Then again, when your boyfriend killed your parents, your brother, and very nearly yourself, and then slashed his own wrists and shot himself in the head to die in a pool of his own blood, people were kind of curious about the whole thing. Especially when there was no obvious “why” behind it all.
Here was the thing. On the whole, other people’s demons were better hidden than hers. Secret vices, shameful pasts, actions that made somebody ache with regret in the dark? Most of that crap was on the down low for the folks you stood in line with at Starbucks, got stuck in traffic behind, worked around, walked past. Maybe if they drank too much you guessed something was up for them. Or if they banged too many people, did drugs hard-core, or gambled their way to bankruptcy, there was a tip-off for the peanut gallery at large—although even with those obvious markers, rarely did third parties get details. Her worst life events, on the other hand, were public knowledge, just an Internet search away if anyone needed a refresher on the fact pattern. Hell, not only was there a Wikipedia page that had recently been updated with all those “decade later” reports, but there were a good dozen or so amateur podcasts and YouTube videos about that night.
At this point, she was just praying no one made a Netflix documentary about it all. The last thing she wanted when she was busy not sleeping was to find herself and her family on the “Trending Now” lineup. And the reality that so many strangers had seen the dead bodies and mortal wounds of her mother and her father and her brother made her nauseated all over again every time she thought about it—
Erika pushed her chair back and yanked the wastepaper basket out from under her desk. As she tucked her ponytail into her suit collar and leaned over, she remembered doing the same thing at the Primrose house.
When she’d gotten overwhelmed in the doorway of that pink bedroom, she’d tried to make it downstairs and outside for some fresh air before she threw up. Halfway to the first floor, it had been clear that she wouldn’t make it, so she’d rerouted herself into the powder room off the kitchen. As she’d fallen onto her knees in front of the bowl, she’d discovered that the family had one of those floor mats that went around the base of the toilet. It had been pale blue to coordinate with the wallpaper, and part of a matched set that included a little rug in front of the pedestal sink.
While she’d wondered why anybody would insulate the soles of their shoes, given that it was unlikely there would be bare feet in that particular loo, her knees had been grateful as she’d vomited up bile.
“Shit…” she groaned aloud.
Trying to get out of her past, she straightened, kicked the wastebasket back into place, and decided that at least she knew she wasn’t pregnant. You had to have sex for that—you know, sometime in the last year, year and a half.
Or had it been more like two for her?
Whatever, like she had time or the inclination to worry about her nonexistent love life.
Focusing on the glowing computer screen in front of her, she was a little surprised to find an open email window front and center. Nobody was in the To: part and the Subject: was likewise vacant. She sure could have used a clue as to what she’d been on the verge of composing. Putting her fingertips on her keyboard, like that would jump-start her brain, she waited for it all to come back to her.
Blink. Blink. Blink…
Well, this was getting her nowhere except maybe an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and no, that wasn’t a facetious hypothetical.
In her experience, people who had had near-death experiences or lived through violent tragedy went one of two ways. They either became fearless, and coasted on a Death Pass card that made them feel as if the biggest worry of mortals no longer applied to them… or they became hypochondriacal shut-ins who were paranoid that every hangnail was an amputation in disguise, each cold was viral pneumonia, and all the normal aches, pains, and forgetfulnesses of daily existence were cancer, cancer, more cancer, and/or dementia.
She was the latter.
“But I’m fine,” she said as she looked around numbly.
Throughout homicide’s open floor plan, the cubicles of her fellow detectives as well as those of the shared administrative support staff were unoccupied, all kinds of office chairs pushed out from under after her colleagues had stood up hours ago to go home for the night. Here and there, a blazer or a coat was draped over the short-stack walls of the workstations, and there were plenty of travel mugs, notepads, files, and pens scattered around any flat surface that presented a set-down opportunity. Although most of the monitors had been turned off, there were a couple that had been left on, CPD badge icons floating as screensavers over the CPD-branded network sign-in page.