Page 68 of Too Old for This

“Like that?” he says.

The bullet is lodged into the computer screen. Dead center in my virtual heart.

My real one flutters.

No, that’s not right. My heart is quaking . Burke is not as weak as I thought he was. And I’m not as strong. After a lifetime of pretending, I suppose we’ve both gotten pretty good at acting fearless.

But it isn’t true.

The question this comes down to is simple: Is it better to admit what I’ve done and go to prison, or to lie and get killed? Because what he wants to do is arrest me. Fulfill his detective dream. But if he can’t, he will kill me.

Simple, not easy. Like all the best things.

Burke continues to point that gun at me. He is shaking with rage now, as if everything he has ever wanted comes down to this.

“I’m sorry you’ve wasted so many years chasing me,” I say. “But the only person I’ve ever killed is Norma, and that was in self-defense.”

“What happened to Plum?” he asks.

“I have no idea. She was fine when she left my house.” I lean forward, getting closer to him. “Now I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“If you were so sure I was a killer, why would you send that nice young woman to my house asking questions about the past?”

With his free hand, Burke rubs his thumb against the edge of the armrest. A habit. The callus on his thumb is visible from here. “I thought you would say yes.”

“To Plum? You thought I’d say yes to her series?”

“I did.”

“Why would I do that? I’ve avoided everything about this for decades.”

He sighs, looking a little wistful. “You may not be as old as me, but neither of us is young anymore.”

“What does that have to—”

“You must have thought about it,” he says. “One last chance.”

“One last chance at what? Being famous?”

“At being remembered,” he says.

Remembered.

Oh, yes. I’ve thought about this. Everyone does.

When most of your life has been lived, you turn to the next phase. What will you be remembered for? Or will you be remembered at all?

What is enough to leave behind? Is a child enough? One child? More than one? And how do the grandkids figure into it? If I leave behind two generations of kids and grandkids that knew me, is that enough to make sure I’m remembered?

Probably not.

Chances are I will end up a name on a family tree or the old woman in a picture that no one recognizes. You can leave behind a business, a nonprofit, an invention, even a forest of trees that you planted, and people still may not remember you at all.

Knowing this doesn’t stop us from trying.

Burke’s goal isn’t to catch a serial killer, but to be remembered for catching one. He has been chasing the dream for decades.

“You wanted me to be interviewed for the docuseries,” I say, “so you could catch me in a lie? Finally be able to arrest me?”

“I need evidence, yes. And maybe being interviewed for the show would’ve been enough. Maybe you would’ve slipped.”

I’m not sure I believe that. It’s too ambiguous. A risk that might not have paid off.

“You wanted to be famous, didn’t you?” I ask.

He shrugs, switches the gun to his other hand again. “I want to leave behind something that’s…bigger than anything else I’ve done. More important.”

Now, that we can agree on.

“Can you imagine?” I say. “The two of us on TV, trying to talk about something that happened forty years ago? That ultrahigh definition would show every damn wrinkle.” I burst out laughing, covering my mouth with one hand.

Burke laughs, too. I get a glimpse of the plastic tube running from the back of his chair. “It sounded good in my head, being on TV like that.”

“Maybe you imagined yourself how you used to be. Clever and sharp. Not a bad dresser, either.”

There’s a shift in his eyes. Not a twinkle—that’s long gone—but they look a little brighter. “You weren’t so bad yourself. I never understood how you stayed so quiet.”

“I had to. I couldn’t afford a lawyer.”

“Oh, right. The single mother.”

Even now, there isn’t an ounce of respect in his tone. “Yes. I was a single mother.”

“That helped you. Otherwise, I probably would’ve been able to get an arrest warrant.

” He sits back in his chair, laying his hand on the armrest. “We had this woman working in the station. Wanda. Another single mother. Her husband left her or something.” He flicks his free hand, keeping the other wrapped around that gun.

“Anyway, she was on your side. Told me every day that you were innocent. Maybe she told the captain, too.”

I remember her. She sat near the reception desk at the front, her clothes always ironed and creased and buttoned up tight. Not old, though. She might have been younger than me. What I remember most is that Wanda was the only one who smiled when I walked in.

“You didn’t believe Wanda,” I say.

“She was a secretary, not a cop.”

“So her opinion didn’t matter.”

He raises his empty hand, palm forward, to stop me. “Don’t do the feminist thing with me. This isn’t about that.”

“No?”

“You might as well tell me,” he says.

“Tell you what?”

“The truth.”

People say they want the truth, and they believe they want it. But it’s a lie. Nine times out of ten, if you know what’s good for you, the last thing you want is the truth. What you want, what we all want, is the story we believe in. And it’s probably a lie.

“Let me tell you a story,” I say.

“A fairy tale?”

“No. A story. It’s about a man who was a police officer.”

“I don’t think I—”

“Yes, you do. You want to hear this,” I say. “Now, this cop was very good at his job. He was tough and fair and very smart. He became a detective—a really dedicated one—finally feeling like he would be able to work on more serious crimes than pickpockets and shoplifting.”

Burke sits back in his chair, relaxing a little.

“Our detective solved a lot of crimes in his career. Murder, rape, assault. He improved his community by putting criminals in prison. He made people’s lives better . And that’s what he wanted, to make a difference. It was the whole reason he became a police officer.”

Burke almost nods along with that but catches himself just in time. “What is the point of this?”

“Then the town got a serial killer. The bodies kept piling up, one after the other. The police put together a task force, and the detective volunteered to lead it. He had never caught a serial killer before but couldn’t stand to see what this was doing to his town.

So he jumped in, devoting a year of his life to catching the killer. ”

Burke can’t help himself now. His head bobs up and down, nodding along, and his hand relaxes on the armrest. The gun is still pointed at me, but it’s sideways.

“Finally, the killer was found. The detective who led the task force got a medal from the mayor, and he was hailed as a hero in a special ceremony. Everything was great. The town was safe again, right?”

“Right.”

“The town was completely safe until two days later, when someone was murdered. And then a week later, when there was another murder. And you know what?”

“He arrested the wrong person?”

“No. He arrested the right person. The killer. But that’s the thing about murder.” I lean forward, as close to him as I can get, and I whisper, “No matter how many killers you arrest, there’s always going to be another.”

Before he can react, I reach out and grab the gun.