Follow The Yellow Brick Road (2/11)
Previous Parts: Part One
After she graduated, she was lucky enough to land a job in Chicago. That was something that Teresa was grateful for. Though she wouldn’t have minded moving out of state for work if she’d had to, she still liked the idea of remaining fairly close to her family. After all, not many of them had moved out of Chicago itself, never mind the state of Illinois. However, a part of her was curious and wanted to make the break, to give herself a completely fresh start. She had a lot of bad memories associated with the place she grew up, that maybe a change would have done her good.
Still, she sat in her small, non-descript apartment and tried to focus on the book in her hands. It was a crime thriller; one that claimed to be based on a true story. However, as far as Teresa was concerned, it was utterly ludicrous. The whole thing was completely sensationalized and unbelievable, something which she should have realized when she picked it up at the bookstore. Then again, that was what most readers of the genre were expecting. The usual demographic didn’t ordinarily include young rookies who had recently graduated and were in their first job. With a sigh, she thumbed half-heartedly at the page. The exaggerations of her career choice weren’t even the things that particularly bothered her about this story; it was the fact the crime in question wasn’t particularly engaging either. The rest of the plot had been twisted so that the crux of the matter jarred heavily with it.
So, when the phone finally rang, she almost found it a blessed relief. Teresa was on vacation and was slowly being driven stir crazy. Then again, it didn’t particularly help that she had opted simply to stay at home instead of heading anywhere interesting. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. She worked in a bustling police department and the concept of a quiet two weeks off, doing nothing but lazing around in her apartment had appealed to her a lot. And besides, it was cheaper and even though she technically only had to support herself, money was still always tight. As she picked up the phone, she expected that it was going to be Tommy, asking to borrow some money, or maybe James, updating her on his latest girlfriend.
“Teresa, I’ve done something.”
John didn’t even bother to say hello and it took her a couple of seconds to place his voice. Of all the people she ever expected to call her, he was pretty low down the list. Truth be told, she didn’t even remember giving him her new phone number. Then again, knowing John, it probably wouldn’t have taken him all that much effort to find it out. She knew the kind of things he used to get up to and finding out an ex-directory phone number would have been a piece of cake for somebody like him.
“What have you done?” she asked and he didn’t answer. “John?”
“I can’t say, but I need your help. Please?”
“Where are you?”
“San Francisco.”
“San Francisco, as in California?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Yes, which other one would I mean?”
“And you thought to call me?”
“Who else is there?”
“I don’t know, your mom perhaps?”
“Like she’d care.”
“We haven’t spoken properly in years, John,” she answered back, irritated. “Why me? Seriously?”
He remained silent once again and Teresa tutted in irritation. The power of silence was something she had learned at the academy; it made people feel uneasy, made them talk. And John was playing the exact skills she was in the process of honing on her. Then again, she already knew that he had those powers. It was something he’d done to her time and time again when she was an impressionable kid and him, with his age and charisma, had awed her into submission.
“Look, please just come. Please?” he asked, after a good minute or so.
Part of her was saying ’why, why should I? It’s not as if he’s one of my brothers.’ The less cynical responded with the fact he had been an important part of her childhood and that she couldn’t just discard the few people she cared for in her life. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t talked for so long, they were still friends. Some things you just couldn’t put a measurement of time on and this, she sensed, was one of them.
“Okay,” she eventually responded, albeit reluctantly.
xxx
She had never seen a dead body in the flesh before. Teresa hadn’t even seen either of her parents after they’d died; relatives had identified them and when she said goodbye to them, they were both enclosed tightly in coffins. And thus far, with work, she had been lucky. The worst she’d had to deal with was elderly ladies being burglarized or kids painting graffiti on walls.
So, this was a completely new thing for her to be dealing with. Yes, she’d been trained to cope with that first call out involving the loss of human life, but it was never the same as the real thing. There was only so much you could learn through talking, studying articles or even being faced with a supposedly lifelike dummy. Nothing could have prepared her for the stench emanating from the deceased subject, nor the way the blood had congealed around the wounds. Rigor mortis had already been and gone; it had taken her three days to get a flight over to California. Teresa knew that if she wanted to get somewhere with her career - really get somewhere - instead of slowly progressing towards becoming a Sheriff in some backwater dump, then this was something she was going to have to get used to.
Still, did her first body really have to be like this? Never, in a million years, had she thought that John would be capable of murder. Yes, she was more aware than most of his malicious streak. As a naïve, inquisitive child, she had actively encouraged it on occasion. Torturing spiders and frying ants was one thing, but another human being was another entirely. And John, she wasn’t sure, but he didn’t look all that bothered by what he claimed to have done. All he wanted was for her to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess. When they were younger, she had always been the fast-talker, the one who tried to get them out of trouble. It was a trait she had since started using for more honorable reasons, most notably helping her brothers when needs be.
“You shouldn’t have called me, why did you call me?” Teresa snapped, furious with John. He hadn‘t even given her proper forewarning on the phone. “You know I’m duty-bound to report this.”
“What, even here in California?”
“Yes, even here in California,” she echoed with a roll of her eyes. She was beyond angry with him. How could he have done such a thing? “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged and Teresa let out an exasperated sigh.
“John…”
“I don’t know, okay?”
“What happened?”
Eventually, he explained. It sounded mostly like a list of feeble excuses, much like the ones Tommy often spouted whenever he got into trouble. Still, somehow, she found herself falling for it. It seemed like in the years they had grown distant, he had learned some of her silvery-tongued skills. It was most likely because he had had to, to survive in the world he had fallen into. There was nobody else fighting in his corner and he had never liked being too reliant on other people. However, there was something about her that meant he still clung on. Teresa figured that it was probably because she had been the sole person to give him the time of day as a teenager. That was, before her mom had died, of course.
“I didn’t know who else to turn to,“ he eventually concluded, “there’s nobody else I trust, not like you.”
“Go, just go,” she said, not even looking at him. “I’ll cover this up. I’ll make it… disappear.”
“You can do that?”
“I shouldn’t, but I will,” Teresa answered with a steely tone.
With a dejected nod, he walked away and Teresa shivered slightly. Had it really come to this? Sacrificing her own principles for somebody who was little more than a childhood friend?
xxx
It didn’t take her long to grow bored with Chicago. After returning, it just felt like something was missing, or rather, she had left something back in San Francisco. What had happened, back there, had changed her somehow. Had made everything she did with the little department she was currently working for seem utterly worthless. Besides, after what she had done, she felt like she almost owed her services to the state of California. After all, it was a criminal offense. Obstruction, aiding and abetting a known offender, perverting the course of justice. And of course, that was the exact opposite of what she had signed up to do. She was meant to be catching the criminals, not willingly help them get away with it, scot-free. Technically, she knew that she should turn herself in, as well as John. That that would have been the right, the honorable, course of action. However, jail was no place for a cop, however young and inexperienced she was. But she wanted to pay her debt back to society, somehow, even if she wasn’t willing to go to jail for what she had done. She never asked to be put in that position by John, but it had happened. And now, she had to move on with her life, as best she could, otherwise the whole sorry situation would just drag her down.
Somewhere, out there, there was a grieving family, desperate for answers and justice, she knew that. Teresa understood the pain of being in that situation, better than most. While they had caught the man responsible for killing her mom, the case had fallen apart in court, leaving her feeling slightly bitter with the judicial system. If he had been punished, then her dad might not have become a depressed drunk, knowing that his wife’s killer was still roaming the streets because of a technicality. And if she hadn’t been so desperate to know why it had all gone wrong after the arrest, then she might never have become a cop herself. She had never wanted another family to be put in the same situation as she had been in. Yet, she had willingly helped John, because she couldn’t bear to see somebody who was such an important part of her childhood behind bars.
It had been pure luck that she had come across the rookie inspector position with the San Francisco Police Department. Part of her was unsure about moving there; after all, it was another city which harbored bad memories for her. Or rather, one particularly harrowing one. However, Teresa also knew that she couldn’t let a single negative experience tar a whole city for her. She had to give it a chance to grow on her, to build something positive there for herself. Nothing was changing for her at home, so why not? Besides, she had already decided to give something back to California. If she turned down this position, then she knew she would just end up waiting forever, with nothing ever changing for her.
Anyway, the other police officers at the SFPD seemed nice enough and she was certain that she would fit in eventually. Unlike other places, they didn’t seem to think that she was incapable of the job simply because she was a woman; a reaction which she found particularly refreshing.
“Welcome to the team, Inspector Lisbon,” Samuel Bosco said as he shook her hand firmly.
“Thank you, sir,” she answered, reciprocating with a smile.
She didn’t say it, she barely admitted it to herself, but part of her hoped that John was based in San Francisco still. That she would be able to track him down and do something. Maybe convince him to sort his life out before he got into even more trouble. Only then, would she be able to make peace with herself.
xxx
“Lisbon?”
“Yes, boss?”
“We’re up.”
She nodded at Bosco and quickly gathered together her belongings. It hadn’t taken Teresa - or Lisbon, as she was now more commonly referred to as - long to settle into San Francisco. Most of her first impressions had been entirely accurate and that was a bit of a relief. However, she also felt a little like the black sheep, even two years on. The men she worked with were all good, honest souls and then, there was she hiding deep, dark secrets from them. Still, she had been trying to settle down, to put it in the back of her mind. As a consequence, she was working ten times harder than she had to, but that seemed to impress her senior.
Bosco was a good boss, firm but encouraging, and she got along well with him. She liked the way his eyes lit up, almost sparkled every time she did something that impressed him. He looked after her; in an almost big brotherly fashion. And because of the effort she put in, he was keen to keep her under his wing, to help her hone her skills. His time and patience was paying and Lisbon already felt as though she was a better cop, more professional. Since she had joined the SFPD, they had brought down a couple of big criminals - a drugs mule and a con artist - and she had begun to feel as though she had repaid her debt to California. That being said, she didn’t want to move away any longer; she now felt comfortable in the state. Like it was her home, and she had friends here. Friends other than John, that was. Besides, the distance between herself and her brothers had only been a good thing. She spent less time being infuriated by Tommy, had a closer bond with James and smothered Joseph a little less.
It didn’t take long for them to travel to the crime scene; it was quite close to their base of operations. Then again, they were just a local police department, serving the city of San Francisco; it wasn’t as if they were a major agency like the CBI or the FBI. The journey was quiet and easy. Nothing much had been happening recently, so they were all pleased that they finally had something more interesting to get their teeth into. There was only ever so much paperwork backlogged and only so many crossword puzzles somebody could fill in when there was nothing else to do.
Her heart sank and she suddenly felt frozen to the bone when they entered the nondescript motel room. Lisbon had seen a set up like this before; it had only been a year or so ago, but now, it felt like a lifetime. How could he have done something like this again? She had thought - or hoped - that John had learned his lesson. That he wouldn’t take another innocent person’s life, for no real reason other than the simple fact he wanted to. Tentatively, she headed in and started scouring for supposed clues. Everything was accurate to the finest detail. Including the things he hadn’t seen, the bits she had done to ensure that nobody realized he’d killed that girl, or she’d helped to cover it up. Yet, somehow, John had replicated it all and taken it on as his own style. It looked like he’d been doing it all his life. Even though she knew full well that this one wasn’t her fault, Lisbon couldn’t help but think she was partially responsible. After all, she had taught him how to clean up his act, how to cover up the evidence. How to - quite literally - get away with murder.
Just when she was slowly beginning to forget about it, it all had to come around and smack her in the face, didn’t it?
“We’ll have to hand this over to the CBI,” Bosco said stiffly, staring at the smiley face painted on the wall in the victim’s blood. “Serial killers are under their jurisdiction.”
She stared at the smiley face. As far as she was aware, there had only been one other case with the same appearance as this. Was Bosco suggesting that John had killed some other victims, when she had been back in Chicago, before she had moved to San Francisco? Quietly, she cursed at herself. That was something she should have checked up before now, just so that she knew what was happening with him. At this moment in time, she didn’t even know if they had put a human face to the bloodied one on the wall. Lisbon took a mental note to remedy this lack of knowledge as soon as she had the opportunity.
“But it’s John,” she whispered, under her breath.
“Did you say something, Lisbon?”
“It’s a Red John,” she said after a pause, clearer this time.
“A what?”
She’d had to think on her feet, in order to cover up her own tracks. It was a stupid mistake, she should never have said John’s name out loud. If Bosco had realized what she had said, what she had meant, then everything could have unraveled before her very eyes. If she was going to continue with this charade, she was going to have to be a little more careful in the future.
“I’ve read up on the old case files, on the computing systems,” she lied and Bosco nodded. “They don’t know who’s responsible - a John Doe - and the red…”
“That makes sense. I guess,” Bosco answered with a shrug.
“Yeah.”
To Part Three
After she graduated, she was lucky enough to land a job in Chicago. That was something that Teresa was grateful for. Though she wouldn’t have minded moving out of state for work if she’d had to, she still liked the idea of remaining fairly close to her family. After all, not many of them had moved out of Chicago itself, never mind the state of Illinois. However, a part of her was curious and wanted to make the break, to give herself a completely fresh start. She had a lot of bad memories associated with the place she grew up, that maybe a change would have done her good.
Still, she sat in her small, non-descript apartment and tried to focus on the book in her hands. It was a crime thriller; one that claimed to be based on a true story. However, as far as Teresa was concerned, it was utterly ludicrous. The whole thing was completely sensationalized and unbelievable, something which she should have realized when she picked it up at the bookstore. Then again, that was what most readers of the genre were expecting. The usual demographic didn’t ordinarily include young rookies who had recently graduated and were in their first job. With a sigh, she thumbed half-heartedly at the page. The exaggerations of her career choice weren’t even the things that particularly bothered her about this story; it was the fact the crime in question wasn’t particularly engaging either. The rest of the plot had been twisted so that the crux of the matter jarred heavily with it.
So, when the phone finally rang, she almost found it a blessed relief. Teresa was on vacation and was slowly being driven stir crazy. Then again, it didn’t particularly help that she had opted simply to stay at home instead of heading anywhere interesting. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. She worked in a bustling police department and the concept of a quiet two weeks off, doing nothing but lazing around in her apartment had appealed to her a lot. And besides, it was cheaper and even though she technically only had to support herself, money was still always tight. As she picked up the phone, she expected that it was going to be Tommy, asking to borrow some money, or maybe James, updating her on his latest girlfriend.
“Teresa, I’ve done something.”
John didn’t even bother to say hello and it took her a couple of seconds to place his voice. Of all the people she ever expected to call her, he was pretty low down the list. Truth be told, she didn’t even remember giving him her new phone number. Then again, knowing John, it probably wouldn’t have taken him all that much effort to find it out. She knew the kind of things he used to get up to and finding out an ex-directory phone number would have been a piece of cake for somebody like him.
“What have you done?” she asked and he didn’t answer. “John?”
“I can’t say, but I need your help. Please?”
“Where are you?”
“San Francisco.”
“San Francisco, as in California?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Yes, which other one would I mean?”
“And you thought to call me?”
“Who else is there?”
“I don’t know, your mom perhaps?”
“Like she’d care.”
“We haven’t spoken properly in years, John,” she answered back, irritated. “Why me? Seriously?”
He remained silent once again and Teresa tutted in irritation. The power of silence was something she had learned at the academy; it made people feel uneasy, made them talk. And John was playing the exact skills she was in the process of honing on her. Then again, she already knew that he had those powers. It was something he’d done to her time and time again when she was an impressionable kid and him, with his age and charisma, had awed her into submission.
“Look, please just come. Please?” he asked, after a good minute or so.
Part of her was saying ’why, why should I? It’s not as if he’s one of my brothers.’ The less cynical responded with the fact he had been an important part of her childhood and that she couldn’t just discard the few people she cared for in her life. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t talked for so long, they were still friends. Some things you just couldn’t put a measurement of time on and this, she sensed, was one of them.
“Okay,” she eventually responded, albeit reluctantly.
xxx
She had never seen a dead body in the flesh before. Teresa hadn’t even seen either of her parents after they’d died; relatives had identified them and when she said goodbye to them, they were both enclosed tightly in coffins. And thus far, with work, she had been lucky. The worst she’d had to deal with was elderly ladies being burglarized or kids painting graffiti on walls.
So, this was a completely new thing for her to be dealing with. Yes, she’d been trained to cope with that first call out involving the loss of human life, but it was never the same as the real thing. There was only so much you could learn through talking, studying articles or even being faced with a supposedly lifelike dummy. Nothing could have prepared her for the stench emanating from the deceased subject, nor the way the blood had congealed around the wounds. Rigor mortis had already been and gone; it had taken her three days to get a flight over to California. Teresa knew that if she wanted to get somewhere with her career - really get somewhere - instead of slowly progressing towards becoming a Sheriff in some backwater dump, then this was something she was going to have to get used to.
Still, did her first body really have to be like this? Never, in a million years, had she thought that John would be capable of murder. Yes, she was more aware than most of his malicious streak. As a naïve, inquisitive child, she had actively encouraged it on occasion. Torturing spiders and frying ants was one thing, but another human being was another entirely. And John, she wasn’t sure, but he didn’t look all that bothered by what he claimed to have done. All he wanted was for her to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess. When they were younger, she had always been the fast-talker, the one who tried to get them out of trouble. It was a trait she had since started using for more honorable reasons, most notably helping her brothers when needs be.
“You shouldn’t have called me, why did you call me?” Teresa snapped, furious with John. He hadn‘t even given her proper forewarning on the phone. “You know I’m duty-bound to report this.”
“What, even here in California?”
“Yes, even here in California,” she echoed with a roll of her eyes. She was beyond angry with him. How could he have done such a thing? “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged and Teresa let out an exasperated sigh.
“John…”
“I don’t know, okay?”
“What happened?”
Eventually, he explained. It sounded mostly like a list of feeble excuses, much like the ones Tommy often spouted whenever he got into trouble. Still, somehow, she found herself falling for it. It seemed like in the years they had grown distant, he had learned some of her silvery-tongued skills. It was most likely because he had had to, to survive in the world he had fallen into. There was nobody else fighting in his corner and he had never liked being too reliant on other people. However, there was something about her that meant he still clung on. Teresa figured that it was probably because she had been the sole person to give him the time of day as a teenager. That was, before her mom had died, of course.
“I didn’t know who else to turn to,“ he eventually concluded, “there’s nobody else I trust, not like you.”
“Go, just go,” she said, not even looking at him. “I’ll cover this up. I’ll make it… disappear.”
“You can do that?”
“I shouldn’t, but I will,” Teresa answered with a steely tone.
With a dejected nod, he walked away and Teresa shivered slightly. Had it really come to this? Sacrificing her own principles for somebody who was little more than a childhood friend?
xxx
It didn’t take her long to grow bored with Chicago. After returning, it just felt like something was missing, or rather, she had left something back in San Francisco. What had happened, back there, had changed her somehow. Had made everything she did with the little department she was currently working for seem utterly worthless. Besides, after what she had done, she felt like she almost owed her services to the state of California. After all, it was a criminal offense. Obstruction, aiding and abetting a known offender, perverting the course of justice. And of course, that was the exact opposite of what she had signed up to do. She was meant to be catching the criminals, not willingly help them get away with it, scot-free. Technically, she knew that she should turn herself in, as well as John. That that would have been the right, the honorable, course of action. However, jail was no place for a cop, however young and inexperienced she was. But she wanted to pay her debt back to society, somehow, even if she wasn’t willing to go to jail for what she had done. She never asked to be put in that position by John, but it had happened. And now, she had to move on with her life, as best she could, otherwise the whole sorry situation would just drag her down.
Somewhere, out there, there was a grieving family, desperate for answers and justice, she knew that. Teresa understood the pain of being in that situation, better than most. While they had caught the man responsible for killing her mom, the case had fallen apart in court, leaving her feeling slightly bitter with the judicial system. If he had been punished, then her dad might not have become a depressed drunk, knowing that his wife’s killer was still roaming the streets because of a technicality. And if she hadn’t been so desperate to know why it had all gone wrong after the arrest, then she might never have become a cop herself. She had never wanted another family to be put in the same situation as she had been in. Yet, she had willingly helped John, because she couldn’t bear to see somebody who was such an important part of her childhood behind bars.
It had been pure luck that she had come across the rookie inspector position with the San Francisco Police Department. Part of her was unsure about moving there; after all, it was another city which harbored bad memories for her. Or rather, one particularly harrowing one. However, Teresa also knew that she couldn’t let a single negative experience tar a whole city for her. She had to give it a chance to grow on her, to build something positive there for herself. Nothing was changing for her at home, so why not? Besides, she had already decided to give something back to California. If she turned down this position, then she knew she would just end up waiting forever, with nothing ever changing for her.
Anyway, the other police officers at the SFPD seemed nice enough and she was certain that she would fit in eventually. Unlike other places, they didn’t seem to think that she was incapable of the job simply because she was a woman; a reaction which she found particularly refreshing.
“Welcome to the team, Inspector Lisbon,” Samuel Bosco said as he shook her hand firmly.
“Thank you, sir,” she answered, reciprocating with a smile.
She didn’t say it, she barely admitted it to herself, but part of her hoped that John was based in San Francisco still. That she would be able to track him down and do something. Maybe convince him to sort his life out before he got into even more trouble. Only then, would she be able to make peace with herself.
xxx
“Lisbon?”
“Yes, boss?”
“We’re up.”
She nodded at Bosco and quickly gathered together her belongings. It hadn’t taken Teresa - or Lisbon, as she was now more commonly referred to as - long to settle into San Francisco. Most of her first impressions had been entirely accurate and that was a bit of a relief. However, she also felt a little like the black sheep, even two years on. The men she worked with were all good, honest souls and then, there was she hiding deep, dark secrets from them. Still, she had been trying to settle down, to put it in the back of her mind. As a consequence, she was working ten times harder than she had to, but that seemed to impress her senior.
Bosco was a good boss, firm but encouraging, and she got along well with him. She liked the way his eyes lit up, almost sparkled every time she did something that impressed him. He looked after her; in an almost big brotherly fashion. And because of the effort she put in, he was keen to keep her under his wing, to help her hone her skills. His time and patience was paying and Lisbon already felt as though she was a better cop, more professional. Since she had joined the SFPD, they had brought down a couple of big criminals - a drugs mule and a con artist - and she had begun to feel as though she had repaid her debt to California. That being said, she didn’t want to move away any longer; she now felt comfortable in the state. Like it was her home, and she had friends here. Friends other than John, that was. Besides, the distance between herself and her brothers had only been a good thing. She spent less time being infuriated by Tommy, had a closer bond with James and smothered Joseph a little less.
It didn’t take long for them to travel to the crime scene; it was quite close to their base of operations. Then again, they were just a local police department, serving the city of San Francisco; it wasn’t as if they were a major agency like the CBI or the FBI. The journey was quiet and easy. Nothing much had been happening recently, so they were all pleased that they finally had something more interesting to get their teeth into. There was only ever so much paperwork backlogged and only so many crossword puzzles somebody could fill in when there was nothing else to do.
Her heart sank and she suddenly felt frozen to the bone when they entered the nondescript motel room. Lisbon had seen a set up like this before; it had only been a year or so ago, but now, it felt like a lifetime. How could he have done something like this again? She had thought - or hoped - that John had learned his lesson. That he wouldn’t take another innocent person’s life, for no real reason other than the simple fact he wanted to. Tentatively, she headed in and started scouring for supposed clues. Everything was accurate to the finest detail. Including the things he hadn’t seen, the bits she had done to ensure that nobody realized he’d killed that girl, or she’d helped to cover it up. Yet, somehow, John had replicated it all and taken it on as his own style. It looked like he’d been doing it all his life. Even though she knew full well that this one wasn’t her fault, Lisbon couldn’t help but think she was partially responsible. After all, she had taught him how to clean up his act, how to cover up the evidence. How to - quite literally - get away with murder.
Just when she was slowly beginning to forget about it, it all had to come around and smack her in the face, didn’t it?
“We’ll have to hand this over to the CBI,” Bosco said stiffly, staring at the smiley face painted on the wall in the victim’s blood. “Serial killers are under their jurisdiction.”
She stared at the smiley face. As far as she was aware, there had only been one other case with the same appearance as this. Was Bosco suggesting that John had killed some other victims, when she had been back in Chicago, before she had moved to San Francisco? Quietly, she cursed at herself. That was something she should have checked up before now, just so that she knew what was happening with him. At this moment in time, she didn’t even know if they had put a human face to the bloodied one on the wall. Lisbon took a mental note to remedy this lack of knowledge as soon as she had the opportunity.
“But it’s John,” she whispered, under her breath.
“Did you say something, Lisbon?”
“It’s a Red John,” she said after a pause, clearer this time.
“A what?”
She’d had to think on her feet, in order to cover up her own tracks. It was a stupid mistake, she should never have said John’s name out loud. If Bosco had realized what she had said, what she had meant, then everything could have unraveled before her very eyes. If she was going to continue with this charade, she was going to have to be a little more careful in the future.
“I’ve read up on the old case files, on the computing systems,” she lied and Bosco nodded. “They don’t know who’s responsible - a John Doe - and the red…”
“That makes sense. I guess,” Bosco answered with a shrug.
“Yeah.”
To Part Three