The Devil's Closet (7 page)

Today, when he watched her walking down the street, he felt the familiar quickening of his pulse, as he licked his parched lips. It was an emotion without a definition, an emotion no one could understand. They were already together in their minds; he knew that. He knew she dreamed of him each night when she went to
bed. Several days ago when she dropped her book bag and he handed it to her, he saw it in her eyes. Just as he had seen it in Hanna Parker’s, and just as he’d seen it in all the others.

Watching now as Ashley’s mother fell to pieces on the street, he felt the sweet, high-pitched excitement in his body and the ache in his groin. Oh, how wonderful! The cop standing by Ashley’s mother was CeeCee Gallagher, who had played right into his hands—just as he’d planned.

Hearing the stifled cries from the backseat, he knew Ashley was getting impatient and wanted to get home. Home to him. Smiling at the scene unfolding, he quietly drove away.

I hadn’t been paying much attention to the time, so when I saw Eric and Jordan heading our way, I figured they had been called in early. Surprisingly, it was nearing seven o’clock in the evening and they had been at work for five hours already. I had been so focused on the case that I had totally forgotten about my problems with Eric. I looked around for a quick exit, hoping Michael hadn’t seen them and vice versa, but it was too late. Eric came straight toward me, and I braced myself for the inevitable confrontation between Eric and Michael. It would be wishful thinking to hope the two of them might act like adults. It was hard to believe it took this long for them to run into each other. Eric was now only about twenty feet away when Michael saw him. Muttering obscenities, he sighed.

“Here we go.”

Eric and Jordan, curiously, stopped about five feet away.

“Please, everyone, maintain,” I whispered back.

No one said anything. It was one of the most awful, awkward, and uncomfortable moments I can ever remember. It was so bad and so obvious, it became comical. The silence lasted about thirty seconds, but felt like twenty minutes. Eric broke first.

“Michael. How are you?” He nodded grimly toward Michael while speaking politely, though certainly without warmth or friendliness. That seemed as good as it was going to get, which I guess was OK.

Eric’s face maintained the same uninviting look it had when he first saw us, and Michael merely nodded back, almost inaudibly muttering a sound that resembled “hello.” After that, the two just stared at each other. Jordan kept looking at both men, waiting for one or the other to crack. She wore a contemptuous look that made me want to reach over and slap her into next week. It took all I had to keep my face expressionless and my mouth shut. I didn’t even acknowledge she was there until I felt in control enough to speak.

“Have you been out long?” I asked Eric. “We’re going on four hours now and coming up with nothing.”

Jordan was the one to reply. “We’ve been at it for a good two hours now? Right, Eric?” Then, with an arrogant confidence I’ve rarely seen in another human being, she grabbed Eric’s arm and started playfully patting it.

I felt like I would explode right there, but Eric slowly pulled his arm away from her. That did it. I had enough.

“I wasn’t asking you, I was asking
my husband
the question, honey. If I were to…”

“All right,” Eric interrupted sharply. “We’re gonna keep walking. Let me know if anything turns up. By the way, CeeCee, my parents are keeping the girls overnight since I assume we’ll both be late.” He started walking quickly away from us, Jordan in tow.

I didn’t move. I simply stared at an old rotted tree trunk and continued fuming. Not only was I berserk over Jordan’s behavior, I didn’t like how Eric seemed to come to her defense once I began to attack. He cut me off, walked away, and prevented me from causing her any kind of emotional pain or anxiety whatsoever. It also angered me that Jordan seemed to be aware of the tension between Eric and Michael. How much had he confided in her about the seriousness of our situation?

Now Michael saw it all laid out, impossible to miss. So much for keeping up the everything’s-hunky-dory-at-CeeCee’s-house front.

It took all I had to get myself in control. When I did, I was counting on moving along with our search and pretending nothing happened, but Michael wouldn’t let me off that easy. I started to walk again, but he stepped in front of me, his eyes full of concern and knowledge of the truth.

“Got over the rocky patch, did you? Why do I get the impression the tension in our little meeting wasn’t all about me for once? Who was the rookie?”

I sat down on a tree stump and let out a sigh. I couldn’t hold it in. There was no reason to pretend or hide from Michael anymore. I told him about Jordan, the rumors, and the strain my relationship with Eric has been under since he, Michael, came back into the picture.

“Maybe Eric’s trying to get back at me for what we did last year. Or maybe I was the one drumming up all the problems so I wouldn’t have to acknowledge that my feelings for you haven’t faded in the slightest over the past year. Not even a little. Never in my life did I ever think it was possible to be in love with two people,” I said softly, picking up a stick and poking it around in the dirt.

Michael stood, looking down at me, listening intently. When I was finished, he knelt and took my stick away, tossing it into the woods, before grabbing my hands.

“Maybe I have the solution. I’ll leave tomorrow, send another agent, and simply never come back. It hurts too much to see you so unhappy, and if I can fix it by leaving, that’s the way it has to be.”

I looked at Michael’s eyes, his lips, his hair. I didn’t want him to leave, not a second time. And certainly not forever.

“Unfortunately, whether you leave or not, it doesn’t matter. Things will be the same. Eric will be training Jordan, or sleeping with her for all I know, and he’ll still resent me for the relationship you and I had last year.” I paused and put my hand up to Michael’s cheek. “And most of all, I don’t want you to leave.”

Michael squeezed my hand tightly before standing up and looking at his watch.

“I’ll stay. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that, but it also scares the shit out of me. Who knows what’s in the cards for any of us, but right now, let’s just see what happens. We can talk more later. Right now, we’ve only got another hour of searching before it gets dark.” He held out a strong, firm hand, pulling me up from my perch on the tree stump.

I didn’t feel guilty, not one bit, for finally telling Michael how I felt. I was relieved that it was out in the open. Finally. What I did feel was anger at Eric. To be blunt, he might as well have picked me up bodily and thrown me into bed with Michael, as much as he was pushing me away and letting me think something was going on with Jordan. As childish as that sounds, it’s the God’s honest truth. The best thing Eric could’ve done was be himself; loving, attentive, honest, and most of all, faithful.

Eric and I lived in the city only a short drive away, so I told Michael I just wanted to go home and sleep. There was disappointment and worry in his eyes; he knew Eric got off work at ten. I felt like adding that it was highly unlikely, after tonight’s episode, that Eric and I would roll around in bed like a couple of newlyweds, but I declined. I didn’t think Michael and I were quite at a level where he needed to know that.

Naturally, my alarm seemed to go off right after I fell asleep, but the clock showed that, indeed, four hours had passed. I saw Eric sleeping peacefully by my side. It was a good sign that at least he came home. Not that I expected he wouldn’t, but nothing was normal anymore, and I wouldn’t have been surprised at anything. I quietly took a quick shower and put on fresh clothes before heading back to the department.

Michael wasn’t there yet, but he came strolling in shortly. He didn’t look like he slept much, if at all. Coop was thrilled to see us, desperate as he was for his own four-hour reprieve. He was halfway out the door, waiting for us so he could leave.

Drinking our third cup of coffee to wake ourselves up and clear our heads, Michael and I finally started in on the case. Now both cases had become full-blown national news, and our parking lot had enough news vans to cover the O. J. Simpson trial. A section of the road that runs alongside the department had actually been closed off to hold what media the parking lot couldn’t. The department helicopters were still in the air, searching the county. Every poor soul who drove a white station wagon was pulled over and put on the ground at gunpoint. Most people understood. Unless you lived in a coal mine, it was impossible not to know what was going on. A few who were stopped threatened lawsuits, but nothing anyone took seriously.

For the next two days, Michael and I scoured every possible lead. The media was pressuring everyone, Michael and me the most.

The only good the media brought was that three other law-enforcement agencies contacted us with similar murders. They had missed our teletypes, but saw the news. Detectives from the Topeka PD, in Kansas, the Peoria PD in Illinois, and the Indianapolis PD were flying in first thing the next day with their files. The detective from Tampa was coming the day after. Each of their cases was over ten years old. The FBI officially took over the investigation on the second morning Ashley Sanders was missing, because, for now, it seemed the suspect was staying in this area. They formed a task force headquartered at Richland Metro with all the agency detectives, including me, and put Michael in charge of it all.

After doing everything humanly possible to try to find Ashley Sanders, we hit a dead end, and she’d only been missing for two days. There were uniform officers that had been awake for forty-eight hours straight, walking every square inch of the county. If Ashley Sanders was in Richland County, we would have found her.

The afternoon of the second day was spent arranging the room for the task force, a large conference room in the detective bureau. All the photographs of the victims with all their information had to be visibly posted on the wall and each investigator had to have a work space. Michael must’ve read my mind after we finished putting the room together.

“I really need a drink. We don’t have to be back until five tomorrow morning, so how ’bout it?”

“Follow me, sir. I shall lead ye to the nearest watering hole,” I said in a horrible, fake English accent, waving my arm toward the door.

Michael laughed out loud. I told him I would meet him out by my car, but needed to make a phone call first. I wanted to try to call Eric before we left since I hadn’t spoken to him in two days. He was on a day off today, so I couldn’t catch him at roll call. He’d been avoiding my calls and only left messages about the girls on my voice mail. My mother got the girls yesterday and took them back to Cleveland for a week—or two if needed—of fun and sun by the lake. Selina only had a couple days of school left anyway, so it didn’t matter. My mom was used to helping out when a case consumed our lives, and the girls just looked at it as another vacation. Eric and I were very lucky. The girls adored both sets of grandparents and loved spending as much time with them as possible.

I didn’t call Eric after all. I was tired of constantly trying to communicate with him when he was not making any attempt to contact me. Nothing. From now on, if he wanted to talk, he could find a way to get hold of me. The anxiety, pain, and fear of the situation notwithstanding, I’d had it.

We went to the quietest dive bar I knew, with maybe four local drunks in the entire place, and took seats at the bar. The bartender greeted me by name. (Coop and I have had many a drink there.)

“Old boyfriend?” Behind a straight face, Michael’s eyes laughed.

“Cute, Michael.”

For the next five hours, we did shot after shot, and drank beer after beer, hitting such an inebriated state that it was impossible not to talk openly. Neither of us could control what was coming out of our mouths. There was also the chance that we would get called back to work, so we were taking a huge risk drinking like we were. It was only when I asked Michael a question I’ve always wanted to know the answer to, that I thought, maybe, I went too far. I turned my stool to face him. The stools were so close together, our legs intertwined. Seeing two Michaels, I grabbed his face and pulled him as close to mine as possible, and tried to speak as clearly as I could, hoping my question didn’t come out in one long unintelligible mush of words.

“Michael, come here.”

“I’m as close as I’m gonna get.” He was laughing and waving his arms loosely.

“Do you regret not making love to me when we were in West Virginia last year? I want the truth.”

He stopped laughing, and in fact, didn’t smile at all. I let go of his face, thinking I’d made him angry. His stare suddenly became so fixed, I thought for a brief second he wanted to haul off and hit me.

“Michael, I’m sor—”

“Stop, CeeCee. We went over this before. But now, a year later, do you really, I mean really, want me to answer that truthfully?”

“Michael, if you don’t want to. I wasn’t trying to upset—”

“Answer me. Do you want the truth?”

“Yes,” I answered timidly, although now I wasn’t so sure. But it was too late to back down.

He put his beer down on the bar before turning back to face me again. He sat looking at me for thirty seconds before taking a deep breath.

“Every day of every week of every month of the entire last year, I have done nothing but regret the decision I made that night. I have tried to will myself back in time so I can change the past, like a character in some dopey movie.” He grabbed his beer and took a long drink. “My first day back, when I saw you, I felt like someone smacked me with a hammer. All I could think about was I had a chance to be with you, make love to you, and I blew it. I can’t help but think that had I made a different decision, you would be with me now, and not Eric.”

He took another drink and continued. “Every time I was in Cleveland seeing my son, all I could think about was how close you were. Just a short drive away. There was a time, about three months ago, when I couldn’t take it anymore and drove down to talk to you. I sat in the department parking lot till you walked out and got in your car, but lost my nerve and drove right back. Seeing you for a few seconds like that did nothing but make it worse, plus I felt like a stalker.”

I just stared at him and realized, like I had that night in West Virginia, that I wanted him more than anything right then, and I didn’t believe the alcohol had anything to do with it. It simply made me more impatient. I was getting ready to suggest we could easily make up for lost time, but he wanted answers from me first.

“Now it’s your turn. Something I want to ask you, and I want the truth.”

I didn’t know what was about to happen and I was very scared, actually. If I thought all Michael wanted to know was whether I would sleep with him now, we’d be out the door. Unfortunately, I was smart enough to know that wasn’t all he wanted, and my nerves broke through, something Michael noticed immediately.

“CeeCee, stop being nervous, you don’t even know what I’m going to say,” he said, lightly putting his hand on my knee and leaning forward.

Sorry, but I had a pretty good idea. I was a decent investigator myself, and even being as drunk as I was, I braced for the question. I was scared because I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to him, this close, face to face. Or ever.

“Go ahead, Michael. Ask.”

“I want to know…did you ever regret not choosing me over Eric, even once?”

I knew it, and as much as I wanted to lie for the sake of my marriage, I couldn’t. Michael was as rattled as I was, nervously anticipating my answer, so I gave it to him, slowly and truthfully.

“Yes, Michael. I have had times where I have regretted it. Now, particularly, is one of those times.”

Michael didn’t answer; he merely pulled me to him and began kissing me slowly and passionately. I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t pull away, and I wanted not part of him, but all of him.