DAVE STARED at the mirrored glass in the interrogation room knowing that Sean's partner, and maybe Sean, too, stared back at him.
Good.
How's it going? I'm enjoying this Sprite myself. What's it they put in the stuff? Limon. That's right. I'm enjoying my limon, Sergeant. Mmm-mmm good. Yes siree. Can't wait to get me another can of this.
Dave stared straight into the center of the mirror from the other side of the long table and he felt great. True, he didn't know where Celeste had gone with Michael, and a dread came with the ignorance that polluted his brain far more than the fifteen or so beers he'd downed last night. But she'd come back. He seemed to remember he might have scared her last night. He definitely hadn't made much sense, going on about vampires and things that went in you not being able to come back out, so maybe she'd gotten a little spooked.
Couldn't say he blamed her. It was really his fault allowing the Boy to take over like that and show his ugly, feral face.
But outside of Celeste and Michael being gone, he felt strong. He felt none of the indecision he'd felt over the last few days. Hell, he'd even managed to sleep six hours last night. He woke feeling stale and woolen-mouthed, his skull weighted down by granite, yet somehow clear.
He knew who he was. And he knew he'd done right. And killing someone (and Dave couldn't blame it on the Boy anymore; it was him, Dave-he'd done the killing) had empowered him now that he'd gotten his head around it. He'd heard somewhere of ancient cultures that used to eat the hearts of the people they murdered. They ate the hearts, and the dead were subsumed into them. It gave them power, the power of two, the spirit of two. Dave felt that way. No, he hadn't eaten anyone's heart. He wasn't that fucked in the head. But he had felt the glory of the predator. He had murdered. And he had done right. And he had stilled the monster inside of him, the freak who longed to touch a young boy's hand and melt into his embrace.
That freak was fucking gone now, man. Gone down to hell with Dave's victim. In killing someone, he'd killed that weak part of himself, that freak who had lain in him since he was eleven years old, standing in his window, looking down at the party they were throwing on Rester Street in honor of his return. He'd felt so weak, so exposed at that party. He'd felt people were secretly laughing at him, parents smiling at him with the fakest smiles, and he could see behind their public faces that they privately pitied him and feared him and hated him, and he'd had to leave the party just to escape that hate because it made him feel like a puddle of piss.
But now another's hate would make him strong, because now he had another secret that was better than his old, sorry secret, the one that most people seemed to guess anyway. Now, he had a secret that made him tall, not small.
Come close, he'd feel like saying to people now, I've got a secret. Closer, and I'll whisper it in your ear:
I've killed someone.
Dave locked his eyes on the fat cop behind the mirror:
I've killed someone. And you can't prove it.
Who's weak now?