Chapter Two
Danica
I sat staring down a bottle of vodka, my tipple of choice when things got hard. My mind replayed the interview with deafening volume. The throwaway phone I’d emailed from laid in my lap, the email app open. Three unread emails filled the Inbox, all from the same email address. Reports on Leo's crimes littered my web browser.
Fuck.
A man’s life hangs in the balance, if his appeal fails, his execution date will be set. I have information, information Schilling says won’t help him. Information I know won’t help him. He killed those people. That poor child and her mother suffered at his hand. Evidence doesn't lie. He couldn’t have made it any easier for us if he’d brutalised them on stage, filming the whole thing in front of a live audience of cops.
I’m not doing this. The man is guilty. For all I knew, he handed me to my kidnappers, starting my nightmare. He’d dragged me out, away from Angel, forced me to leave the room unsecured. His accomplices slipped through the window, overpowered Angel and lay in wait for him returning me. It was less nonsensical than his version of events. I was his first victim.
The MO of the men who took me and the men they sold me to after my father refused to hand over the ransom, didn’t fit his fantastical tale. Most of the former were dead, died years before the murders of Stacey and Maia. Anyone involved met with the pointy end of Angel’s blade, anyone else, people who had knowledge of my whereabouts and refused to tell, died in tragic ‘accidents’. To the latter Stacey, and Maia especially, were too valuable to kill. They’d have killed Leo and taken the girls as property.
He’s guilty. The only man I’ve ever loved, the knight in shining armour I’d dreamed of night after night throughout my living Hell was a paedophile and a murderer. I’d be damned if I was throwing away my career on that.
If he talks, he talks. My past will become common knowledge once more. I’ll look for work elsewhere, maybe move out of state. I sure as Hell aren’t gonna throw myself under a bus for a monster.
My resolve strengthened, I grabbed the vodka and phone.
They both ended up in the barbeque with all the printouts of Leo’s case file I’d agonised over all evening. I lit the match and stepped back. Vodka makes a powerful fuel. Flames licked the phone, the melting tech fizzed and popped. It was time to stop looking back.
Leo had been the anchor tethering me to my nightmares, the thought of tracking him down, running off into the sunset with him and living happily ever after trapped part of me in the past. No more.
“Talk to me, Milano.”
My body spiked, I swear I jumped a half a foot in the air, my hand reached instinctively for my gun. The crackle of the fire had drowned out Schilling’s footsteps, he’d ambushed me in my own back yard, caught me burning the evidence Leopold Roman would kill for. The cell phone the email had been sent from.
“Christ, Schilling, you scared me half to death,” I spat, spinning to face him. He stood, his hands jammed in his beige pants, gazing passively at me.
“I think Roman is one who has you jumpy, Dani.”
“Danica, we established that this morning, my name is Danica. Detective Milano to you.”
I turned my back on him, on the fire, striding to the safety of my rented house. Schilling blocked the door with his foot, forcing his way in behind me.
“I’ve been a Detective since you were in diapers, kid. I saw the way you looked at him, the effect he had on you. And that little chat y’all had when we were leaving, that told me everything I needed to know. You’re Dani, Roman’s Dani. The holiday fling we all thought was a figment of his imagination.”
“And? You said yourself, my case and his are unconnected. What happened to me, him looking for me, if he ever did, has nothing to do with the horrible things he’s guilty of.”
“Too right, kid,” he grinned, “and don’t you forget it. Don’t let him snake his way into that fucked up head of yours. He’s no knight in shining armour, he’s not a Prince Charming sent to rescue you from the dragon. He’s a cold-blooded killer.”
Schilling grabbed two beers from my chiller and made me talk. Tried to, anyway. I told him only what he needed to know, switching off emotionally as I spoke. I despised people seeing me as weak. Weak isn’t me, I’m not that person anymore.
“It’s all gonna come back and haunt me again, isn’t it?”
“No,” Schilling grinned, taking a long sip of his beer, “he’s withdrawn his appeal. The Chief told me right after you raced outta the office.”
“What?”
“I know, right? Musta been hit by a rush of conscience or something. Told his lawyer right after we left he wanted to end the appeals process.”
“That makes no sense, he found me. The evidence he’d been searching for, sat right opposite him, interviewing him and he gives up now?”
“Makes perfect sense, kid. If you’re there and you’re real and you’re alive, you got away, then why’d they frame him? They didn’t. He knows it, I know it, you know it, the appeals court would too. It’s over for him. That poor baby gets her justice and the world is down one monster. It’s a win-win, kid, don’t overthink it. If you ever need to talk, I’m here, confidential, of course.”
“Thanks.”
Schilling let himself out, leaving me absorbed in my past, my nightmares floating across my vision. The mercy of sleep refused to come. I spent the night on the sofa, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.
Why? Why would he give up now?
Fuck, I wished I hadn’t burned that phone. Christ only knows what the password to that email account was. I’d been half shot when I set the damn thing up.
◆◆◆
My stomach growled unable to remember the last time I ate. I slumped over my desk, the first to arrive from day shift. I hadn’t been able to face another hour in that house, my mind dragging over my past, Leo’s emerald eyes dancing around my imagination.
A brown, grease-sodden paper bag landed on my desk. Schilling scraped his grey plastic seat over the threadbare carpet, planting it in front of my desk. His elbows rested on my work space, he leant towards me, his bushy caterpillar brows joined together in the middle with a deep frown.
“Eat. You’re too skinny.”
“Whatever is in that bag, I’m not eating it.”
The scent of the oil laden junk food turned my stomach.
“You look like shit. Eat.”
“I’m fine, rough night that’s all.”
“Bullshit, Milano. He’s gotten to you.”
“Detective Milano, I need to speak in my office,” Chief barked. “Alone,” he added as Schilling dragged his fat ass up.
I followed my new boss to his office, my heart pounding through my ribs. He knew. Leo had told him everything.
The Chief lowered himself into his worn, padded office seat, waving at me to take the seat opposite him.
“You’re aware I know your past, of course? The trafficking, who your father is.”
“Yes, Sir.”
My file followed me everywhere, detailing my entire life from the moment Las Vegas Vice rescued me from a seedy backstreet brothel to my arrival here and everything in between.
“Leopold Roman withdrew his appeal yesterday, after speaking with you.”
“Schilling told me.”
“Right. It doesn’t take a Police Detective to work out your involvement with him.”
Great, now my name was associated with a vicious cartel boss and a murderous paedophile as if it couldn’t be muddied any more.
“I can’t give evidence, if my face ends up on the news…”
“You don’t have to. Your case and Roman’s are both closed and unrelated as far as I’m concerned.”
“Okay…”
“He wants to see you again. Says he has info on another case and he’ll only talk to you. Alone. Look, Milano, if I’d any idea you were involved with him, I’d never have sent you with Schilling yesterday. This info he has, I’m sure it’s a wild goose chase, if you don’t want to go, I’ll send Schilling.”
“No. I’ll go.”
I straightened in my seat, squaring my shoulders, my eyes hard. This wouldn’t beat me, wouldn't chase me from another town. And I had to know why he’d withdrawn his appeal, something about Schilling’s explanation didn’t sit right with me. I guess, if I was honest with myself, I wanted him to convince me he was innocent, or at least explain how he’d turned from the man I fell for into the monster he is today. I couldn’t accept that he’d always been that way. What would that make me? I’d loved him, waited for him to rescue me and then moved to Texas in the hope of bumping into him again, all the while he was raping a child.
Schilling tried to come with me, giving up only when I agreed to eat the greasy egg and bacon sandwich he’d brought me. It sat on my stomach, weighing heavy, coating my insides with a layer of nauseating grey oil.
The ninety-minute drive back to Livingston passed in a blink of the eye. My gut twisted, my feet burned, aching to run back to my car. I forced myself forward, pushing through to the reception. The same stony-faced guard greeted me.
“Detective Danica Milano, here to see Leopold Roman.” I pressed my badge to the bullet proof screen separating us.
A cold film of sweat coated my goosebumped skin. I was directed through the concrete corridors, to the visitation booths for death row. Two guards flanked Leo. Chains bound his hands, crossing around his waist. He shuffled towards the poured concrete box his side of the plexiglass, his ankles shackled in heavy metal, dressed in the white death row prison overalls. He flinched at the sound of the thick iron door behind him slamming closed, locking him into the claustrophobic space, like the animal he was.
An uncertain, shy smile played on his lips, he reached for the plastic phone. I grabbed mine, lifting it slowly to my ear, my lips tight. Whatever reaction he wanted from me, he wouldn’t get it. I’d been to Hell, this was a walk in the park. My legs quivered below the desk, my foot tapped erratically at the cold, grey floor.
“Thank you for coming. I didn’t really expect you to show.”
“No bullshit, why am I here?”
“I wanted to know you were okay. You emailed me ‘rescue me’ only a few weeks ago.”
“My welfare is of no concern to you.”
“You asked me for help.”
“That was before I knew what you are.”
His head dropped. Fat tears rained from his eyes, landing in splotches on his pristine white jumpsuit. He swiped at his hollowed cheeks with the back of a cuffed hand, drew in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, raised his eyes to meet mine.
“You can believe I’m a monster if it’s easier for you but Carly isn’t. She’s there for you, no judgements, if you need a friend. There are charities too.”
Huh. I puffed out a breath.
“I’m a Police Detective, you think I don’t know what support is available?”
“You deserve to be happy, Danica. And you’re not. I’d be able to face this a lot better if I knew you were happy.”
“I owe you nothing. Do the right thing, Leo, for your victims.”
“What is the right thing, Dani? Honesty leaves my family and friends knowing I was executed an innocent man. If I lie, the people who did this to you and Maia, they get away with it.”
He was good, I’d give him that, almost like he believed it himself.
“The person who did this is paying, Leo.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” I inhaled, the burning question on the tip of my tongue. I had to know, to Hell with the consequences, I had to know if I’d given my virginity to a monster. Before he could fill me with more crap about his innocence it burst out of me, “did you rape anyone before you were with me? Was my first time with a rapist? I have to know. The truth, Leo, I need the truth.”
His eyes, brimmed with tears, scanned my face.
“No. It was your first time?”
I nodded, my voice caught in my throat. Whatever made him into what he was, happened after me. I hadn’t loved a monster, I’d loved the man he used to be.
“That’s easiest, isn’t it? Me being a monster, for everyone?”
“You are a monster.”
“Do I make my confession to you or my lawyer?”
“Your lawyer. Why now, why did you end your appeal process after you found me?”
He paused, rolling his eyes upwards, his tongue sneaking between his dry lips.
“It’s over. If you identify the men who took you, they can be eliminated from the investigation. My defence is shattered.”
Exactly what Schilling guessed.
“None of this is your fault, no matter what comes out after I’m… gone. You’re not to blame, remember that.”
“Goodbye, Leo.”
A sinking feeling was left in my gut as I left. I headed home, unable to face Schilling and the station. Chief let me take an early finish. Leo had filed his full confession before I made it back to Houston. The prosecution had it spot on, right down to the last detail, it was as if they’d written the damn thing for him. The only thing he couldn’t explain is how he’d been drunk enough to pass out covered in the blood of his victims but sober enough to commit rape.