Cause to Dread

The doorbell rang, making her jump.

Her finger loosened and her entire body went limp. The Glock clattered to the floor.

Almost, she thought as her heart slammed mounds of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Another quarter of a second and my brains would be all over the wall.

She looked down at the Glock and swatted it away as if it were a poisonous snake. She buried her head in her hands and wiped the tears away.

You almost killed yourself, the voice that may or may not have been Ramirez said. Doesn’t that make you feel like a coward?

She pushed the thought away as she got to her feet and made her way to the front door. She had no idea who it could be. She dared to hope that it was Rose but she knew that would not be the case. Rose was very much like her mother in that regard – stubborn to a fault.

She opened the door and found no one. She did, however, see the rear of a UPS truck leaving her driveway. She looked down to the porch and saw a small box. She picked it up and read her own name and new address in very neat handwriting. The sender’s address showed no name, just a New York address.

She took it inside and opened it slowly. There was no weight to the box and when she opened it, she found balled up newspaper. She removed it all and found just one single thing waiting for her at the bottom.

It was a single sheet of paper, folded in half. She unfolded it, and when she read the message inside, her heart stopped for a moment.

And just like that, Avery no longer felt the need to kill herself.

She read the message over and over, trying to make sense of it. Her mind worked it over, seeking an answer. And with something like this to figure out, the mere thought of dying before it was solved was out of the question.

She sat on the couch and stared at it, reading it again and again.

who are you, avery?

Yours,

Howard

CHAPTER THREE

In the coming days, Avery kept touching the area beneath her chin where she had placed the barrel of the gun. It felt irritated, like a bug bite. Whenever she lay down for sleep and her neck extended when her head hit the pillow, that area felt exposed and vulnerable.

She was going to have to face the fact that she had gone to a very dark place. Even though she had ultimately been pulled away from it, she had gone there. It would forever be a smear on her memories and it seemed that even the very nerves within her flesh wanted to make sure she did not forget it.

For the three days following her near-suicide, she was more depressed than she had ever been in her life. She spent those days curled on her couch. She tried to read but couldn’t focus. She tried motivating herself to go for a run but felt too tired. She kept looking to Howard’s letter, handling it so much that the paper was starting to wrinkle.

She stopped her heavy drinking after receiving the letter from Howard. Slowly, like a caterpillar, she started to break out of her cocoon of self-pity. She slowly started to exercise. She also did crossword puzzles and Sudoku just to keep her mind sharp. Without work, and knowing she had enough money to last her a year without having to worry about anything, it was very easy to fall into a mindset of laziness.

But Howard’s package had erased that lethargy from her. She now had a mystery to solve which set her to a task. And when Avery Black was set to a task, there was no end until it was resolved.

Within a week after receiving the letter, her days slipped into something of a routine. It was still the routine of a hermit, but the routine of it alone made her feel normal. It made her feel like there might be something worth living for. Structure. Mental challenges. Those were the things that had always inspired her and they did that in those coming weeks.

Her mornings started at seven. She’d go out running right away, etching out a brisk two-mile run through the back roads around the cabin for that first week. She’d return home, eat breakfast, and go over old case files. She had more than one hundred in her own personal records, all of which had been solved. But she went over them just to keep herself busy and to remind herself that among the failures that had occurred there near the end, she’d also enjoyed more than a few successes.

She’d then spend an hour unpacking and organizing. She followed this with lunch and either a crossword or a puzzle of some kind. She then did a simple exercise circuit in the bedroom – just a quick session of crunches, sit-ups, planks, and other core exercises. She would then spend a bit of time looking at the files from her last case – the case that had ended up taking the lives of Jack and Ramirez. Some days she’d look at them for ten minutes, other days she’d stare at them for two hours.

What went wrong? What had she missed earlier on? Would she have survived the case had it not been for Howard Randall’s behind-the-scenes interference?

Then came dinner, a bit of reading, some more cleaning, and then bed. It was an eventless routine, but it was a routine all the same.

It took two months to get the cabin clean and in order. By that time, her two-mile run had evolved into a five-mile run. She no longer looked over the old files or the contents from the last one. Instead, she had taken to reading books she bought on Amazon featuring real-life crime dramas and nonfiction police procedurals. She’d also mixed in some books pertaining to the psychological evaluations of some of history’s most noted serial killers.

She was only partly aware that this was her way of filling the void her work had once filled. As this dawned on her more and more, she couldn’t help but wonder about what her future looked like.

One morning, while she made her run around Walden Pond, the cold burning her lungs in a way that was more pleasant than unbearable, this hit her a little harder than it had before. Her mind was running a loop around the questions about getting the package from Howard Randall.

First, how did he know where she was living? And how long had he known? She’d lived under the assumption that he’d died when he had fallen into the bay on the night that final, terrible case came to a close. While his body had never been found, it had been wildly speculated that he had indeed been shot by an officer on the scene before splashing into the water. While she ran her lap, she tried to put together a trail of next steps to figure out where he was and why he’d reached out to her with a strange message: Who are you?

The package came from New York but it’s obvious he’s been around Boston. How else would he know I moved? How else would he know where I live?

This, of course, brought images to her mind of Randall hiding out in those trees with eyes on her cabin.

Just my luck, she thought. Everyone else in my life has died or shut me out. It makes sense that a convicted killer would be the only one that seemed to give a damn about me.

She knew that the package itself would offer no answers. She already knew when it was sent and where it was sent from. It was really just Randall teasing her, letting her know that he was still alive, on the loose, and interested in her in some form or another.

The package was on her mind when she returned from her run. As she stripped off her gloves and stocking cap, her cheeks pink and blustery from the cold, she walked to where she had kept the box. She had looked it all over for clues or little hidden meanings from Randall but had found none. She’d also come up empty when she had looked over the balled up newspaper. She’d read every article on the crumpled paper and nothing had seemed worthwhile. It had just been filler. Of course, that had not stopped her from relentlessly rereading each and every word on those pages several times.

She was tapping anxiously on the box when her cell phone rang. She grabbed it from the kitchen table and stared at the number on the display for a moment. She smiled hesitantly and tried to ignore the happiness that tried to peek into her heart.

It was Connelly.

Her fingers froze for a moment because she honestly didn’t know what to do. Had he called two or three weeks ago, she would have simply ignored the call. But now…well, something was different now, wasn’t it? And as much as she hated to admit it, she supposed she had Howard Randall and his letter to thank for that.

At the last moment before her phone would go to voicemail, she answered the call.

“Hey, Connelly,” she said.

There was a heavy pause on the other end before Connelly responded. “Hey, Black. I…well, I’ll be honest. I was expecting to just have to speak to your voicemail.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, no way. I’m glad to hear your voice. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, it’s starting to feel that way.”

“Am I to take that to mean you’re regretting your far-too-early retirement?”

“No, I wouldn’t go that far. How are things?”

“Things are…good. I mean, there’s a void in the precinct that used to be filled by you and Ramirez but we’re plugging along. Finley is really stepping up his game. He’s been working very closely with O’Malley. I think Finley, between me and you, he took it personally when you quit. And he decided that if someone is going to have to take your place, then dammit, it better be him.”

“Good to hear. Let him know I miss him.”

“Well, I was sort of hoping you’d come and tell him yourself,” Connelly said.

“I don’t think I’m ready to visit just yet,” she said.