Page 19 of Jar of Hearts
They’ve never discussed where this would go. The affair—an ugly word, but he’s always believed in calling a spade a spade—started more than a year ago. Kim’s husband, Dave, is also a cop, working out of a different precinct, and his hours are crazy. Their schedules rarely mesh. They were supposed to start trying for a family, but first Kim put it off, and now Dave’s putting it off. She’s lonely, hungry for attention and validation, and she needs a warm body next to her just as much as Kaiser does.
But this can’t go on indefinitely. It’s already gone on way too long, and he’s starting to get sick of the sneaking around, having tohide it from everybody at work. It isn’t worth it, especially since he doesn’t—nor will he ever—love Kim. Kaiser’s not sure he’s capable of really loving anyone anymore.
It makes him the ideal cop. Nobody to apologize to for working long hours, no kids to worry about, no family plans to fuck up. Nobody to take care of, not even a plant or a goldfish. He can work the hours he wants, sleep when he wants, eat when he wants. He only really feels “single”—which is a dumbass word, a label designed to make people feel like losers, because people are just people—at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sometimes, not even then.
He was married once, to a nurse he met in the ER while getting stitched up after breaking up a bar fight shortly after he graduated from the police academy. It lasted a tumultuous eighteen months, ending just as decisively as it began. He never blamed her; he’d become unbearable to live with, consumed with work, never putting her first. She left him for a guy she met on the internet, and when the ink was dry on the divorce papers, he swore he’d never get married again.
He leans back on the pillow and brushes a strand of Kim’s hair away from her cheek. You’d think after a year of this her husband would catch on that his wife isn’t sleeping at home when he’s working. But so far, he hasn’t, and maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to know. Kaiser met Dave once, a few months back, at the precinct’s annual family barbecue. Had shaken the man’s hand. If the other cop suspected anything, he didn’t show it. The smile had been warm to match the handshake, and they’d spent a few minutes talking about sports, which is what men do when they’re new to each other and have nothing else to talk about.
Kim stirs again, opens one eye, peers up at him. “What time is it?”
“Don’t worry,” he says. He knows the drill. “I’ll wake you at six.”
She smiles at him, pulls the covers up to her chin, and falls back asleep.
He checks through the report again, hungry for details that aren’t there. Is Georgina happy? Is she lonely? Is she excited to get out, or is she dreading rejoining civilized society after what she did? The discovery of Angela Wong’s remains fourteen long years after the teenagerwent missing rocked Seattle because everybody remembered that case. There was wild speculation about what could have happened to her. Mike Bennett, the quarterback of the St. Martin’s High School football team and her on-and-off-again boyfriend, was questioned extensively in her disappearance, leading some to believe he might have killed her. It could have ruined Mike’s life, and yet Georgina had said nothing.
The one thing he never asked her, the day he arrested her, was why. Why had she done it? And why had she kept it a secret? Deep down, though, Kaiser knew the answer. He didn’t ask because he didn’t want her to lie to him again. He remembers how she was with Calvin James. The profound effect Calvin had on her. She acted differently around him. Spoke differently around him.Moveddifferently around him. It was like Calvin tapped into a part of her control panel that nobody else could reach, turning on a switch that nobody else realized was even there. Not even Georgina herself.
Calvin James changed her life. He had changed all their lives… for the worse. He’d pulled off the prison escape of the decade, killing a prison guard and a counselor in the process. The three men who’d escaped with him had all been found dead in the months to follow. Not Calvin James, though. He’s still out there somewhere.
Kaiser still remembers the conversation he had with the serial killer at the precinct shortly after his arrest. The Sweetbay Strangler sat easily in the interrogation room, hands resting on the table, his wrists cuffed together, relaxed. Jeans, T-shirt, no jewelry except for a watch with a leather band on his right wrist, which Kaiser always thought was strange, as Calvin was right-handed. He looked completely unconcerned, as if he just assumed the world would fall into line with whatever it was he wanted.
Which it always did in the end, didn’t it? The arrogant sonofabitch.
“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” Kaiser asked.
Calvin nodded. “You think I killed someone.”
His lawyer leaned over. “I strongly suggest that you don’t say anything, Mr. James. Let me speak for you.”
Calvin shrugged. Again, unconcerned.
He’d been assigned a public defender, a thin, scraggly man named Aaron Rooney, whom Kaiser had met only once before. Rooney graduated from law school eight months earlier and was scratching out a living working for the state, which was about the worst job a lawyer starting out could have, with the worst clients. There was zero glory in being a public defender. Some trial experience, maybe, but the majority of cases were pled out and never saw the inside of a courtroom. Rooney was dressed in a baggy brown suit, his beard five days old, his hair flattened down with too much gel.
“We’ve been looking for you for a long time,” Kaiser said. “Three victims over the past nine years, buried in shallow graves. I’m sure there are more, but we just haven’t found them yet. Took us a while to ID you. Since we didn’t know your name, we’ve been calling you the Sweetbay Strangler.”
“I like it,” Calvin said.
“Want to know how we finally found you?”
“Why don’t you just tell us?” the lawyer said.
“The first girl you killed all those years ago finally turned up, which now brings your murder count to four.” Kaiser watched Calvin’s face. The man’s expression was neutral, with only a slight etching of polite interest. Bright eyes. Handsome motherfucker. Might have been a movie star had he gone a different way with his life, but men like Calvin James—men who raped and murdered women—never went another way. Their urges always got the better of them. “You remember your first one, right? You buried her body in the woods, after you chopped her up. She was a high school junior, a cheerleader.”
Calvin said nothing, continuing to listen politely.
“In case you forgot, her name was Angela Wong. Sixteen-year-old, reported missing some fourteen years ago.” Kaiser slid a manila folder across the table and opened it. Inside was a high school photo of Angela, full color. “She’d be thirty now, same age as me. And she was a good friend of mine, which makes me a little more than pissed off to be sitting across the table from her killer.”
“Detective, if you have a personal grudge against my client—” Rooney began.
“Fuck off,” Kaiser said to him, his eyes never leaving Calvin’s face. “Angela was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she? Now there’s nothing left of her but a pile of bones and her purse. Oh, and her camera, which had pictures of you in it.” He leaned in. “Tell me. Did you know from the day you met her that you were going to kill her? Was it Angela you really wanted all along? I don’t know if it was planned or not, and I don’t give a fuck. But killing her gave you a taste for it, didn’t it? Except you didn’t dismember the others. Only Angela. Only the first one.”
Calvin James’s lips twitched, but he said nothing.
“You sick motherfucker,” Kaiser said. “Is that why you got close to Georgina back then, so you could get to her best friend?”
At the mention of Georgina’s name, Calvin’s mouth opened slightly. Then he smiled, the connection finally dawning on him.
