I stare at what I’ve done for long seconds—stare at her graffitied face, her vacant eyes—until my skin crawls. Then I walk into the bathroom, turn on the shower and step under the freezing cold spray. The blood runs off my body, turns pink as it mixes with the water and slowly swirls down the drain.
I reach for the soap, pour it all over my body. And scrub. And scrub. And scrub. Only when I’m clean, only when I can look down at my naked body and see my skin and not the blood, do I do what I’ve been afraid of since this nightmare began. What I’ve been afraid of for far, far too long.
I shatter.
Chapter 31
Don’t say that.
I don’t believe you.
Don’t say that.
I don’t believe you.
Don’t say that.
Don’t say that.
Don’t say that.
Veronica’s words echo in my head as I make the hour long drive from Houston Hobby airport to the Huntsville correctional facility.
They wash over me again and again, just as they have every day—every hour—since I walked out of her house two weeks ago.
What did I ever do to you to deserve this?
I slam my fist against the steering wheel and try to block out her voice. To block out the blankness of her face, the devastation in her eyes.
It doesn’t work. Nothing works. It hasn’t since I walked away from Veronica. No, not walked away. Since I let her push me away.
I don’t believe for one second that you know what it means to be sorry.
She’s wrong. She’s right about so much, right about everything else. But on this one thing, she’s so, so wrong. I’ve never been more sorry—more sick—in my life.
What happened to her that last day—what I let happen to her—in that shell of a house, with her shell of a mother—it haunts me.
The profiler in me knew Melanie Romero was a narcissist from the moment I started observing her at that party. But like so many other mental disorders, narcissistic personality disorder encompasses a wide spectrum of behaviors and varying degrees of severity. And I didn’t realize just how gone she was, didn’t realize—even after I learned about her role in Veronica’s relationship with William Vargas—just how far she would go to cover up her own culpability and reap the benefits of her daughter’s fame.
That was my mistake, and because I made it, Veronica was terrorized, drugged, made to think that she was the crazy one while I did nothing to stop it.
How could I have not seen?
How could I have not known?
Understanding deviants and how they think is my job. More, it’s my vocation. It’s what I’ve dedicated my life to. And yet when it came to Melanie, I didn’t dig deep enough. I saw only the superficial threat and Veronica paid the price.
Is it any wonder she wants nothing to do with me? It’s bad enough that I lied to her, that I tried to use her to get information for the Vargas book. But then I also failed to protect her.
I’m so lost in my head—lost in the sickness of my remorse—that I make it to Huntsville before I’m ready. I have no idea what I’m doing here, let alone what I’m supposed to say to Jason.
Then again, what is there to say to the man whose choices have so brutally affected my own life? The man I’ve spent so many years trying not to be.
I slowly pull into the parking lot for the maximum security unit, park the rental car in one of the last spots. Then I empty my pockets of everything but my driver’s license and car key—the only two things I’m allowed to bring inside the entrance.
And then I just sit in my car for long seconds wondering if I really want to do this. If I really want to walk into that prison and see my brother for the first time since he’s been incarcerated.
I don’t believe you know for one second what it means to be sorry.
Goddamn it. Am I never going to be free from what I did to her?
Fuck it. Just fuck it. Facing down Jason can’t be any worse than sitting here and dealing with my own demons. My own transgressions.
Now that I’ve made my final decision, I want to get in there and get it over with as quickly as possible. I stow my wallet, cellphone, and key ring in the glove compartment of the car and leave everything else that I’ve got in my pockets—a pack of gum, a random business card, a pen—on the passenger seat.
And then I start the long walk to the front door.
As I walk, I struggle to find the right words, struggle on how to deal with Jason when I see him. I’ve met with a lot of prisoners through the years—when I was in the FBI and even afterward, because of the books I choose to write—and there were very few that I ever had trouble speaking with. But I don’t have a clue what I want to say to Jason.
Maybe that’s because there are no right words. No right way to handle this first—and if I have my way, only—meeting.