Page 82 of Long Way Down

She made a face before she could stop herself, and he chuckled.

“I take it you wanted it to be an ex?”

“I don’t want it to be anyone,” she huffed, because, damn it, shehadwanted it to be that little creep Jason. “I just wanna find the bastard.”

“Hm. Your accent. Tennessee?”

Fuck. “None of your business,” she snapped. “Focus on this.” She thumped a fingertip down on the table, above the photo. “Why is he dedicating these rapes to you? Who is he?”

“I already told you I don’t know him,” Osborn said, calmly, as though speaking to an unhappy child. “The only in-person visitors I’ve had are women.”

“What about phone calls? Letters?”

“I don’t get to read my own mail. You’ll have to ask Spence about that.”

“What about former associates?” she pressed. Leaving here with nothing felt like losing; she hated the idea of him smiling at her retreating back with the simple satisfaction of knowing he’d been unhelpful. “Relatives? Any cousins? Nephews?”

He put his head to the side, smile serene, now. “Come on, Detective. You have my file. You already know I don’t have any family or friends.”

“Then–” She paused, and took a deep breath.

“How old are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“What? Early thirties? You’re a detective. You’ve seen enough bad shit to know that the world’s not a comic book. Somewhere out there, I can promise you there’s more than one person who admires me for what I did. It could be anyone. The boy who rings up your groceries. The man who held the door open for you on your way into the store.Anyone.”

It could even be, she well knew, the man standing at the pulpit every Sunday, thanking her mother afterward for her generous offering to the collection plate.

She said, “Why do you sound happy about that?”

He looked it, too, eyes sparkling behind his glasses.

“Everyone in the world has monstrous thoughts and urges. I acted on mine. I’m free, detective. They put me behind bars, but I did it, and they can’t take it away.” He tapped the side of his head. “It’s still here, all of it, and I’mfree.”

Seventeen

“Okay, so, he’s batshit.”

Melissa sighed and tore the top off a sugar packet. “Not really, no.”

Contreras paused with his fork halfway to his mouth and gave her areally?look.

“Okay, heis,” she conceded. “But it’s like he’s very aware that he is. He’s smart-crazy, not throw-poop-at-you-crazy.”

He snorted. “Now there’s a scientific scale.”

She sighed and picked up the California Wrap she’d ordered beneath the sternly paternal look he’d given her when she tried to order nothing but coffee. Her brain acknowledged that it tasted good, but her stomach gave an uneasy roll anyway.

They’d spent two hours with Osborn. Or, rather, she had. Bradley had intervened a few times, overcome with anxiety that she was, in his words, “trying to coerce him into a confession,” and then Contreras would wrangle him back to the other table.

Once Osborn realized that he wasn’t going to be able to spook her – at least not outwardly – he’d settled down and proved helpful.

In a terrifying way.

“I knew who my victims were,” he’d said, conversationally. “But I wasn’t obsessed with them. I saw them a time or two. I liked their hair” – his victims had all been blonde, she recalled from the case files – “and I liked that they knew they were attractive. One was wearing this skirt, and when she bent over, she had to know that she was–”

“Let’s not linger over details,” she’d gritted out.