“You can’t remember a date? Must have been outstanding.”
“What difference does it make? We went out. We went out. And then he came to my work.”
“Did he talk to anyone there?” Scott asked. “Did anyone see him?”
“No. Everyone was… Lucy was in the back, I think.” Bess scrunched up her face and tried to remember.
“Then there’s the address you gave me for him, on Aviary, it’s no good.” Scott stared at his hands.
“I was there. You found me there on the street. You basically tackled me while I was running away from him.”
“I saw you on the street running like a mad woman. There was no one else there.”
“I am not mad,” Bess said.
“There’s no one on that street with the name Leeds. Or even Greg,” Scott said.
“Maybe… it’s in Amy’s name?” Bess leaned forward, elbows on knees, face in hands. “Stop this,” she muttered. “Please, I don’t feel well. Maybe I’ve misremembered. Maybe it was Poplar. That’s where I saw him the other day, the night he grabbed me. He was on Poplar.” She felt desperate.
“We’ve checked every possibility. There is no Greg Leeds. No Greg Leeds at all. If he lives here then he doesn’t drive or vote or pay utilities…” Scott ticked each item off on the fingers of his left hand. In the right he still held the voice recorder.
“I gave you his gun, remember?”
“It was your gun. Registered to you. Only your prints were on it.”
“Winnie Tate!” she cried. “I was at the historical society with Greg. She saw us, she talked to him. She’s the one who called you to come after me!”
“She said you were in there alone the day she called me. She said you were acting peculiar. Like you were talking to yourself. Not making sense,” Scott said. “And then there’s this journal you gave me. The one with all the information about Greg Leeds. The one that happens to be a journal purchased from The Rabbit Hole and written in your handwriting.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m not doing anything, Bess. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here.” He clicked off the recorder and set it down on the coffee table. “Just… are you fucking with me?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No, of course not. I don’t understand what’s going on. You’ve inserted yourself in an investigation you have no relation to. You’re telling me the guy we arrested for it is no good and at the same time, you’re sending me on a wild goose chase after a man who doesn’t exist. It doesn’t look good. Are you in some kind of relationship with Tam Gillis?”
“I can’t believe you’re even asking me that.” Bess sat up quickly and regretted it immediately as her brain swam.
“I’m starting to feel like an idiot. And I don’t like feeling like an idiot.” His voice was harsh and cold. “I thought you were flirting with me this whole time and it never even occurred to me you were trying to… I don’t know… throw me off. Distract me.”
“I’m not. I’m not doing any of that.”
“You’ve been using me and I can’t figure out why.”
“I want you to leave,” Bess told him.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Bess.”
“I know my fucking rights. You can’t be here if I don’t want you. Are you charging me with a crime?”
“I could! I very well could! Obstructing justice would keep you tied up at least long enough for us to figure out what’s happening.” He studied her face for a moment, then added, “I don’t know if you’re well.”
“It’s Daniel Mills. He’s got to you. He’s making this all seem… He’s doing this.”
“I told you, I spoke with Mr. Mills. He was enormously polite. In fact, he spoke very highly of you. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.” Bess stood up slowly and stood still for a moment to steady herself before going to the refrigerator and pulling out a beer.
“Kinda early,” Scott said.
She deliberately deepened her breaths. “Do you want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself,” she said and tipped the bottle up to her lips. “Scott, I want you to know something. It’s really important to me.” She strode back over to the couch and sat down next to him, closer this time, their arms touching, and faced him. “I haven’t been playing with you. Not at all. I was flirting with you. The truth is, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you lately.” She sipped her drink. “I’m not using you. Not in any way you wouldn’t want me to.” She leaned into him, her mouth stretching up toward his ear, and murmured, “How do you want me to use you, Scott?”
He leaned back and looked at her, a mixture of caution and longing fighting for control of his features. “I like you, Bess. But I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t know if I can trust you.”
“Well, isn’t that the funniest thing I’ve heard all month?” Bess laughed loud enough to startle herself. “This whole time I’ve been trying to decide if I can trust you.”
“Who is Greg Leeds?”
The tension in the room was palpable. Anxiety flapped against her ribcage, threatened to burst out and run rampant. She tried to drown it with beer.
“You know, Daniel Mills talked to me about Jesus the other day and I can’t get the fucking shit out of my head. He said maybe Jesus wasn’t the Son of God. Maybe he’s the actual antichrist we’ve all been so worried about for the last few centuries.” She finished the bottle, went for another. “And I thought he was just… trying to distract me. I thought this was his great red herring to confuse me. But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. And the more sense it makes, I start to wonder, is Daniel the Devil at all? Is the Dragon the Devil? Does the Devil tell us lies, or does he tell us our perfect truths? God damn, Scott. It’s interesting, you know, when you think about it.”
Scott didn’t say anything, he picked up the recorder and pushed the record button once again. Not trying to hide it, right out in the open for her to see.
“If we’ve had the idea of good and evil twisted around all this time, what does that mean?” she asked.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Bess. You know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Do I? Do you?” Her voice rose slightly with each word.
“I think I do,” he said, but she wasn’t listening. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she seemed to not notice.
“Animals don’t have morality. Humans invented it with our big idiot brains. We decided our actions are right or wrong based on rules we made up ourselves and we still can’t manage to agree or follow the rules. We stacked this deck and are still losing, Scott.” Without warning, she flung her bottle hard against the garage door and screamed in genuine fright as it crashed and broke, scattering amber glass into the carpet.
Scott was up in a second, he wrapped his arms tight around her, pinning her arms to her sides. “Don’t. Don’t you hurt yourself,” he told her.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she screamed.
“You’re going to be okay. I swear.” He loosened his grip. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He kissed her forehead, so soft it was barely a kiss at all.
“Please stay with me.”
“I will.”
He led her back into her bedroom. The floor was littered with crumpled clothes, notebooks, and loose papers. The bed itself was a bare mattress, all the sheets and blankets were pushed off to the floor. He pulled a soft fleece blanket from the heap and smoothed it over the bed. Bess lay down and he carefully removed her sneakers and covered her with a worn green quilt. Scott turned and started out of the room, but Bess caught his hand and tugged him back toward her.