Cause to Dread

“Okay, so I was never good at the small talk bullshit,” Connelly said. “I’ll cut to the chase.”

“That’s when you’re at your best,” she said.

“Look…we’ve got a case – ”

“Stop right there,” she said. “I’m not coming back. Not now. Probably not ever, though I wouldn’t rule it out completely.”

“Hear me out on this one, Black,” he said. “Wait until you hear the details. Actually, you’ve probably already heard them. This one has been all over the news.”

“I don’t watch the news,” she said. “Hell, I only use the computer for Amazon. I can’t remember the last time I read a headline.”

“Well, it’s strange as hell and we can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. O’Malley and I had a late-night drinking session last night and decided we needed to call you. This isn’t just me kissing your ass and trying to convince you…but you’re the only person we came up with that could maybe crack this one. If you haven’t seen the news, I can tell you it’s – ”

“The answer is no, Connelly,” she said, interrupting. “I appreciate the thought and the gesture, but no. If I’m ever ready to discuss a return, I’ll call you.”

“A man is dead, Avery, and the killer might not be finished,” he said.

For some reason, hearing him use her first name stung a bit. “I’m sorry, Connelly. Be sure to tell Finley I said hello.”

And with that, she hung up. She looked at the call idly, wondering if she had just made a huge mistake. She’d be lying if she told herself the idea of returning to work hadn’t elicited a bit of a thrill. Even hearing Connelly’s voice had made her yearn for that part of her old life.

You can’t, she told herself. If you go back to work now, you’re basically telling Rose that you don’t give a damn about her. And you’d be running directly back into the arms of the creature that put you where you are right now.

She got to her feet and looked out the window. She looked out to the trees, into the thickness and shrouded daytime shadows between them, and thought about Howard Randall’s letter.

About Howard Randall’s question.

Who are you?

She was beginning to think she wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. And maybe being without her work in her life was the reason.

***

She broke out of her routine that afternoon for the first time since establishing it. She drove out to South Boston, to St. Augustine Cemetery. It was a place she had been avoiding since the move, not just because of guilt but because it seemed that whatever cruel force manipulated fate had delivered a vicious jab to her. Both Ramirez and Jack were buried in St. Augustine Cemetery and though they were many rows apart, that did not matter to Avery. As far as she was concerned, the nexus of her failures and grief was located in that one green strip of land and she wanted nothing to do with it.

That’s why this was her first visit since the funerals. She sat in the car for a moment, looking out toward Ramirez’s grave. She slowly got out of the car and walked over to where the man she had been ready to marry had been laid to rest. The grave marker was modest. Someone had recently placed a bouquet of white flowers on it – probably his mother – that would wither and die in this cold within the next day or so.

She didn’t know what to say and she supposed that was fine. If Ramirez was aware that she was there and if he could hear what she could say (and a large part of Avery thought that was the case), he would know that she had never been one for sentiment. He was probably shocked, even in whatever ethereal place he was occupying, that she was here at all.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring that Ramirez had intended to one day place on her finger.

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss you and I’m just so…so lost. And there’s no need to lie to you…it’s not just because you’re gone. I don’t know what to do with myself. My life is falling apart and the one thing I know will make it somewhat stable again – work – is probably the worst thing I could turn to.”

She tried to imagine him there with her. What would he say to her if he could? She smiled when she imagined him giving her one of his sarcastic frowns. Suck it up and do it. That’s what he’d say. Get your ass back to work and pick up what’s left of your life.

“You’re no help,” she said with her own little sarcastic expression. It scared her a bit that speaking to him through his grave felt almost natural. “You’d tell me to go back to work and figure it out from there, wouldn’t you?”

She stared at the gravestone, as if willing it to answer her. A single tear came out of the corner of her right eye. She wiped it away as she turned away and headed in the direction of Jack’s grave. He’d been buried on the other side of the cemetery, which she could just barely see from where she stood. She walked to the little path that ran through the grounds, enjoying the silence. She paid no attention to the few others who were there to pay their respects and grieve, leaving them with their privacy.

Yet as she neared Jack’s grave, she saw someone already standing by it. It was a woman, short and with her head bowed down. With another few steps, Avery saw that it was Rose. Her hands were stuffed into her pockets and she was wearing a coat with a hood, which was up and covering her head.

Avery didn’t want to call out, hoping she’d manage to get close enough where they could actually have a conversation. But within several more steps, Rose apparently sensed someone approaching. She turned, saw Avery, and instantly started walking away.

“Rose, don’t be like that,” Avery said. “Can’t we just talk for a minute?”

“No, Mom. Jesus, how can you ruin this for me, too?”

“Rose!”

But Rose had nothing more to say. She quickened her pace and Avery did everything she could not to give chase. More tears came spilling down Avery’s face as she turned her attention to Jack’s grave.

“Whose side did she get that streak from?” Avery asked the gravestone.

Like Ramirez, Jack’s stone was of course also silent. She turned back to her right and watched as Rose grew smaller in the distance. Walking away from her until she was gone completely.

CHAPTER FOUR

When Avery walked into Dr. Higdon’s office, she felt like a cliché. Dr. Higdon herself was very poised and polite. She seemed to always have her head pointed slightly upward, showing off the perfect point of her nose and the angle of her chin. She was a good-looking woman, if not a bit overdone.

Avery had fought the urge to go to a therapist but knew enough about how the traumatized mind worked to know that she needed it. And that was excruciating to admit to herself. She hated the idea of visiting a shrink and also did not want to resort to calling upon the services of the Boston PD–assigned shrink she’d seen a few times over the years following particular tough cases.

So she’d reached out to Dr. Higdon, a therapist she had heard about last year during a case involving a suspect who had used her to get over a series of irrational fears.

“I appreciate you meeting with me so quickly,” Avery said. “I was honestly expecting to have to wait a few weeks.”

Higdon shrugged as she sat down in her chair. When Avery took a seat on the adjacent couch, the feeling of becoming a living cliché only intensified.

“Well, I’ve heard of you a few times just through news stories,” Higdon said. “And your name has come up when new patients have come in, people you’ve apparently crossed paths with in your line of work. So I had an open hour today and figured it would be nice to meet you.”

Realizing that it was unprecedented to get an appointment with a respected therapist just two days after making a call, Avery knew not to take the appointment for granted. And, never having been one to beat around the bush, she had no problem getting to the point.

“I wanted to meet with a therapist because, quite honestly, my head is just a mess right now. One part is telling me that healing is going to come from time off. Another part is telling me that healing is going to come from productivity and familiarity – which leads me back to work.”

“I know just the briefest of details about the healing you’re looking for,” Higdon said. “Could you elaborate?”

Avery spent ten minutes doing just that. She started with how the last case had unfolded and then ended in the death of her ex-husband and her would-be fiancé. She breezed over the part about moving away from the city and the recent fallout with Rose, both at her apartment and their run-in at Jack’s grave.

Dr. Higdon started asking questions right away, having taken down handwritten notes the entire time Avery had been talking. “The move to the cabin by Walden Pond…what made you want to do that?”

“I didn’t want to be around people. It’s more isolated. Very quiet.”

“Do you feel that you heal better both emotionally and physically when you’re on your own?” Higdon asked.

“I don’t know. I just…I didn’t want to be in a place where people had the ability to come by and check on me a hundred times a day.”

“Have you always had problems with people concerned for your well-being?”

Avery shrugged. “Not really. It’s a vulnerability thing, I suppose. In my line of work, vulnerability leads to weakness.”