Page 80 of Long Way Down

Osborn shielded his mouth from Bradley and said, in a stage whisper, “I wrote a book and Spence is the one who pitched it to the agents. He stands to get a cut and he doesn’t want me getting in any new trouble, even though I’ve told him that would increase sales.” He chuckled to himself when Bradley spluttered a protest. “I’m joking,” he assured. “Well. A little.”

Melissa found herself at a loss. She’d expected an intense stare, maybe some lip-licking. An focused and predatory attention; a littlehello, Clarice, really. Butnothingabout Osborn jumped out at her as creepy or threatening.

It was devastating, really, because it affirmed what she’d always feared about herself: that she wouldn’t know true danger if it smiled at her.

She thought of Pongo, and his winks, and his freckles, and felt faintly sick.

“We’re here to pick your client’s brain,” Contreras said. “We don’t think he’s involved in any way. But we do think, given what’s been happening, that our perp is trying to attract his attention, or may have already done so. Anything we ask, we ask in our own interests. We can have our captain call you if you’re worried this is some sort of entrapment.”

Bradley scowled, tip of his pen tapping on his legal pad, but finally jerked a nod.

Osborn leaned an elbow on the table edge and glanced between them. “How can I help you, Detectives?”

Contreras drew two photos from his breast pocket and slid them over: the orange and the pink Post-It notes from the crime scenes; the bold, all-caps writing, unmistakably masculine, the nib of the pen pressed hard to the paper.

Osborn said, “May I?” and at Contreras’s nod, pressed a fingertip to a near corner of the photo and dragged it closer. This was the man those messages had been written for. Here was the god for whom a girl named April’s back had become an altar.

Melissa watched him study it, noted the flicker of his lashes and the way he knuckled his glasses absently up his nose when they started to slip. With his head bent down, his graying hair revealed a thin patch at the back of his head, a peek of shiny pink scalp.

“Hm,” he hummed, and lifted his head. “And you think this is for me?” He frowned. “The last person who called me Davey was my Sunday school teacher when I was four. My friends called me Dave.”

What friends? she wondered. Friends with whom he’d had beers and watched football; friends who wished him well when he trooped down ice-slick front steps to the cab that had been called for him. Friends he ribbed and teased with…before he went out and beat a woman’s face to a pulp while he raped her?

How could a rapist have friends?

How could a rapist sit here quietly and pose a question so innocently?

She’d learned that humans were capable of monstrous things at an early age, but it still caught her off guard sometimes; left her reeling and clammy with fear-sweat.

“There was a movie that came out in the nineties,” Contreras said, continuing the interview because he wasn’t having a dumbass existential crisis at this bolted-down picnic table the way she was. “Tribute. Ever heard of it?”

“Was that…oh, no, it was that other one. With the young detective whose father had killed someone when he was a child, right?”

“Yeah. The serial rapist who was using his attacks to leave tributes for an inmate who’d been infamous a decade before.”

Bradley murmured a “Hmm.”

Osborn lifted his brows. “My conviction was ten years ago.”

“Yeah. And inTribute, the notes read, ‘This one’s for you, Jackie.’ The inmate’s name was Jack.”

“Hence Davey,” Osborn said, nodding. “But I believe the rapist in the film – the more recent one – had a personal connection with the inmate, didn’t he?”

Melissa didn’t know, because she hadn’t finished the movie. She said, “Maybe this one does, too. The deputy warden said you have a fan club.”

He shrugged, and his smile was self-deprecating. “Not one I started, and not one I have any outside contact with, I can assure you.”

She frowned. “Then how do you explain having multiple female visitors each week?”

Bradley sliced a hand through the air in front of his client, staying his response. “If you’re suggesting my client has a relationship with a known criminal–”

“I’m suggesting,” Melissa cut him off, “that your client meets with dozens of strangers every month, and has no way of knowing what they’re capable of. But maybe something jumped out at him that seemed suspicious, so if you’d let your client speak freely, we can figure that out and then get out of both your hair. Sound like a plan?”

His face had darkened throughout, flushed with anger. He prepared to speak, and Osborn said, quietly, “Spence, it’s fine. I’m old hat at this by now; I know what to say and what to keep to myself. I’m not worried about talking to the detectives.”

“In fact,” Contreras said, shooting Melissa a quick look, “it’d be helpful, Mr. Bradley, if you and I could sit at that table over there and you could go over some of your client’s correspondence with me. The warden said you would be the one to ask about someone stalking Mr. Osborn.”

Melissa had tipped her chin in a nod. Though she didn’t relish the idea, she thought getting Osborn alone, just the two of them one-on-one, was their best bet for getting answers. So she sat, silent and waiting, while Bradley worked through the angst of leaving his client behind.