“Oh, Jesse,” he says, his voice sweet and calm. I can already feel the manipulation dripping off it from here. He sounds just like I’d imagined—calm, calculating, and gentle.
I’ll do my best to rile him up and destroy that fakeness oozing from his words.
“Jesse left the room the moment he realized you were calling,” I respond, wanting to test whether he can still see us or not.
“He wouldn’t leave,” he says, telling me that Gabriel is right. The camera has been lost with the Wi-Fi turned off. “Jesse is far too curious of a person. Aren’t you, Jesse?”
“If you’re just going to rattle on about your love for Jesse, I’m going to hang up.”
Whitaker chuckles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you needed all the attention, Detective Liam Paige.”
“I am an attention seeker; always have been. And it’s clear you are too. Where’s the rest of the body?”
“Somewhere safe. It really would be best if the police didn’t stumble upon it. What they’d find would make Jesse’s life a whole lot worse.”
“So you want us to sweep the head under the rug because the body will tie Jesse to the crime?” I ask.
“Exactly.”
I laugh, absolutely thrilled by this turn of events. “Whitaker… I don’t even care what kind of game you’re playing, I’m going to find you, and I’m going to ruin whatever is left of your miserable life.”
“You know nothing?—”
“Oh, I know more about you than you could ever imagine. You get off on the idea of controlling others. You want to stand back and use your words to manipulate vulnerable people. You get joy out of watching them slowly break. You offer them asylum while slowly draining the life out of them until they think that everything you say and do is right. Is that the only way you can find joy in your life? Consuming the joy from others?”
“Let me speak to Jesse,” he snaps, the calm and collected tone shifting.
“All you have is me now, and let me tell you something, Whitaker, you’ve fucked up. I’m sure you’ve looked into me. Feel free to do some light reading for the evening as you see every single fucked-up monster just like you that I’ve found and delivered to a very roomy prison cell where you’ll be forgotten like the rest of them. I really am excited to play this game with you. Things have been a bit dry lately.”
“Do not fuck with me.”
“I’m afraid it’s the other way around. Make sure you watch every shadow; I’m coming for you.”
“We’ll see who has the last word.”
“We will, won’t we? Feel free to give me a call any time you want. I enjoyed our talk,” I say before I hang up.
Jesse looks at me incredulously. “I… I don’t think anyone has ever flustered that man. You should be proud of yourself.”
“I am proud of my ability to harass even the unharassable,” I say while the darkness inside of me spirals out of control. I want to hunt this man down and destroy his miserable existence. I want to feel my blade tear into his flesh, rip him apart as he begs me to let him go.
A hand wraps around mine and squeezes it. Slowly, I look over at Gabriel, uncertain whether I’d given anything away, but I’m careful. I’m always so careful to make myself completely unreadable. Yet this man… he can read everything I do. Heknows me inside and out. He knows the darkness inside of me and still… he stays by my side.
Why?
Why does someone who burns so brightly decide to stay by my side?
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Jesse asks.
Gabriel responds, “He, or someone he was controlling, was in your house. It would have been easy to gather some hair from a brush or take something of yours to leave behind with the body. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn you, though. You have the tape from the box. You have us. But it will make others have to look into you and I’m afraid it won’t be us. They’ll find someone who isn’t close to you.”
Jesse is quiet as he watches us. Does he regret bringing us into this because he can’t simply dispose of the head and pretend this whole thing never happened? But he’s going to have to face it at some point. Whitaker is just going to make this worse and worse until Jesse either gives in or breaks.
And I’m curious which one will happen first.
“Let’s go out to the car where we can speak freely,” Gabriel suggests.
With fresh gloves, I retrieve the wrapping paper from Gabriel and put it in a plastic bag so I can take it with me and not let it out of my sight. If Whitaker is still watching us and has caught on to my idea with the paper, he’ll try to destroy it.
