Page 40 of Kill Me Again: Psychics

“Will you go to the prison?” Jamie asked.

“The prison?” Lake and I said together.

“To see him.”

“To see who?” I asked.

Jamie frowned. “The Car Park Reaper. Geoffrey Ryhill.”

Lake looked to me, but all I could do was shake my head. “They never caught the man who stabbed me,” I said slowly. “I got Calisto to look into it once. I can’t remember when. Maybe about five or six years ago.” I’d already explained to Jamie how I’d maintained a physical presence. He might not have fully comprehended it, but he’d accepted it. I guess when your boyfriend from nineteen years ago returned from the dead and looked the same, you probably found it easy to accept one more fantastical fact.

Jamie leaned forward, his expression intense. “Not for years, no. But your information’s outdated. Three, four years ago, they caught this guy… Ryhill. He’d stabbed four men in different car parks. The similarity between those murders and yours couldn’t be ignored. The theory was that you’d been one of his earliest victims. You and another guy, who died two years after you. Ryhill denied it, but you would, wouldn’t you? Better to keep your murder count at five rather than seven, and it’s not like they had any DNA evidence to prove it. But the police closed your case, so it wasn’t like they had any doubt.”

Lake checked his phone. “He’s right. They officially added your murder to his list of crimes two years ago.”

The cafe suddenly felt way too warm. “Is there a picture of him?” I leaned toward Lake intending to get a look at the screen. He moved the phone away, pressing it flat to his chest, concern written all over his face. “Are you sure? What are you hoping to see?”

“Did he know his victims?” I asked Jamie.

“I think so.”

“So I should know him,” I pointed out. I reached for Lake’s wrist—the skin pleasantly warm and solid, and far more distracting than it should have been considering my emotional state—and turned his phone around. Lake could easily have resisted, but he went along with it.

“I like him touching me.”

I ignored the stray thought from Lake, concentrating on the mugshot taken at the time of Ryhill’s arrest. I’d naïvely expected him to look like a murderer, but that assumption had been based on too many films and TV programs. O’Reilly, the woman who’d made all the necromancer’s lives a misery in the past year, hadn’t looked like a murderer, but she’d been one, the blood of many on her hands.

The man on the screen looked to be in his early-to-mid forties, with the everyday looks you might see in a queue at the bank, or sat behind a reception desk. He had brown eyes and thick eyebrows. His gaze was calm and steady, rather than intense or shifty. More the relaxed gaze of someone caught in an unflattering moment than a hardened criminal. He had thin lips and dark hair with a smattering of gray running through it. In short, he was unremarkable. The kind of face you passed every day without giving it a second thought.

The most jarring thing about his appearance, though, was that I couldn’t place him as ever having been in my life. I hadn’t dated him; I knew that for sure. But could I honestly say he’d never delivered something to me, or that he hadn’t tried to chat me up in a club. Maybe he had, and I’d turned him down.

“Well?” Lake asked.

“I don’t know him.”

“Maybe you don’t remember,” Lake suggested.

“Maybe.”

“I didn’t recognize him either,” Jamie said. “But I wasn’t always with you.”

“I should have looked my murder up before,” I admitted.

Lake snorted. “You and me both. I gave it the big I am when it came to research, and I didn’t even bother to google it. And all along, the answer was right there.”

“This was about facing up to things,” I said quietly. “About not burying my head in the sand.” Jamie watched us, his gaze moving between us like an observer at a tennis match.

“And you have,” Lake said softly.

“I have,” I agreed. I waved a hand at Lake’s phone. “I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s going to take some processing.”

Lake nodded. “That’s understandable.”

Jamie’s phone buzzed, and he pulled a face. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.” He didn’t give any explanation, and neither Lake nor I asked.

After a somewhat awkward hug and an exchange of numbers, he left. With the rain still coming down, Lake and I sat tight.

While Lake went to get more tea, I contemplated Geoffrey Ryhill. By the time he returned, I’d reached a decision. “I need to see him. I need to look him in the eye and ask why he did it, what he got out of it.”

Lake grimaced. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“Will you come with me?”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You think I’d let you face something like that alone?”

“No. You’re too good a man.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s your answer then.”