I’m sitting in the Breaux Bridge police department, the cheap bulbs fastened to the ceiling of the interrogation room making my skin glow a radioactive algae green. The blanket they had draped over my shoulders is scratchy like Velcro, but I’m too cold to take it off.
“All right, Chloe. Why don’t you take us through what happened one more time?”
I look up at Detective Thomas. He’s sitting on the other side of the table alongside Officer Doyle and a Breaux Bridge cop whose name I’ve already forgotten.
“I already told her,” I say, looking at the unnamed officer. “She has it on tape.”
“Just one more time for me,” he says. “And then we can take you home.”
I exhale, my hand reaching for the paper cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of me. It’s my third cup of the night, and as I bring it to my lips, I notice microscopic specs of blood dried to my skin. I put the cup down, pick at one spot with my fingernail, and watch as it flakes off like paint.
“I met the man I knew to be Aaron Jansen a few weeks ago,” I say. “He told me he was writing a story about my father. That he was a reporter for The New York Times. Eventually, he claimed that his story had changed due to the disappearances of Aubrey Gravino and Lacey Deckler. That he believed it was the work of a copycat, and he wanted my help to solve it.”
Detective Thomas nods, urging me to continue.
“Throughout our conversations, I started to believe him. There were so many similarities: the victims, the missing jewelry. The anniversary coming up. Initially, I believed it could have been Bert Rhodes—I told you that— but later that night, I found something in my closet. A necklace that matched Aubrey’s earrings.”
“And why didn’t you bring this evidence to us when you found it?”
“I tried,” I say. “But the next morning, it was gone. My fiancé took it
—I have a video of him holding it, on my phone—and that’s when I started to believe that he may have had something to do with it. But even if I did have it, during our last conversation, you made it pretty clear that you didn’t believe anything I said. You practically told me to fuck off.”
He stares at me from across the room, shifting uncomfortably. I stare back.
“Anyway, there’s more than that. He’s been visiting my father in prison. I found Diazepam in his briefcase. His own sister went missing, twenty years ago, and when I visited his mother, she told me that she actually thought he might have had something to do with it—”
“Okay,” the detective interrupts, holding up a hand, fingers outstretched. “One thing at a time. What brought you to Breaux Bridge tonight? How did you know Riley Tack would be here?”
The image of Riley, ghostly pale, is still etched into my mind. Of the ambulance as it came flying down my driveway—of me, standing in the front yard, the phone I had retrieved from my car clutched in my hand as I waited, my body rigid and eyes unfocused. Unable to go back into that house, unable to face the dead body on the floor. The paramedics loading her into the back, tied to a stretcher, bags of fluids rushing into her veins.
“Daniel left me a voice mail, telling me he was leaving,” I say. “I was trying to figure out where he might have been going, where he could have been bringing the girls. I just had a feeling that he was bringing them here. I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Detective Thomas nods. “And where is Daniel now?”
I look up at him, my eyes stinging from the harsh lights, the bitter coffee, the lack of sleep. Everything.
“I don’t know,” I say again. “He’s gone.”
The room is quiet except for the buzzing of the lights overhead, like a single fly trapped inside of a tin can. Aaron killed those girls. He tried to kill Riley. Finally, I have my answers—but there is still so much that I don’t understand. So much that doesn’t make sense.
“I know you don’t believe me,” I say, looking up. “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth. I had no idea—”
“I believe you, Chloe,” Detective Thomas interrupts. “I do.”
I nod, trying not to show the relief that I feel flowing over me. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this. I was expecting an argument, a demand for proof that I can’t produce. And then I realize: He must know something that I don’t.
“You know who he is,” I say, understanding dawning on me slowly. “Aaron, I mean. You know who he really is.”
The detective looks back at me, his expression unreadable. “You have to tell me. I deserve to know.”
“His name was Tyler Price,” he says at last, leaning over as he pulls his briefcase onto the table. He opens it up, pulls out a mug shot, and places it between us. I stare at Aaron’s face—no, Tyler’s face. He looks like a Tyler, different without the glasses magnifying his eyes, the snugly fit button-ups, his hair buzzed short. He has one of those generic faces that seems recognizable to everybody—bland features, no easily identifiable marks—but there is a vague resemblance to that headshot I had seen online, to the real Aaron Jansen. He could pass as a second cousin, maybe. An older brother. The kind who buys liquor for high-schoolers then shows up to the party, slinking off to the corner. Sipping a beer in silence, observing.
I swallow, my eyes drilling into the table. Tyler Price. I scold myself for falling for it, for so easily seeing what he had wanted me to see—but at the same time, maybe I had seen what I had wanted to see. I had needed an ally, after all. Someone on my side. But it had only been a game to him. All of it, a game. And Aaron Jansen had been nothing more than a character.
“We were able to ID him almost immediately,” Detective Thomas continues. “He’s from Breaux Bridge.”
My head snaps up, eyes wide.
“What?”
“He was already in their system for some smaller stuff a while back. Possession of marijuana, trespassing. Dropped out of school just before the ninth grade.”
I look back down at his picture, trying to conjure up a memory. Any memory of Tyler Price. Breaux Bridge is a small town, after all—then again, I never had many friends.
“What else do you know about him?”
“He was seen at Cypress Cemetery,” he says, pulling another picture from his briefcase. This time, it’s of the search party—with Tyler in the distance, glasses off, baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead. “Murderers can be known to revisit their crime scenes, especially repeat offenders. It seems Tyler took it a step further with you. Not only revisiting the scenes, but getting involved in the case itself. At a distance, of course. It’s not unheard of.”
Tyler had been there, been everywhere. I think back to the cemetery, those eyes that I could feel on my back, always. Watching as I pushed through the headstones, crouched in the dirt. I imagine him holding Aubrey’s earring in one gloved hand, crouching down to tie his shoe, and leaving it there, waiting for me to find it. That picture of me he had shown me on his phone. He didn’t find it online, I realize. He took it himself.
And then it hits me.
I think back to my childhood, after my father’s arrest. Those footprints we had found around our property. That nameless kid I had caught, staring through our windows. Propelled by a sick curiosity, a fascination with death.
Who are you? I had screamed, charging forward. His answer was the same then as it was last night, twenty years later.
I’m nobody.
“We’re processing his car now,” Detective Thomas continues, but I can barely hear him. “We found Diazepam in his pocket. A gold ring that we assume at this point belongs to Riley. A bracelet. Wooden beads with a metal cross.”
I pinch my nose with my fingers. It’s all too much.
“Hey,” he says, dipping his head so he can see my eyes. I glance up, weary. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But it is, though,” I say. “It is my fault. He found them because of me. They died because of me. I should have recognized him—”
He holds out his palm, gives his head a little shake.
“Don’t even go there,” he says. “It was twenty years ago. You were just a kid.”
He’s right, I know. I was just a kid, only twelve years old. But still. “You know who else is just a kid?” he asks.
I look at him, my eyebrows raised. “Who?”
“Riley,” he says. “And because of you, she made it out alive.”
