Page 11 of Sullied Saints

That’s the thing with Chloe, she loves everyone. And everything. As we’re given no choice but to follow her, responding now and then as she chatters on about anything and everything—from the new coffee machine to a casual mention of the protestors throwing a chair through the side window—I wonder as I usually do, why she chose this morbid line of study.

"Dean and Howie have a room set up. I’m calling it the Cocooner Brainstorming Room. Let’s go get everyone up to date!"

"I actually…" Dirk attempts, but she's already moved on togettingus up to date. I only shrug and follow along. I didn't even think I was going to still have a job after today, so I've hardly got other places to be.

Feeling somehow like the most junior member of staff is now running the show, we now rejoin the Cocooner/Needler case.

"Looks like we're on the case with you officially now," Dirk comments as we step into the wide room and spot Dean and Howie. The space is set up somewhat like a classroom, with whiteboards on wheels up the front and too many small tables and their chairs facing it. Indeed, when school excursions bring their students to see the precinct, this is the room the kids and their teachers are most often sequestered to after the perfunctory tour is given.

Dean stands up, coming and shaking Dirk’s hand, clapping him on the shoulder in that way of men who are too self-conscious to actually hug one another. "Good to see you back, Dirk."

Howie trails just behind. Dean and Howie have been on the Cocooner case for years together. They're your typical pairing of wisdom and new ideas, with Dean being young and reasonably new on the force and Howie seasoned. They make a good pairing, for the most part. Dirk and I have worked with them on a number of occasions when our own leads for Needler so often dried up and we had to find some other homicide case to spend our time on. The fact that our two killers have now turned out to be related is something else, but it fits our dynamic.

Chloe sets about arranging the boards, and Howie turns to me. "Tawill has put you two on the Cocooner case with us, huh?"

I shrug. "I guess with Needler in custody, that is the most logical direction."

Howie breaks eye contact at the mention of Needler, and I sigh into the silence. "Look, can we just address the elephant in the room now? I'm not holding a candle for Needler. But we need his information on Cassandra. And if it’s me, he wants to give that to—"

Dean spreads his hands. "We're professionals. Whatever gets the psychos caught, right?"

I almost snort at that, sure he didn't mean it to quite the lengths that I took it. However, it's too late to lie to myself now and imagine that I slept with Needler out of any inclination to speed up catching him.

Chloe comes back over, handing out markers and small bundles of photographs. "Okay, I've printed out photos of people we know are involved with Cassandra, and I've got a colour code all worked out."

Dirk raises an eyebrow, fanning out the photos. An old mugshot of Cassandra is on top, back when she was Olivia, or maybe even before. He moves on quickly, away from the face of the woman who almost killed him.

"You gonna be alright on this case, man?" Dean asks.

Clearing his throat, Dirk gives a shallow smile. "I'm fine. Who'll want the bitch behind bars more than me, right?" I'm not convinced by that, and I sense that neither is anyone else, but he adds, "I'll start," and we all take our places on the desks while he starts pinning the first suspects up on the far left board.

As I watch the faces go up—Cassandra, of course, right in the middle, and then above her, Caleb, my late husband and, as it turns out, the original Cocooner—I start to get uncomfortable. Chloe really hasn't missed a thing. And to that end, Dirk looks up at her and asks wryly, "Really?"

Chloe glances at me, then back at him. "Well, it’s important, isn't it? We need all the information."

With a low laugh, Dirk turns back to the board, puts my face up there, a few inches to the left of Caleb’s, then draws an orange line between us. Then it’s his own face, further left again than mine. He draws a line from him to Cassandra, in red, for Victim. I tense, knowing he needs to draw a line between us. Will he pick orange, like what links me and Caleb? After a brief hesitation, he draws a pink line for a colleague. I wonder if anyone else saw that hesitation or has seen the invisible line held taut between us this whole time.

Next are a handful of victims, and Needler, with a line to me and a line to Cassandra. By the end, it's looking like a screwed-up family tree, or some kind of drama-tragedy flow chart. The whole board is nearly taken up, crisscrossed with connections.

Leaning forward over my desk, I peer at it. "We've got so much, so many connections. Why can't we find her?"

"Because she's too good at becoming someone else," Dean says, "Like Needler. Or Seb, or whoever."

"And too good at hiding," Howie adds.

"Well, there's no shortage of places to hide." Dirk takes a step back from the board, tilting his head at it.

I tap my fingers on the table. "Maybe that’s it. Where would she hide? I mean, she was my roommate for how long? Hiding in plain sight. But now what? Her sketch is everywhere.”

“Unless she's altered herself dramatically,” Dean puts in.

Tilting my head, I say, “I doubt she'd have the means for that, or the time.” When Cassandra was ‘murdered’ by my husband, she underwent a major change, turning from a dark-haired girl going on chubby into the almost bulimic-looking faded blonde I knew as Olivia. But it’s just as unlikely that she’s reversed that process in an effort to disguise herself, and impossible that she could have done it in six weeks. “No, she must either be around people who know exactly what she is, or…"

"No one." Dirk leans back on a desk. "So, she’s in Crennick."

"Fucking Crennick," Howie murmurs, loud enough for us all to hear it. "Place ought to burn."

I twist to look at him. "Thought you were of more traditional opinions, Howie?"

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