Page 65 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

I pick mine up.

We look at each other. Just that. Just the two of us in this small warm room in Richmond on a Thursday evening with the candlelight between us, and I think about all the rooms I’ve been in and all the evenings I’ve spent in them and how none of them, not one, has felt anything like this.

I touch my glass to his. The sound it makes is small and clear and perfect.

“What are we drinking to?” he says.

“This,” I say.

He holds my gaze. “This,” he agrees.

The key is in my jacket pocket. I can feel it there, warm from being close to me all evening, small and solid and real.

Just for this one night, I’m going to let myself believe it. That everything is going to be all right.

Chapter thirty

Lennox

He’s up before me.

I come out of the bedroom at quarter to seven to find him at the kitchen counter in his sweatpants and t-shirt, assembling something with the focused competence he brings to all cooking, and he looks up when I appear and says, “sit down, I’m making you breakfast” with the specific authority of a man who has decided this is how mornings work now.

I sit down.

He makes eggs. With toast that’s the right color, and he brings them to the table without ceremony and goes back to the kitchen, and when I’m halfway through eating, he reappears with a paper bag that he sets beside my plate.

“What’s this?” I say.

“Lunch.” He drops into the chair across from me with his own coffee. “Prosciutto and mozzarella. There’s a note inside. Don’t read it at your desk.”

I look at the bag. “I don’t take lunch breaks.”

“You do now.” He picks up his mug. “There’s fruit in there too. You’re going to eat it.”

I look at him across the small table in the corner of my small flat, in the morning light that comes through the window at this hour, and he looks back at me with the easy certainty of someone who has decided how things are going to be and is prepared to wait as long as it takes for the universe to agree with him, and I think about arguing and don’t.

“Thank you,” I say.

He smiles over his coffee. “You’re welcome.”

Hendricks’s office smells like the same air freshener it has always smelled like, something that claims to be linen and isn’t, and she is sitting very still behind her desk, which means she’s angry.

“Sit down,” she says.

I sit.

She opens the case file on her desk. It is, and I know this before she opens it, not a thick file. It is the file of a case that has been running for too long and has produced, in terms of actionable leads, almost nothing. She looks at it the way people look at things that are disappointing them and turns to page three.

“Four victims,” she says. “Same MO throughout. Names of children, all of them either confirmed dead or missing, carved into the chests of men, some of whom are suspected child abusers.” She looks up. “The press have named him the Vigilante. He has, and I want you to understand how much this sentence costs me to say, a higher approval rating in public polling than the Metropolitan Police.”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you?” She closes the file. “Because what I’m not aware of, Lennox, after four bodies, is a single viable suspect. You have one name on the board. You are, to my knowledge, not currently pursuing any active leads.” She pauses, and the pause has a very specific quality. “This is not normal for you.”

“The investigation is ongoing.”

“The investigation is ongoing.” She repeats it without inflection. “Yes. That’s one way to describe the current situation.” She leans forward. “You are one of the best detectives on this floor. You have closed cases that no one else could close. I have watched you work impossible problems and find the answer through sheer thoroughness, and I need that person in this office right now, because the superintendent is asking questions I cannot answer and the press are asking questions he cannot answer, and someone on this case needs to give me something.”