He stumbled back to the couch and collapsed onto it. Maybe he’d sleep tonight, but probably not. Not for more than a few minutes at a burst, just like the last few nights. How the fuck does a person ever get a real sleep after their wife and baby die? Seems sacrilegious. If Colin ever got a peaceful eight-hour sleep again, he’d slit his wrists out of sheer guilt.
Sleep made him think of Riley McKay, who slept so hard he never came out of it. And Riley McKay made him think of Rose Yates. Colin had become obsessed with her, something more easily admitted in the pitch-black of his house. Obsessed with needing to know what she was guilty of, if anything. Since Meg’s death, Rose Yates had occupied a disproportionate chunk of Colin’s thoughts. He hadn’t wanted this, but he had no power to fight the way his synapses fired.
And that led to tonight, where Colin, deep in the dark, seven and a half beers in his bloodstream, wearing nothing but underwear and a thousand-pound suit of grief, powered on his phone, bringing a digital spotlight into the void. He searched his contacts for Rose Yates, whom he’d added in his list before his trip to Bury.
Colin thumbed the Call button.
Fuck it, he thought, bringing the phone to his ear. Fuck everything.
Four rings, then voicemail. It was an hour later in Bury.
He dialed again.
Voicemail.
One more time, and on the third ring, an answer. The voice was tired and hardened, dried soil sown with bitter seeds.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Rose.”
“Who is this?”
“Colin Pearson.” He tried to keep his voice from slurring.
The sleep cleared from Yates’s voice, replaced by anger. “It’s late, Detective. Why are you calling me?”
“Because I figured the case out,” Colin said. The darkness, drink, and desolation allowed him to do this. A week ago, Colin couldn’t have imagined making a call like this. But life is nothing if not unpredictable.
“We’ve been over this,” Yates said, and now Colin thought he heard a little fear creep in alongside the anger. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m not talking about your husband,” Colin said. He heard the slurring now but didn’t care. “I’m talking about Caleb Benner.”
He could hear her breaths but nothing else. Nothing for maybe ten, twelve seconds.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“You remember Caleb Benner, right? Disappeared back when you were in high school?”
She didn’t reply.
“Last seen by your sister,” Colin continued. “Cops talked to one Cora Yates right there in your house. Same house I interviewed you in, matter of fact. And just like with us, her interview was cut short. So I’m kinda curious to know what conversations went on in the Yates house after the detective left.”
There was a slight tremble in her voice as she spoke, but she managed to keep her composure. Not everyone could, Colin knew. Some suspects just lost their shit entirely when a cop cut close to the bone. But not Rose Yates. She knew cops. Knew everything about the inner workings of police. Or maybe Colin wasn’t in any shape to mount a proper interrogation technique.
“This is a serious breach of protocol,” she said. “Calling me up in the middle of the night, drunk. Harassing me. Accusing me of…of I don’t even know what. But something far beyond your jurisdiction, I know that much. So you can be assured I’ll be contacting your department in the morning.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Colin replied. “They’ll be upset. Maybe I’ll get fired. Probably not. I’m on bereavement leave. Probably just get a reprimand.”
“Bereavement leave?”
“Wife and child,” he said, adding, for no reason he could think of, “Unborn child.” The tears didn’t come this time, probably because he’d released so many of them earlier. Between the alcohol and the crying, Colin was dehydrated, his skin scratchy, his eyes full of burn. “Died a few days ago. So we have that in common, Rose. We each lost a spouse.”
“Oh my god. I’m sorry. I…I don’t know what to say. But that’s still no reason to—”
“Turned out I was right,” he interrupted. “A baby girl. Little girl.”
“Detective, that’s terrible. I think maybe you should go to sleep. Please leave me alone, and I won’t report this call.”
“You want to know what I think, Rose? I think you know what happened to Caleb Benner. ’Cause you wrote about it, didn’t you? In your book. Child of the Steps. So I wanna ask you something.” Colin went from sitting to lying on the couch, staring up at nothing. “What happened on those steps? Your dad mentioned to the cop back then he was having some of them refinished.”
Rose said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Every suspect said that at some point. Some sort of denial. The words were meaningless, Colin knew. It was how they were said that mattered. And there, in Rose’s voice, he heard a crack.
“I think you do,” he told her. “I think your family has a big secret. Maybe the biggest secret in all of Bury.”
“Leave me alone. You can’t be doing this.”
“You’re right,” he conceded. “This is a completely inappropriate phone call, and let it be known…” Colin subdued a belch. “Be known I’m acting on my own, not as a member of Milwaukee’s finest.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Rose said. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“One more thing,” Colin said, hoping to keep her attention for one more moment. He nuzzled the phone between his cheek and couch cushion, and it hit him how tired he was. Tired as if he were living a dozen lifetimes simultaneously, all of them hard. “Just know you can talk to me,” he continued. “I understand family bonds. Hell, I’ll even tell you something about me related to your book. My wife? She fell down the stairs, too. Right the fuck down the stairs, just like the character in your book. Corey
