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In her last act of spiteful defiance, Jessica insisted on cremation and no funeral, no nothing, just a city burial and a number at Hart's.
"Wasn't he Jewish?" you'd asked, though you recalled that tiny, bird-boned Mrs. Friedman, who lives downstairs from you and goes to Synagogue like clockwork, had her husband cremated two summers ago and told you she planned for the same.
Jessica had scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Jewish? Only when he found it convenient."
Still, serial killer or not, it hadn't sit right with you not knowing Martin's wishes in that respect. So, in your own act of defiance, you passed the news to Malcolm before it was too late to claim the remains. You thought he deserved to know. The kid was owed some closure beyond those last gasping breaths and the warmth that had gushed onto his hand, red and inevitable.
But your attempt at a small kindness ultimately bred more sorrow, and over the months, no matter the cases on his desk, Malcolm's eyes sunk into purple shadows, dark as bruises. His cuffs hang loose on his wrists now, his collar no longer fitting snugly despite his tailor's best attempts to keep up. Confronting him in the middle of a case going sideways is how you discover he hasn't been able to let go of his father at all. Hasn't footed the bill for a burial or scattered Martin's ashes to the wind. You let go of his lapel. Stagger back. Wonder how you hadn't realized.
The monster lives under his bed now instead of the basement, tucked away inside the free plastic urn from the funeral home with a crooked sticker sealing the lid.
Later, in the quiet of your office, Malcolm rolls a glass tumbler between his palms. He admits in the small voice of a frightened child that he has nightmares about opening this new box. He grinds the heel of his hand into his eye and tells you he can't escape the creeping, smothering fear whenever he closes his eyes. That it feels like there's a poison leeching from the urn, soaking into the hardwood, sticky as tar. He worries that it's somehow slithering into him at night as he tries to sleep because now, at crime scenes, when he puts himself into the mindset of the killer—
He can't finish the sentence.
"What if it isn't him?" he asks instead, and at first you think he worries the Surgeon's remains might have been sold to the highest bidder, off to live proudly on the mantle of the kind of sicko who likes to collect murder memorabilia. When Malcolm raises his big, wet eyes at you, you realize that's not the question at all. No. Christ in Heaven. The terror is that no fire, however hot it is, could burn away the worst of Martin's impulses. It's the same fear that's hounded Malcolm for almost as long as you've known him. What he's asking you is this: What if there's no way to purify that evil? What if the Surgeon is still a part of me?
And your answer now is not the same as it would have been when you first called him back to New York, so you stay silent, and offer only a silent prayer and the fleeting absolution of a hug.