Page 10 of Sins of Leo

“I think you would have,” Ruth stated with assurance. It didn’t matter if it were true or not. In that instance, he deserved the belief rather than adding to his list of imagined failings.

“I wonder why the thief took only that. Seems strange,” he remarked.

“Maybe he thought it was valuable.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Once we interrupted him, he most likely grabbed the first thing he saw and ran. I assume he was arrested.”

“You needn’t worry about him coming back.”

“When do you need me to make a statement?”

“It’s already been handled.”

“Thank you.” The reply provided some relief to her anxiety. “Listen, my 8 a.m. cancelled. If you want, we can continue our session now if you’re not busy.”

He hesitated before nodding. “Sure. Why not?” The couch groaned once more as he lay upon it, more relaxed than the previous day. “So what do you want to know?”

She dove right into it. “Tell me about Olivia.”

His expression softened. “She was a tiny baby. Delicate. Perfect. Which surprised. I mean look at me. I’m a brute.”

“You’re a big man,” she corrected. “That doesn’t make you a brute.”

He chuckled. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw me in action.”

“In your line of work, getting physical is unavoidable.”

“And I’m usually the guy who sees the worst of the worst.” His rueful tone lowered as he added, “But I never expected to find my wife’s and baby’s things in the nest of that monster.”

Even Ruth found herself shocked at the revelation. “You discovered their bodies?”

“No. I probably wouldn’t be here if I’d seen their corpses. I found their clothing and my wife’s necklace.” His lips turned down. “I can’t help but think if I’d refused to participate that day, they’d still be alive.”

“Or you’d have been with them when the killer attacked.”

“It would have been the last thing it did,” he growled. “As it was, I’m the one that ended its reign of terror, but notsoon enough. The lives it claimed… The terror they must have experienced when it dragged them to that sewer…”

Her brain suddenly clicked. “You’re talking about the Sewer Massacre.”

“Yeah.”

She remembered reading about it in the paper with horror. The hundreds of bones the police recovered almost impossible to match to victims given the sheer number. Not to mention the killer had struck the unhoused population first, many of whom were never even reported missing.

“You did the city a great service that day. If you’d not stopped the killer, who knows how many more would have died?”

“Too many did die because it took too long for us to locate its lair.”

She noticed how he continued to refer to the killer as “it,” as if it were some creature. Then again, someone indulging in that kind of depravity lacked humanity, so it was understandable.

“How long did you take afterwards to recover from the trauma?”

“A few weeks. I was a mess,” he admitted. “I spent that entire time drunk off my ass. Eventually, my friends slapped me and told me to sober up. They needed me, and so I tried to pull myself together. Managed to get back to work, which I always do sober,” he stated, glancing at her quickly. “But as soon as I finish a task, I suckle at a bottle. It’s a wonder I haven’t died of liver poisoning,” he uttered with a self-deprecating laugh.

“You’re sober right now.”

“I am. Didn’t drink at all last night.” He grimaced. “Not because I didn’t want to. I craved a shot of whiskey something fierce.”

“But you didn’t give in. Why?”

He didn’t immediately reply. When he did, it emerged slow and low-timbered. “Because I was given an important job. One I can’t fuck up.”

---