The Breaking Point

The handle was a golden rectangle in the center of a chocolate block of a door, which creaked open before I could even reach for it. A pale, wizened face beneath a swath of woolen white wisps and tucked into a strangling navy blue turtle-neck appeared from the gloom beyond. The denture-filled mouth cracked.

"Tom," she croaked, with a genuinely warm smile. She draped her arms around my waist, ignoring the damp in my drenched trench coat. Despite myself, I hugged her back.

"How long's it been?" she asked from within my bosom.

"Fifteen years," I answered, my voice gruffer than I'd expected.

"Oh, it feels so much less to me."

She pulled away, her nostrils slightly wrinkled, and she backed herself into the door.

"Well, come out of the rain, you silly man!" she scolded. I stepped inside and obliged her when she demanded my coat. Her wrinkled features scrunched like the papers of forsaken ideas, and I wondered whether it was at the cheap deodorant I'd washed in moments before, or the scent of bourbon I'd tried to drown with it.

"I've done tea in the garden," she said, leading the way down the hall past the stair, towards the back door.

I knew the interior of her house intimately. The set of dreary blue Victorian units her apartment was set in had the misfortune of facing due north; never capturing any sunlight. The décor was brown so dark it was almost black, and her walls were painted the hue of matte ocean blue after sunset. Still, despite the gloom, the apartment radiated warmth and coziness against the gloomy weather. The muffled drone of the rain cascaded down the staircase from the upper floors, and I spied the fireplace crackling between the curves of two hickory leather couches.

How many times had I shared news with her and her family there?

The smell of something delicious lingered in the air.

"I've been baking," she explained, as she shuffled down the hall, her slippers dragging across inky floorboards. "Although, I wasn't sure you'd accept my invitation. Thought maybe you wouldn't want to after all this time, or maybe there was some rule against visiting a victim's grandmother..."

I chuckled. "There probably is. But I'm not a cop anymore." I nodded towards the loungeroom. "It feels like nothing's changed since I've been here last."

"You mean when you told my daughter they were closing the investigation?"

I froze, suddenly cold against the whiskey warmth.

She paused and looked back at me. "Don't worry about it, Tom. I didn't mean anything by it."

She opened the back door, letting in the smell of water and sounds of raindrops. She gestured outside.

"How are Bill and Wendy?" I asked uncertainly.

She rolled her eyes. "Both moved on. He ran off with some tramp he found at a local dive bar - good riddance, I say. After that, Wendy left town for the bad memories. Left me here to rot, she did..."

And I was kicked off the force because I drank too much.

It's funny how some cases keep killing long after the murdering's been done.

I stepped past her onto the patio, where color and life were resurrected and fulminated in contrast to the bleakness inside. She had a rainbow myriad of flowers blossoming in planters; dangling from straw hanging pots or blooming from stone basins carved with decorative ribbons. Lavender and larkspur leaked deep and foggy purples into the luscious greens of club mosses and forest ferns. Hollyhocks and sweet peas dazzled in their reds, while rudbeckias and sunflowers blazed in their golds and yellows. Herbs sprouted in a planter that ran the width of the rail that separated the patio from the rest of the garden, tiny signposts signifying what they were.

Further, beyond a row of blue hydrangeas, and a neatly packed vegetable garden, was a small stretch of manicured turf ending in a magnificent pear tree. The branches bowed heavy beneath the weight of their harvest. The golden fruit gleamed and glistened in the rain like the sacred boons of Idun.

"Now, this has changed," I noted.

"Yes, I took up gardening not long before Wendy left." she said, coming to stand next to me, hands resting on her hips. "It's a bit much for me to manage now I’m getting on, but at least I had this to keep me occupied after, well..."

We stood there for a while, letting silence wash us with its meaning. The rain’s rhythmic pounding sounded like infantry marching on the rooftiles.

"Tea?" she asked eventually.

I nodded.

She ushered me over to a cast-iron white, round table and matching chairs, the kind that every elderly person seems to own. On it, a wooden tray cradled two blue teacups and a matching porcelain teapot leaking steam from its spout, and a delectable-looking pear cake.

My stomach growled; reminding me how long it had been since I’d eaten something that wasn’t deep-fried and greasy – or drank anything that didn’t burn my throat afterwards.

"I hope you don't mind sitting out here in the cold," she said. I sat down as she poured the tea. "At my age, you never know they’ll whisk you off to a home. Never to enjoy it again."

I smiled. "It’s fine. We’re undercover and out of the wind."

"Yes, and I do like sitting out here and enjoying the fruits of my labors. Speaking of, this pear cake is baked with those pears you see growing back there. Early Gold Pears, they are."

She expertly served me a slice, and we listened to the rain as we nibbled our cake and sipped our tea. I couldn't taste the tea, but the pear cake was as moist, sweet, and gorgeous as a young lover – the kind I'd need to pay for now given how I look, especially with my lumpy red mess of a nose.

"It's good," I mumbled, catching crumbs as they spilled over my lips.

"Mmm.” Her gaze was fixed on the tree. "They were Benji's favorite too."

The utterance of missing boy’s name makes my blood run cold for the second time that visit.

"His mum would drop him off," she continued. "Every second weekend. And we'd bake that cake together, and he'd nibble at the pear slices and get juice all over his adorable little face. We'd bake other things too, but pear cake was always his favorite. That's why I planted the tree. To remember him."

She fell silent again, and together we watched the tree, boughs bobbing in the rain like the heads of a herd of deer at the riverside. Although she hadn't said it in her invitation, I knew she had asked me to come to speak about the missing boys. Once, I might have respectably declined, as protocol dictates. But this case still haunted me, all these years later. The killer had gotten close to me; delivering personalized letters to get under my skin, with elaborate clues leading to the other boys' bodies.

Eventually, though, there comes a clue you can't solve. And five out of six bodies ain't bad, right?

"Do you remember," she said, "when they called the investigation off?"

Somberly, I nodded.

"Me too. You came around to tell us yourself. Then you promised us that you personally would keep searching. Do you remember that?"

Another nod.

"So, what happened, Tom?" she asked, looking at me shrewdly.

I breathed a heavy sigh. I'd known this was coming too.

"I did keep looking – I swear I did. But Benji was the last, and the killer never killed again.”

“You didn’t receive any more letters?”

“Oh no,” I replied, haunted. “I did. The bodies stopped coming, but the letters never did.”

“So...?

“I couldn’t make sense of them! Nobody could! And the more time passed, the less sense they made. By the end, I couldn’t even be sure it was the killer sending those letters, and still, they didn't stop coming. So, after a while, I had to just stop opening them. And when the captain kicked me off the force, I even stopped turning them in for evidence. There’s a pile in my cupboard, yellow with age. I just..."

"Gave up?" she proffered. Looking in her eyes and seeing her disappointment was worse than staring into the sun.

I shrugged, unsure of what else to say.

She sighed and turned away.

"I don't blame you, Tom," she finally said, sincere sympathy in her voice. "Maybe I did for a while, but no more. I'm old and getting older. The body quits before the spirit does, and mine keeps me from doing the same things I used to. Now, my soul is as tired as these bones.

"There's a breaking point, I think, for everyone. Like Wendy, when she could stand no more of this godforsaken town and fled. Like Bill, when he could take no more of my daughter's grief ‘twixt his own, and found solace in that little whore. Your captain, no doubt, when you arrived stinking of bourbon for the umpteenth day in a row."

She turned to me and smiled sadly.

"Yours, when one letter too many landed on your desk. Mine, for never receiving a response to our fifteenth anniversary letter.”

I must admit, it took me a long time for my ethanol-soaked brain to process what she'd just said to me.

"You said the bodies stopped coming,” she continued. “You're right; there was meant to be more. But I stopped fighting back the urge far too late, and my body was already beginning to fail me back then. It was hard to strangle anyone; took four times to finally choke poor Cole Jessup out. The little fool kept sputtering back to life like a crank handle motor carriage, and my hands hurt like hell afterwards. Sadly, I knew it had to end soon – and I told myself it didn't matter, because at least you and I would always have our little game to keep me entertained. Cat-and-mouse, Tom. But you... you stopped playing."

I squeezed my eyes shut to force myself to sober up and make sense of what was happening. "You?"

She pulled a face and nodded.

"'Fraid so, Tom."

"But Benji was your-"

"Grandson? Sure. That’s why he was last – he had to be special. He was always going to be my cherry on top."

"W-why are you telling me this?" I stammered.

"Because I’ve reached that breaking point, too, and I’ve finally accepted you’d never have found me on your own. So, no more letters or clues, Tom. No more hoping you'd finally uncover who I am or where Benji is. If left to you, I'd never get to taste the fruits of these labors. I want to soak up that infamy before I die. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can wait no longer."

She stood, and I flinched. She laughed, crueler than I'd heard before.

"Relax, Tom. I'm not going to hurt you. Nor is that cake poisoned, if it crossed your mind. Now - when you're ready - I'll be waiting inside for my arrest. It's been fun while it lasted, Tom. "

She placed her teacup on the table – the liquid untouched – and shuffled towards the door, leaving me plastered in my seat, unable to move. But I could still manage one more question - the question that burned in my mind every day and kept me awake every night.

"Where is Benji?"

She stopped with her hands on the door jamb - the same hand she'd used to take the lives of all those little boys. She stared back at me with contempt.

"Oh please, Tom," she said. "I'm not going to give you all the answers. Surely, even you can work this one out."

She went back inside, leaving me alone with my thoughts, the rain, and the tree of golden pears.