Calla woke to the smell of coffee.
With a luxurious stretch, she rolled over and checked her phone for the time. Well, it looks like Cooper's awake early, for once.
Yawning, she scrolled through her other notifications—Olivia had blown her shit up with an endless parade of pictures from Marissa's party—and then paused, breathless, at the unread email at the bottom of her homescreen.
Here's that info you wanted. Delete this email within 24 hours. I'll take care of the rest.
You owe me.
BR
BR. Blake Richardson. Calla grinned as she slipped out of bed and bounded into the kitchen, high on her own brilliance. "Cooper!" she sang.
She found him on the couch, a chipped blue mug in hand. "Coffee's on," he announced. His eyes narrowed on her giddy expression. "Who died?"
"Ha-ha." She threw herself down on the couch beside him. He swore, holding the mug above his head to avoid spilling coffee everywhere. "My plan worked," she told him, smug.
He yawned, unimpressed. "You're going to have to be more specific."
"Blake emailed me the files."
"Oh, goodie," he muttered. "I sense my morning is about to take a turn for the worse."
Calla leapt to her feet, not at all discouraged by his lack of enthusiasm. "I'm going downstairs to the printers. Don't move."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he called to her retreating form.
She checked and double-checked the size of the file Blake had emailed over, and—satisfied the leasing office's outdated printers would suffice for the job—she sprinted down the third floor corridor, wallet grasped firmly in hand. The leasing office was blessedly empty at such an early hour, which Calla took full advantage of, dividing the contents of the file across each of the two printers available for tenant use.
A spark of impatience set her foot to racing as she leaned against a nearby wall and waited, eyes tracking the printers' progress as they spit out ten, twenty, thirty sheets of paper—and more besides. It took the better part of an hour to see the task done. By the end of it, Calla felt liable to crawl out of her skin.
When she returned to the apartment, papers in hand, she found Cooper still sprawled on her couch, coffee untouched. "Here," she said, tossing half the files in his lap.
He sucked in a startled breath. "What the—"
"We're lucky." She claimed the far side of the couch, placing another stack of papers between them. "Detective Douche has been a small town, crime-fighting machine for most of his career, minus a short stint with the bureau over in Raleigh, back when he was fresh out of the academy."
Cooper stared at the pile of documents in his lap, aghast. "And this makes us lucky, how?"
"Because if he'd served any real amount of time in the big city, we'd have hundreds of case files to work through. Homicides are a dime a dozen in places like New York or Miami. But Greenwitch?" She shrugged. "Sleepy town. Low crime rate."
"Until you came around," he muttered.
"Until his son came around," she corrected him. "Which is all kinds of ironic. As it is, he only worked thirty-six homicide cases over the course of his career. Less work for us."
Cooper heaved a sigh. "This is going to take all morning."
Calla stretched out her legs, ignoring his pointed glare when her toes brushed his thigh. "Aren't you a criminal justice major? This should be right up your alley."
"Bite me."
She resisted the urge to do just that. "Cheer up. Coffee's on me. And," she added when his sour expression didn't budge, "I'll order pizza for lunch."
"Deal," he said, setting aside his coffee. He immediately started leafing through the first case file, brow furrowed in concentration. "What are we looking for?"
"We need to match the names of the six targets with the old cases Michaels worked over the course of his career." She recited each name from memory. "There's Owen McCormick. Kurt Rivera. Harlan—"
"Hold on." Cooper ripped off the corner of one of the transcripts and reached for a stray pen. "Okay. Go."
"Harlan Caddel," she finished. "Liberty Schwartz. Jeremy Kepner. Lenny Li."
"Professor Li," Cooper corrected automatically.
Calla nudged him again with her toe, delighting in his disgusted expression. "I didn't choose him, Coop. I didn't choose any of them."
"I know that," he mumbled, inching away from her foot. "Can't we just scan through the files to see if the last names are a match for the case?"
"Not necessarily." She licked the edge of her thumb and began sorting through the documents in her lap. "It's not like their names will be plastered across the top of the file in red ink. Quite a few of these cases were never closed. We could be looking for suspects. Eyewitnesses. Anyone, really."
"That's helpful." Cooper reached for his coffee. "Well. Cheers, I guess."
They worked in silence after that, burying their noses in paperwork. An hour passed. And then another. Transcripts littered the couch, the floor—until stepping into the kitchen to put on a fresh pot of coffee became more trouble than it was worth. Calla alternated between the task at hand and sneaking glances at Cooper, a troubled crease etched between his eyes.
Exhaustion had left its mark on him. He hadn't slept well—this she knew, having woken to the sound of his uneasy tossing and turning. She had a feeling it had been a good long while since he'd slept at all.
What keeps you awake at night, Cooper Daniels?
He glanced up, and as he did, their eyes met. "What? Why are you staring at me?"
"I'm not staring at you."
"You're totally staring at me."
"Whatever." Calla stood abruptly and retreated to the kitchen, ignoring him. "I need caffeine."
As she tiptoed across the landmine of paperwork they'd built up over the last two hours, her eyes landed on the EMT costume Cooper had thrown over the back of the obnoxious yellow dining room chair she loathed (she hadn't bothered with her own furniture, not when it was so much easier to move into a pre-furnished unit). Her lip curled at the sight of the lipgloss smeared on the jacket's sleeve.
With perhaps more force than strictly necessary, she put on another pot of coffee and returned her attention to the transcript she'd only half-heartedly scanned moments before.
According to eyewitness reports, Regina Kendrick was last seen leaving her office at approximately 5:37. Both the brother and step-sister deny same-day contact prior to Ms. Kendrick's disappearance. First responders on the scene, including Detective Gerald Michaels and Lieutenant Eric Fargera—
"Calla." Cooper's voice floated in from the living room. "Take a look at this."
"Hold on," she mumbled, scanning through the rest of the report. Regina Kendrick. I know that name.
Impatient, Calla typed in a quick search on her phone. Regina Kendrick. As expected, her obituary came up as the first search result. Regina Kendrick. Twenty-seven. Unmarried. One child. Daughter to Steven Kendrick and Maribeth Schwartz.
Schwartz. Calla grinned. There you are.
"Hello?" Cooper called. "I have juicy, scrumptious intel."
"Coming." Calla quickly refilled her coffee mug. "What did you find?" she asked, kicking discarded paperwork out of her path as she made her way back to the living room.
Cooper brandished the page in his right hand. "Lenny Li. His name popped up in a cold case for some poor girl's murder—Margaret Yate. Apparently, Professor Li and this girl were enrolled at the same community college and ended up running in the same social circles."
"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Michaels was the lead detective on the case." When Cooper nodded, grim about the mouth, Calla leaned over his shoulder to get a better look at the report in his hand. "And was Professor Li charged with anything?"
He shifted beneath her scrutiny. "Nope. But he was brought in for questioning. Something about conflicting testimony that put him at a dorm party the night of Margaret's murder. I guess people thought they were close. Said if anyone knew where she'd been that night, it would be him."
"And then she turned up dead." Calla straightened. "You said he was never charged."
"Everyone at the party was trashed. They didn't have any hard evidence against him, so the case never went to trial. Which would explain why his name never popped up in the media."
Calla sipped her coffee, thoughtful. "I found something, too." She reclaimed her spot on the couch. "Liberty Schwartz."
Despite his many reservations, Cooper leaned forward, the look in his eyes one of impatience. He's enjoying this, she realized. And then she continued. "Schwartz was arrested over twenty years ago for the murder of her step-sister, Regina Kenderick. But she never did any time. It was a mistrial." Calla blew on her coffee. "I knew the name Kendrick sounded familiar when I came across it just now. Apparently, the Kendrick-Schwartz scandal was a pretty big deal, so there was plenty of coverage to sift through online, back when I was still trying to dig up information on Schwartz. But Michaels never came up in the search, probably because he was only a junior detective at the time, but it was his fuck-up that led to the mistrial. Schwartz walked free because of him."
"He's tied to her. Just like he's tied to Lenny." Cooper eyed the papers scattered on the floor. "And you're betting he's tied to the others, too. Other cold cases. Or mistrials."
"The ones who got away," Calla finished quietly. "If you had a chance to avenge someone you love and clean up a few loose ends along the way, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know. I like to think I'd not devolve into a remorseless killer, if push came to shove." Cooper buried his face in his hands. "I don't understand. I mean, I get that losing your son the way Michaels did would be hard and everything, but why couldn't he take up, like, golf or something—"
"Let's stay on task." Calla scraped a handful of papers off the floor. "We've still got four cases to tie back to the detective before we go and do anything rash."
"Before we go and do anything rash?" Cooper scoffed. "When am I the one doing something rash?"
She glanced at him over the edge of her papers. "Like that time you literally tripped over a dead body and then thought, I should throw up, right here, and mix up my DNA with the killer's. Something rash like that, you mean?"
He turned scarlet. "That wasn't rash, that was unlucky—"
"Or that time you decided to confront Astrid, alone, and got baited by Tom Sahein's scrawny ass instead?"
"That—" He stuttered. "That was one time—"
"Or that other time you beat the shit out of Tom before fourth period. And let's not forget when you tried to charge off like a white knight to save your best friend, who'd just been kidnapped by a sociopath, with no weapon, no plan, and no clue how to get yourself out of that mess—"
"Okay," he interjected loudly. "We can move on now."
Calla glanced back down at her papers with a sly smile. "That's what I thought."
A beat of silence passed. Cooper cleared his throat. "Calla?"
I know that tone. He's about to ask me something exceptionally stupid, or incredibly insensitive, or both. "Spit it out, Cooper."
"It's about Professor Li."
I bet it is. "Alright."
"Well." He shifted, jostling the cushion at her feet. "How are you going to, ah..."
And there it is. A question that's both exceptionally stupid and incredibly insensitive. Calla dropped the case file into her lap. "I don't know how I'm going to kill your professor yet, if that's what you're asking."
"Oh." His eyes darted back to the transcript in his hands. "Right." She watched him pretend to scan the page, his knee bouncing restlessly. Finally, he blurted, "What's the...uh, process for figuring something like that out?"
"You're asking me how to be a serial killer."
"No. Yes." He dragged a hand through his hair—one, two, three. The old, familiar pattern was somehow comforting. "Maybe?"
She reached for her coffee. "There's not exactly a manual for me to follow, Coop. I'll stalk him on his socials, like usual. If I can figure out what his day-to-day looks like, or if he's got any particularly nasty vices, I can use that information to decide how to get the job done as...discreetly as possible. And then there's the question of how to dispose of the body—"
"Got it." Cooper set aside his papers with a heavy sigh. "Fuck."
"You asked." Her anger came roaring to the surface, an inferno crackling away in her chest.
"I know. I'm sorry." He pulled his knees to his chest, curling in on himself. He looked even more exhausted than he had before, if such a thing were possible. "I guess I'm just trying to understand. It's like...maybe, if I can get a solid grasp on how this works, that'll somehow make it less awful."
She leveled him with a cool stare. "I think that information will make the situation much, much worse, actually."
"Maybe. But I can't sit here on the sidelines and pat myself on the back because I didn't pull the trigger myself." He stared at his kneecaps. "If I'm in this, then I'm in this. And I am in this." He gestured at the paperwork between them. "I'm helping you sentence a man to his death, Calla. Directly. Indirectly. What does that matter?" He barked out a mirthless laugh. "Sitting in the dark isn't going to change what's happening here, so I might as well have the full picture and take some measure of responsibility."
Her coffee had long gone cold. Calla set it aside, contemplative. Cooper had never been one to ask for specifics. If anything, burying his head in the sand had always seemed his most faithful recourse—as if he might be able to hide from the horrors of his reality by feigning ignorance. And Calla, who'd never been one to share such dark, nasty pieces of herself, had only been too happy to oblige him.
"You aren't going to like it," she said slowly. "I can promise you that, Cooper."
"I don't have to like it. Just...tell me," he urged her. "Tell me how you did it. Tell me how you killed them."
Calla stared at the ceiling, arms folded over her chest. Her anger had drained away and now lay dormant in the bowels of her belly, where it waited, coiled—ready to spring.
Tell me how you killed them.
"Fine. Here's a bedtime story for you." She did not smile. Instead, she closed her eyes. "It all started with a man named Owen McCormick."
From the opposite end of the couch, she felt as Cooper slowly uncurled his legs. "He was the first."
"He was a nobody," she corrected him softly. "Which is why nobody missed him when he was gone."