9.
***
At least they waited for him to get well - or rather, get better, he still wasn't back up to what he had been, and probably never would be again - before they put him on trial.
A number of the cops that Scott worked with were up in arms over the inquiry. After all, they told him, it wasn't enough that he had lost his wife and child in the same day that he had left his spleen and a good portion of his intestines in a hospital operating room. It wasn't enough that he had spent four months in a hospital room and another four learning how to walk once more - though even now he still couldn't get around without the aid of crutches. It wasn't enough that he had survived a shootout with one of the strangest endings anyone in the department could ever recall.
They had to have their trial.
Not that Scott could blame them. After all, there had been a very public murder, followed by an even more public shootout, followed by...nothing.
No prints.
No shooter.
No evidence, other than the spent casings and three dead bodies: two family members, and the blue eyed John Doe.
Of course the journalists got a hold of the story and ran with it, running exposé after exposé on Scott Cowley, asking the question of whether he was a good cop, but asking it in such a way that it was never really in doubt what the answer was: no, he was not a good cop.
For those journalists who ran the pieces, after all, there was no such thing as a good cop. It didn't matter to them that Scott and people like him were the reason that they could write their drivel without having to look over their shoulders at night for fear they'd be attacked. It didn't matter to them that freedom of the press existed because of the blood of men and women who kept the peace and who provided a community safe enough that such freedoms were even possible.
It just mattered to them that there was a shooting, and that there was a cop involved. So it was only a short leap from "Cop Involved in Shooting" to "No Suspects Found" to "Cop Under Investigation."
So no, Scott couldn't blame his superiors on the force, who were under pressure from the mayor's office, which was under pressure from the voters, who were being spoon-fed a load of crap about Scott being an irresponsible and perhaps irrational, gun-toting lunatic.
The trial itself wasn't termed a trial, of course. It was an "inquiry." He told his story over and over, to police commissions, to civilian oversight committees, to Internal Affairs, and to anyone and everyone else who asked. Even though he knew it was going to end up as a public flogging sooner or later, he answered the questions, and answered them truthfully.
But yes, eventually it became clear that though there was no real dirt on Scott - he had a record as spotless as the floors that Amy had kept in their home - even so, there was also no real evidence to support his story. Just bullets and casings and some "friends" who had come upon a scene where, ultimately, there was no suspect to be found.
Eventually, he was reprimanded and demoted several levels. His career as a cop - at least, as a cop who had a chance at any serious vertical movement in the department - was over.
And Scott didn't mind.
In fact, on the day that the letter was delivered to him at his home, he was almost relieved. It was over. The people had their scapegoat for a crime that had "likely never occurred except in the mind of an overstressed officer." Indeed, he was aware that it could have been much worse; that there were those in the department and in the journalism sector who quietly whispered about the possibility that Scott had staged the whole event for the sole purpose of covering up the real crime: his murder of his own wife and child.
The day that he was demoted, he came home early from work, feeling like hell. What were they going to do, demote him again? he reasoned. So he said goodbye to the few remaining friends he had on the force and came home, reasoning that he might take a nap.
Or he might kill himself.
It was a tossup. On one hand, a nap sounded damn fine.
On the other hand, you had to wake up from a nap, and Scott didn't know that that sounded so very good to him these days. What did he have to wake up to? An empty apartment. A room full of toys that would never be played with again. Presents that had not quite been unwrapped for his child's last birthday, and never would be unwrapped, for the child for whom they were intended was gone forever.
So Scott walked through the place, looking at the rooms, at the evidence that once he had been alive, and wondered if he wouldn't be better off just ending it all. It wouldn't be hard, he knew. He could cut his wrists in the tub and sink into a warm oblivion, leaving the world as he had come into it: in blood and water and pain. Or he could just throw back a couple dozen of the OxyContins that he had been prescribed in the aftermath of his ordeal, to help him cope with the almost daily pain he now suffered.
Either way, it would be easy, quick, and final.
All good things.
He actually got as far as filling up the tub for a final bath when it happened.
There was a sound.
Immediately, Scott was transported back to the alley, to the sound he had heard when the hitter - the man Scott called Mr. Gray, a man who had never been identified, though Scott had spent countless hours and even entire days looking through various photo files of criminals and killers - had crept up behind him with the intention to end his life.
Scott froze. He turned off the water, which dripped for a moment and then was silent.
He listened. Waited.
He watched the doorway to the bathroom, wondering if what he had heard had been real, or simply some post-traumatic hallucination dredged up from his subconscious to torment him.
The sound did not repeat.
Even so, Scott went from room to room in the small apartment, clearing the area with the precision of a Delta Force member sweeping for hostiles.
Nothing. The apartment was empty, save only him.
Even so, there had been a sound. He was sure of it. It was the sound of a shoe scuffing on the floor, the sound of someone trying hard to be stealthy and not quite succeeding.
The sound of a killer, of a predator, laying in wait for its prey.
Scott went through the apartment one more time, this time more carefully. He looked not only in each room, but in each possible hiding place in each room. He opened every closet. He looked under every bed and table. He even opened the cabinets under the kitchen sink on the off chance that a very small intruder might be hiding there.
Nothing. Still nothing.
But then the sound came again. The soft scrape of leather on wood, the murmur of a shoe on the floor.
Scott ran to the front room, the area he thought he had heard the sound.
But again, there was no one there. Just him. Just him and....
Scott turned in shock. It hadn't been the sound of a shoe on the floor. It hadn't been anything as easily explained as that. Instead, Scott watched as a paper fluttered off the small writing desk where he wrote checks and paid his bills each month. The sound had been the movement of the paper.
Scott stared at the paper. How had it fallen? He was always very meticulous about his stationary, placing it in the exact center of the desk where it could be easily reached when necessary, but where it was out of the way whenever not needed. There was no way a page could have fallen from the pile of papers on the desk.
Scott looked at the nearest air conditioning vent. It was a good fifteen feet away. Besides, even if a breeze might have explained the movement of the paper at a different time, there was no fan or air conditioning or heater active right now. The air in the apartment was inert; stagnant.
Scott hobbled over to the paper where it sat on the floor. A strange foreboding gripped him, as though he knew in some portion of his mind what he was going to find, and dreaded the discovery.
He reached out, surprised to see that he was actually shaking, and took the paper by the corner, holding it as gingerly as he would a dangerous pit viper. The side that had been face up was blank, but Scott knew as he turned it over that he would see...something.
But he was wrong. There was only another side of white, empty paper looking at him.
So why were the hackles on the back of his neck standing on end? Why were his arms awash in gooseflesh?
Telling himself not to be foolish, chiding himself for falling prey to fear of something as mundane as a falling piece of paper, Scott moved to put the page back on the pile of similar stationary on his desk.
And froze.
Because the second page, the page under the one he was holding, had also moved. One moment before, it had been perfectly stacked on its companions, an exact rectangle of paper ready for use. Scott was sure of it. But now, the page that had been below the one Scott now held was slightly askew, as though someone had been fingering through the papers, looking for evidence. What kind of evidence could be found in a pile of empty paper, Scott did not know. But he drew his gun, feeling both silly and reassured by the action.
He pulled the paper aside.
And dropped his gun.
He backed up, moving as far from the papers on his desk as possible, moving in reverse until he was backed up against the wall opposite to the writing desk. His mouth was open in a round "O" of shock and terror.
The page below, the third page down in the pile, had writing on it.
"I'm still here" it read, in writing that was thick and awkward, as though it had been written by an epileptic in the midst of a seizure.
Scott scooped up his gun and moved as quickly as he could through the apartment once more, making sure that every window was sealed, every door locked. The short hairs on the back of his neck were still standing straight up, and he knew - he knew - that someone was in the apartment with him. Someone unseen, someone well-hidden.
But someone.
He moved back to the pad, intending to call the precinct and ask one of the two or three guys who weren't treating him like a pariah to come over and give him a second set of eyeballs. But when he returned to the writing desk, all thoughts of calling a friend fled from his mind.
Because there was more writing. More words on the piece of paper that still sat in the middle of his desk.
"I'm still here, and I'm coming for you and Kevin."
Scott swept the house one more time, but he found nothing. No more notes, no evidence that anyone other than him had ever been there.
Just a note. And he knew - knew somehow - that if he turned it into the department for testing, they would find no prints, no clues that might lead them to the invisible author of the short missive. It would be just one more reminder to those who had it in for him that Scott was not to be trusted; that his life and his career were over and might very well be more of a liability than they were worth.
So Scott balled the paper up and threw it in the trash. He went to bed that night and dreamed of phantom notes, and old men holding babies, and most of all he dreamt of a question:
Who is Kevin?
***