Two days later...
Rick rarely visits murder scenes, primarily because they're not too common in King County. He's seen his unholy share of dead bodies—hard to beat the bloody, vomit-inducing aftereffects of a car accident—but murder still shakes him up in a way that leaves him wanting to hug his kids and never let go.
Rick stares down at the first corpse. Diane Eastman stares back with dead, unblinking eyes. Her throat has been slashed in a ragged, gaping wound. She bled out on the Oriental rug on the living room floor.
And yet, the sight of a violently murdered woman isn't the worst of it. Upstairs are the similarly-violated corpses of Eastman's children, a boy and a girl, both younger than Carl. Rick hasn't gone upstairs yet, doesn't know if he wants to. His breath's already coming in hurried gulps just thinking about it.
"You okay?" Hershel Greene, the medical examiner, asks Rick. With his kind eyes and long white hair and beard, he looks like Santa Claus. Tenderly, he pushes blood-caked strands of hair off Diane Eastman's face with gloved hands.
Rick nods. "I'm fine. I gotta be."
"It's okay not to be fine," Hershel says, his eyes watery with tears. For someone who sees death on a regular basis, Hershel is surprisingly sensitive. He performs every autopsy with the utmost care and respect, as though he might be able to bring his patients back. "The day this stuff stops eating at you, well, that's about the time to pack it in."
Shane enters from the front door. He'd stayed outside and talked to the husband, John Eastman, while Rick and Hershel went inside. "He wants to talk to you," Shane announces, looking at Rick.
Rick's surprised until he isn't. Shane can be a bit gruff sometimes, and it makes sense Eastman would want to talk to someone who's also been touched by the cruel, cold hand of tragedy.
"Why don't you go talk to him and I'll take care of this?"
Rick wants to argue that he can handle this, but honestly he'd rather talk to the husband.
Rick gets to his feet and finds John Eastman sitting on the porch steps. His balding head is buried in his hands, but he's not sobbing.
"John?"
Eastman looks at him. His eyes are shattered marbles.
"I'm so sorry," Rick says, because there's not much else to say. He joins Eastman there, sitting on the first step and turning his body to face him.
"I don't understand..."
A huge percentage of murders like this are committed by the husband, but Rick knows Eastman didn't do it. Naïve? Probably. But Rick can sense the grief emanating from him in waves, like heat off a sidewalk.
"Can I ask you some questions?" Rick says.
Eastman manages a nod.
"So you just came home from work?"
Eastman is a forensic psychiatrist at West Georgia Correctional.
"What happened?"
It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts, or at least put them into words. "I came home. And I found her..." Eastman's voice trails off. "Then I went upstairs, hoping the kids were hiding somewhere, but they were already..."
Rick shuts his eyes in pain. If anything like this happened to Carl or Judith...
No. Don't go there. Focus.
"Did you notice anything missing?"
Eastman gives a faint shrug, still staring out at the front yard and the drove of police vehicles parked in the driveway. "No. Not yet. But Diane still had her wedding ring. They would have taken that..."
"Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Diane?"
Eastman shakes his head slowly, dazed. "Everyone loves her, Rick."
Still using present tense.
Rick considers the crime from every angle. Eastman interviews some of the most evil people in the state. Could the perpetrator be one of his patients? "What about you? Anyone who might want to hurt you?"
"I don't... They're all locked up. I don't know how they would..."
"Give me names. We'll check 'em out."
The front door opens, and a body is wheeled out on a gurney, covered in a black tarp. Eastman's already-devastated face caves in, and he can't seem to tear away his gaze.
"John," Rick says, but Eastman doesn't hear him. "John, I need your head in this, okay? Can you think of anyone who could have done this?"
Eastman is quiet for a moment, then: "Crighton Dallas Wilton."
What a perfect serial killer name. Rick thinks of other famous three-named murderers: John Wayne Gacy, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, Henry Lee Lucas...
"He was a patient of mine at the prison," Eastman continues, his voice hollow and ghostlike. "He had done... horrible, unspeakable acts, and it was my job to evaluate him. On the surface, he was charming. Too charming. Too likable. Said all the right things, went to therapy. But I saw right through him. I knew what he was: a psychopath who knew how to play people. When I was interviewing him, there was this moment... where I knew that Crighton knew that I knew exactly what he was. And he stood up, smiled, and just cracked me across the face. He got me on the ground, and I saw his eyes. His evil. He was gonna kill me right there because he knew I would never let him get out of prison."
"And you didn't?" Rick's presuming this because Eastman's not dead.
"I turned my assessment into the parole board. I didn't hear that he'd been released. But he's the only person I can think of who would want to destroy everything I love."
Rick takes a deep breath. "Alright. We'll look into him. We're gonna find the person who did this."
"It doesn't matter," Eastman says. "It's already over for me."
Rick wants to argue that it's never over, that he thought the same thing too after Lori died, but Rick has Judith and Carl. What does Eastman have now to convince him that life is worth living? Once you've lost everything, is life worth living?
Rick stands up and says, "I'm sorry," again before heading back into the house.
Negan texts Rick in the late evening while he's making dinner: Shit, tell me you aren't handling that triple murder case.
Rick stares at the message for a moment. Steam from the boiling pot of water on the stove fogs up the screen. This is their first correspondence since their separation the other night (Rick refuses to call it a break-up, because his life is not a Taylor Swift song), and he wonders what it means, why Negan chose to contact him now.
Rick types a reply: Okay, I won't.
The phone vibrates on the countertop a moment later. Rick glances at the screen but doesn't pick up the phone.
(Thursday 6:42 PM)
God damn. Are you okay?
Could Negan possibly care about Rick as more than just a sex partner? Negan had been the one to push for friendship, and Rick thinks it's entirely possible that Negan is just lonely and latching onto the first person who doesn't write him off as an asshole. But it's also possible he views Rick as a friend. A friend he's stuck his cock into, but a friend nonetheless.
(Thursday 6:44 PM)
I will be
(Thursday 6:45 PM)
Well if you need to talk your shit out, I'm here.
Rick doesn't know how to answer that, startled by this new level of intimacy they seem to have tumbled into. He pockets his phone and finishes cooking.
Over dinner, Carl is worryingly quiet. He must have heard about the triple murder and extrapolated horrific possibilities, perhaps the same ones banging around in Rick's head like tennis balls.
"We'll catch him," Rick says softly.
Carl nods. "I know."
"You don't have to be scared."
"I'm not."
"It's okay if you are."
"I told you I'm not," Carl says, rolling his eyes.
Rick looks at Judith, who is happily eating spaghetti and seems to be completely untouched by any of this. She has no idea what's out there, none of the fears that keep Rick awake at night. He envies her.
After Judith has been put to bed and Carl's bedroom light has gone out, Rick pours himself a drink. He thinks he's entitled after the shitfest of despair he witnessed today. He walks around the darkened living room as though on night watch, sipping at his glass of Jack.
He thinks about John Eastman, if he's doing the same thing as Rick tonight. Would he even want to stay in the house where his family was murdered? Or would he refuse to leave, wanting to preserve the last traces of them?
That poor man.
There are blows you can take and get back up from; Rick doesn't know if that's one of them.
If Judith had been in the car with Lori that day... If someone had broken in the other night when Rick left his children alone...
Rick shudders though he isn't cold. He could be Eastman right now.
He could be Eastman at any point in the future, because misfortune does not discriminate. People rarely get their fair share of suffering; sometimes good people are beaten down by loss, and bad people escape with barely a scratch. Just because Rick lost his wife in a car accident doesn't mean he has reached his life's maximum tragedy quota. There may very well be more to come.
In a job like Rick's, it's easy to focus on the negative, because the police are rarely called for celebrations. Rick has seen cruel domestic violence and bone-shattering accidents and tragic suicides and overdoses and grisly murders.
But he has also seen good things, too. The beginning of new life. The blossoming of romance. Maggie and Glenn are in love and having a baby. Tara and Rosita are getting married and starting their lives together. Morgan and Carol have put aside their failed past marriages and attempted to try again. There is something noble in the almost blindingly naïve act of surrendering your heart to another person. Because there is no guarantee it won't be broken, either by death or betrayal or the misfortune of unrequited affection.
It is sometimes said that all love stories end in tragedy. You either fall out of love, or you live long enough to watch your soulmate die.
Jeez, Rick's a depressing motherfucker tonight. He swallows down the rest of the Jack, hoping it will help him rest easy.
A sound at the top of the stairs turns his head. Carl's standing there, and Rick feels like he's in a groundhog day loop of this moment, because his life cannot just be a series of late nights with whiskey on his breath and Carl catching him drowning his sorrows.
"Everything all right?" Rick asks.
"Can't sleep. Maybe I should start drinking too."
"Very funny," Rick says, not amused. "Why don't you come down here? I wanna talk to you."
Carl heaves a theatrical sigh and takes the stairs with a lazy teenage gait, like he's in no hurry to reach the bottom. "What?"
Rick sits on the couch, pats the empty space beside him. "Sit down."
"Oh no, a sit-down talk?" Carl groans, but obeys, dropping bonelessly onto the couch. "What did I do?"
Rick turns to face him. "You didn't do anything. This is all me. I'm sorry about the other night. I screwed up. It was my judgment call, and it was wrong. I put you and Judith in danger because I was selfish. It won't happen again."
Carl's brow creases in confusion. "Where'd you even go?"
"I was at a friend's house. Someone I've been... seeing. But it's over now. I ended it."
"Why didn't you just tell me?"
Rick hadn't expected that response.
"I don't care if you wanna date someone," Carl says. "But you've been lying to me and sneaking out of the house. That's what I'm supposed to do."
"Well, you're not supposed to..." Again, Rick focuses on semantics in order to dodge the real question.
More eye-rolls. "You know what I mean."
They sit there quietly for a moment before Judith cries from upstairs. On instinct, Carl moves to get up.
Rick stops him. "I'll get her." He goes upstairs and retrieves Judith from her bed. Her tears seem to slow as soon as Rick shows up. He picks her up, lets her cry into his t-shirt. "Bad dream? A lot of those goin' around lately."
He carries her downstairs, sits on the couch and cradles her in his arms. Judith's sobs grow quieter as Rick rubs slow circles over her back to calm her.
Carl reaches out and tucks a strand of Judith's hair behind her ear. "How come you didn't tell me?" he asks Rick.
Where to start with that one? Rick ignores the two obvious answers. "I didn't know how you'd react." Okay, not entirely a lie. "I worried you'd think I was trying to replace your mom."
Carl huffs a tiny sound of exasperation. "I'm not a kid anymore. I get it. Why you wanna be with somebody again. And it's okay. Mom wouldn't want—" He shakes his head as though shaking off the wavering emotion in his voice. "Mom wouldn't want you to be alone."
Lori probably wouldn't want Rick getting his ass blasted by Carl's baseball coach either.
"I can watch Judith if you wanna go out," Carl says. "But you have to ask first. You can't just run off and expect me to do everything."
"I know. And I won't. I broke it off."
"Why?"
"It didn't seem like a good idea."
"But she likes you, right? If somebody likes you, you should just go for it."
Rick isn't sure he should take dating advice from a fifteen-year-old, no matter how sound it may seem.
"It's her, isn't it? The person you've been texting?"
Rick nods.
"You, like, never text," Carl says, like he's making a point.
Rick also never makes booty calls or signs up for casual sex with no strings. Negan has certainly broadened Rick's horizons.
Judith has fallen asleep in Rick's lap. Her tiny fingers are still clutched in the front of his shirt.
Carl pushes off the couch. "G'nite, Dad," he says, heading for the stairs.
"Thank you," Rick says, because he honestly didn't expect Carl to accept the concept of Rick starting to date again. Even though whatever he has with Negan absolutely isn't dating.
He watches Carl climb the stairs and disappear down the hallway. Then he watches Judith sleep, stricken by how much he loves his children, how they're living, breathing pieces of Lori.
Carefully, Rick extricates his phone from the pocket of his pajamas. He's gotten into the habit of carrying it around everywhere in case of an emergency. He opens his conversation with Negan and types: I can't stop thinking about Eastman. What he's doing right now. How he's handling what happened. Then I think that I could have been him. When I left Carl and Judith the other night, someone could have come in and... Someone still could.
(Friday 3:22 AM)
But you'll be there. You sleep with a gun under your pillow, right?
(Friday 3:23 AM)
I can't lose anyone else
(Friday 3:25 AM)
Carl seems okay with the idea of me seeing someone. But if we're still gonna do this, you have to come here. I can't leave them alone.
(Friday 3:26 AM)
Are you unbreaking up with me over text? Pussy.
Rick stares at the text for a moment. He might be about to do something very stupid.
He clicks on 'Lucifer' and presses the call button. When Negan answers, Rick says, "Is this better?"
"Prick," Negan chuckles.