Chapter 31: Hoffman's Weakness

Sgt. Melborne, the officer who'd responded to the incident at Frank's bar and interrogated me about Creepy Guy's beating the day after, had volunteered to work the night shift.

He and a few of the other officers had watched the playback of the interrogation. After Sgt. Melborne had given me a bag of ice wrapped in a towel to reduce the inflammation around my neck, he denoted that if Drew had held onto me much longer, I'd have died, which I could believe.

Drew's hands had left their impression around my throat. Where his thumbs had nearly collapsed my windpipe appeared red, bruising was inevitable. Pictures were taken so that even if Drew somehow got off Scott-free for the three murders, he was still going to jail for attempted homicide.

After the fact, Drew offered to tell his story 'officially' in the most orthodox way.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

These psychopaths were attention seekers. Drew was no different. My talk with him and his attack on me had whet his appetite, and after getting a taste of what that attention looked like, he was adamant to keep the spotlight on himself for just a while longer.

Kerry extracted his full-fledged confession as he admitted to kidnapping, drugging, and murdering Kiara Davis, Danielle Drifas, and Minerva Kendall. He admitted to defiling them postmortem; after, he wrapped their bodies in cellophane and kept them in his freezer to prolong the rate of decomposition. A few days later, the bodies were tossed in ditches, still wrapped in cellophane to later be discovered by curious passersby.

His reason for dropping the bodies in the ditch still wrapped in the plastic was that from the road, it looked like garbage. People were less likely to the pull off to the side and stop to look at trash than if they were to see an open view of a dead body.

I stood on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching Kerry and Drew in the interrogation room. The entire time Drew spoke, he stared at the mirror as if knowing I was directly behind it, successfully giving me the creeps.

Mark closed the door to the dimly lit observation room after he'd stepped inside, taking to standing next to me, peering at Drew with dislike for the most obvious reasons.

"I know what you're going to say."

"Really," He said edgily. "What am I going to say?"

"You were going to remind me how Kerry wasn't supposed to leave the room and that I made her go. He wasn't going to talk while she was there." I said tiredly. "She knew it. I knew it…You knew it."

"It was one of the precautions I put in place to keep you safe."

"I know."

"I also told you not to go near him."

"I know."

"You said you wouldn't."

"I know I did. I also promised that I wouldn't coerce, lead, or threaten the suspect, which I didn't—"

"—You both went against my orders."

"The last time I checked, only Kerry was your subordinate," I responded stiffly.

He said standoffishly, "Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"I know you all like the old-school phonebook tactic, but people like Drew don't respond to violence. I decided to use a different method." I gestured to the window as Kerry continued to question Drew, who appeared a lot more cooperative this time around. "One that would actually hold up in court. He ended up talking, as you can see."

"Only when after you made him think you were—"

"—Infatuated with him, yes." I finished his sentence with little effort, knowing exactly where this conversation was going. "I offered empathy. I offered compassion. He thought I was offering something else—I wasn't. He fell into a trap and when he realized it, that's when he became homicidal. It's the same pattern he used with the last three women. He baits, gets rejected, then kills them—Only this time, he did it while in a precinct. I set the pins up, and he knocked them down all on his own."

"You put yourself at risk just to get under his skin?"

"I didn't do it for him." I tossed the towel and bag of ice to the table beside me, leaning back against the mirror to peer up at him. "I did it for those girls. They deserved better."

"You could have ended up like them."

"But I didn't."

Mark begrudgingly turned his glare from me to Drew as if he relived that moment all over again, seeing me on the ground getting strangled to death while he and Kerry broke down the door, which still had its hinges dented from the break-in—an officer stood in the doorway as a precaution in any case Drew unintelligently decided to flee.

"You're angry with me, aren't you?"

Mark said coldly, "What you did in there was irresponsible—"

"—My actions were vindicated." I waved my hand towards the interrogation room. "He's confessing to all sorts of fuckery because of me."

"He's enjoying the attention."

"So let him enjoy his five minutes of fame." I said flippantly, taking the towel back and pressing it around my throat again to reduce this annoying burning sensation. "He'll dig himself into a hole he can't possibly climb out of and we'll all be happier for it."

Mark let out a sigh of frustration as if it'd been building up inside of him, saying angrily, "Do you have any idea the amount of danger you put yourself in? Any idea?"

"I didn't plan on getting that close to him. I just did."

"You were careless—"

"—I was improvising—"

"—Reckless—"

"—I saw an opportunity and I took it!" I snapped, stepping towards him. "I know you set up precautions, but it was necessary to break them to get close to him."

"The risk wasn't yours to take!"

"You wanted that asshole to confess just as much as I did! Why the fuck are you riding me so hard about how I did it!"

"I almost lost you!" He shouted as he grabbed my shoulders, slightly shaking me.

I froze.

The level of intensity Mark showed when he'd slammed Drew's face into the table after lifting him off me was the same demonstrated back at the restaurant on Halloween when Baxter had tried to hurt me. That same level of intensity was back in his eyes, felt behind his vice-like grip on my arms as he held me in place, pinning me against the mirror.

As if realizing this, Mark hesitantly took his hands off me, looking as though he wasn't sure what had happened or why he was acting this way. After all, he tended to keep a lid on his emotions, not easily controlled by them as I was; and yet, they'd found their way to the surface.

It was one of the few times in which I'd seen him look unnerved. So human.

"You didn't lose me," I said softly. "I'm standing right here."

"If Kerry or I had been one minute too late, you wouldn't be." He clenched his fists as if trying to gather his composure.

"Well, you weren't a minute late. You and Kerry got in just in time."

"And if we hadn't?"

I didn't have an answer, none that would have appealed to his justification anyway.

He said unhappily, "I swear you just put yourself in these situations without thinking about how you'll get out of them."

"I went with an idea of how to get him to talk. I didn't think it through—"

"That's right, you didn't think it through."

I bit my bottom lip, fidgeting with the towel in my hand as I said modestly, "You know…You're right. I didn't have a solid escape plan this time around. I was expecting Drew to become violent, but I wasn't expecting him to get the jump on me, literally."

"How would you have gotten away if I hadn't intervened?"

"I don't know. I guess I wouldn't have."

Mark rolled his eyes, saying, "You just do things for chaos' sake, don't you?"

"If the result outweighs the risk of doing it, yes."

"Kerry planted the idea in your head. You didn't take anything into consideration before you ran with it."

"She had a good idea. At least I was willing to see how it'd work out!" I responded heatedly. "What was your plan? 'Fuck any other plan before trying it out'?"

"It was better than putting you at risk."

"You put your case at risk! You were about to let him walk away because you didn't want me to even talk to Drew."

"And as it turns out I had good reason not to."

"Oh, please—Like you've never acted purely on instinct. You should be more adamant in getting this fucker. You're a cop! All you people do is take risks. Anytime you pull out your gun, you're taking a risk. Anytime you're on a call, you're putting yourself at risk! How was this case any different? My father—"

"—Your father was the cop." Mark argued. "You are not!"

"He taught me about the streets and criminals as well—if not better—than any of you could teach a rookie. I knew what I was doing when I walked into that interrogation room."

"If that was the case, how did you end up on the floor, getting strangled by him?"

"I wasn't prepared for it. I admitted that! I didn't have time to think on my feet!" I snapped. "The whole thing escalated too quickly!"

"I should have never let you go in there with him."

"He's talking because of me!"

"You let him get to you—"

"—And I got the best of him!"

"You're lucky he didn't kill you!"

"It worked out, didn't it!"

"Fucking Christ," Mark growled, "Do you ever think before you jump into a fight!"

I stiffened at his accusation and said coldly, "You knew what kind of trouble I was before you even started dating me. Before we even slept together you knew what I was from the beginning. I'm not going to apologize for being myself."

"I'm not asking you to be someone else."

"It sounds like you are. You know I'm spontaneous as fuck but that's never bothered you before. Why is it bothering you so much now?"

"Alexis…" Mark sighed exasperatedly, although he seemed to struggle with what he wanted to say as he peered back at the window, watching Kerry continue talking to Drew, although what they were saying became background noise compared to what was happening in this room.

I pressed, "Don't start holding back on me now. If you've got something to say, say it."

He moved closer to me, taking my hands in his as if he'd find the way to articulate his thoughts somewhere in my palms before turning them over. His thumb moved over the engagement ring, turning it until the melded-diamond heart revealed itself.

His actions softened my temper. "…Mark. Honey?"

As he spoke, his anger seemed to come from a place of care rather than judgment.

"Alexis, I love who and what you are more than I have ever found a way to explain it to you." He said lowly. "When I pulled him off you, a few seconds passed where I thought he might have…" He took my hands and placed them over his chest. "When I thought you were gone, my deepest regret was not being able to save you. I held myself responsible for what happened."

"Drew would have been responsible for what happened." I corrected. "Not you. I made my own decision. Maybe it wasn't the right decision at the time, but it was my own to make." I smiled a little. "So, making Drew's face meet the table's acquaintance is your reaction after watching someone hurt me, huh."

Mark cracked a grin. "I'd have done much worse if you hadn't gotten up."

"Oh, that's flattering. Would you have burned the city to the ground, maybe?"

"Something to that affect, I'm sure."

"That would be visually satisfying. Very dramatic. " I slid my hands out of his so I could move closer to him.

"It'd mean a lot of paperwork."

"Don't tell me you've never hit a suspect before."

"Well, up until now, I was the only cop in this precinct, besides Kerry, that hadn't."

"Well, those statistics were bound to change. 13 years of law enforcement and you hadn't popped a single person in the face? That's not a streak many are capable of keeping."

"Until you got involved, I was determined to keep it going."

"You gave someone what they deserved, and you think that's the worst part about you? Most people would say that's their lukewarm dark side. I think the worst part about you is that you don't know what that is. You don't know what makes you weak."

Mark looked at me expectantly as if silently encouraging me to tell him.

"My guess is that what you did to Drew is what you wanted to do to Baxter when he tried to hurt me at the party—the only thing that held you back was because you knew it'd hurt Angie. You didn't even hesitate to let the beast out all over Drew when you saw I was in danger. You didn't think twice about how that would affect your confession or your career."

Mark slid his hands up my arms to the small of my back, pulling me close, and in a gentle voice, all he said was one word.

"You."

I tilted my head, looking up at him skeptically. "I'm sorry?"

"You." He caressed my face with one hand; the other gently squeezed my hip. "You make me weak."

I smiled sheepishly. "Is that good?"

"You bring out the best in me. You make me a better man, a better cop."

"Mm-hmm?"

"But you also bring out the worst in me."

"Personally," I admitted, "I don't mind seeing that side of you. I kind of like it when you let loose." (I felt the conversation move to a more serious note.) "Look…I know I crossed a line today."

"Yes, you did."

"I did kind of have a back-up plan if—or, I guess, when—Drew tried something."

"What was it?"

"I, um…" My face suddenly became hot. "Well, I kind of hoped that you'd come barging into the room like you did."

Mark wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me closer to him as he teased, "I thought you didn't need to be saved."

"I don't." I insisted. "But…" I cleared my throat uncomfortably—my pride started to sting. "It's comforting to know that you'll save me when I need you to."

"I'm glad you feel that way."

"I bet you are glad." I pointed at him. "You know, I can do a lot of things by myself."

"You don't have to convince me; I know you can." Mark lifted my chin and kissed me tenderly, whispering against my lips, "I just won't let you."

"Maybe one day, I'll get to save you."

"Until then, I guess you owe me one."

"I guess I do."

Kerry moved out of the interrogation room and reappeared as she opened the door to ours, noting our close interaction.

She said officially, "We're finished. Do you want him to sit in the room for a little while and have an off-the-record kind of conversation?" She made a scissoring gesture with her fingers in the direction of the camera hanging in the corner on the wall in the room Drew sat in. "Or did you get your fill?"

"Time to get out the brass knuckles." I joked, making clicking noises as I pretended to crack my knuckles.

Without looking at her, Mark said coolly, "He'd suffer more if we just ignored him for the rest of the night."

"Are you sure?" Kerry asked as she walked over to us, taking the towel from me as she readjusted it so that the ice pack fit more comfortably in the crook of my neck.

"Just leave him there." Mark instructed, putting an arm around my waist. "Have the Unis watch him."

Kerry nodded dutifully, leaving the room to tell the officers to take turns watching him and not to respond to Drew for any reason unless it was life or death and while she went on to meet the guys at Frank's, Mark and I opted to go home.

It was probably for the best; I doubted I'd have been able to justly kick Matthews' ass in a drinking game after having my windpipe nearly crushed by my psychotic neighbor.