“Humor me.”
She rocks back on her feet, making a go-ahead motion with the bag of milk.
The groceries get carefully placed on the walk. I drag off one of my gloves so I can take several pictures before crouching down next to the bouquet. There’s a card threaded between some of the stems. Almost a card; it’s nothing more than a small sort-of rectangle of white card stock, poorly cut. I yank it out with my hand still gloved. All it says is Priya. The ink is bright blue. The handwriting doesn’t look familiar, but it’s indented slightly into the card stock and has the kind of glisten I usually associate with cheap pens, the kind you get three bucks a dozen on the expectation that they’ll be lost or stolen.
There’s no delivery tag. When florists deliver flowers, there’s some kind of card or tag from the florist with the delivery instructions. That’s how we identified the sender in Omaha.
I take some more pictures, holding the card in front of the bouquet, then scoop up the flowers and groceries. Mum still looks bemused until we get to the kitchen and I can show her the card.
Then her face goes very still, everything tucked away until she decides what she thinks about it. “So he’s here.”
“Maybe,” I murmur. “We’ve gotten jonquils before.”
“Yes, in San Diego,” she replies, one eyebrow tilted. “I’m sure you remember what else happened in San Diego.”
I give her a nasty look.
She just shrugs. Mum saves tact for work, and even then only when she absolutely has to. She doesn’t much bother with it in her personal life.
“We got them in Boston, too,” I remind her. “Once Chavi was connected to the other cases, we got a slew of the earlier flowers.”
“So you think it’s a murder groupie.”
“I think we have to concede the possibility.”
She frowns at the flowers as I dump them, wrapping and all, into the sink. “Do we tell the Quantico Three?”
“Is there something to tell them yet?” I rub my thumb along the edge of the phone, trying to think my way through the options. Just like in chess, you can’t think only of the move you’re making. You have to think three, five, eight moves ahead, to place each play within the context of the full game. “We don’t know that it means anything.”
“Could it be Landon?”
“Maybe? I guess the jonquils could be a coincidence.”
“That would stretch the definition, wouldn’t it?”
“Your daughter was murdered by a serial killer less than a mile from home.”
“Point,” she sighs. She starts putting away groceries, giving herself the chance to think. Mum is nearly never without something to say, but if she has the chance to consider things first, she’ll always take it. “Tell Eddison,” she says when everything is either put away or stacked next to the stove for us to use. “Stalker or killer, the FBI will have to get involved anyway. If they’re here from the beginning, so much the better.”
I lean into her, using her shoulder as a pillow, and wait.
“If it is him,” she says, “if he really has found you again . . . it’s one thing to leave it unresolved when it’s out of our hands.”
“What makes you think it’s in our hands now?”
“I don’t think it is, yet, but if it is him, this is our chance. We’re more likely to succeed if the Bureau’s in the loop. Partial loop,” she corrects herself. “I’m quite sure they don’t need to know everything.”
That’s because Mum’s idea of resolution is seeing the bastard who killed Chavi dead at her feet. Mine usually involves hearing you’re under arrest, followed by a recitation of Miranda rights.
Usually.
A certain awareness of the other cases was inescapable, partly due to the questions the FBI asked us about Chavi and partly because the media seemed to insist we had to know. For a while, we didn’t want to know more.
Then San Diego happened.
I supposed we could have maintained ignorance, but at that point, it seemed not just stupid but actively harmful. So Mum and I researched the other murders, painstakingly sorting out what was true from the theories of the armchair detectives or fans.
It wasn’t that we were hiding what we’d learned from our agents; it was more that . . . well. They’ve always been so careful in their questioning not to give us the weight of those other deaths. Chavi was ours to carry, but it’s so easy in a serial case to feel like you have to hold the entire string of victims to your heart. It’s easy to feel guilty for the deaths that happen after your loved one’s—we got cards from the families of Zoraida Bourret, Mandy Perkins, and Kiersten Knowles when Chavi’s murder hit the national news—and there’s this sense, irrational but strong, of Why couldn’t I provide the information to catch him? It’s not so much What did I do that my daughter/sister got murdered for it? as it is What did I do wrong that he wasn’t stopped?
Guilt doesn’t have to make sense; it just is.
I carry the names of those other victims, but it’s not from guilt. From sorrow, usually, and from rage. Our agents tried to protect us from the extra wounds that come with serial cases, but it isn’t their fault we’re broken people who don’t always react the way we’re expected to.
“How are you going to play it?” Mum asks.
“It doesn’t really matter what kind of flower it is; the fact that whoever delivered them knows where we live is problematic.”
“So you’re telling the truth. Novel way to go about it.”
Only Mum would consider sharing a fraction of the available information to be telling the truth.
I pull up the clearest of the photos, with both the flowers and the card, and text it to Eddison along with These were at the door when we got home from errands.
When there’s no immediate response, Mum and I both go get changed and come back to the kitchen to start the Oreo truffles. About an hour later, as we’re on the couch waiting for things to chill enough for the next step, my special Eddison-only ringtone goes off. “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett; it felt appropriate.
“Hey.”
“Are those jonquils?” he asks, sounding out of breath.
With a glance at Mum, I put the phone on speaker. “Yes, yes they are. Is that important?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re panting.”
“I was out running. Has anyone sent you jonquils before?”
He’s got the Agent tone in his voice, the one that says to let him ask his questions before I try to get clarification. I don’t always like that tone, but I get why it’s important.
“San Diego and Boston.”
“Did you get any other flowers in San Diego?”
Mum and I trade looks. “Yes. I can’t recall what they were, though.”
Mum’s eyebrows inch toward her hairline, but she doesn’t contradict me. I’ve never outright lied to Eddison before; I don’t think I like it.
“Would you have written about it to Chavi?”
“Yes, but I’d have to dig through the journals to find which one they’re in.”
“When you get a chance, do that, please. And there was no delivery tag?”
“Just the bit of card stock. I still had my glove on,” I add.
“I’m going to send someone out from the Denver office to pick the flowers up, just in case. You didn’t throw them out, right?”
“No, they’re in the sink.”
“Is the sink wet?”
Mum snorts. “Please. Like we do dishes.”
There’s a short pause that I think is Eddison trying to decide whether or not he should respond to that. He doesn’t; it’s probably the right choice. “How long do you think it would take you to find the right journal?”
“I don’t know. We’ve got boxes and boxes of journals, and they’re not in any sort of order.”
“Any particular reason?”