Highway Butcher – Chapter Fifteen

NOT EDITED

Chapter Fifteen

1:57 PM; LOS ANGELES, JUDY CRANE’S APARTMENT, ENTRYWAY

David had insisted on carrying Bo’s satchel and camera case to the sixth floor of the apartment building, and Bo felt incredibly vulnerable and naked without either accessory draped over his shoulder. It was kind of strange, really, how much those things seemed to define him. The man with the camera. The man with the satchel. The man with the notebooks.

The man with the serial killer best friend and the death wish.

“What’re you thinking?” David’s voice pulled Bo back from dangerous territory.

He blinked, clearing his throat as his blue eyes scanned the part of the apartment visible from the entryway. “From here, the place looks clean. The door was locked. There aren’t any signs of a break-in via the door. There isn’t a sign of a struggle here. That’s not to say we won’t find one in the bedroom or the bathroom.”

“But… you don’t think we will?” David asked.

“I’m not sure that I ‘think’ anything.”

David snorted. “You do. You always do. You just don’t trust yourself enough to allow yourself to be led in any direction.”

Well. That was certainly accurate. David had unfortunately always been good at that, pinning down the exact thing Bo was feeling before even Bo could positively identify it.

“I trust you, for what it’s worth. I trust you, your mind, and every ounce of forensic knowledge you have tucked away in there. Depression didn’t erase your intelligence or your skill. It just made you doubt it. But I promise you, Bo, it’s still there, just as clear as it was when I first met you at the West Department.”

Bo shook his head and stepped further into the apartment, knowing if he didn’t engage any further in the conversation, neither would David. He didn’t understand where it kept coming from. The faith. The trust. Aramis, an older forensic tech with the LAPD when Bo had first been hired as a teenager, had trusted him and his eye almost immediately. So had Russ, the police officer—and later detective—he had worked with around the same time, before he had transferred departments to get away from Bo. But that was a whole other can of worms that Bo did his best to keep the lid on nowadays.

Dallas had trusted him. Or, so he said. He must’ve, to let him live in his home. But not enough to let him know who Dallas truly was.

His parents had trusted him when he had decided to move to California for college and apply at the LAPD. Jamal had trusted him enough to put his ass on the line and hire a teenager to the forensic department. Bridget had trusted him from the moment they met as children, through their time together at the station. Even now, after months of abuse and isolation, she had still trusted Bo enough to call him when she needed an escape. And David. Jupiter, David trusted him beyond anything Bo could even find a comparison to.

Even Jensen, a complete stranger, claimed to have faith in Bo. Trust. And then there was Bo, who couldn’t even muster up enough of either to do the only goddamn thing he loved.

“What do you see?” David eventually asked. “Not what you think or feel. Just what you see.”

Bo scanned the kitchen. “There are no dishes in the sink or left out on the counter.”

“So she wasn’t surprised in the middle of eating or putting things away,” David said. “No pots or pans on the stove either, so no one knocked or broke in while she was making food.”

Bo nodded, turning toward the living room as he fidgeted with the blue rubber band around his wrist. “The furniture in the living area looks… normal. Nothing seems toppled over or out of place. No books knocked out of the bookcase. No magazines pushed off the coffee table.”

“So if there was a struggle, it didn’t take place in the living room,” David said.

Bo walked off toward the short hallway and leaned into the bathroom. With his gloves tucked inside his camera bag, draped over David’s shoulder, he had no intentions of touching anything. David was right. It was unlikely this apartment was the scene of any part of the crime, but it would always be better to be safe than sorry. The sunlight filtering through the small, single window in the bathroom was enough to get a clear view of the room.

“Her hairbrush is put away. There aren’t any towels on the floor or hung up to dry, save for the hand towel by the sink here. No curling iron or blow dryer plugged in.”

“So… not getting ready to go somewhere when someone interrupted her.”

Bo took a small step back and headed to the end of the hallway. The bedroom. The bed was made. Her phone wasn’t charging on the nightstand. Even her tower fan was unplugged. The lack of light on the extension cord switch indicated she had turned that off too. “Hmm.”

“What?”

“Nothing in particular.”

David laughed. “There’s no way in hell you’re gonna stand here and ‘hmm’ and tell me you aren’t thinking anything ‘in particular’.”

“It was… an unintentional slip.”

“Unless you can go suck it back outta the air, I want to hear the thought.” Bo snapped the rubber band against the inside of his wrist a few times, eyes darting to David’s face when the detective laid a hand over his. “The fidgeting is okay. I’m not going to let you welt your wrist while I’m standing here watching you do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Bo whispered.

David shook his head, his brow furrowed. “You don’t have to be. I’m not even sure you’re totally aware you’re doing it.”

“Sometimes. Only… sometimes,” Bo mumbled. He stepped into the room, closing his eyes briefly as David’s hand dropped back to his side. “The bedroom is very tidy. Appliances unplugged, extension cord powered off. That was my ‘hmm’.”

“Those were the things you saw that led to the ‘hmm’,” David corrected. “But I can still work with that.” He took a slow look around the room. “You wanna check the closet? See if she packed a bag to get outta here?”

Bo smiled, though his back was still to David. No one had ever been able to read Bo quite the way David could. It had always been impressive, if not a little unfortunate. Well. Incredibly unfortunate. If David had put even ten percent of the effort he’d put into Bo into understanding someone else instead, the man would have friends. So many damn friends. And Bo wouldn’t be his ride or die. His sink or swim.

He wouldn’t be aboard the ever-sinking vessel that was Bo’s mind, and Bo wouldn’t be able to drag David down with him any further.

But David had never done that. He had never strayed far from Bo, never taken the time to ‘get to know’ much of anyone else at the station. Bridget, of course, didn’t count. David only had taken the time for her because she had been Bo’s friend, because he had invited her out for drinks with them, or because she had invited them out with her. It struck him then and there, in Judy Crane’s apartment, that he had never really wondered why David had focused all of his befriending efforts on him. Even Jacob Mason hadn’t ostracized his other friends simply because Bo had arrived, despite how badly the detective had seemed to want another station buddy. Bridget had always had other friends. So had Russ. Everyone always had.

Except for Dallas.

Bo turned to face David, fingers moving back to the rubberband. “You’d tell me if you were… different, right?”

David tilted his head to the side. “Different how?”

“Different… in the head? If you were…?” Bo shifted his weight between his feet. “If you were like Dallas, let’s say. You would tell me?”

He raised a brow. “Are you asking me if I’m a murderer?”

“Umm… I don’t know that I want to phrase it that way.”

“I’m not a serial killer, Bo. If I had a secret like Dallas did, I would tell you. I saw what learning Dallas’s secret through other people did to you. I would not put you through that a second time.”

“You… you promise?”

“I promise,” David whispered. Bo nodded, gaze falling to the floor. “Are you just… in your head? Are you reliving something I can help you through?”

“No. I’m not… No.”

“Okay. That’s something. Can I ask why you thought of it then?”

“It’s stupid.”

“It’s trauma, Bo. Whatever you’re thinking and however you got there — it isn’t stupid. It’s your brain’s response to trauma. It literally changes your brain, Bo. Fundamentally, it’s changed forever. You aren’t stupid for being traumatized.”

Bo chewed on that thought for a moment before forcing himself to nod. David was right. At one time, Bo had been the one to tell him that, about the brain scans of people who survived trauma. Somehow, knowing it was true for other people and accepting it was also true for himself, that his brain wasn’t different just because he was an idiot who couldn’t stop thinking about everything revolving around Kathy and Dallas, were two entirely separate entities. Understanding it for other people and their trauma was easy. Accepting it for his own was… impossible.

“I was thinking about how you can read me better than anyone else. I wanted to check the closet. You knew I wanted to check the closet, and you knew the reason why. Even though I wouldn’t say it. And then… I thought about how if you put even the smallest amount of effort into reading someone else like that, you’d have friends. Normal, healthy, and mentally-sound friends. But you don’t have any other friends. You’re like Dallas. It’s just me. And…”

“And Dallas is the only friend who only had you,” David finished.

“There you go again. Reading me.”

David offered a smile. “You pay enough attention to a person, and reading their quirks or their thoughts isn’t super difficult. Most of the conclusions I ‘read’ from you are just the end of the path you walk me down. I don’t pull them out of thin air. You look at something when you’re thinking about it. You might not know you did, but you turned your head toward her closet. That’s all.”

“Why just me?” Bo asked after a moment.

“I’m quick to pick out things I don’t like about other people. Maybe they’re at the bar too many nights or they brag about the things they did to avoid their spouse and their kids for a couple hours. Maybe I’ve seen the way they talk to victims and witnesses, or the way they talk about them behind their back when the interviews are over. But you…” David blew out a breath, shoving his hands into his pockets. “My first partner, before I came to California and joined the LAPD, was autistic. I knew him from the day we started kindergarten to the day he died. Before he was officially diagnosed, before he was given tools to help him cope with the way the rest of the world treats autists, before he was given access to help in school specific to the things he struggled with because of his autism, I saw the way the world treated him and shoved him around and pushed him to the ground and kicked him once he was there. I couldn’t help him, not like I wish I could’ve. But I can help you. I can be there for you. Always.”

Bo watched him for a moment. “So I’m… grief relief?”

“I stuck to you in a very dark time in my life, when having a second chance with someone like him was the only thing keeping me from drowning. After that? No. You were just my best fucking friend, and I saw no reason to seek out another. I mean, what cop can balance two healthy friendships anyway?”

Bo couldn’t fight the little smile that tugged at one corner of his mouth. “I suppose that’s fair. The seond part. The first part, I… I’m sorry. I appreciate you sharing that information with me.” He cleared his throat, looking down as he shifted his feet. “Thank you for not being mad. That I… That I asked.”

“It’s good to talk about things like that, especially when they’re bothering you or weighing on you. Keeps them from festering,” David said. “You didn’t pull the idea out of thin air. You didn’t make it up just for the hell of it. You’re traumatized, Bo. You suffered trauma. You made a connection between me and the thing that the trauma stems from, and you needed to know you were safe here. That this wasn’t going to be more bad stuff. I’ll never penalize or demonize you for that.”

“Thank you,” Bo whispered, eyes lifting back to David’s face.

The detective smiled softly. “No problem.” He nodded toward the closest. “So, you wanna check out your ‘hmm’ and see if you can get a satisfactory answer?”

Bo nodded. Before he could even ask for a pair of gloves, David was already pulling a pair from his satchel. Bo offered a smile as he reached for them. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Bo pulled them on as he walked over to the closet. He fidgeted with the cuff of the glove on his left hand. His ongoing theory about this house specifically seemed so incredibly asinine. Once he opened the closet door, and the closet inevitably revealed that it was asinine, he’d be able to show David irrefutable proof that he wasn’t the Bo Austen everyone so desperately seemed to believe him to be. That would at least be one benefit of being wrong. Everyone would quickly tire of propping up the genius who wasn’t one anymore, and he could… leave. Leave with the peace that no one he loved would be hurt by his departure.

Bo reached out and pulled open the closet doors. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I was… right.”

“Told ya,” David said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He stepped up beside Bo, one eyebrow raised. “The closet’s empty. Like… empty empty.”

Bo only nodded.

“So… since you predicted it’d be empty, what does that mean in your current working theory?”

Bo was a little too stunned to offer up his usual excuses for not telling a detective about his theories. “Umm, that she packed up her things and just… left. Just like the first victim did.”

“How do you know that?”

“Umm.”

“Oh, my God. You broke into her house after you ID’d her.”

“Technically… her door was unlocked.”

David snorted. Lightly, he backhanded Bo’s upper arm. “Y’know, when you have a detective for a best friend, and when that detective is the one working the homicide you’re interested in, you don’t have to go sneaking around into the victims’ homes to look for clues. I’ll go with you, every single time.”

“That kind of defeats the purpose of me doing it in secret.”

David rolled his eyes rather than offering any sort of verbal response. “They both packed up for something and then were murdered and tossed out like garbage” he said after a moment. “Or it’s the killer’s hallmark. Comes by and cleans out their places, make it look like they went somewhere willingly?”

“It’s a possibility. Hell of a lot of work though, especially since the only way we’d end up here is either because we identified the victim or because a family member or friend called for a wellness check. Why go through the trouble of cleaning up and making it look like they left when the only reason we’d even look is if we already knew they were dead?” Bo asked.

“That’s fair. Solid points.” David lightly elbowed his upper arm. “See? Your brain works just fine. I know it feels like you’re broken or you’re not the Bo Austen you once were. But you’re not broken. You’re just depressed.” A pause. “ ‘Just’ isn’t the word I want. You aren’t ‘just’ depressed. Depression is fucking horrible. But it doesn’t mean you’re broken or that you aren’t Bo anymore. It just means… your head’s a little darker these days, a little heavier. But it doesn’t make you stupid or worthless. You’re the same damn genius I met when I first came to L.A., no matter what everyone put you through.”

Bo didn’t quite have a response to David’s seemingly never-ending confidence in him. How the hell was he supposed to have a response? Nothing he could conjure up would ever match the overwhelming pride and joy David apparently felt for Bo.

He settled for reaching out to squeeze David’s arm. Anything to move past it without addressing it. “I need to sit for a few, and then I’ll grab some photos.”

David nodded. “Of course. Let’s go sit. Take all the time you need.”

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