Page 84 of Long Way Down

“Gone what?”

“It’s a thrift store. Big building, used to be a shopping center, now it’s a thrift warehouse full of all sorts of junk.” He frowned. “Which girl was from Cool Down? Was–” She cringed as she watched him figure it out: his lifted brows, his slow grin. “Pongo, huh?”

“I willnottalk about him right now. But that’s where the first girl he told me about works. I, uh, kinda interviewed her last night. Off the record,” she said, holding him off with a raised hand when he pitched forward across the table. “She’s scared shitless and doesn’t want to come forward. Didn’t even want to talk to me. But I saw the scars myself. And it fits with what Osborn said: the perp’s not obsessed with these girls in particular, but with Osborn. With leaving a, for lack of a better word, tribute for him.”

She thought he might argue, but after a beat, he nodded. “Kinda makes sense. If he was OCD, if it was about the ritual, there’d be a pattern in the forensics. We wouldn’t see the escalation, the different ways of leaving his tribute. He’d be consistent, right?”

“That’s my guess. Osborn said we’d also see a stronger pattern with the vics.”

Contreras nodded again, reached into the calamari basket, and frowned when he came up empty. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’m not supposed to be eating fried shit.”

“Oops.”

“My doctor’s on me about my cholesterol. Maria, too.”

“Who’s scarier? Your doctor or Maria?”

“Do you have to ask?” he chuckled, and ripped open a packet of the wet wipes the waitress had left on the edge of the table. “Our guy thinks Osborn’s a rockstar, then,” he said, back on topic, cleaning the grease off his hands. “Does said rockstar have any guesses as to why?”

“Oh, several,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He really is spending all his time in the library up here. He’s living in the criminal justice section.

“According to his ‘research,’ criminals like him serve as, quote, ‘fantasies made manifest’ for all the little hateful weirdos out there – that last part was my quote, by the way.”

“I could tell.”

“He called them ‘emotionally disturbed.’ The ‘disaffected youth searching for purpose and fame in a purposeless, overly famous world.’ He said they’d settle for infamy instead, and that they latch onto figures like him. To them, people like Osborn are gods. They mimic crimes to achieve that same level of media attention and to feel closer to the objects of their obsession.”

“There’s a bright outlook on young people.” His brow furrowed. “Does he think our guy’s young, by the way?”

“Maybe. He said someone young, or someone experiencing youth for the first time.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

She held up her hands. “No idea. He went off in the weeds for a bit about the psychological damage of being forced to grow up too quickly; childhood trauma and assuming responsibility, and the delay of adolescence until later in life.”

Contreras snorted. “A buncha bullshit, in other words.”

“Yeah,” she said, tone flat, while a voice from the past whispered that he’d kill her family if she ever told. She swallowed hard and said, “He thinks we ought to check in with his vics, see if anyone’s been bothering them. This guy will have studied him, his crimes and his life, which makes me think we ought to dig into Osborn’s past, too.”

Contreras pointed at her. “Now there’s a good idea.” Hands clean, the scent of chemical lemons heavy in the air, he dug out his wallet. “I’ll look her up when we get back to the precinct.”

Melissa opened her bag. “I’ll pay for mine.”

“You didn’t even eat yours.” The waitress appeared, and he said, “Can my friend get a doggy bag, please?”

Melissa made a face at him when the woman was gone. “I’m not liking you today.”

He grinned. “You’ll like me less when I make you eat the thing on the ride back.”

She stuck out her tongue to the sound of his laughter…but the sound couldn’t dispel the cloud of uneasiness that surrounded her.

Halfway across the parking lot, shrugged deep into the hood of her waterproof jacket, she glanced over her shoulder up the river’s edge, toward the dull pink of Sing Sing’s perimeter wall. She pictured Osborn’s face, the knowing little smile beneath his glasses, and recalled the line she hadn’t relayed to Contreras just now.

I think you know something about that, don’t you, detective? Childhood trauma.

What – what makes you think that?

It’s something about your eyes. The way they’re haunted.