Dead Man's Match

Thirty-Five

Darkness cloaks Mom's room that night. I tiptoe into her room, lit only by the pale light of the moon streaming between her closed blinds. It shines slightly on her bedside table and her left arm. Her phone sits on the table beside her alarm clock, glowing the red numbers two-ten in the morning. I creep toward her phone and ever so quietly ease the charger from the bottom. This time, I wedge the cable under the clock so it doesn't fall to the ground.

Last time, I had an impossible time rooting around for it amongst the white tulle bedskirt. To make matters worse, Mom's hand fell over the side of the bed inches from me. I had to carefully extract myself from being between her bed and the bedside table to avoid my head brushing against her.

I sneak from Mom's room. Light streaming from the side light in the kitchen illuminates the family room enough for me to make my way to the couch. I sit down with the phone and unlock it. Mom's home screen pops up. I start by going to her web browsers and scroll through her history. I scroll far back, even use the date history to target the years when she was part of the criminal investigation force. No such luck. She must've used her laptop, which I don't have the password for. Maybe the next time she's using it, I can look over her shoulder to try to get her password.

Defeated, I'm about to return the phone to Mom's room when I decide to check her emails again. I click on her emails and scroll back to several months ago. The email she received from the police force is still there. A week later, there's another email from the same address. Curious, I click on it.

We're so pleased that you agreed to speak at the conference. Here are any additional files you may need to access since you no longer have access through the officer portal. Let us know if you need any more information.

I click the back arrow, and soon after, there's a third email.

We're sorry to hear about the personal issue that is preventing you from speaking at the conference. We hope it gets resolved.

So Mom did plan to speak at the conference. She even sent an email accepting the invitation. She backed out because of me. Guilt pangs through me, but I hope to make it up to her some day. Maybe some day she can speak at a conference without worrying about how it will affect your mental health.

Not if you're a killer, that voice in my head says.

I want to suppress it, but I fear that doing so is only suppressing the truth. The problem with truth is that no matter how much you run from it, eventually, it catches up to you. You have to accept reality for what it is. And it is infinitely more painful to do so when you've been battling the truth for so many years.

I click on the original email. The interview files are attached. Quickly, I hurry into the kitchen and hide behind the counter. If Mom wakes up, hopefully she won't spot me.

The interviews download to Mom's phone. A minute later, a popup allows me to click on the files, pulling them up on the screen.

For the next few hours, I comb through the interviews with countless suspects. Some names are present, others are not. If only they stated what the children's names were. From what I glean, the kids are both between five and eight years old. I would've been that age in 2012, so we're looking for someone my age. Autumn and her brother fit the age range.

Something appears in both their interviews that catches my attention. Both kids heard him talking on the phone late at night. When the phone call seemed to have ended, the son got up from bed and went downstairs, asking what was wrong. Ronald kissed him on the forehead and sent him back up to bed, saying that he would be right back and was just going around the corner to visit a neighbor.