It must have been four in the morning when Gail crawled into bed. She knew she probably should have gone home to her own apartment, but she was here, seeking refuge in the one place she had ever truly known solace.

Christopher was dead at the age of thirty four. He had been exactly the same age as Holly, not that it mattered. For some reason, she had visited him every night this past week after arresting him for assaulting Nick with a syringe. She had no idea why, but she couldn’t seem to leave him alone. He had replied in Japanese when she bragged to him that she spoke 5 languages fluently and a smattering of another three. They had spoken in French about the three years he had lived in Paris, where he met and married his husband, and about her travels abroad with her parents when she was younger. She envied the wistful smile on his face as he spoke of his escapades in Europe and New York in his late teens and twenties. She had told him all about Holly and about her past relationships with Nick, and Chris. He told her about being gay bashed, and left for dead in Central Park when he had been a student at Yale on a football scholarship, and how the athletic department had covered it up by saying he had been in a car accident. And she had finally confessed to him her nightmare, the abduction, the rape, her anger, and fear, and shame, and how waking suddenly in the dark, or catching an unexpected whiff of Old Spice, or taking taxis, still made her panic, at times for days. She snuck him chocolate icecream soft serve from the hospital cafeteria, and beer with a straw when the nurses weren’t looking. He was cynical and catty, witty and smart, open and vulnerable without ever being weak. It was weird. She actually cared. Even weirder, he liked her. She had arrested him, but he liked her. He even told her so, asking her to come back and visit him again.

When she had dropped by the hospital on her way home, only to find an empty room, the night nurse gave her the news. When she turned to go, the nurse called her back saying, “Officer, wait. I almost forgot. He wanted you to have this.”