Page 80 of Call Off the Dark

In a soulless, windowless room, she told Helen the good news: The tiny drop of DNA blood evidence in the hallway had returned a match in the system, and they had made an arrest that morning.

The room started to tilt, and Detective Calhoun offered Helen water, which she drank faster than she should have, because then she was coughing.

Helen knew she was supposed to feel happy, but the arrest didn’t bring Tyler back, and as Detective Calhoun gave her more details—Jack Franklin, twenty-four, delivery driver, prior B and E, assault, and drug charges—she just felt her blood boiling.

Such an ordinary name for a monster. Helen would never be able to think of him as a Jack, and when Calhoun showed her the man’s mug shot, all Helen saw was the black ski mask. He would always be the masked man to her.

“Why did he do it?” Helen asked.

Calhoun looked up from her files. “Why?”

“Why did he kill my husband?”

Calhoun took a moment before answering. “Given his history, I think we can probably assume it was a robbery gone wrong.”

Helen didn’t want assumptions. She wanted a reason that Tyler was dead. She knew no one could give her a good reason, but at the very least she deserved a shitty reason.

“My husband and I used to get a vanilla latte on most Sundays. Just one to share,” Helen said. “He always took the first sip. Always. Do you know why?”

Calhoun regarded Helen warily. “Because he liked lattes so much?”

“No. To make sure it wasn’t too hot for me. So I wouldn’t burn my mouth. Who murders a man like that? I need to know why.”

Calhoun looked down at her papers and told Helen she would do her best to find out the masked man’s specific motive. “But Helen,” Calhoun said, “the answer might not satisfy you. Sometimes crimes are just senseless, random acts of violence.”

The next day, an arraignment was held. Calhoun called her afterward.

“Are they going to let him out on bail?” Helen asked.

“No. The judge didn’t grant bail,” Calhoun said, her tone reassuring.

“That’s good,” Helen said, trying to sound relieved, but she didn’t really think it was good, and relief certainly wasn’t what she was feeling.

In Helen’s imagination, there was a version of the past she rewrote in her head in which she was the heroine of the story. In that version, she put a bullet in the masked man’s chest on that fateful night. Boom. The villain, dead. Love of her life, alive.

It was too late for that perfect ending, but she was preparing for a different kind of ending. At the gun range that morning, she had hit the target almost every shot. So the truth was that she was gravely disappointed they were keeping the masked man behind bars. It would be impossible for her to shoot someone who was in police custody.

She should have waited outside the courthouse when they brought him in that morning for the arraignment.

Helen vowed to herself she wouldn’t miss her next opportunity.

Wade called her several times after their first date, undeterred by her flimsy excuses until she finally agreed on a second date.

Helen figured that, in person, she would tell Wade she wasn’t in a place to handle anything romantic. She never said those words though. Instead, she discovered as the evening went on that hearing Wade’s voice respond to hers held so much allure. She almost didn’t care what he said, so long as he said something. And when he started talking again about moving to the middle of nowhere, not so subtly suggesting that she’d love the forest too, she thought it sounded a little magical.

Besides, if she was going to kill a man, she’d need a place to hide.

Helen hadn’t seen visions of Tyler around the city in a few weeks. She wasn’t sure if the pills were starting to work or if her mind was starting to work.

When Calhoun called and asked her to come into the station, she had an uneasy feeling though. It was something in the woman’s tone.

The news was worse than she expected.

The masked man was going to accept a plea deal. Guilty of second-degree murder. He’d be eligible for parole in twenty-five years.

“What?” Helen said. “But he could be out before he’s fifty!”

“I understand that number sounds shocking,” Calhoun said, “but let me put a few things in perspective. With robberies and burglaries, the DA almost always pursues second degree—”