[ WP ] You are a detective who has closed every case but one , a serial murderer who has taunted you all your career . After retiring you start to suspect your significant other .

She sits there on our veranda, looking over the foggy Hollywood hills, warm cup of tea in hand; her morning ritual. Her figure is as familiar to me as breathing, her scent like a memory of my parents on Christmas morning. So many mornings have gone by, so many years filled with regret, but I could always come home to her and forgive my scars. 
 
 She is almost perfect in every way, even in her work. Which is why it made it so hard to catch her. If I had n't remembered that silver, pea-sized little bell, the charm I bought her on our honeymoon in a Paris trinket shop, the one that had been imprinted underfoot into the lush carpet at the scene of her last victim, I would have never known. 
 
 I still remember the flitting microscopic glare coming from the fading sun through the sliding glass door, the way it caught the corner of my eye. I remember my gnarled old fingers picking it out of the carpet like a buried seed, and quietly slipping it into my pocket before the other investigators could vacuum it up into a hermetically sealed evidence bag. 
 
 I press the little treasure between my fingers and give it a shake, and feel the little piece of bone - supposedly a piece of St. Catherine - muffledly rattle inside. I do this while I inspect the frayed and worked corners of ox blood file folders containing over a decade of her morbid symphony splayed neatly on my oak desk while she sips her English breakfast. The top file is a personality assessment that Quantico had given me two years ago when we all still had hopes of catching our killer; when we still had the naive hope that she might slip up. She never did, except for that one time, that mistake saturating itself in the oils of my fingers. 
 
 The assessment said she was incapable of empathy, that she was a psychopath who would never organically develop a sense of humanity, of remorse. Yet she has made me believe, despite all my instincts as a seasoned homicide detective, that she did indeed love me. I would come home drunk or high or broken or angry and she would lick my wounds and put my fuming head into her bosom and slip me off into bliss. The irony of feeling so safe in the chest that once pounded over the dying eyes of a fourteen year old girl makes my mind swirl in self-loathing and regret, and yet, oddly enough, a slight apathy toward the men and women still searching for her. Maybe she has rubbed off on me, made by blood colder than a human's should be. However, I'm too old and have committed too many sins of my own to bring myself to any sort of righteous indignation or a war of morals. 
 
 So I slip the small bell into one of the bindings on my desk, stack them, and put them into the bottom drawer. It is easy for me to close the drawer, surprisingly enough to myself; there is no hesitation in doing it. Locked away, safe, her secret for me to keep. Our secret. 
 
 I join her in the open air, and she grabs my hand, still warm from cradling her mug, and gives me that same smile that has pulled me from the dark corners of myself and this putrid city all these years. I bring her close to my chest, I can feel her breathe, our souls as one, our secret shared. I wonder if she knows. 
 
 Edit: thank you for the gold.
