Strings

III

At last I let myself sit, kitty corner from her. "Sure."

Her thumb rubbed against the china as she gazed into the liquid. "Do they haunt you?" Her eyes connected back with mine and she furthered. "The bodies, I mean."

I answered the question I wished she was asking. "The ones today were particularly gruesome."

My wishes were dashed by her following words. "No, the ones in Virginia."

I called it. When someone asked me about bodies, they always meant them. The spree. The girls. The basement.

"They did more in the past." I declared. That was true. Every night, I was visited by the sight. What that monster had done. I don't remember when it stopped. "I've sort of... numbed now."

In the smallest possible increment, Jane shrunk away. "That's frightening."

She had lost me a bit to the past, and my voice sounded far off, even to myself. "You think?"

"I suppose it's not my place to say." The resigned tone of her statement reeled me back. I couldn't let her think that way about me.

"You can say whatever you want."

With my compliance, she plowed on. "Then, are they why you moved here?" I could sense my face twisting in reaction to a query no one had yet dared present to me. Jane, however, held nothing back. "You caught the killer, why not stay down there? You were a hero." I knew the answer immediately. I knew it so well and so painfully in the pit of my soul since the news sensationalized the killings, the capture, and the cop. I allowed my deputy to read in my stare the ache that had driven me north.

"I couldn't live with those murders being the first thing anyone associated me with. I didn't want them to look into my eyes, and always think of those five girls."

Jane looked into my eyes. Jane looked into my eyes, and saw me. "I understand." With her reassurance, I finally allowed myself to dip into relaxation. The tension in my muscles was washed away, and I leaned back in my chair, glancing over her: the tendrils of dirty blonde hair that had slipped from her bun, her unblemished fingers clasped around the mug, her button nose that was always honest about when she was cold. I realized hadn't felt this content in any recent memory.

Then, the pendulum swung back and slammed me with that unforgiving fact:

I was thirty-eight.

She was twenty-six.

To belay the weight from shutting me down, I told her a truth. "I never thought you knew about what happened. Virginia's so far, and you were probably still in the academy, then."

My deputy shifted, it seemed like she was unsure of whether to continue, but she had already come to this point. "When you arrived it was all anyone would talk about." She flinched after she had finished, in reaction to her own remorse. "I'm sorry, that must be disappointing."

Though I hadn't ever told myself, I had always known. "It's fine." I stated flatly. In my peripheral vision, I watched Jane swivel her head to further her research of my home. Her next question disguised itself like a simple remark about the weather.

"Aren't you lonely?"

Hearing those words, from her, in this context, was almost absurd enough to make me laugh. I could only cough out: "You're getting more personal by the second."

She was unfazed, and trained her emerald irises on my person, with a twenty-something's signature combination of serious and naive. "You didn't leave anyone behind?"

For once, I was confronted with a thought I hadn't already considered. It seemed too obvious to even cross my mind. "There wasn't anyone to leave." That was when I learned that Jane had an inscrutable poker face. Even I couldn't tell what my words meant to her. So, noticing her cup, I rose to my feet. "More coffee?"

"Yes, please." Her perfect smile borne a sweet glow into the room. I regretted having to leave it. I took her mug, and while it was heating, her song floated into the kitchen. "Y'know, even though we've never talked like this, it somehow feels like we have." Next to the 'comforting' comment, that was the best thing I'd heard in ages.

"Really?" I called out while turning, before stopping mid-rotation as I discovered Jane standing right at my elbow. Startled- as if she expected I wouldn't find her there, staring at me- she froze like a bunny rabbit before something new, deciding whether or not to scamper away. In her mute indecision, the blanket around her shoulders began to slip off. My reflexes kickstarted without my prompting, and my arms circled around her to catch it. She made a slight hop of surprise at my closeness, before realizing what I was doing as I returned the cloth to its original position. Briefly, I thought I saw her cheeks color.

"Thanks." She murmured. Her eyes sneaking away from my gaze, she reached over to her shoulder, and for a second covered my hand with her own, before gently taking the blanket from me and pulling it tight around herself. A grin danced on her lips, and she wiggled slightly to the side so she was standing right in front of me, then lifted her pixie chin so her face was directly in line with mine. "And thanks again for letting me borrow your coat, earlier. I'm sorry, you must've been cold too."

In shock, my words sort of tripped from my mouth in fumbling haste. "Don't apologize." Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and before I could rethink, I confessed. "You mattered more in that moment." I think she was close to saying something then- the slight intake of breath indicated it- but my phone vibrated in my jeans before a sentence could be released. Had it been any other less chaotic day, I would have let it ring.

I checked the caller ID to be sure. It was the department. There was something here, now, with Jane, a moment- I didn't want to lose it. But I needed to know. I glanced at my deputy, then answered the phone.

"Carter." I tried not to sound impatient, but a thought as insignificant at that was shot dead by the information I received.

Our killer in custody was brutally murdered in the interrogation room.

By my detective.

Jane read me like a 'breaking news' banner. Her dainty voice cried upward, forlorn. "What's wrong?"

My phone dangled limply at my hip. "The assistant coroner is dead."

"Oh my god." Her quaking hands flew to her mouth. The blanket fell forgotten to the floor.

"George killed him." I finalized. Though I wanted nothing more than to comfort her shaking form, I couldn't manage to look her in the eye.

She was straining for breath below me. "What? George? Are they sure?" Her face, still aimed at mine, begged me to change my mind. "That can't be true." At last I turned down at her a blank and inarguable stare, and watched as a devastated scowl contorted her beauty. She let out a sandpaper whisper of grief. "Why is everyone going crazy?" I couldn't help myself- I placed one hand on her upper arm, and held her face with the other. What I had to say was too vital for anything less drastic.

The contact drew every last iota of her fleeting focus to my plea. "I know you probably don't want to stay any longer, but he got away, they don't know where he's headed, and I don't want you out there alone."

Jane nodded against my palm, and squeezed my fingers that were tangled in strands of her hair. "Of course. I'll stay." The tender scene lingered for a few seconds, until a foreboding sound from my porch crawled through the thin walls. My deputy swung her head toward toward the noise. "Do you... hear snow crunching?" Before I could stop her, she had silently rushed to the window, and needled the blinds aside just enough to get a good view. She swallowed a gasp. "It's him."