Chapitre 28: Turn off the Light ch.28
Peter follows her into the house. He sits on the lumpy couch in the first room and waits as Sam goes to put the tea on. He tries not to remember the Case of the Lovesick Hick of a Stalker (as Leight once called it).
He tries not to remember the way Leight sat beside him, put his hand on his thigh. He tries not to remember how Leight's touch could burn so perfectly.
He tries not to remember the times Leight told him he loved him. He tries not to remember Leight at all.
He really, truly, honest to god cannot keep up this routine of constant crying.
Then Sam Jameson comes back with two teacups of piping hot water and a tin box filled with teabags. She sits down beside him, hands him a teacup, and then gestures to the box.
It takes a minute, but he finds one packet of Earl Grey. He rips the paper open (more violently than necessary), and sets his tea to steep.
"I'm sorry to impose like this," he finds himself saying.
He can't stand the awkwardness of meeting Sam's eyes, so he stares at his teacup. He watches the tea diffuse into the water, the spindly brown lines tangled, intertwined, twisted, involuted.
"It's all right," Sam says to her own (soon to be peppermint) tea. "I understand."
"It's just." Peter stops because of course it isn't just anything; it's just everything.
"You said, at the wedding, that I'd break him if I left. He didn't—when he looked me in the eye and introduced me to his whore—he didn't look like he was afraid of being broken. He didn't even try to make excuses. He didn't run after me. He just—"
And he stops because Leight didn't just do anything; he just did everything. Wrong. "He broke me. He broke me, and he doesn't care enough to pick up the pieces."
"Peter." She touches his arm, just gently enough to get him to turn toward her. "I don't think—" And then she stops.
Her eyes are dark and shiny and heavy with nostalgia. She wants to draw comparisons to her own experiences with cheating.
She wants to talk about how she managed to cheat on Jennifer Smith and while she loved her. She wants to talk about regret. She wants to talk about how, no matter what it looks like, Leight is hurting.
Peter doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't blame her for wanting to say it, but he really, truly, honest to god won't listen to this lecture. He shakes his head and says, "I can't."
She smiles tightly. "Okay."
.
.
That night, Peter almost regrets that he didn't take the time to pack before storming out of the apartment. He has to borrow Sam's unisex gym clothing (sweats and a t-shirt for a band he has never heard of).
She lets him use her computer. And that's how he ends up lounging on the bed in the guest bedroom, in her too tight clothing, with her clunky laptop resting on his lap, his flash drive in its USB jack, poised to open the file named, "060606 Eleanor Leight."
He knows he shouldn't. Even though he's mad and hurt and a thousand other emotions he can't begin to name, he shouldn't.
It's a betrayal of Leight's trust, and he shouldn't be willing to betray Leight just because Leight betrayed him.
He should be better. He loved Leight more, didn't he? He should take the high road. His love is purer; he should be better.
But he isn't. He's mad and hurt and a thousand other emotions, and he wants to do something that might make Leight feel just a fraction of what he's feeling.
His love may be pure, but his heart is broken. He isn't better.
He clicks once, twice, and the file opens before his eyes.
It's short, he notices. Much shorter than the other file he read.
The description of the scene (Eleanor's apartment) is terse and remarkably similar to the scene of Raymond's murder.
The summary of evidences consists wholly of the brown butterfly (Tisiphone abeona, of course), the pillow used to suffocate her (traces of saliva), and the notation, "the promise".
Peter's eyes fall to the conclusion, his heart plummets in his chest, and he remembers that, when it comes to this case, Leight doesn't trust technology at all.
Unlike in the other file, Leight hasn't laid out his deductions as to motive and method. All he has recorded is a name, the name of the killer.
Charles Knightley.
.
.
.
Peter doesn't sleep well. He dreams. He sees flashes of pale, sweaty skin writhing in pleasure. He hears groans, sighs, moans, and grunts.
He's watching Leight and Saffron, and he wants to look away, to leave, to wake up, but he can't. His legs are fixed firmly in place. His eyes won't move. So he's stuck watching, and it goes on and on and on.
When he wakes, he's drenched in sweat and tangled in white sheets. He's disoriented.
This isn't the apartment. The walls are too white, the bed is too soft, the blanket is neither orange nor wool, and Leight isn't there.
His dream wasn't just a nightmare; it's his new reality, and this is Sam Jameson's guest bedroom.
He stares weakly at the gauzy white curtains across the room. The sky is yellow-pink, and by his estimation, it's probably less than an hour before dawn.
He's still tired—so exhausted, really, that he feels it in his bones—but he refuses to go back to sleep. He refuses to dream.
He refuses to relive the memories he can barely suppress when he's conscious. Instead, he resigns himself to his uncomfortable wakeful state.
He reaches for his glasses and Sam's laptop, both of which he left on the night table after he read the file about Eleanor. He hoists himself into a sitting position and adjusts the pillow behind his back.
He puts his glasses on. He sets the laptop on his lap, opens it. The desktop image (an abandoned yellow umbrella on an empty beach) pricks his conscience (it's so unlike anything Sam would choose for herself, and he can't help but wonder).
He stops. He pushes these thoughts—all thoughts—away. He needs to focus. He needs to make decisions. He needs to get over this—Leight—himself.
He opens a web browser. He doesn't know when he made the decision—it wasn't conscious—to keep working on the case, but he's aware that he has made it. He knows that nothing he does can undo what has already been done, but it isn't really about that.
He can't bring the Lieutenant back to life or erase the time Leight has spent fucking Saffron, but he's not trying. He just wants to understand. So he goes to Google's news archive search engine.
Remembering what the Captain told him, he sets the date parameters from January to December of 2001.
Then, he types "Leight Knightley" in the search box. He holds his breath, and then he clicks "Go."
The results all appear to date back to the summer of 2001; they're all from Philadelphia newspapers. The headlines are chilling.
"Five Killed in Countryside Fire."
"Leight Manor Burns."
"One Spark Destroys Two Families."
His stomach is turning. Part of him wants to slam the computer shut and walk (run) away, but he can't.
He won't. That's what Leight wanted, and he refuses to do what Leight would have wanted. (There's something itching in the back of his brain, but he ignores it.)
He needs to understand. So he clicks the first article.
It's worse than Peter expected. Alexander and Olivia Leight, Daniel and Grace Knightley, and 14-year-old William Knightley all died in the fire that consumed the Leights' countryside estate on the evening of July 1, 2001. It wasn't an accident, but the police weren't saying what it was.
The two families were survived by Malcolm Leight and Charles Knightley, both 17, who had, of all things, gone out to buy ice cream shortly before the fire broke out. Eleanor Leight, 19, was safely away taking summer classes at Princeton (where she was a pre-med student).
The article goes on to describe the long-lasting friendship between the two families, as well as their business relationship. (Alexander and Daniel had opened a law firm together two decades prior.) The article promises that the five victims will be missed.
The next five articles corroborate everything. None of them offer any speculation as to the cause of the fire. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't casual arson. It may as well never have happened at all, as causeless as the authorities treated it.
Peter feels sick.
He can't.
He doesn't.
It isn't.
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État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
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