Page 10

TEN

Liam

Present

I park the car outside Abby’s apartment building before we both get out of the vehicle and head inside. Once on the second floor, I knock, but the door is unlocked, so I push it open.

“Well, this just got a whole lot more interesting,” I say.

“I really don’t like the sound of that,” Gabriel mutters as he steps up behind me.

The man we’d been looking for, the one named Mitch who owned the house where the dead body was found, is currently sitting at the kitchen table. He appears to have been stabbed multiple times before he bled all over the table, knocking down several objects around the room in his attempt to survive. It makes me think that whoever stabbed him put him back in the chair after he died.

I look up at Abby who is standing to the side of a second chair that appears to have fallen down during the tussle. She’s wearing a large t-shirt that just covers her underwear and has no pants. Her shirt and arms are coated in blood as she stares right at me.

“Looks like you were quite busy,” I comment as I observe the mess she’s had me walk in on.

Gabriel seems absolutely horrified as he takes it all in and appears to realize that we’ve literally let ourselves into a crime scene that we shouldn’t be anywhere near. “We need to call this in?—”

Abby looks alarmed. “NO! Why the fuck did you bring him?” she asks me, fixing me with her wild eyes.

“Because you woke both of us up when you sent so many texts,” I say. “Where I go, Gabriel goes, and you asked me to come.”

She shakes her head like she can’t comprehend this. “I didn’t do it. Please don’t call anyone. I didn’t do it.”

“Oh?” I ask as I look at her hand. It’s clean of blood where the knife must have been held when Mitch was stabbed.

“I didn’t. I didn’t. Mitch and I were really close. I didn’t do it. Someone’s setting me up.”

Tears are breaching her eyes, just adding to the drama.

“If you really didn’t do it, why didn’t you call the police?” Gabriel asks.

Abby is shaking as she gestures at the scene before her. “You have to be fucking kidding me! If I called the police, they would assume I did it!”

“It really does look like you did it,” I admit.

Her shaking is worsening, and I can’t tell whether she’s just enraged or upset. I’ve never been the best at reading emotions like these. When someone is so far gone that they seem incapable of controlling their emotions, I find myself unsure what to do with them.

“Please, Liam. I didn’t kill him. I need your help.”

I carefully step toward the body, really not wanting to get blood on my shoes. I grab a Kleenex as I walk by and use it to grasp Mitch’s hair to pull his head up. He still has his eyes… but why? I had assumed the eyes of the first body were removed for a reason, unless they were done by different people—or did they not have time?

“Liam, this is really fucking risky. We need to get out of here and call it in,” Gabriel says, sounding anxious.

Abby looks terrified as she comprehends Gabriel’s words. “N-No. You can’t, please… Liam. I would rot in prison for something I didn’t even do.”

“What the fuck were you doing that you didn’t notice someone getting stabbed in your apartment and then coating you in blood?” Gabriel asks.

Abby hesitates, clearly understanding why we’re having trouble believing this. “I was fucking sleeping! I had my sound machine on… I must not have heard it.”

“You didn’t feel them coating you in blood?” Gabriel questions, rightfully suspicious.

Tears are racing down her cheeks as she looks at Gabriel like he’s the problem. Like everything would be alright if he wasn’t here.

“Were you using again?” I ask.

She stills before shaking her head. “No! I promise. I wasn’t. I didn’t.” Abby rubs her face, smearing blood across it and then looking down at her hands in horror that she’s wiping it everywhere. I’m surprised she didn’t wash it off while waiting for me, but my guess is that she wants me to tell her exactly what to do and how to do it so she doesn’t fuck up the scene. She knows they’d search the sink for evidence. They’d swab the drain and other places she wouldn’t have been able to easily clean up. She knows the only way she’s getting out of this is with my help.

“Liam. Please. Please. I will do anything you ask, but if you arrest me, that’ll be the end. They want to frame me. They want me out of the picture.”

“Who are ‘they’?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says as she shakes her head wildly.

“I don’t know if I want to help someone who won’t tell me the damn truth,” I growl. “Gabriel, come on.”

A sob escapes her. “I fucked up. I fucked up, Liam. Please. I got in a bad spot. I ended up with some man who was making my life miserable. But I liked the drugs, so I went along with it, and then Mitch got me out. He got me out and he saved my life, and we were doing good because of each other. We were doing good and then…”

“Was Mitch the one who killed the guy in his house the other day?” I ask.

“I really don’t know. I thought it was him… I thought he did it. And then I heard the gunshot and knew the police would be coming and he saved me, Liam. He saved me, and so I wanted to save him. I wanted to distract you guys so he could get away, and now he’s dead. He’s dead.” She chokes back a sob, and then her expression turns into a mask. I’m well aware it’s her way of coping with shit. She does it every time something goes wrong.

“I needed to protect him. I was going to live a life with him. We were going to get married and have kids and… but nothing good ever happens to someone like me. I deserve this, don’t I? Why the fuck else would everything happen this way?”

I don’t know what to do with the drama. I mean… what am I supposed to do? Tell her it’s okay she stabbed someone to death? Roll up the body in a rug and dispose of it? I suppose I could. But would I risk myself again for her? Back then, I did it to save myself… or maybe because the idea of killing again seemed tempting to me.

“It’s okay,” Gabriel says quietly, and my eyes shift over to him.

Is it okay? This sure doesn’t seem like the definition of “okay,” but I’m also positive that Gabriel is never wrong.

Abby frantically shakes her head. “Please. It’ll only be okay if Liam helps me. I’m asking him to get the body out of my apartment. To make it clear I didn’t do it. Liam, please, you can make the body disappear just like you made my father disappear. Please?”

I think about her father, whose death was written off as caused by gang violence related to a case he’d gotten himself wrapped up in. There’s no way anyone would ever tie it to me. The case is closed and the gang they pinned it on had dirtied their hands with the death of a different cop just weeks prior. I made it mesh so that no one would ever know I was involved. I could do that with this guy too. I’m significantly better at it now. Being in an apartment would be tricky, but I could get the body out, remove his teeth and burn his fingerprints so no one could identify him. I could?—

“You’ve trusted Liam once to chase away your demons; why can’t you trust him again?” Gabriel asks.

Abby gives him a desperate look. “I am! I’m begging him to help.”

“No. If you are being honest—and I hope you are, I want to believe you are—then we can’t just sweep this under the rug. Someone is trying to frame you. They killed someone you really care about. If we just destroy all of the evidence, what will keep them from coming again? What will keep them from killing you or placing blame on you in some other way? Liam is the best damn detective I know. You have to trust that he’ll figure this out. That he’ll save you without condemning you and himself.”

She’s staring at him now, and I know she’s not going to go for it. She’s stubborn. She relies on no one but herself. When everyone else has always fucked her over, why would she trust anyone?

Gabriel dips his head beseechingly. “Please. Let him chase your monsters away, but let him do it as a detective. Please?”

“I’ll go to prison.”

“Not if you’re innocent,” he says, sounding so determined that I’m not sure how anyone could not trust him.

Abby shakes her head, not believing a word he’s saying. “No one ever cares what I say or whether I’ve done something or not. They never have, and even if you pretend you do, you don’t. You don’t know me. Why the fuck would you care about me?”

“I don’t have to know everyone I help. I definitely don’t know everyone I help. That’s just a part of being a detective,” Gabriel says. “I want to help you, and I want to believe you and really hope you’re not lying. I promise Liam and I will work together to figure this out.”

She’s still as she stares at her hands. “Okay.” Her voice is quiet, like she has no trust in us. She knows she’ll get fucked over again and again. She’s submitted to this, but Gabriel hasn’t.

He gives her such a gentle smile. “We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to find justice for your friend. And we’re going to make sure to clear your name.”

Abby slowly looks over at me. “I never thought I’d see you with someone like him… I see why you like him.”

“Yeah… he’s really fucking special,” I say.

“Don’t let him go,” she whispers as her eyes trail over to Mitch. “Don’t let him go.”

“I’m going to search your apartment to make sure the killer isn’t still in here. And then you’re going to call the police while Gabriel and I go back downstairs. There don’t appear to be any security cameras. When you call them, you’re going to tell them my name, and that I’m on the case and you want me to help. Okay? As simple as that. If they know you personally called me here, they’ll boot us off the case but if we don’t tell them right away, it’ll give me time to examine the room before we have to face the consequences of your messages. I’m going to tell them I had you blocked so I didn’t see the messages. They won’t question it. I block half my coworkers whenever I’m bored of them.”

“Okay,” she agrees as I move through the apartment, careful not to disrupt anything. I’m thorough enough that I check every corner of the apartment, but it’s clear that if someone else did this, they’re gone.

“We’ll lock the door and as soon as we’re gone, you need to call the police, you hear me?” Gabriel asks. “Don’t leave the apartment. Don’t answer the door until the police are here. Don’t delete your messages to Liam. They’ll know if you do and will find it even more suspicious. It’s fine that you’ve contacted him, though it will make it more difficult getting him to work on the case if it seems like you two are close, but we’ll figure it out. Just pretend he didn’t show up because if he did, they’re going to immediately make someone else work the case. It’s already going to look super suspicious that you contacted Liam instead of the police. When they ask, you tell them that because he was the detective you were dealing with, you thought it was the same as calling the police.”

Abby nods. “Got it.”

“We’ll be right outside waiting for the police to call, alright?”

“Okay.”

“Go into your room. You shouldn’t sit out here with him here. Go in and wait for us.”

He gently guides her into the bedroom before coming back and heading out with me.

Gabriel gives me a look as he runs a hand through his dark hair. “They’re still going to boot you off this case the moment they realize she texted you well before she called it in. They’re going to suspect it’s her. You might not even be able to touch the case. I assume you knew that when I got her to agree to call it in. I was just hoping that if it looks like we didn’t turn up, and she called it in, we’d have time to work the case before they realized her connection to you.”

“I know,” I say. “But if you’d told her the likelihood that I’ll be kicked off it, she would have insisted on me hiding the body.”

“If I hadn’t been there… would you have?” he asks curiously.

I think about it as we head down the stairs. “I’m not sure what it would have accomplished. Sure, she would have avoided arrest, but at what cost? Someone wants to frame her and if they can’t… will they try to kill her? Something’s not right. And I’m going to figure out what it is.”

“Did anything stand out to you when we were in there?”

“Her knife block was full; if she chose to kill him while filled with emotions, she wouldn’t have gone for a knife in the drawer. The knives in the drawer are rarely the sharpest, being thrown in with other utensils instead of those kept apart. You can’t say she cleaned up the knife and replaced it when her hands hadn’t gotten wet. The way the blood went up her arms was well done, but it wasn’t splattered right. There were areas where the splatter looked to have come from the side.”

“How could she have slept through that? You think she was drugged?”

“I assume she was… or she used herself. We’ll have to see where she was earlier. When I knew her, she took sleeping pills to sleep. I can’t tell you if that’s still a habit or not. Was she unable to sleep because of what happened the other day and took more than she needed so she never heard them enter? Did someone drug her? Of course we won’t get toxicology right away.”

We head out to the car but only move it to the street because we should get the call at any point that tells us to head to the apartment.

“Aren’t you surprised they haven’t called us yet?” Gabriel eventually asks as we watch the apartment. “I would say that even with her asking for us, they might not have permitted it, but then where are the police?”

I check my phone and see that it’s been almost ten minutes and nothing. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be hearing sirens at this point. Tossing the idea of having her blocked out the window, I call Abby to see what’s going on. It’ll be simple enough to explain that I called in response to her texts, but she doesn’t immediately pick up.

Gabriel asks, “You don’t think she’d have run, right? Do you think she agreed with us just so she could make a run for it?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest,” I admit as the phone rings and rings.

I hang up and sigh before calling the department. “This is Detective Paige. I’ve received urgent texts from Abigail Brown, the suspect in Steven Wong’s murder case. Have you received a call from her?”

“Hold please,” a woman says as I get out of the car and head toward the building. “Nothing. Can you give us an address?”

“Yes.” I rattle off Abby’s address. “Hyde and I are headed there now.”

“Backup will be there shortly.”

After ending the call, I grumble, “I should have just fucking called it in with me standing in the goddamn foyer. What was the sense of this if she wasn’t even going to call it in? I was trying to make it so it at least took a few days for them to realize we knew each other. I was trying to make her look less guilty. Why the fuck did I even care?”

Gabriel reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I’m amazed at how much it calms me down. “Because you were trying to help her and knew that if she called the police herself, the outcome would be best for her. The moment we were pulled into it, it complicated things… and would also make people question what she thought you could do differently. We need to make sure that no one ever looks into you. I need to protect you more than I need to protect anyone else.”

“I’m fine. I promise I’m extremely safe,” I say. “You don’t ever have to fret about that.”

Gabriel gives me a look like he’s prepared to fret every day for the rest of his life. He really shouldn’t. He’s much too cute to fret.

I knock on the door, but after getting no response, I try the doorknob. “It’s still locked. Would she lock it if she ran?”

“Maybe to delay us?” he asks.

“Possibly,” I say as I see something I hadn’t noticed before. “Was that door cracked earlier?”

“Which door?” Gabriel asks as he looks down the hallway at the door I’m fixated on. It really is hard to see that the door is cracked with the way we’re positioned. I could have missed it the first time, but I don’t think I did. I never miss shit like this.

I pull out my gun and start toward it before knocking on the door. “This is the police, come to the door with your hands up,” I bark.

Someone steps up onto the hallway behind us and freezes when they see the gun.

“Police,” Gabriel says as he turns and flashes the man his badge. “Do you know who lives in apartment twenty-six?”

“No one right now. The tenant moved out last week. Is something going on?”

“Have you seen the woman who lives in apartment twenty-four in the last day? Abby Brown?”

“No, I just got off work. I didn’t see anyone,” he says.

“Please go in your apartment.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice as he unlocks his door and hurries inside while I use my foot to push the other door open a little more. If this apartment is set up like Abby’s, that means the light is right inside. I flip it on and my eyes lock on to a fluttering curtain that hangs over the sliding glass door for the balcony.

“They must have left this way,” Gabriel says, but that’s not right.

“No… Abby did,” I say as I sweep the room. Gabriel has my back as I reach the railing and look over at Abby lying unmoving in the alley below.

“Fuck,” Gabriel yells as he turns and rushes back out the door. I look around the room and question when I got so fucking sloppy. If I hadn’t thought about protecting her, if I’d just called the police as I stood over Mitch’s body…

Carefully, I move farther into the vacant apartment. I push open all the doors until I reach the final one. Then I use my foot to slide open the door to the bedroom and look at the blood smeared across the trim of the closet door.

Slowly, I make my way toward it, but I know Mitch’s killer is long gone. I know that everyone is going to assume Abby killed Mitch before jumping off the balcony in some murder/suicide bullshit. But Abby wouldn’t just kill herself. No. If she were going to, she would have given up a long time ago.

I push the closet door open, but as I had guessed, there’s no one inside.

With that, I turn and rush out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out to the alley where Gabriel is kneeling next to Abby.

“She’s alive but unconscious. EMS should be here quickly,” he says. “Did you find anything upstairs?”

“Just some blood,” I respond as I walk over to him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I hesitate as I realize that most people probably wouldn’t be okay in these situations when someone they know was nearly killed. Where they could still be moments away from death based on the way her head appears to be bleeding. But I’m not like most people. I haven’t seen her in years . Yet doesn’t that make me a monster? Shouldn’t people worry and feel compassion no matter who is lying before them?

Gabriel’s face softens and I don’t know why. Does he mistake my hesitation as a loss for words to express my grief over the situation? Should I fake it? I can make others believe things I want them to, so can I make Gabriel think I’m normal?

“Liam, it’s okay to show care for people in other ways,” he says. “Just because you don’t hurt when others do doesn’t mean you don’t care.”

“I’m going to find who did this.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t care.”

Why is he so goddamn good?

“Paige, a word.”

I look over at the door of Abby’s apartment where Michaels stands and decide that I would rather not have a word with him. I dutifully go back to examining the crime scene and decide that if he really wants me, he can wrestle me out of this room. There’s no fucking way he’s going to win that fight.

“PAIGE, NOW.”

Everyone else in the room freezes. Strangely, I’m the one he seems pissed at, and I’m the only one still doing my job. It’s like he can’t even see how useful I am!

Gabriel approaches and I know it’s all over as he sets a hand on my back and parades me right out of the room like I’m his little puppy. And here I am, wagging my tail the whole way because his hand is pressed gently on my back.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew her?” Michaels asks.

The woman in question is currently at the hospital where she still hasn’t woken up because of the swelling on her brain from impact.

“I didn’t remember her. I can’t even remember Jesse’s name and I’ve worked with him for years. You think I’m going to remember one of the many faces that came in and out of that stupid home when I was sixteen?” I ask.

“She texted you personally.”

“Because she recognized me when we were at the station and I was interrogating her.”

Michaels’ face is doing some weird thing. I believe he’s trying to show that he’s suspicious, but I’m confident he just looks like a fool. “So you looked into her and none of it clicked? Bullshit. You know you can’t be on this case.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be on the case dealing with Gabriel’s kidnapper either and?—”

His eyes narrow. “Things were different then. We have a new chief after the last one tried covering up his son’s murders, and we are being scrutinized now more than ever. You can’t be here.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, prepared to whip out my blackmail again if I need to. While he likely stopped the affair, it doesn’t mean it’s not still haunting him.

“Go. HOME.”

“Thank you. We apologize for not telling you earlier,” Gabriel says. “Sometimes when emotions get mixed into things, we start to believe that we will try harder than others to find the answer. We would still love to help in any way we can that will leave us unbiased.”

“No, you’re done. You’re out. Both of you. Go home.”

I grit my teeth but let Gabriel direct me down the hallway where I run into our replacements, Matthew and Donna.

“I see the less superior detectives are here,” I announce.

“As you make the walk of shame back to your car,” Matthew says, looking rather smug.

I tsk. “I would love to brawl you just once .”

“I would not love to do that! You’d kick my ass.”

“I’d watch,” Donna says, which is probably the first decent thing she’s ever said. “And bet on Liam.”

Second decent thing she’s ever said.

Gabriel shakes his head, and we all know his is the final word. “We’re not brawling. Matthew, we really don’t think Abby did this. I know the killer made it look like she stabbed him and then jumped off?—”

“I know. If she was going to kill herself, why go into another apartment to do it? She has a perfectly fine balcony in her own place,” Matthew says. “I’m not as useless as Liam thinks I am.”

“Can you comb through all technology that Mitch and Abby had?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course. You think something’s on it?”

“I want to know where the recording is from the first death. Someone recorded Steven Wong’s murder, but something was also taken from Mitch’s house. While I’m confident Abby wasn’t involved in the deaths, I’m certain that she’s the one who took something out of Mitch’s place. I think she was trying to hide something. She thought Mitch was the killer and was trying to protect him. Whether or not he needed her protection, I’m not sure. We now know that she was wrong, that Mitch likely wasn’t the original killer.”

“One second you’re being an ass, the next you act like I’m worthy of your information,” Matthew complains.

“You’re welcome,” I say as I give his cheek a pat and head out the door.