“It is,” I confirm.
“You must be a very worthy candidate.”
“I worked extremely hard in school and excelled in training.”
“So, what you’re saying is someone with your heightened awareness and polished skills of intuition had no hesitation entering into a romantic relationship with Mr. Logan,” Roderick says.
“Intuition isn’t a skill,” I point out.
“Fair enough. But you are trained to evaluate people, to scrutinize them and recognize certain characteristics in them,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t recognize anything in Mr. Logan that gave you pause? Nothing that made you suspicious? Even someone with your tremendous instincts considered him completely normal?”
“The word ‘normal’ is extremely weighted. I think there is such a thing as average and fitting with expectation. But I hesitate to describe anyone as normal.”
“Very well, Miss Griffin. We won’t use the word normal. Is it fair to say you didn’t have reservations about him? That you, in fact, trusted him?”
“Yes.”
He tosses another look at the jury, this one pretending to be so puzzled he just can’t understand what I’m saying to him.
“You met many people in Feathered Nest. Did you form such close connections to any of them?”
“No.”
“Did you trust any of them?”
“No.”
“So, not only did you not have reservations about Mr. Logan, you actually set him apart from everyone else you met in the town and identified him as someone you could trust and rely on. Is that right?” Roderick asks.
“Mr. Logan is very good at pretending to be the person he wants to be,” I tell him.
“A rabbit isn’t afraid of a wolf because that wolf isn’t pretending not to be mean, Miss Griffin. It instinctually knows to be afraid.”
“Are you suggesting every woman should instinctively be afraid of every man, Mr. Roderick?” I ask.
His expression shifts. He wasn’t expecting that type of response.
“Of course, that’s not what I’m suggesting. But the severity and truly grotesque nature of the crimes does suggest a person of a certain character.”
“Let me tell you, Mr. Roderick. Rabbits aren’t afraid of wolves because they show their teeth. They aren’t afraid of them because they don’t like the way they look. They’re afraid because it is born into them. Genetic memory tells them the wolf is a threat. Not because there is something inherently flawed or unperceptive about the rabbit. But because that is what nature created. The instinct to fear exists in the animal kingdom because one animal’s survival relies on the death of another. The hunt is about staying alive. What separates humans from the animals is necessity. Humans don’t have a food chain within ourselves. There is no need to kill to live. There is only the thrill.”
I glare directly into Roderick’s eyes.
“Man’s greatest enemy is man, make no mistake. It’s the compulsion to kill without need that makes a human truly terrifying. We may be able to recognize danger in certain individuals, but we cannot have an instinct to fear all who are dangerous because there’s no way to know. We are trained to befriend the enemy. To eat with them, rely on them, lie down beside them. There is no division between the enemy and the friend. As soon as a wolf begins to gather the rabbits to protect them as they pass through the pack, you can talk about instinct. Until then, you can only say I am a human being who spent several weeks falling under the spell of a man who convinced everyone around him, he was the last person they should fear. This isn’t about believing someone’s lies because I have a hard time even saying he was lying. A lie is about deception. He was telling me, and everyone else, what he has taught himself is true.”
Roderick has positioned himself, so looking at him means looking at the defendant’s table. Jake stares back at me, and the emotion in his eyes makes the center of my chest ache, and my stomach feel like it’s going to tear in two. I want to hate him. I want more than I could ever describe to feel nothing for him, but the hatred and disgust his actions deserve.
But I can’t. So much of me does feel those things. But there’s another part of me that doesn’t just remember the words he said, but the way he said them. I can still see the look in his eyes and the pain in the way he touched the faces of corpses his mind turned into people he loved. That’s the part of me that can’t hate him. I hate what he did and what he put me through. I hate the chaos he caused and the effects of it that will go on into the future. But I feel pain for him.
Two hours later, I walk out of the courthouse and feel like breath enters my lungs for the first time today. Eric had to leave the hearing for another work assignment, and Bellamy wasn’t involved, so I’m alone as I step into a pool of sunlight and lean back to tilt my face up toward the sky. The heat feels good on my skin after the chill of the air conditioner inside. It seeps through my eyelids, creating an orange glow.
“Emma?”
The voice brings some of the tension back to my muscles. I stand up, the bones of my spine stacking back up, so I stand straight and turn toward the man. Chief LaRoche has his hands in his pockets and stares at me through dark-tinted sunglasses. I knew he was here. He was in the courtroom during the hearing but didn’t get called up to speak. He will. The time will come for him to talk about his part in all that happened. The months haven’t done much to soften my distaste of the man. He isn’t who I thought he was, but he’s still arrogant, misogynistic, and rude.
“Chief,” I nod in greeting.
He takes the few steps up closer to me and pauses like he expects me to say something. Finally, he relents to the reality that he approached me and not the other way around.
“It’s been a while,” he says.
“It has,” I confirm, even though it really hasn’t. This is the third time we’ve been in the same room together since I left Feathered Nest.
“How have you been?”
There’s an awkwardness to the question. Like he really wants to say something else.
“Better.”
“Good to hear,” he says. “You didn’t have to spend too long in the hospital, did you?” he asks.
“No. A few days,” I shrug. “But there was a lot of healing to do after that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to get up there to visit you,” he says.
“You had done enough.”
Despite how I feel about LaRoche, I can’t forget it was his team who were there to rescue me after my confrontation with Jake.
“Can I ask you something, Emma?” he asks, and I nod. “Did you really think it was me?”
“Yes,” I tell him without hesitation. “There was evidence and compelling circumstances. And, regardless of the little existential fit Roderick had in there, I immediately had a feeling about you. Something that didn’t sit right with me. To your credit, Jake had a major hand in that. He did a good job twisting things and pointing them right at you.”
“And your bad feeling?” he asks.
“I think we can both agree it wasn’t completely unfounded,” I say.
His eyebrows knit tighter together.
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“But you did have affairs, break women’s hearts, and lie about it. You manipulated their trust and used your position as chief of police for your own ends. You hid your connection to Cristela Jordan even after she died when it could have meant something.”
“What could it have meant?” he asks defensively. “I had nothing to do with what Jake did to Cristela. It destroyed me when she died. Can’t you imagine how hard that was for me? I had to investigate her death. I had to go to those train tracks and look at her body. I had to see what he did to her. And no one knew what we had, so I couldn’t show any emotion. I couldn’t grieve for her.”