Chapter Text
“When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”—Adrienne Rich
Stella has a single recurring dream.
She’s developed a short hand for it in her diary: wolf haven. It’s economical, but it’s descriptive enough to have the same clarifying effect as a full entry. The dream is so well known to her that there’s little purpose in recounting it, not even in her own head.
But now, standing outside the crime scene cordon at the Merchant Hotel, she’s briefly tempted to re-enter the world of that dream. Instead, she remembers how steady her hand was, the few times in Belfast when she’s had and noted this dream. She visualizes Spector going through his pictures and staring at those words in utter bewilderment.
Better picturing him reading that than any of the alternatives.
She needs to keep herself mentally sharp in this moment. Forensics has asked her about her movements in the room since the beginning of the day, and they will need more specific details from her before they close the crime scene. She will need to account for every moment of her evening (she must not, she must not, let her thoughts wander to what almost happened with Tanya). She estimates she’ll be at the Merchant for another few hours.
And then she will return to her office, and she will wait at her computer until someone from Forensics sends her a file with the pictures of her diary. They will send this to her not because it belongs to her but because it is evidence associated with her task force, as is the procedure. They will cc Eastwood, perhaps Burns, and they will recommend that at least one of her subordinates take the time to fully review it.
And it will be lost to her.
Stella takes a long breath in through her nose and holds it for ten seconds. What she wouldn’t do for a swim. Failing that, she lets her thoughts settle again on that recurring dream. She only has that dream when she goes to sleep feeling contented in some way; it has a habit of appearing after investigative breakthroughs or major arrests. The last time she had it was the night after Tanya first told her about Rose Stagg.
Wolf haven. She thinks she won’t be having that dream for some time.
Stella’s engrossed in research about Fuseli’s The Nightmare when she sees ACC Burns lingering outside her office door. She eyes the time at the corner of her laptop screen: 5:25 AM. If he is not still drunk, then he is certainly hung over. She is fully prepared to ignore him when he opens her office door sharply and walks right in.
Stella doesn’t look up. “Have you been briefed on the new developments?”
She’s still staring at a high-res image of The Nightmare, but she can almost hear Burns furrow his brow. “I heard there was a crime scene at the Merchant. I don’t know the specifics. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Stella has to restrain herself from snorting. You sexually assaulted me just hours ago, and now you want to know if I’m okay? It is not the time or the place to confront him, not if it will endanger the investigation, but Stella gives herself a moment and lets herself be angry.
She composes herself and looks at him. “I’m fine. But there’s some CCTV footage that you need to see.” She gestures for him to join her on her side of the desk.
She presses play on the CCTV footage and points at a figure outside her hotel room door. “22:06. An individual resembling Paul Spector enters my hotel room.” She skips ahead in the video. “23:01, that’s me returning to the room, and 23:03, there’s you, knocking on the door.” She skips ahead again. “11:12 PM, that’s Spector leaving.”
She pulls out a layout of her hotel room and points to the walk-in closet. “He must have been hiding in here.” Now she points to the center of the room. “He would have been watching us when we had our… confrontation, which was here. And he must have escaped while we were in the bathroom and I was cleaning your face.”
Burns palms his face. “Jesus. He must have heard everything.”
“Oh, forget your private embarrassment for a moment,” Stella snaps. “You were talking about Father… whatever he calls himself. And I’m pretty sure you referred to Paul Spector by name.”
She’s standing up now, and she and Burns are on opposite sides of her desk. He turns to face her, and she responds by leaning back and crossing her arms across her chest. “Are you certain,” he asks.
“Not certain. But if you did, then he knows that we’re on to him.”
She meets Burns’ eyes and lets that information sit with him for a few seconds. He needs to get over himself and understand how badly this investigation might be compromised.
He looks away and turns his attention to the printout of The Nightmare on the wall. She goes to stand next to him and follows his gaze.“ What’s that?” he asks.
“He left that as my desktop background,” Stella says. “It’s Fuseli, The Nightmare. I suppose in his mind the woman is me.”
Burns points to the incubus perched atop the woman. “And that must be him.”
Stella shakes her head. “Not necessarily. I’ve been reading some of the critical literature on the painting. There are several prominent art historians who believe that that incubus represents the woman’s sublimated sexual desires as expressed through erotic dreams.”
That gets Jim’s attention. Stella swallows deeply but silently; he cannot know how much this next… development has rattled her.
“I suppose that brings me to my next concern,” she says. “While he was in my room, Spector read my dream diary.”
Jim blanches. “You keep a diary?”
Stella sighs and refocuses her gaze on the printout that’s pinned to her wall. She had hoped, vainly, she now realizes, that Jim would not think less of her because of this particular habit. Of course, keeping a diary is a female-coded activity, so it’s viewed as an outlet for whining and over-the-top emotional outbursts. Men write in journals, and those suffer from no such associations. Perhaps she needs to change her vocabulary.
“I keep a journal,” Stella says quietly. “I’ve trained myself to wake up and record my dreams. It started as an investigative thing, but now I can’t stop. And Spector left me an entry.” She opens a folder and hands Jim a photocopy of Spector’s page in her diary. And her fingers tap the two other photocopies in the folder. Jim Burns was never meant to lay eyes on these pages.
“And there are two entries that I’ve made that particularly concern me. In part because they involve someone who is working on the investigation, and in part because they are… sexual in nature.”
She has to keep her hand from shaking as she hands Jim the folder. It is a significant mental effort, but ultimately a successful one.
As Jim reads, Stella recites the entries back to herself silently.
I’m floating on my back in the Hilton pool, nude. Tanya kneels by the edge of the pool. I swim to her. I ask her if she likes the view, and she doesn’t answer. She stares at my body. I tell her to join me. She removes her scrub top and exposes her naked breasts to me. They are almost close enough to touch, but not quite. So I look.
And the second—
I’m riding pillion on Tanya’s motorbike. She’s driving us to the morgue but has taken a wrong turn. We are riding into a desert instead. She stops the bike and turns to face me. Our thighs make contact. I grab her hips and start grinding her against me. We go faster and faster until we orgasm simultaneously.
Stella studies Jim’s face for his reaction. It is as she expects: confusion about this new information about her sexuality, jealousy that she should want to fuck someone who isn’t him, and arousal, of course. She watches his eyes cloud and wonders how long he will be able to control himself before he has to have a wank. Jesus.
That might be unfair, she thinks. She’s certainly masturbated over these two dreams, and multiple times. But these desires are hers, and Jim Burns has no business spilling semen over them. And neither does Paul Spector, although God knows they both will.
Jim finally finds his voice. “Is this Professor Tanya Reed Smith? The pathologist?”
Stella nods. “The same. As I said, part of the investigation.”
Jim flicks through the two pages, as if there might be a report behind them explaining this new information. “Who’s seen this?”
“Spector, obviously. Forensics, although they are probably still fingerprinting and have not yet read it. Eastwood received it. And I forwarded it to DC McNally so someone on my team could refer to it, if needed.”
“So you’re concerned for Professor Reed Smith’s safety?”
Stella sits back down at her desk. She is suddenly so, so tired; she has been awake for nearly 24 hours. She is loath to explain this to him, but if she is going to protect Tanya she knows that she must.
She leans forward and looks up at him, makes sure he’s looking back. She disregards the desire in his eyes and barrels forward with what she needs to say. “I am. Spector probably intends to use whatever he’s found in the diary to mock me, rile me, humiliate me in some way. I think the first line of inquiry he would pursue would be the objects of my sexual fantasies. I expect he didn’t count on them not always being men.“ She takes a long breath before saying the next part. “I fear I might have handed him his next target on a silver platter.”
Jim sighs and goes to sit opposite her. He tosses the folder back on her desk. “I can’t justify providing her with police protection. You know where we are with our budget, Stella. And we don’t even know for sure that Spector’ll know who Tanya is. ”
Stella chuckles mirthlessly. “It’s amazing what you can find when you Google ‘Tanya’ and ‘PSNI.’” She opens the folder and traces her handwriting with her pointer finger. She had these dreams before Annie Brawley’s attack, and it feels like an age ago.
“Doesn’t Professor Reed Smith have children?” Jim asks, interrupting her train of thought.
“Yes,” Stella responds. “Two children. And so does Rose Stagg.”
Jim scrubs a hand through his beard. “You’ve made your point. Draw me up a detailed proposal explaining why you think it’s warranted and get me a line-item budget. And I’ll take it under consideration.”
“Good. I’ve drawn up the budget already, actually,” Stella says, handing him a small stack of papers that she’s labelled T. REED SMITH AND FAMILY. “You’ll probably need to make arrangements for her ex-husband and daughters as well, just in case. And I expect the other report will be finished within the hour. Once you have it, can you expedite it?”
“I can’t…. I can’t make promises Stella.”
Stella can’t stop herself from scoffing. “You were certainly quick to arrange a detail for me when you heard there was a crime scene at the Merchant. You didn’t even know what had happened yet.”
Jim knows he’s been bested, so he gets up to leave. But he turns back to her just when he reaches the doorframe. He almost looks contrite, with face turned downward and his hands in his pockets. “For the record, I came here to apologize. For my behaviour. It was… inappropriate. I hope you will forgive me.”
Stella returns her focus to her computer. She starts proofreading her protection proposal and does not look up from her work. “I’ll take it under consideration,” she says.
DC McNally shares a cramped office with DC Martin. Between the two of them, it’s a bit of a mess. Martin’s left a half-empty container of noodles on his desk, and an open drawer is stuffed with Kit-Kat wrappers and empty packets of gum. McNally, for all of her attention to her professional appearance, is not much better. Her coffee mug still has yesterday’s coffee in it, and the papers in her area might have been in piles at some point, but now they’re strewn on her desk and chair in no particular order.
Stella knows that it’s rude of her to invade another detective’s working space like this, but she’s been anxious to talk to McNally and go over the… new evidence with her. She considers leaving a note on McNally’s desk, so McNally will see it as soon as she gets in, but that seems preposterously juvenile.
But then again, this woman, who she barely knows, is now privy to her most private thoughts. This entire situation is thoroughly preposterous.
Just then, McNally enters the room. She’s here almost two hours early; according to the clock on the wall, it’s 6:15 am. Her bun is looser than usual, and her button down is rumpled. She tries and fails to look unfazed by Stella’s presence in her office.
“Morning, ma’am.”
“You’re here early.” Stella leans back on McNally’s desk, trying to appear nonchalant. Perhaps she, too, is trying too hard.
McNally grimaces. “I just saw your email, ma’am. I got in as quickly as I could.”
McNally looks around, curses when she notices the piles of papers on her chair and quickly moves to clear them away. Stella gestures for her to stop. “There’s no need,” she says gently.
So McNally sits on top of her papers, turns on her computer, and opens up the file containing Stella’s diary. She looks at Stella expectantly and waits for some kind of instruction.
Stella heaves a sigh and pulls up Martin’s chair. “I appreciate your help on this. I understand that this is an uncommon situation. I also want to thank you in advance for your discretion with this evidence. It will only be available to your colleagues on a need-to-know basis.”
McNally doesn’t say anything. She just nods gravely.
“Have you read the entire diary?” Stella asks.
“I have, ma’am. All of your entries and Spector’s entry at the end.”
Stella can’t quite look at McNally, so instead she stares at her hands. The thing is she respects McNally, thinks she has a lot of potential as an investigator. She would have liked to advise McNally, perhaps even come out to McNally, but on her own terms. Spector has poisoned even this.
“Is there anything that I can clarify for you? About the nature of the diary?” asks Stella. She’s looking at McNally properly now.
McNally shakes her head. “No, ma’am. I don’t want any more information than Spector has. It’s irrelevant to the investigation.”
Stella smiles tightly. McNally’s right, and it almost makes her proud. “All right, then. Based on what you’ve read, what do you think Spector’s next move is?”
McNally picks up a pen from her desk and starts bouncing it against her palm. Her eyes shift to the ceiling, and Stella senses that McNally’s launched a thought-corralling process that is beyond her comprehension. She watches McNally, intrigued.
“He snuck into your room right under nose, so he wants you to know that even with a police force behind you, you’re absolutely helpless,” McNally begins. ”He chose that, frankly, really ugly painting to tell you you’re helpless against your sexual desires, too. As soon as he figured out what the diary was, he probably targeted any dreams with sexual content. Even innocuous stuff, like noticing someone’s hands.”
Yes, of course, Stella thinks. The dreams about her father. “Go on,” Stella prompts.
“He wants you to know that you have the same desires as he does. He thinks you’re the same as him… didn’t he say as much when he called the first time? Except he’s strong enough to act on his desires, and you’re just stuck dreaming about them. So, based on that, I think he’s going to…” McNally stops abruptly and looks at Stella with giant, frightened eyes.
“Please,” Stella says.
“He’s going to target Professor Reed Smith, as the next victim,” McNally says, but there’s a quaver in her voice now. “He imagines that you want to, I don’t know, objectify and then dominate her. He projects that on you. So he’s going to indulge the desire that you’re too weak to even recognize. To prove he’s superior to you.”
The silence between them after McNally finishes her profile stretches for almost a full minute. Stella knows that she needs to process McNally’s analysis, but she can’t help but be impressed. Stella had been able to justify Spector’s likely stalking of Reed Smith on paper, but McNally just made a convincing case that puts Reed Smith’s life in danger.
Stella stands up and leans over McNally’s keyboard. “May I?”
McNally just nods. Stella pulls up the copy of her protection request that she saved on a shared drive, and she moves the cursor to an unfinished paragraph toward the bottom.
“I need you to type up exactly what you just told me,” Stella says. “And then I need you to email it back to me.”
McNally looks up at Stella. “You started a protection request. You thought the same thing.”
Stella hums in agreement. “But you articulated it better. Do you have a psychology degree?”
“I was studying psychology, ma’am,” McNally says softly. “But I dropped out of uni after my first year. That’s when I joined the police force.”
Stella considers pressing for more information, but with everything that’s happened, she lets McNally keep the reasons to herself. “That was a great profile you just gave me,” she says instead. “Do you know if Burns is reviewing your file for promotion to Detective Sergeant?”
McNally stares at Stella, slack-jawed. “No ma’am.”
“Help me oversee the surveillance over the Reed-Smith family. If you do well, then perhaps I will recommend you.”
McNally smiles brilliantly. “Yes, ma’am. And thank you.”
Stella nods. “Don’t forget, morning prayer at eight.”
She lingers at McNally’s door for a moment too long before going back to the bullpen to see if the men have arrived.