(32) I am what I am

~ Quinn ~

“What?” Jack asked as I stormed into the squad room the next morning and slammed copies of Blair’s information down on the desk in front of him. “What’s this?”

“That’s our fucking killer. That’s the man…the man…”

Jack was no fool. One look at me and he knew he was missing part of the whole. He just didn’t know what. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on,” he ordered.

I rubbed my forehead, debating the wisdom of that. But I knew he wouldn’t lay off until I did, so I sat and began pouring out the story. “I met him, Blair Ryley, in a club the night before last…”

When I finished he had only one thing to say. “You fell hard for him, Quinn.”

“I did. It’s stupid. There was no reason to except… Something clicked between us, Jack.” Scrubbing a hand over my face I finally looked at him. “He can’t be the killer, but everything points to it.”

“What everything Quinn? Did you happen to consider that he ran because he feels the same way about you? There has to be some reason he was masquerading as a woman. Whatever that is, he could be terrified that you’d find out, so he left.”

“Unless he sick in the head and that’s why he was seeing Freer and when the doctor found out what was going on…”

“Hang on,” Jack interrupted. “If that’s why Ryley was going to him then he’d have known from the beginning, right?”

“Yes, no, I mean wait, that’s not why he was seeing him. It was because of nightmares.” I pulled out my note book and then made a call. When Bonnie picked up I asked what the nightmares had been about. After she told me I shook my head. “He wouldn’t have thought he needed a therapist if he was just having bad dreams about some horror flicks.” She disagreed but I couldn’t see it.

When I told Jack, he agreed with me up to a point. “It sounds like he went to get his friend off his back. Let’s say Freer, who we know thought of himself as a swinger when it came to women, made some move on Blair and she, umm he freaked.”

“But if that happened he would have killed him then and there in his office.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jack said. “What if they fought and then Blair left, thought about what had happened and came back.”

“If that’s the case then he killed Ward too. There can’t be two killers with the same MO.”