Page 12 of Long Way Down

“Yeah. I’m Irish,” he said, like that was obvious.

The hair and freckles, she thought. Made sense. But she didn’t know his last name; there’d been no way to know for sure.

Hell, she didn’t even know hisfirstname. She wondered if his mother knew he was a biker now; if his friends called him Pongo for his spots, and if they knew that that was how he introduced himself to detectives in bars.

Finally, the scene ended; cut to a busy police precinct that was immediately soothing not only in its familiarity, but in the knowledge that, now that the crime had occurred, the narrative could shift to solving it.

“We can watch something else if you’re not into it,” Pongo offered. A kindness, one that left her wondering if she looked as tense as she felt.

She made an effort to breathe out slowly and relax her posture. “No, this is good. I should watch it.”

When she dragged the nearest throw blanket around her shoulders, he didn’t comment on it.

~*~

Melissa expected Pongo to start talking, or slide closer and put an arm around her, start trying to soften her up and talk her into a more compromising position. He did neither, though; stayed on his side of the couch and watched the movie, letting her watch uninterrupted in turn.

By the time the second victim was found, she was fully invested; thought she might have lashed out had anyone turned it off.

The premise she already knew from web searches: the active suspect was carrying out the attacks and leaving notes behind.This one’s for you, Jackie. And Jackie himself was wearing all-white at a maximum-security prison, claiming not to know this admirer, smiling benignly at the detectives when they came to interview him. He liked to talk, this Jackie: friendly and civilized andI wish I could be of more help, Detectives. The actor who played him hadn’t become especially famous after this role, but he’d delivered an admirable performance. A violent brute wouldn’t have proved half as frightening; under a cloak of regret and friendliness, he would cock his head just so, and the light would strike his eyes, and the monster within would shine through for a moment. A trick of lighting, makeup, performance, and musical score, Melissa knew, but that didn’t comfort her, much. She kept trying to think of the characters as actors, performers playing their parts, reading lines off a page, but the story was sucking her in, little by little. Until she swore she could smell the senior detective’s cigarette smoke; until her stomach hurt like the younger, antacid-popping junior detective.

All the victims – five by the halfway point in the film – lived very different lives, were all from different backgrounds and had never met one another. But the junior detective had figured out they’d all had electrical work done in their homes, recently, all by the same company. One of the electricians was out sick when they went by Sparky’s to check. The net began to tighten.

And then, in a flurry of quick-cut scenes and a swell of music, Jackie pulled off a jailbreak.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Her phone rang.

Melissa jumped. Jumped physically off the couch, reaching to her hip for a gun that wasn’t there, smacking her shin on the edge of the coffee table so hard she saw stars. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, turned, hobbling, and saw that Pongo was asleep, slumped over against the arm of the couch with the towel of half-melted ice leaving a wet patch on the front of his jeans. Her pulse hitched, stuttered, and evened out as she found the remote, paused the movie, and picked her phone up off the end table where it had begun to ring again.

Contreras.

“Shit,” she muttered again, and answered. “This is Dixon.”

“Sorry if I woke you,” Contreras sounded wide-awake on his end. “Just got the call: Lana Preston’s awake.”

Three

“Someone’s there,” Ivy whispered.

“Nuh-uh. Where?” Melissa asked. A breeze had kicked up, briny and hot, and it stirred the moss in the oaks so that shadows lapped over the mossy old shingles and left the cloudy windows winking at them.

“There. Inside.”

Melissa didn’t think that was right, thought Ivy was trying to scare her, like she did when she hid under the bed and reached out to grab Melissa’s ankles, shrieking with laughter when Melissa jumped.Did you pee your pants? Betcha did. Pissy Missy. That’s what I’ll call you. Pissy Missy, Pissy Missy, Little Pee-Pee Pants.

But then a silhouette passed in front of a window, and the sunlight caught a flash of clean, plaid shirtsleeve. Therewassomeone in there.

Don’t talk to strangers, her father’s stern warning flashed through her mind. They knew everyone who lived on their road…but the swamp was deep, and dark, and vast. It might not be a neighbor, but anyone at all in there.

“Come on.” Melissa grabbed Ivy’s wrist and tried to tug her away. “Ivy,come on.”

“I wanna see who it is.”

“Ivy…” Melissa’s tummy cramped like it did during a thunderstorm, her heart tap-tap-tapping hard and fast against her ribs. She didn’t know what sort of threat a stranger posed, what might happen if one caught them, if they’d be swallowed up like Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, only that Daddy had gotten a rare look in his eyes when he’d delivered his warning, and she’d taken him seriously.

“Quit bein’ a crybaby,” Ivy hissed, and snatched her hand away.