Kristin brightens. ‘I could go with you! Would they let us visit him, do you think?’
‘We’re supposed to be flying back to Washington tonight,’ Bell grates.
‘Then we should ask Carter to switch the tickets.’ The idea is solidifying in Emma’s mind. ‘We could do a hop from here to Philadelphia, then return to National.’
Kristin claps her hands once, then stops. ‘Would Mr Carter allow it? He’ll have to telephone through to Byberry to obtain the permissions …’
‘I’m sure he can make it happen if we say we need it. Bell?’
‘You want me to go convince Carter.’ His voice is flat.
‘Look at me, Travis.’ She lets him look, lets him see what this is costing her. ‘I’m not trying to light fires. I’mtired. I’m tired of feeling scared of a ghost, and I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, and I’m tired of staring at pictures of dead girls.’
Bell says nothing, and the silence has weight. Then he breaks away to walk past her, reaching for the door, to go back into the Grant Street Tavern and tell Carter they need to see Simon Gutmunsson.
CHAPTER NINE
They have to run for the plane. Travis offers Emma the aisle seat so she won’t be squashed in the middle, and it’s one of a series of small courtesies they’ve accorded each other since the argument. Each gesture adds a layer, hardens into a kind of impermeable chitin under which their true feelings roil.
Travis is still seething and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to fight. He could blame it all on Gutmunsson – who he is and what he did – but that’s not it either. At least, that’s not all of it.
Emma’s ‘big man in a suit’ comment still smarts.
He reminds himself why she wants to do this: to stop another man, one who is assaulting and murdering women. He hears the reminder in his father’s voice.
It’s 1800 hours by the time they’re in the air. McCreedy has settled into a spot two rows ahead and opened a well-thumbed Louis L’Amour paperback. A few minutes after takeoff, Emma excuses herself to use the bathroom.
Kristin’s voice comes quietly from Travis’s right. ‘She sweated through all her clothes, you know.’
He turns his head. ‘Pardon?’
Kristin leans her shoulder against the porthole window of the plane. Her face is serene and ethereal, her long hair trailing down to her midriff, as white as the shirt she’s wearing. Travis always thinks she looks out of place in contemporary settings; Kristin seems like she’d be more at home in some forest scene, dancing with woodland sprites.
‘After the police briefing,’ Kristin notes. ‘Emma had to change her clothes because she sweated through the other ones. That was very brave of her, to go up there and speak. I could never do that in a million years, goodness. I would lift right off my feet and float away.’
‘They sprung it on her,’ he concedes. He remembers Emma’s exchange with Carter in the bar. ‘They shouldn’t have done that.’
‘They– you mean Mr Carter. He wanted to give the Pittsburgh police a sense of urgency, to make them listen.’ Kristin inclines her head. ‘People only listen when women expose their pain, I suppose. Why do you think it’s like that?’
Travis gets a sudden harsh flash on the Pittsburgh briefing: an image of Emma, pinched and pale and sharply defined, standing in front of all the officers in that huge room in the City-County Building. Then, outside the bar, wind blowing rain against her face, her buzzed hair sparking with it. He thinks of last night when she arrived, her rigid responses, the tremor in her voice when she said, ‘It’s him.’
For Emma, this case isn’t just about the victims. It’s a very personal threat, a constant reminder of what she endured with Huxton. She’s scared, and far from home, and trying mightily to hold it all together. There are a hundred different ways she is emotionally heightened right now.
He, on the other hand, is merely angry.
‘I don’t know,’ he says finally. ‘I don’t know why it’s like that.’ But observing Emma’s experience, he thinks he’s starting to.
Kristin is looking out the window again, like there’s something to see besides darkness. ‘Does it make you regard Emma differently, knowing the details about what happened to her?’
Travis gets the urge to straighten, resists. ‘I’m used to thinking of Lewis as my partner. Not as part of a case file.’
‘You’re not used to thinking of her as a victim.’
He cuts his eyes sideways. ‘I think she’d be really angry if I called her that.’
‘She certainly does get angry. And there are other feelings. She holds them very tightly inside herself, doesn’t she?’
‘I’m familiar with her MO.’ His voice is dry.
