Heads Will Roll – Chapter Seventeen

NOT EDITED

Despite Rick practically chasing her out to the parking lot, Kathy had climbed into her rental car and driven away from the station. He headed back inside and made his way down to the basement. Jeff was stationed outside in the hall, arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back against the wall.

Rick did his best to seem… casual. “Everything okay in there?”

Jeff nodded. “Mmhmm. Bo said was waiting for him when he came back from a coffee refill, but she headed upstairs after he threatened to call Jamal if she didn’t get out of his office.” He snorted. “Apparently our short blonde duo in there don’t play about that woman. Bridget says she’s gonna kill her if she sees her again, and Bo says it’s probably a good thing he’s in charge of the evidence collection and recording, then.”

“Yeah, probably,” Rick agreed. “Bo seem… normal?”

“I mean, as normal as an overworked, sleep-deprived genius can be,” Bridget said as she came to the doorway. “Why?”

Rick cleared his throat. “Is it okay if I talk to him alone?”

Bridget raised a brow. “She didn’t get to you, did she?”

“Nah,” Rick said with a shake of his head. “I know her pretty well. I just want to make sure he’s okay. On my own.”

“Sure,” she said after a moment, drawing the word out for several beats. “Umm… we’ll go out and snag some more good coffee. You need a refill too?”

“That’d be great, Bridget. Thanks.”

She gauged his face through the slightest squint of her eyes before stepping past him and heading upstairs. Jeff seemed hesitant, but he followed her without further question. For that, Rick was thankful. The only person left in the station who could begin to ease his mind was Bo.

He walked into the room, closing the door behind him. At the other end of the room, Bo stood behind the table, eyeing something through a microscope. “What’re you looking at?”

“The hair you collected from Bonnie’s room. Thus far, I’ve matched it to three of the hairs we discovered in the school’s basement. We can officially confirm without any doubt that she was taken down there after being taken in the parking lot.” Bo lifted his head with a sigh. “I just… don’t know why.”

“We’ll get there.”

“I hope so.” Bo’s eyes shifted to his face, and Rick watched the furrowed brow of concern and confusion drop from Bo’s. In a split second, it was simply gone, a well-practiced societal mask of normalcy falling in its place. “What’s wrong?”

“Kathy said something to me before she left.”

“And… what would that be?”

“She said these men… the guy who took Bonnie and the guy who killed Carol… she says this is revenge. Revenge against me.” Rick swallowed roughly before trying to clear the lump in his throat. “And then, uh, she said she’d love to see you try to decipher that one.”

Bo stared at Rick for a moment before turning around and grabbing a small stack of notebooks. He flipped through the stack before letting out a heavy sigh, head tilted back toward the ceiling. “She stole my notebook.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have different notebooks that I use for different things. When I came into the lab, she was holding this one,” Bo said as he turned around, setting a red notebook on the table. “I use the red ones for individual cases. So this one is for Bonnie, and this one is for Miss Jameson.” He set a second red notebook on the table. “She had Bonnie’s when I came in, but I flipped through it after I took it from her, and everything was still there where it belonged. I use a black notebook for basic, minimalist notes of every case I’ve ever worked, and in this specific instance, I’ve been using a gray notebook for the… underground side of our case.” Bo sprawled the rest of the stack out on the table. “It’s gone, which means she knows everything you and I know that… no one is supposed to know, including the things I was going to tell you about at lunch, preferably after you’d taken at least a bite or two.”

“So you knew about the… the revenge thing?” Rick asked.

Bo chewed on the corner of his bottom lip for a moment before nodding. “Yes. Sort of. ‘Knew’ is a strong word, but it was a theory she stole from my notebook, yes.”

“Wh-why do you think this is… is because of me?” Rick asked, his brow furrowed.

“It’s a theory. Kathy seemingly stated it to you as though it were a fact or something I had extreme evidence of. It isn’t, and I don’t. But the Decapitator case was in California. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our killer’s father ended up here in Ellepath to decapitate people.”

“But his blood was at… at the school. With Bonnie,” Rick said.

“Right,” Bo said after a moment. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bonnie is the kid he chose to take, either. I believe that was also quite deliberate.”

“Why? It’s not like she’s mine. She’s just… j-just a girl. She’s dating my son. I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”

“Her not being yours is precisely the point, I believe. Bonnie allows him to still get to you, to still relate the case to you, without entirely destroying your ability to work it. If it were one of your kids he had taken instead of Bonnie, you wouldn’t have been given the case. And even if they had assigned it to you despite the conflict, there’s no way you would have been able to function well enough to work it. You working this case is… one of the most important parts of enacting revenge. He has to be able to get to you, to play with your mind, to make you trip over your feet, so to speak. And if you aren’t the one going to the crime scenes and seeing the evidence and questioning the witnesses and the families, then nothing happens to you. Nothing tortures you at the… appropriate level.”

Bo cleared his throat. “He needs to play with you, Rick. Cat and mouse, I suppose. He needs to toy with you before he can go into whatever his final plan for you is. Bonnie’s kidnapping was the beginning. Carol Jameson — I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for that. I haven’t quite put the pieces together on it, but it’s related. It has to be. And one way or another, it’s all aimed at you. It’s just a matter of why.”

***

On his lunch break, he headed home from the school, more than surprised to see Caleb’s car in his driveway. He shut off the engine and climbed out of the car. Inside the house, he found Caleb standing at the bar in the kitchen, hands clasped together atop the surface, his head resting on his joined fists.

“Thought we had talked about you not coming here?”

“We’re going too far, Zak.”

He cleared his throat. “Why’s that?”

“This was all supposed to be to get back at Rick Downs.” Caleb lifted his head. “This was about him. A-and now we’ve been holding that girl hostage for almost forty-eight hours, and now we’ve killed an innocent old lady too. I-I just can’t see how this is all still something that follows what we set out to do. I d-don’t think I can keep doing this in the name of revenge.”

“You no longer have a choice, Caleb. You agreed to the plan. You agreed to follow the plan.”

“That was before I knew the plan involved killing and decapitating innocent old ladies!” Caleb shook his head. “I can’t do this anymore, Zak.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome to feel that way, but if you decide not to follow the plan, you will be made to join Carol Jameson in hell. If you want Rick to pay for his crimes, you need to shut the hell up, man up, and do as you’re told.”

“Jesus Christ,” Caleb whispered. “You’re a psychopath.”

As Caleb walked past him, he grabbed the man’s arm. “Before you truly consider running to the sheriff, I’d like to remind you that our children are proof that these cops are absolutely not capable of protecting the people they promise to protect, so better figure out whose side you’re really on, and you better figure it out fast. Because if you breathe a word of anything to anyone, I will find out, and you will pay for it. Do you understand?”

Caleb’s brow furrowed before he nodded. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I understand.”

“Good.” He released Caleb’s arm. “Now get the fuck outta here.”

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