Page 92 of Long Way Down

He titled his head toward Dana and nodded, as if to saygo ahead.

“Dana, the reason we’re here is because we have reason to believe that someone might be studying David Osborn’s victims.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“Women were attacked,” Contreras said, voice still careful. “Not by Osborn – we’ve been up to Sing Sing today and, trust me, he’s still locked up – but by someone who appears to admire him.”

“Admire him,” Dana echoed, voice faint, as though her lips were numb. “Holy shit.”

“From what we’ve learned,” Melissa said, “it’s likely this person would have spent some time studying Osborn’s victims in order to feel closer to him.”

Dana sat back hard, her swivel chair creaking from the sudden movement, and pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes tremendous and red-rimmed in her shadowed face. Slowly, they began to glisten with tears.

“It’ll never stop, will it?” she whispered between her fingers. “Never.”

Melissa wished she could offer an assurance, but it had never stopped for her, either, so she kept silent.

~*~

Of Osborn’s other victims, only one still lived in New York. One had committed suicide before the trial; another had been killed in a tragic, one-car crash that was the result of alcoholism. The others had all moved not simply out of the city, but out of state.

One remained, and Becky Danville had processed her trauma in a very different way than Dana Peterson.

She spoke with them in the office of the gym she co-owned, where she taught judo, kickboxing, and a variety of women’s self-defense courses. She wore a lycra tank-top and shorts that highlighted a physique honed by hours and hours of hard work and strict diet, bulging biceps, calves, and quads.

“Yeah,” she said with a nod, and a sour curl of her upper lip. “Caught somebody following me across the parking lot a few times. Took off when I yelled at him. But the fifth time” – she grinned and cracked her knuckles – “I pretended to trip, and fall down on my knees so he could catch up to me.”

Contreras’s brows jumped. “That was a risk.”

“Heh. You think?” She lifted her left arm and flexed.

“Not that big of one,” Melissa said, which earned a grin from Becky.

“I waited until he was right up on me,” she continued. “I could tell he was trying to be quiet and fast, but his breathing was all excited. Sick fuck. When he was close enough, I popped up and kicked him right in the balls. When he bent double, I grabbed his head and kneed him in the nose.” She demonstrated as best she could while sitting down.

“That’ll do it,” Contreras said. “Did you call it in?”

“Nah. He took off, bleeding everywhere. I think he was crying.”

“Bleeding?” Melissa asked, perking up. “And this was in the parking lot?”

A parking lot that they found a few minutes later flooded with a half-inch of standing water, rippling beneath a fall of fresh raindrops.

Melissa’s breath steamed in the chill air as she sighed beneath her umbrella. “Well. It’s been too long anyway.”

“Yeah. Which takes us back to square one with ‘white guy.’”

“White guy who’s obsessed with David Osborn, even.”

“And who knows Lana and Lynn, somehow.”

“God,” she groaned, tipping her head back to look up at the roiling gray sky through the clear plastic of her umbrella. “Is it always like this?”

He nudged her arm and she turned so they could walk side-by-side through the puddles toward the unmarked. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Incredibly frustrating? Stressful? Like the weight of the world’s bearing down on your shoulders?” He chuckled, but it was a sad attempt.

The light was already fading as evening approached, nightfall hastened by the weather. She could smell the Pine-Sol, man-sweat stink of the prison wafting off her damp jacket, and her head was throbbing at the temples. They’d been at it all day, and they’d achieved absolutely nothing. “All of the above,” she muttered, and wanted, badly, suddenly, to push back the weight of if all. For a little while, at least.

Guilt tugged at her when she thought about the way she’d left things with Pongo last night. But there wasn’t a bar, or a movie, or a meal, or any distraction she craved at the moment.