Cause to Dread

“That’s fine and I thank you…but I’m honestly more worried about what might be going on with Rose. She’s a good girl.”

“Yeah, she is,” Avery said and ended the call.

By that point, she was less than half a mile away from her new home. She pulled up Rose’s number and placed the call as she pushed her foot down harder on the gas. She was pretty sure how the next couple of minutes would play out, but still felt a stinging hope each time the phone rang in her ear.

As she expected, it went straight to voicemail. Rose had only answered one of her calls since her father had been murdered and that had been when she had been especially drunk. Avery opted not to leave a message, knowing that Rose would not check it, much less return the call.

She parked in her driveway, leaving the engine running, and ran inside long enough to dress in something a little more presentable. She was back in the car three minutes later, pointing it back toward Boston. She was sure Rose would be pissed that her mom was coming into town to check up on her, but Avery didn’t see where she had any choice, given the call from Gary King.

When the road smoothed out and became less curvy, Avery increased her speed. She wasn’t sure where her future rested in terms of her old job but she did know one thing she’d miss about working in law enforcement: the ability to break the speed limit any time she damn well pleased.

Rose was in trouble.

She felt it.

CHAPTER TWO

It was shortly after one o’clock when Avery showed up on Rose’s doorstep. She lived on a ground floor apartment in a decent part of town. She was able to afford it because of the tips she got as a bartender at an upper-class bar – a job she nailed down shortly before Avery had moved out to her cabin. Her job before that had been a little less glamorous, waitressing at a chain restaurant while doing some cheap editing work for ad firms out of her apartment on the side. Avery wished Rose would just buckle down and finish college, but she also knew that the harder she pushed, the less inclined Rose would be to choose that path.

Rose knocked on the door, knowing Rose was home because her car was parked a block down on the side of the street. Even if that clue hadn’t tipped Avery off, ever since she’d moved out on her own, Rose had opted for jobs with later hours so she could sleep late and lounge around the house all day. She knocked louder when Rose didn’t answer and nearly called out her name. She decided not to, figuring her voice would be even less welcome than that of the landlord she was trying to dodge.

She probably figures it’s me because I tried to call beforehand, she thought.

Given that, she figured she’d go with what she did best: negotiating.

“Rose,” she said, knocking again. “Open up. It’s your mom. And it’s cold out here.”

She waited a moment and there was still no answer. Instead of knocking again, she calmly approached the door, standing as closely as she could to it. When she spoke again, she raised her voice just enough to firmly be heard inside but not nearly enough to cause a scene out on the street.

“You can keep ignoring me if you want but I’ll keep calling, Rose. And if I want to get really obsessive about it, remember what I used to do for a living. If I want to know where you are at any given time, I can make it happen. Or you can make life easier for both of us and just open the damned door.”

With that said, she gave another knock. This time, it was answered within a handful of seconds. Rose opened it slowly from the other side. She peered out like a woman who didn’t trust the person standing on the other side of the door.

“What do you want, Mom?”

“To come in for a minute or two.”

Rose considered it for a moment and then opened the door all the way. Avery did her best not to pay too much attention to the fact that Rose had lost some weight. Quite a bit, actually. She had also dyed her hair raven black and straightened it.

Avery walked inside and found the apartment meticulously cleaned. There was a ukulele on the couch, something that looked sorely out of place. Avery pointed to it and gave a questioning look.

“I wanted to learn to play something,” Rose said. “Guitar is too time consuming and pianos are too expensive.”

“You any good?” Avery asked.

“I can play five chords. I can almost get through one song.”

Avery nodded, impressed. She almost asked to hear the song but figured that might be pushing it. She then thought about sitting down on the couch but didn’t want to seem as if she were making herself welcome. She was pretty sure Rose wouldn’t extend that invitation anyway.

“I’m okay, Mom,” Rose said. “If that’s why you’re here…”

“It is,” Avery said. “And I’ve wanted to speak with you for a while. I know you hate me and blame me for everything that happened. And that sucks, but I can deal with it. But then today I got a call from your landlord.”

“Oh God,” Rose said. “That greedy jerk won’t leave me alone and – ”

“He just wants his rent, Rose. Do you have it? Do you need some money?”

Rose scoffed at the question. “I made three hundred dollars in tips last night,” she said. “And I make almost double that in tips on a Saturday night. So no…I don’t need any money.”

“Good. But…well, he also says that he’s worried about you. That he’s been hearing about some things you’ve said. Now don’t bullshit me, Rose. How are you, really?”

“Really?” Rose asked. “How am I really? Well, I miss my dad. And I was nearly killed by the same asshole that killed him. And while I miss you too, I can’t even think of you without remembering how he died. I know it’s messed up, but every time I think of Dad and how he died, it makes me hate you. And it makes me realize that ever since you got really deep into working as a detective, my life has suffered for some reason or another.”

It was hard for Rose to hear, but she also knew it could have been much worse. “How are you sleeping?” she asked. “And eating? Rose…how much weight have you lost?”

Rose shook her head and started walking back toward the door. “You asked how I was doing and I answered you. Am I happy? Hell no. But I’m not the type that’s going to do something stupid, Mom. When this passes, I’ll be fine. And it will pass. I know it will. But if it is going to pass, I can’t have you around.”

“Rose, it’s – ”

“No. Mom…you’re toxic to me. I know you’ve tried very hard to make things right between us – you’ve tried for several years now. But it’s not working and I don’t think it ever will considering recent events. So…please leave. Leave and stop calling.”

“But Rose, this is – ”

Rose broke into tears then, opening the door and screaming. “Mom, would you please just fucking leave?”

Rose then looked at the floor, stifling her sobs. Avery fought back her own as she obeyed her daughter’s wishes. She passed by her, painfully restraining herself from hugging her or giving some last argument. In the end, she simply walked through the door and out into the cold.

But the door slamming violently closed behind her was perhaps the coldest thing of all.

***

Avery was crying before she was able to start her car. By the time she was back on the road and headed for her new home, she was doing everything she could to hold in a series of chest-tightening sobs. As the tears ran down her face, she realized that she had cried more in the past four months or so than she had for the entire span of years beforehand. First there was Jack dying, then Ramirez. And now this.

Maybe Rose was right. Maybe she was toxic. Because when it came right down to it, the deaths of Jack and Ramirez were her fault. Her ambitious career had led the killer to those she loved the most and, as such, they had been targeted.

And that same career had pushed Rose away. Never mind the fact that the career in question was over. She’d retired soon after Ramirez’s funeral and although she knew that Connelly and O’Malley were leaving a back door open for her, it was an invitation she knew she’d never accept.

She pulled into her driveway, parked the car, and walked inside with tears still running down her face. The sad fact was that if she abandoned her career completely, her life would be empty. Her future husband had been killed, an ex-husband she had been on good terms with was gone, and now, the only survivor from her past, her daughter, wanted nothing to do with her.

And rather than fix it, what did you do? some smaller part of her asked. It almost sounded like Ramirez’s voice, pointing out how she was making matters worse. You left the city and retreated into the woods. Rather than face the pain and a life that had been upended, you ran away and spent a few days drinking yourself into oblivion. So what will you do now? Run away again? Or should you maybe fix it?

Back inside the cabin, though, she felt safer than she had while standing on Rose’s doorstep. It seemed to lessen the sting of having her daughter slam a door on her. Yes, it made her feel like a coward but she simply didn’t know how else to deal with it.

She’s right, Avery thought. I am toxic to her. Over the last few years, I’ve done nothing but make her life so much more difficult. It started when I put my career over her father and then just got worse when, no matter how hard I tried, the career won out over her, too. And here we are again, at odds even when the career is gone.

And it’s because she blames me for her father’s murder.

And she’s not exactly wrong about that.

She walked slowly over to the bed that she had yet to fully put together. Her personal safe was there, sitting among the headboard and the box springs. As she opened it, she thought of entering Jack’s living room and finding his body. She thought of Ramirez in the hospital, already seriously injured before he had been killed.

Her hands were dirty in all of that. And she’d never be able to clean them.

She reached into the safe and pulled out her Glock. It felt familiar in her hands, like an old friend.

The tears still came as she rested her back against the headboard. She looked to the gun, studying it. It or one just like it had been on her hip or at her back for nearly two decades, closer to her than any human had ever been. So it felt all too natural when she placed it to the soft flesh beneath her chin. Its touch was cold but assertive.

She let out a sob as she positioned it back at an angle, making sure the bullet would pass through at the best angle. Her finger found the trigger and trembled against it.

She wondered if she’d even hear the blast before she was gone and, if she did, if it would sound as loud as Rose slamming the door behind her.

Her finger curled around the trigger and she closed her eyes.

The doorbell rang, making her jump.

Her finger loosened and her entire body went limp. The Glock clattered to the floor.

Almost, she thought as her heart slammed mounds of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Another quarter of a second and my brains would be all over the wall.

She looked down at the Glock and swatted it away as if it were a poisonous snake. She buried her head in her hands and wiped the tears away.

You almost killed yourself, the voice that may or may not have been Ramirez said. Doesn’t that make you feel like a coward?

She pushed the thought away as she got to her feet and made her way to the front door. She had no idea who it could be. She dared to hope that it was Rose but she knew that would not be the case. Rose was very much like her mother in that regard – stubborn to a fault.

She opened the door and found no one. She did, however, see the rear of a UPS truck leaving her driveway. She looked down to the porch and saw a small box. She picked it up and read her own name and new address in very neat handwriting. The sender’s address showed no name, just a New York address.

She took it inside and opened it slowly. There was no weight to the box and when she opened it, she found balled up newspaper. She removed it all and found just one single thing waiting for her at the bottom.

It was a single sheet of paper, folded in half. She unfolded it, and when she read the message inside, her heart stopped for a moment.

And just like that, Avery no longer felt the need to kill herself.

She read the message over and over, trying to make sense of it. Her mind worked it over, seeking an answer. And with something like this to figure out, the mere thought of dying before it was solved was out of the question.

She sat on the couch and stared at it, reading it again and again.

who are you, avery?

Yours,

Howard

CHAPTER THREE

In the coming days, Avery kept touching the area beneath her chin where she had placed the barrel of the gun. It felt irritated, like a bug bite. Whenever she lay down for sleep and her neck extended when her head hit the pillow, that area felt exposed and vulnerable.

She was going to have to face the fact that she had gone to a very dark place. Even though she had ultimately been pulled away from it, she had gone there. It would forever be a smear on her memories and it seemed that even the very nerves within her flesh wanted to make sure she did not forget it.

For the three days following her near-suicide, she was more depressed than she had ever been in her life. She spent those days curled on her couch. She tried to read but couldn’t focus. She tried motivating herself to go for a run but felt too tired. She kept looking to Howard’s letter, handling it so much that the paper was starting to wrinkle.

She stopped her heavy drinking after receiving the letter from Howard. Slowly, like a caterpillar, she started to break out of her cocoon of self-pity. She slowly started to exercise. She also did crossword puzzles and Sudoku just to keep her mind sharp. Without work, and knowing she had enough money to last her a year without having to worry about anything, it was very easy to fall into a mindset of laziness.

But Howard’s package had erased that lethargy from her. She now had a mystery to solve which set her to a task. And when Avery Black was set to a task, there was no end until it was resolved.

Within a week after receiving the letter, her days slipped into something of a routine. It was still the routine of a hermit, but the routine of it alone made her feel normal. It made her feel like there might be something worth living for. Structure. Mental challenges. Those were the things that had always inspired her and they did that in those coming weeks.

Her mornings started at seven. She’d go out running right away, etching out a brisk two-mile run through the back roads around the cabin for that first week. She’d return home, eat breakfast, and go over old case files. She had more than one hundred in her own personal records, all of which had been solved. But she went over them just to keep herself busy and to remind herself that among the failures that had occurred there near the end, she’d also enjoyed more than a few successes.

She’d then spend an hour unpacking and organizing. She followed this with lunch and either a crossword or a puzzle of some kind. She then did a simple exercise circuit in the bedroom – just a quick session of crunches, sit-ups, planks, and other core exercises. She would then spend a bit of time looking at the files from her last case – the case that had ended up taking the lives of Jack and Ramirez. Some days she’d look at them for ten minutes, other days she’d stare at them for two hours.

What went wrong? What had she missed earlier on? Would she have survived the case had it not been for Howard Randall’s behind-the-scenes interference?

Then came dinner, a bit of reading, some more cleaning, and then bed. It was an eventless routine, but it was a routine all the same.

It took two months to get the cabin clean and in order. By that time, her two-mile run had evolved into a five-mile run. She no longer looked over the old files or the contents from the last one. Instead, she had taken to reading books she bought on Amazon featuring real-life crime dramas and nonfiction police procedurals. She’d also mixed in some books pertaining to the psychological evaluations of some of history’s most noted serial killers.

She was only partly aware that this was her way of filling the void her work had once filled. As this dawned on her more and more, she couldn’t help but wonder about what her future looked like.

One morning, while she made her run around Walden Pond, the cold burning her lungs in a way that was more pleasant than unbearable, this hit her a little harder than it had before. Her mind was running a loop around the questions about getting the package from Howard Randall.

First, how did he know where she was living? And how long had he known? She’d lived under the assumption that he’d died when he had fallen into the bay on the night that final, terrible case came to a close. While his body had never been found, it had been wildly speculated that he had indeed been shot by an officer on the scene before splashing into the water. While she ran her lap, she tried to put together a trail of next steps to figure out where he was and why he’d reached out to her with a strange message: Who are you?

The package came from New York but it’s obvious he’s been around Boston. How else would he know I moved? How else would he know where I live?

This, of course, brought images to her mind of Randall hiding out in those trees with eyes on her cabin.

Just my luck, she thought. Everyone else in my life has died or shut me out. It makes sense that a convicted killer would be the only one that seemed to give a damn about me.

She knew that the package itself would offer no answers. She already knew when it was sent and where it was sent from. It was really just Randall teasing her, letting her know that he was still alive, on the loose, and interested in her in some form or another.

The package was on her mind when she returned from her run. As she stripped off her gloves and stocking cap, her cheeks pink and blustery from the cold, she walked to where she had kept the box. She had looked it all over for clues or little hidden meanings from Randall but had found none. She’d also come up empty when she had looked over the balled up newspaper. She’d read every article on the crumpled paper and nothing had seemed worthwhile. It had just been filler. Of course, that had not stopped her from relentlessly rereading each and every word on those pages several times.

She was tapping anxiously on the box when her cell phone rang. She grabbed it from the kitchen table and stared at the number on the display for a moment. She smiled hesitantly and tried to ignore the happiness that tried to peek into her heart.

It was Connelly.

Her fingers froze for a moment because she honestly didn’t know what to do. Had he called two or three weeks ago, she would have simply ignored the call. But now…well, something was different now, wasn’t it? And as much as she hated to admit it, she supposed she had Howard Randall and his letter to thank for that.

At the last moment before her phone would go to voicemail, she answered the call.

“Hey, Connelly,” she said.

There was a heavy pause on the other end before Connelly responded. “Hey, Black. I…well, I’ll be honest. I was expecting to just have to speak to your voicemail.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, no way. I’m glad to hear your voice. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to feel that way.”

“Am I to take that to mean you’re regretting your far-too-early retirement?”

“No, I wouldn’t go that far. How are things?”

“Things are…good. I mean, there’s a void in the precinct that used to be filled by you and Ramirez but we’re plugging along. Finley is really stepping up his game. He’s been working very closely with O’Malley. I think Finley, between me and you, he took it personally when you quit. And he decided that if someone is going to have to take your place, then dammit, it better be him.”

“Good to hear. Let him know I miss him.”

“Well, I was sort of hoping you’d come and tell him yourself,” Connelly said.

“I don’t think I’m ready to visit just yet,” she said.

“Okay, so I was never good at the small talk bullshit,” Connelly said. “I’ll cut to the chase.”

“That’s when you’re at your best,” she said.

“Look…we’ve got a case – ”

“Stop right there,” she said. “I’m not coming back. Not now. Probably not ever, though I wouldn’t rule it out completely.”

“Hear me out on this one, Black,” he said. “Wait until you hear the details. Actually, you’ve probably already heard them. This one has been all over the news.”

“I don’t watch the news,” she said. “Hell, I only use the computer for Amazon. I can’t remember the last time I read a headline.”

“Well, it’s strange as hell and we can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. O’Malley and I had a late-night drinking session last night and decided we needed to call you. This isn’t just me kissing your ass and trying to convince you…but you’re the only person we came up with that could maybe crack this one. If you haven’t seen the news, I can tell you it’s – ”

“The answer is no, Connelly,” she said, interrupting. “I appreciate the thought and the gesture, but no. If I’m ever ready to discuss a return, I’ll call you.”

“A man is dead, Avery, and the killer might not be finished,” he said.

For some reason, hearing him use her first name stung a bit. “I’m sorry, Connelly. Be sure to tell Finley I said hello.”

And with that, she hung up. She looked at the call idly, wondering if she had just made a huge mistake. She’d be lying if she told herself the idea of returning to work hadn’t elicited a bit of a thrill. Even hearing Connelly’s voice had made her yearn for that part of her old life.

You can’t, she told herself. If you go back to work now, you’re basically telling Rose that you don’t give a damn about her. And you’d be running directly back into the arms of the creature that put you where you are right now.

She got to her feet and looked out the window. She looked out to the trees, into the thickness and shrouded daytime shadows between them, and thought about Howard Randall’s letter.

About Howard Randall’s question.

Who are you?

She was beginning to think she wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. And maybe being without her work in her life was the reason.

***

She broke out of her routine that afternoon for the first time since establishing it. She drove out to South Boston, to St. Augustine Cemetery. It was a place she had been avoiding since the move, not just because of guilt but because it seemed that whatever cruel force manipulated fate had delivered a vicious jab to her. Both Ramirez and Jack were buried in St. Augustine Cemetery and though they were many rows apart, that did not matter to Avery. As far as she was concerned, the nexus of her failures and grief was located in that one green strip of land and she wanted nothing to do with it.

That’s why this was her first visit since the funerals. She sat in the car for a moment, looking out toward Ramirez’s grave. She slowly got out of the car and walked over to where the man she had been ready to marry had been laid to rest. The grave marker was modest. Someone had recently placed a bouquet of white flowers on it – probably his mother – that would wither and die in this cold within the next day or so.

She didn’t know what to say and she supposed that was fine. If Ramirez was aware that she was there and if he could hear what she could say (and a large part of Avery thought that was the case), he would know that she had never been one for sentiment. He was probably shocked, even in whatever ethereal place he was occupying, that she was here at all.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring that Ramirez had intended to one day place on her finger.

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss you and I’m just so…so lost. And there’s no need to lie to you…it’s not just because you’re gone. I don’t know what to do with myself. My life is falling apart and the one thing I know will make it somewhat stable again – work – is probably the worst thing I could turn to.”