Love the Boys

Chapter Eleven

The police station was one large, echoing chamber, a labyrinth of cold hallways. I kept my purse on my lap as I sat at a desk in the middle of the floor. It was one in a sea of others. I could see everything from here. I watched detectives making calls and officers leading hand-cuffed delinquents to booking. Officer Reed had gone to speak to someone else, and I was feeling nervous, but at least there was plenty to look at. And yet, I didn't really want to draw attention to myself.

There was a picture on the desk of Reed with a young boy, probably his son, in a yellow baseball uniform. I stared at the smiling snaggletooth until he came back.

"What can I do for you, Rosaleigh?" he asked, his black hair as spikey as ever. I swallowed once to prepare myself.

"I just keep thinking about that guy—those pictures. The whole thing kind of scared me, I guess."

"I don't blame you. Anyone would be rattled. But you don't have to worry about that anymore."

He was reassuring, and I believed him, but that didn't make the paranoia go away.

"I just wish I understood it," I said. "I wish I knew who he was and why he was fascinated with me. I was just wondering if you'd found out anything about him. It's bothering me that I feel I should know who he was, but don't."

"We haven't found a thing yet," Reed said, and my heart sank. "No one has come forward to identify him and we haven't gotten any matches in our records. We haven't gotten any tips about the car that hit him either. The whole thing is still a mystery."

I wondered briefly if anyone was still interested in this case. Was it already lost in the files on his desk? Had it gone completely cold in their eyes? Was Reed already thinking of his son's game at the ballpark later, and he had no care for this at all?

Was I the only one left?

"I was thinking," I started, snapping out of my haze, "if I looked at those pictures again, maybe I would remember something. When I first saw them, I was too shocked to think about where I might have been when they were taken, but maybe there is something in them that will make me remember."

"Alright, I see where you're going with this," he agreed. He said it calmly, but I could tell that the idea hadn't even occurred to him. Was he even involved with this case now? I had no idea. "Hold on a second."

Once again he left me alone at the desk, and I was left to look at the tabletop, with the idea that at least he had some family to relate to, reminding him of who he was. Who was I, after all? What defined me? I couldn't remember. This task... Finding out who the scarred man was had consumed me. I would have said I wanted Simon more than anything, but I wanted this just as much.

Officer Reed brought the pictures over in a manila folder. He placed the folder in front of me, though I thought he might open it to spread the images out on the desk.

"Go ahead. Have a look through them. Take all the time you need," he instructed, and simply allowed me to sit there in front of him with that evidence as he turned back to his computer for other things that needed his attention.

My heart was beating fast as I reached out for the corner of the folder with two fingers and grasped it gently to lift it open. The first of the pictures looked back at me, a shot of myself, but I looked down at the girl in that photo as if I was a stranger.

There were specific things I was looking for this time. Shadows, reflections, indicators that he had really been there so near to me instead of just being an idea or a whisper of wind. I wanted to know exactly where I had been when he took the pictures and wondered if I might even indicate which one of them had been first. Had the first one been just a whim, or had he already been following me before his first picture?