ship: reddie

by honeyvenom on ao3

angst (?)

"I told you not to call me anymore, Richie. I told you I needed space."

On a quiet evening in a sleepy California town, an unexpected phone call from an ex-lover rattles Eddie.

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
heavily implied that Richie is a sadist and a murderer in this fic!!!

Eddie's just finished tucking his daughter into bed when he hears his cell phone ring.

He doesn't think anything of it at first. It's probably just Bev calling for their weekly catch-up a little earlier than usual, or the electrician calling to confirm the appointment Eddie had booked online that afternoon. Whatever it is, Eddie knows it can wait, so he takes his time stroking his daughter's hair back from her face, and making sure her stuffed bunny Sir Alonso is tucked in next to her.

Finally, Eddie steps away, keeping Penelope's night light on and keeping the door slightly ajar as he steps outside. Penelope sometimes had bad nightmares, and she needed the door open to make sure monsters weren't going to creep out from beneath her bed and snatch her in the middle of the night. Eddie could relate with those fears. The night still spooked him sometimes, even on the other side of the country to Derry.

Out in the hallway, he can hear Myra humming to herself in the kitchen as she wraps up the rest of the casserole from dinner. The air smells like fresh herbs - the rosemary, sage and thyme that Eddie had plucked from their herb garden that afternoon - and outside the sky was starting to bleed into an indigo blue at the edges.

The Kaspbraks had lived in California for almost two years now, and Eddie was still in awe at the way day turned to night. How warm the air felt. The sound of cicadas, and the smell of the orange trees in bloom. They were so different to nights in New York, or even Derry. It was like everything out here was made of a different fabric.

In his bedroom, his phone is still vibrating where it had been discarded against the bed covers earlier that evening. Buzzing angrily like a bee trapped in a jar. Eddie sits on the edge of the bed and grabs it, ready to flick it on and answer.

But for some reason Eddie pauses. Unease trickles down his spine when he looks at his phone. When he doesn't recognise the number, and realises just how long the person has been calling. Wouldn't they have hung up by now? Left a voicemail? 

Don't do it, Eddie, a small voice whispers to him. It tells him to turn the phone off and put it away. But he quickly tells himself to stop being ridiculous. He was enough of a hermit without also ignoring his phone calls. There was no reason to be this paranoid.

Before Eddie can talk himself out of it again, he answers.

"Hello?"

A wall of silence greets Eddie on the other end. He shifts, his anxiety ratcheting up a couple more levels.

"Er, hello? Is anyone there?"

In the black hole that emerges that paranoid little voice pipes up again, telling Eddie in a harried tone to hang up. To go to the kitchen and help Myra put away the leftovers. This didn't feel right. It wasn't the electrician and it definitely wasn't Bev. So hang up, Eddie, hang up right now.

He's about to do just that, his hand slipping and almost dropping the phone on the floor, when the person on the other end finally speaks.

"Hi Eddie."

Eddie freezes, his entire body growing taut, like a puppet on a string.

"Richie?"

"The one and only, princess."

Eddie makes an involuntary noise and crushes the phone to the mattress.

He hasn't heard Richie's voice in more than four months, and something in him unfurls at the sound of it. Like a wilted flower that feels water on its petals for the first time in weeks. At the flat, nasal tone of it, striking through him like the lash of a whip.

Richie's voice always did that to Eddie. Sometimes, when they were alone, all Richie had to do was whisper something - anything - into his ear, and Eddie would be jelly, his limbs going soft. Richie would have to catch him before he fell to the floor, laughing gently into his ear.

Whoa there, cowboy, he'd say as he kissed the back of Eddie's neck. Take things slow.

Eddie presses the feeling down. Imagines himself pushing it into a small room at the back of his chest and locking it away, where he could pretend it didn't exist. Where he could refuse to let it grow. Instead he lifts the phone again and sets his voice into something steady and firm - just like his mother had taught him growing up - and says, "I asked you not to call me again. I told you I needed space."

"Oh come on, don't be like that," Richie says, followed by the familiar sound of a soft crunch. Richie was chewing on ice again, something he did to annoy Eddie. Always crunching on ice cubes when Eddie was trying to focus on a book or writing an email.  

Richie never did like Eddie's attention on anything but him.

Eddie thinks about all the useful phrases he'd picked up in self-help books over the years.

"You need to respect my boundaries. I told you I'd reach out first."

Richie snickers at the other end. "We don't have boundaries, Eddie. We never have."

And maybe that was true once. When they were children. Half-feral and free, living out of the clubhouse like a pack of lion cubs or street urchins from an old book. The Lost Boys, they called themselves. Even Bev, who liked to cut her hair short and only wore tatty clothes she stole from Bill, hadn't minded. Those were the times they slept together in a pile. When they shared their food, eating it with their hands like they had paws. When they washed in the lake. Eddie's hair had almost gone blonde one summer, he'd spent so much time outside. Though Richie's had stayed inky black, no matter how long he was in the sun. He was the inverted boy. So pale the others joked he was bloodless.

He swallows the memories away like a bitter pill.

"Things are different now."

"No, they're not. They're only different because you're pretending they are."

Richie says it lightly, like they're talking about how the weather's forecasted thunderstorms, or the plot twist at the end of a new movie that had just come out, but it still makes Eddie's chest hurt.

"Please stop," he says, feeling all the progress he'd made over the last few months fall away.

Eddie had never experienced a drinking problem. Had always drank responsibly, even in his 20s when you were allowed to abuse your body with usually little consequence, and even now only enjoyed a glass of wine or two at dinner when he went to a restaurant. But talking to Richie, being around him, made Eddie think that this is what it would feel like to be an alcoholic. To be in that perpetual state of yearning. Gasping for a taste even years after becoming sober. What it meant to call yourself a lifelong addict.

"Okay, let's talk about something else. How's the wife and kid?"

"Fine," Eddie says tightly.

He looks over his shoulder, making sure Myra wasn't anywhere where she could hear him, but from the sounds of cupboards closing she was still in the kitchen. He darts over quickly and closes the door.

He'd had a lot of conversations like this in the time before. Locking himself in the bathroom. Wandering into the garden. Any quiet, isolated space where Myra wouldn't overhear Eddie talking to Richie on the phone. Even though it was mostly Richie talking, and Eddie sighing in a half-swoon. Feeling dazed and sun-burnt as Richie licked dirty words in his ear. Telling him about all the things he was going to do to him.

"Good," Richie replies thickly, like there's a wedge of ice under his tongue. "I know you're fond of playing Happy Families."

Eddie frowns. "Is that why you called? To ask about my family?"

"Nah, I don't really give a fuck."

Eddie feels himself flush angrily under the collar of his polo. God, Richie was a fucking asshole.

"What then? Because I have things to do."

"What's your favourite scary movie?"

The question sideswipes Eddie, catching him off guard.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Deadly. Come on, Kaspbrak. What movie makes you shiver? What makes you scream?"

Eddie sighs, rolling his eyes.

This was a game they played as teenagers. The summer Eddie had turned 19, Scream came out in the one small rundown theatre in Derry. Richie had been obsessed with that movie. Had seen it numerous times and even bought a Ghostface mask that he used to terrorise the town - knocking on front doors wearing it and scaring housewives half to death. Bev had laughed and called him a fucking creep, but that didn't stop him.

One night he even climbed up to Eddie's window and knocked on the glass while wearing it, his t-shirt gaping open to reveal his firm pale chest. But Eddie hadn't been scared; Richie never frightened him. Except when Richie declared that he was here to take Eddie's virginity, Eddie had blushed red and half pushed Richie back out the window, telling him to get lost.

"Ha ha," he replies now, his mouth bone dry. "Never heard that one before."

Richie huffs with laughter, and the rough sound of it turns all of Eddie's small hairs on end, from his neck to arms.

"Fine, how about this: What are you wearing?"

Eddie pulls a face. "Stop it, Richie."

"Why should I? I thought you liked this game."

A game. That was a funny way to put it. To describe the months of pictures and videos, where teasing each other into a snarling, drunken fever had been the only thing they could do when seeing each other was out of the question. When Richie was out of town for a show, or when Eddie couldn't think of another excuse to be in LA that wouldn't make Myra suspicious.

Eventually it would be too much - all the nights of jerking off in the bathroom with the shower running to block out the noise, and biting his lip at all the photos Richie sent him of his huge, veined hand on his hard dick - and Eddie would drive out to some dusty little town just off the freeway between here and LA. At some motel where the rooms smelled like soapy perfume and disinfectant. Cutting across the sweat of all those married men who had snuck in here for their affairs and one-night stands. Rooms where Richie would scratch his skin as he tore his clothes off. Where Eddie would cry as Richie fucked him over the bed, too impatient to even pull his jeans off, his zipper scraping Eddie's delicate skin.

Those were the rooms where Richie had sat up chain-smoking, and Eddie had tried to memorise his profile in the neon light from outside.

Shame had burned through Eddie for days after those swift, desperate encounters. Shame, and a slow simmer of desire, making his stomach tighten every time he looked back at their messages, and the photos Richie had taken of Eddie's bruised, bitten skin against the cheap sheets.

And even the shame couldn't stop Eddie from splaying himself out on his bed when Myra had gone out shopping with Penelope, and pushing his phone between his legs to take pictures of his pink, swollen centre. Couldn't stop how good it felt. Lying like this. Stepping out. Cheating. Doing the opposite of what anyone ever expected from him. Not sweet, nice, ordinary Eddie Kaspbrak.

The drooling emojis Richie sent back made it all worth it.

"I don't like it," he says now, feeling the lie burn through him.

"Funny. Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else."

Eddie's mouth goes sour with jealousy. Richie could have anyone he wanted. He knew that. Richie had been hot shit for years, so who knows how many people he'd fucked since their thing had come to an end. And he'd never been shy about being seen with a number of pretty little things, most recently including a beautiful brunette from a popular sitcom. But that didn't mean Eddie wanted to know about it.

"Sure, whatever."

That makes Richie laugh. But this time it's a loud, widemouthed laugh. Like he can see right through Eddie.

"Did you watch my new show?"

"No," Eddie says automatically.

Even though he had. A couple of weeks ago he got up early one morning while Myra was still asleep and in the milky dawn light had skulked into the living room to watch it. Had watched it from start to finish without stopping once, drinking in every detail of Richie's face, hardly hearing the cruel jokes or the collective inhale of shock from the audience. He realised halfway through that a long, broken whine was coming from his throat and he'd clapped his hand over his face so hard he wore a pink mark on his skin for the rest of the day.

Richie laughs again. "You're such a bad liar."

Eddie swallows, suddenly not knowing what to say.

They both stay quiet for a moment, just breathing in each other's silence. They did this sometimes. Eddie would wake up to find Richie on the other side of the bed watching him, and the two men would stare at each other for a while, Richie stroking back the hair from his forehead and touching every one of his freckles with the pad of his finger. It had been so intimate. Sometimes even more intimate than when Richie had fucked Eddie. In those silent, strange moments it felt like only the two of them existed. Those were the only moments when Richie knew how to be kind.

Eddie feels his throat catch. Don't cry, he tells himself. Don't you dare cry now.

When Richie speaks again, it's so soft it hurts. "Come on," he says quietly. "Just be sweet to me."

"I can't. Richie, please."

"You're my dream boy, Eddie. My number one baby boy."

That feeling at the back of Eddie's chest cracks through his weak defences. The part of him that wants Richie so much, that wants to reach through the phone and cling to him. The part that's wanted Richie this entire time. Even when Eddie was ending things between them.

"Please," he moans again, half to himself, half to Richie. "Don't make me."

"Don't make you what?"

Eddie can't answer. Don't make me want you, he almost says.

Richie's quiet for a moment. Like he's assessing. Recalculating. Reminding himself where Eddie's weak spots were. Where it really hurt.

"I thought about you today, you know," he finally says.

Eddie hums, feeling beads of sweat at his hairline. He picks at a loose thread on the bed sheets.

"Thinking about how you look in the mornings. How you taste. Your bitchy little mouth when you're telling me off."

Eddie tries not to listen. Instead he focuses on the far wall. On a photo of him, Myra and Penelope on a trip to Yellowstone the year before. That had been before he'd met Richie again. Before the flirting and the photos and all the lost weekends buried in Richie's sheets.

"You've been looking good recently, Eddie."

Something about the way Richie says that rattles Eddie, tearing his eyes from the picture.

"What?"

"Yeah, really good." Richie pauses for a moment, and there's a sound of rustling, like Richie's pulling a cigarette from a pack, "I really like that new shirt you got, the one with the blue stripes. You looked so sweet in it. Like a cute little candy wrapper."

Eddie's hand stills against the covers. His blood goes cold as Richie's words catch up with him.

He'd been wearing that shirt when he'd walked his daughter to school the day before.

"How do you know about that?"

Richie lived in LA. An hour away from the sleepy little town where Eddie lived, with the orange trees and the one-story houses. In the quiet cul-de-sacs where sometimes the sound of a lawnmower was the only thing you could hear for hours. There was literally no reason for Richie to be here. He probably hadn't even heard of the place before Eddie and his family had moved out here from New York.

Eddie grimaces as he says, "You've been following me?"

Just saying it makes him feel sick.

"Following is a little much. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"That's bullshit, Rich."

He thinks of Richie out there yesterday morning as Eddie left the house with Penelope, holding her hand down the street as she eagerly told him all about the storybook they were reading in class. At one point stopping so he could fix a loose shoelace on Penelope's shiny red brogue. Had Richie followed them the entire way to her school? Had he smoked a cigarette and watched them as Eddie waved at her from the gates?

He resists the urge to dart to the window and look outside, to see if Richie was there.

"Where are you now?"

"At home," Richie says lightly. "Where else would I be?"

"That's not okay, Richie. You can't do that."

Richie doesn't answer at first. Like it's enough for him to listen to the tremor in Eddie's voice. Like he's savouring it.

"I needed to see you, all right? It's been months. When you said you needed space I didn't think that meant cutting me out of your fucking life."

Eddie runs a hand through his hair. It wasn't long anymore like Richie liked it, but Eddie still had a habit of pushing it away from his face.

"But that doesn't mean you can just follow me around. Jesus, Richie. What were you thinking?"

Richie goes quiet on the other end. But it's a churlish silence, rather than a contrite one.

"Sure, my bad," he says. Like that even made up for it. "I just thought, with the way you've been hanging out with the others recently. I felt left out."

Eddie frowns, feeling confused. "What do you mean the others? I haven't seen some of them for months."

A note of bitterness creeps into Richie's voice as he says, "I heard you meet Bill once a week for lunch."

Richie says it casually enough. Except with Richie, nothing was casual. Everything was loaded with some hidden meaning. Some added layer.

"How? Have you been following him too?"

"A little birdie called Stan told me."

For fuck's sake, Stan, Eddie thinks angrily. Stan was the only one who kept in regular contact with Richie now. But he hadn't seen Richie in a while, and sometimes Eddie wanted to call him up and warn him. But what would he say? And Stan was in a delicate place too. Recently home from a hospital stay after hurting himself again. The last thing Eddie wanted to do was upset him.

"It's not like we're all throwing parties and not inviting you. It's just while he's been writing his new book."

"Which one? I can barely keep up with our very own trailer trash William Faulkner."

"The one about our childhood, the Derry one."

"Oh yeah? And what gives that asshole the right to pilfer our past like that? I swear he'd suck his own dick if it had a Pulitzer Prize attached to it."

Something like that would usually pull a reluctant laugh from Eddie. But everything about the conversation has him on edge. All the warning bells that had been screaming at him since before he picked up his phone were still going. Were getting louder every minute he stayed on the phone.

"I need to go now, Richie."

"And before we've had a chance to catch up? Where have your manners gone, Kaspbrak?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm sure you'll recover."

That's when Richie's voice changes.

"Don't you dare hang up on me," he says, soft but ominous. Like steel wrapped in velvet.

Eddie freezes, his thumb hovering over the phone. He knew that voice only too well.

It was the voice Richie used when he was telling Eddie he couldn't come yet. The voice that told him, no, he couldn't go home. That he had to stay another night. Make up an excuse to tell his dumb wife. That he didn't care what it was, but it had to be something.

It was the dark little voice Richie used whenever he wanted Eddie to do as he said. And even now, Eddie's entire body lights up, wanting so badly to obey. Makes his chest swell up like it did when Richie was about to latch onto his skin with his teeth and suck a hickey over his heart.

"Richie... we can't do this," he says, wincing at how strained he sounds.

"I've missed you, Eddie. I miss playing with you."

Playing. There was that word again. But there wasn't anything fun about how Richie made Eddie feel.

"I'm being serious. If you call again-"

Richie's voice goes low and taunting as he says, "You'll do what?"

And Eddie didn't know. Call the police? Tell his wife? Talk to Bill, who had started asking Eddie some weird, probing questions at their lunches together. Ones that were usually about Richie, pulling a recess of repressed memories painfully back to the surface.

Do you remember when Richie killed that dog? Do you remember that summer he started acting weird? That he started hanging out with Patrick Hockstetter and the two of them would disappear for entire days together? Do you remember what he did to that old man?

"We ended things for a reason."

And they had. The affair. Even if it had made Eddie feel incredible at first. The nights away in LA under the guise that he had a business conference in the city. The illicit meetings. Going back to Richie's mansion in the Hills. As Richie feasted upon him like a starved animal. The mornings waking up and eating fruit from Richie's hands. The evenings in the pool. How it felt to have Richie inside him, all around him. How overwhelming it was to have all of Richie's attention on him. This strange, brilliant, acerbic man who had been described as his generation's most challenging talent.

But then the nights had spiralled into entire weekends. And Richie got fiercer, more demanding. Had started fucking him harder, bruising him up more. Had told him he couldn't go home until he was done with him. Had started tying Eddie's wrists together so tightly it chafed Eddie raw. Had looked at Eddie with dark, inscrutable eyes. Talking in that voice that Eddie couldn't ignore. Locking all the doors so he couldn't leave.

And then Eddie had started reading about the murders.

"And you never told me what those reasons were."

"Yes I did."

"Oh you mean that shit about it being wrong? Because you felt so bad about cheating on your wife? That cow-faced lump you can't bear to touch? Because you'd much rather scurry back to your little life playing the dutiful house husband because it's so much safer than being with me?"

The venom in Richie's voice punches through Eddie. Makes his breath catch.

"Fuck you," he breathes, his fingers trembling against the phone. "And it was wrong. That wasn't a lie."

"No. You're the one who's getting it all wrong. Being with me is the only true thing you've ever done."

The red-hot flare of anger and arrogance was so like Richie. So much Eddie almost laughs.

"You're such a narcissist, Richie. Not everything revolves around you."

"Oh yeah?" Richie says, like Eddie had just challenged him to a party game. "Because I seem to remember you calling me your everything."

You're still my everything, Richie, that feeling in Eddie's chest says.

"That was a long time ago," Eddie says instead.

"Not that long. It can't be, because I have this picture of you in my head that I can't stop thinking about."

Eddie braces himself, his hand white against the bed. "I don't want to hear it."

"It's all you. Red and purple all over-"

"Stop it, Richie."

"Covered in my marks, begging for me to come in-"

"I said stop!"

Miraculously Richie does, going silent on the other end. And Eddie can tell he's enjoying this. That he's enjoying tying Eddie into knots and then watching him unravel. He did it when they were kids too. Always pulling Eddie's hair and flicking him on the nose. Typical kid's stuff maybe. Except his methods of winding Eddie up had become more twisted as they got older. Things that he had thought were normal at the time. It was just Richie being Richie. But they were things he winced at years later, when he really thought about them.

How Richie had gifted Eddie a necklace from dead butterflies that he had strung together. Telling Eddie in front of all the others to pull down his shorts and prove he was a boy. The way he'd beaten up the kid who liked to trip Eddie up during track, holding him down and punching him in the face so hard his nose sprayed blood as it broke. Stan had stood idly in the background, looking bored and telling him to hurry up. Not even flinching at the sound of the boy's sobbing or his broken nose, even as Eddie cowered away, wanting so badly to disappear into the wall.

He blinks the memories from his eyes as Richie says, "Careful, Eddie, you don't want wifey to hear you, do you?"

Eddie sighs. He feels exhausted. Wants so badly to fall into bed and never wake up again.

"Why can't you respect what I want?" he asks.

"Me leaving you alone is what you want?"

"Yes."

"No," Richie says slowly, "that's not what you want."

Eddie clenches the phone so hard he thinks it might crack in his hand.

"I really do need to go," he says again. "Myra is calling me."

"I told you not to hang up on me."

Eddie resists the overwhelming urge to obey again. The one that made him go lax and soft, made him feel like he was floating.

"Richie-"

"Just tell me one thing first."

"What is it?"

"Tell me you belong to me."

Eddie makes that noise again, but this time Richie hears it. That half moan, half sob.

He hadn't said that to Richie in months. Not since a few days before he broke things off. When things had reached a fever pitch in the kitchen as Richie had taken him by the hair and arched his head back to spit into his waiting mouth. Watching Eddie's eyes go dark and glazed as his drool spilled over Eddie's chin, his fingers digging into Eddie's face so hard it had left a purple smattering of bruises.

"I knew it," Richie says. "Come on, tell me."

"I can't..."

"Yes you can. Just tell me that one little thing. And I'll leave you alone, I promise."

But Eddie can't. Because admitting that means letting Richie in again. Means letting that feeling at the back of his chest take charge. Means breaking down all the walls Eddie had spent the last few months erecting for the sole purpose of keeping Richie out.

His voice cracks as he says, "I'm hanging up now."

"No you won't."

"Please don't call me again."

"Eddie, don't-"

Eddie hangs up.

A second later he stumbles off the bed, as far from the phone as he can. He expects it to start ringing again, but it doesn't. He stares at it, his heart thudding like he's just run a marathon - how his heart would beat when he ran from the man in Derry - but it doesn't ring. After a couple of minutes he plucks up the nerve to pick it up again and blocks the number with shaky fingers.

You know that won't keep Richie away, the voice in his head says.

Shut the fuck up, Eddie whispers back harshly. Just shut the fuck up.

He spends the next 20 minutes in the bathroom sucking in deep breaths with his head between his knees. Going through all the grounding steps his therapist had coached him on, trying to block out Richie's wide goofy grin and the sound he made in the back of his throat when he came.

When he's put himself back together as much as he can, he makes his way to the kitchen. Myra throws him a smile when he walks in, but it slips away when she sees Eddie's face. How big and dark his eyes probably look. Richie always told him he had Bambi eyes.

"Eddie, what is it? You're pale."

Eddie shakes his head. Walks over to put his arms around her.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I just had a hard week."

"Oh Eddie," Myra sighs, stroking a hand down his back. "You poor thing. Maybe you should go to bed and rest."

Eddie nods, breathing in her warm, comforting scent. Over her shoulder, he can see the street outside. The orange trees and the stars like pin pricks of diamond against the sky. He stiffens, expecting to see Richie out there leaning against his car, hidden in shadow, apart from the glint of his glasses and the smoke from his cigarette. But there's no one there, and when Myra pushes Eddie towards their bedroom, he goes willingly.

That night he dreams of Richie. But he can't make out the narrative. It's a dream of dark shapes and a harsh voice whispering in his ear.

A week later, a woman is found strangled and killed in her bedroom two towns over. Eddie reads about it on his phone and ignores the pit in his stomach that opens and grows. The woman had been pretty, in her 30s, with a long scarf of dark hair and tanned skin. The man on the news says the murderer had obviously wanted her to suffer. That she hadn't died for a long time.

Eddie jumps off the couch and into the solitude of the garden so he doesn't have to read anymore. 

It's the fourth murder in the area in seven months. The cold, quiet nightime murders. House invasions in sleepy suburban areas, where the killer snuck away as easily as smoke. And the police had been hesitant to tie the murders together, probably scared of sending people into a mass panic. Words like prowler and serial killer and sadist hadn't been uttered once in any press conferences. But everyone knew. Everyone watching the news was a budding armchair detective these days. And places like Twitter and Reddit had been lighting up with new threads on the new serial killer in the Los Angeles area and where he would strike next. Putting a hazy profile together. People had even been pitching catchy names to call him.

Everything about it made Eddie feel sick.

Bill sends him a text later that day. Have you seen the news?

Yes, Eddie sends back.

Do you think it's him?

Eddie doesn't reply for two hours. Not until Myra's gone to bed, and it's just him and the night air. Out in the yard with the inky Californian sky and the smell of the orange groves in his nose, taking him back to when they were children. When Richie would peel his oranges for him, as Eddie hated getting any of it under his nails. Holding it out for Eddie to take but at the last second, biting into it himself, his face shining with glee.

It's a picture that melts into something darker. Memories of rope around his wrists, biting into his skin. Marks on his wrists that matched the marks left on the victims. And the shoe tracks in their backyard, which matched the sneakers Richie always liked to lope around in. How a neighbour of a previous victim had told the police he saw a strange man leaving the house on the night of the murder. Saying the man had been very tall with broad shoulders. That he'd caught a glimpse of a strong jawline as the man pulled his mask up to suck on a cigarette.

I don't know, he texts Bill when his fingers manage to stop shaking. I just don't know.

It's over a month before he hears from Richie again.