we speak.’

Griffin nodded.

‘Good knowing you, counsellor.’

Griffin strode out of the office and walked away.

Kathryn glanced at her watch as soon as he was gone, cursed silently, and then hurried out of the station.

***

30

Kathryn worked quickly.

To her relief, the apartment was still empty when she arrived. She felt exhausted, both mentally and physically, as she drove back to her apartment, but now she had to focus on herself. On her future. Kathryn showered, got dressed, stuffed some toast and coffee down her throat while simultaneously cramming her belongings into two suitcases that usually resided in the space beneath the bed.

Kathryn hauled her suitcases out of the apartment to her battered old Lincoln and jammed them into the trunk. She had to jump up and sit on it in order to force it closed. Satisfied, she then returned to the apartment and packed what else she could fit into a small holdall that she then stuffed under the bed, ready for a fast getaway.

Kathryn dashed back inside and grabbed Stephen’s tablet computer, accessing it and logging in to his personal accounts. She worked feverishly, hurriedly accessing various accounts and doing what needed to be done. She would ensure that he was fully exposed, that he would lose not only Kathryn but also his wife and his life with her.

There was no more room for manoeuvre; things were black and white now. Stephen had a wonderful, luxurious life with his wife and a painful, struggling existence with Kathryn. There must be a reason why he remained with Kathryn, so what was that reason?

As she grabbed the last of her things, a long flowing dress fell out of her handbag where she had crammed it. Kathryn looked at it and recognised the sarong she had stolen from Stephen’s other house, tucked in alongside the tickets that she had asked Ally to purchase for her.