Geoffrey MacIntosh lives in the infirmary of his prison, his health still too tenuous to remove him to a cell. He’s on constant oxygen, his lungs permanently seared by the explosion of the greenhouse complex, the plastic tubing for the cannula actually locked behind his head so he can’t loosen it enough to harm himself with it. Or, Eddison would suspect, for anyone else to harm him with it. The attack on Keely has made national news.
He used to be a handsome man, the Gardener. There are pictures in the file, and all over the Internet. A charming, charismatic fifty-something with sea-green eyes and dark blond hair, always impeccably dressed. Filthy rich, both inherited and earned, and willing to spend small fortunes on charities and other philanthropic endeavors.
And his greenhouse, of course. His Garden.
But the man in the hospital bed has bubbling scars running down the right side of his body, the flesh twisted and stretched. His fingers are thick and stiff with rippling tissue. His throat is pocked and sagging, the scars climbing up to tear at his face. His mouth is pulled down on one side nearly to his chin, teeth and bone showing in places, and his eye is simply gone, too damaged to leave in place. The healed burns wrap back around his scalp. His left side is better, but not unscathed. Pain has gouged deep lines around his mouth and eye. Some of the burns are still resistant to healing, seeping infection around fresh grafts.
He looks nothing like the man who spent thirty years kidnapping, killing, and keeping teenage girls as human Butterflies.
Perhaps perversely, Eddison really wishes he could take a picture to show the survivors. To reassure them.
And because Bliss is Bliss, to really enjoy the sense of vindictive glee that will surely arise.
MacIntosh’s lawyer—or one of them, anyway; he’s hired an entire team to defend him—sits to his client’s left, where he can be seen by the remaining eye. He’s a tall, thin man in an expensive suit that isn’t tailored quite right, like he was too impatient to get it done. It leaves him looking a little swallowed by it, and his clear discomfort with the infirmary doesn’t help.
“Is there a reason you needed to see my client in person, Agents?” the lawyer—Redling? Reed?—asks sharply.
Vic leans against the foot of the bed, hands curled around the sturdy plastic rail. His expression is hard to read, even for Eddison. It’s almost like he doesn’t trust himself to show anything, for fear of what might show.
Eddison can understand that.
“Call it a kindness,” Vic says too mildly. “Mr. MacIntosh. An hour and a half ago, your son Desmond was discovered dead in his cell. He shredded his pants to braid together a noose, and tried to hang himself from the end of his bunk. He was unsuccessful in breaking his neck, but he did cut off his air supply. He was pronounced dead at five forty-two.”
Despite the suddenly shrieking heart monitor, MacIntosh looks frozen, unable to react. His eye darts around, landing on the agents, on his lawyer, at the space near the foot of the bed where the nurse says Desmond sat on occasion.
“Suicide?” says the lawyer, fingers twitching toward his phone. “Are they sure?”
“Biometrics on the cell; no one went through the door after he was accounted for last night. Not until they saw him this morning. He left a note.”
“May we see it?”
It’s already in an evidence bag, Vic’s initials the third in the chain, but he holds it out so it can be seen. There’s not much to see, really—just a single line in black ink, the letters slanting forward with the speed of the writing: Tell Maya I’m sorry.
The lawyer glances at his client, but MacIntosh displays no awareness of the note.
One of the nurses bustles over to hush the monitor, her hand on the inmate’s good shoulder. “Sir, you need to breathe.”
“His son just died,” murmurs the lawyer.
“Well, unless he wants to join him, he needs to breathe,” the nurse answers pragmatically.
Vic watches in silence, finally turning to the lawyer. “We don’t need anything from him. We have no questions.”
“This is your kindness?”
“He heard it in person, from someone who isn’t gloating. He heard it from another father. That’s the kindness.”
Eddison gives the man in the bed one last look before following Vic out. He didn’t say anything. He never intended to. He’s there for Vic, and maybe for the survivors.
For Inara, who understood the fraught relationship between father and son perhaps better than the MacIntoshes themselves. Inara, who’ll know this was Desmond giving up as surely as him finally calling the police was. Not bravery, not what’s right. Just giving up.
Vic is silent through the process of leaving the prison, getting their guns back, retrieving the car. He lets his partner do the talking, but Eddison knows how to talk to guards. It’s nothing like the discomfort of talking to victims. They hit the road back to Quantico, Vic still absorbed in thought.
Eddison pulls out his phone, double-checks a few things before firing off some texts. They’re almost to the garage before he gets the response he’s waiting for. He dials, letting the car’s Bluetooth pick up the call. At the sound of the ringtone, Vic gives him a sideways look.
“You’re a bastard for calling before noon,” comes Inara’s sleepy mumble over the line.
Another day, he might tease her. Not today. “I wanted to make sure we were the ones to tell you.” He glances over at Vic, who nods. “Everyone else still asleep?”
“It’s barely after eight; of course they’re asleep.”
“There’s a box just outside your door; take it and your phone and head up to the roof.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?”
“Please, Inara.” There’s something to Vic’s voice, a weight, a grief, that makes Eddison shift in his seat. From the rustle of fabric, he can tell it works on Inara as well.
“Bliss, let go,” she mutters. “Have to get up.”
“’S’early,” they can hear Bliss groan. “Why?”
“You can sleep.”
“Oh, it’s . . . shit. That means it’s important. Where are we going?”
“Roof.”
The agents in the car listen to the rustles and thumps of the girls getting out of bed, and Eddison wonders which of them had the bad night, that they were sharing. The girls did that in the Garden, curled around each other like puppies whenever they needed the comfort. There are snores in the background, one set soft and whuffling, another putting a chainsaw to shame, and a tinkling bit of piano music. A door closes, and the next thing they hear is another heartfelt groan from Bliss.
“Jesus fuck, this box is fucking heavy, Eddison, what the fuck?”
“Your morning eloquence is astounding,” he says dryly.
“Fuck you.”
Eddison grins. Vic just shakes his head.
“Take the phone; I’ll take the box,” Inara says, and there’s a sharp thump before the line disconnects.
Eddison hits the “call” button again.
“Shut up,” Bliss answers. “No one’s fucking coordinated in the fucking morning.”
There’s something solid and reassuring about Bliss’s habitual profanity. It’s like counting on the tide.
“All right, we’re up on the roof and it’s fucking freezing,” she announces at a normal volume. “What’s going on?”
“You’re on speaker?”
“Duh.”
“Inara?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she says, the words garbled by a yawn.
“We’ve got some news for you.”
“Good or bad?”
“Just news, I think. I’ll leave it to you to decide.” He takes a breath, wonders why he’s the one doing this instead of Vic. “Desmond was discovered dead in his cell this morning.”
A long silence crackles over the line. He can hear the whistling of the wind, and even the faint blast of car horns.
“He killed himself,” Inara says eventually.
Bliss snorts directly into the phone. “Someone could have shanked the fucker.”
“No, he did it himself. Didn’t he?”