Anonymous

by Elizabeth Breck

  Madison had been through a lot in her life. She had lost both her parents—nursed them and then watched them slip away and die of cancer. She’d had breast cancer. But she could honestly say that this was the lowest moment of her life.

  She had held Felicity while the blood drained out of her. She had known Tom for ten years; she could not believe he would stab a girl in the neck with the closest sharp instrument because he was about to get caught. She couldn’t believe that Tom would kill anyone in cold blood, ever, but this was so barbaric that it held everything she knew about Tom in stark relief, like a map of a mountain range. The things sticking up were the things she could imagine Tom doing, in his worst moments in the worst of times of his life; this was not one of them. She remembered reading a book about Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer, written by a journalist who had been close friends with him. The journalist had not known that he was the serial killer they were all looking for; they had even discussed it between them. But that seemed like such an unusual and rare occurrence. Madison knew she could be dumb when it came to guys, but she didn’t have feelings for Tom—not the kind of feelings that made her ignore red flags. And yet everything pointed to him. Every single thing. Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Had she eliminated the impossible? Tom had had her followed. Tom had had her activities monitored. Tom had left the notes. And who else but Tom could have access to the BOLO system of law enforcement?

  She had eliminated every other possibility, at least. And what remained, Tom, was improbable, but it must be the truth.

  She sat in the driver’s seat unmoving while Felicity’s blood dried on her clothes and her hands and arms. She was afraid to go back to the house where her car sat in the garage, because she was afraid the neighbor would see her and decide it was just too weird: Tina and Jack hadn’t told her someone was going to watch her house, and now this strange girl was coming and going at all hours of the night. With blood all over her. If she went back, it needed to be in the morning and in the daylight when people might be at work. She would have to run in before anyone saw her. Then she remembered she had a bag of clothes she had bought at Target. Thank God. She grabbed the bag and changed her clothes in the front seat: a brand-new T-shirt and a brand-new pair of yoga pants. She balled up her bloody clothes and threw them in the back seat. She still had blood on her arms and her hands, but she could stop at a fast-food place and wash them in a sink, hopefully before anyone noticed her. And then what?

  The burner phone rang. She had forgotten that she had given anyone the phone number and so it caused her to jump in her seat. She grabbed it and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  At first she couldn’t figure out who it was or what they were saying. It was a woman crying. Hysterical.

  “Who is this?”

  More crying. And then, “It’s Josie.”

  Apparently Josie knew about Felicity. The police must have hit redial on Felicity’s cell phone, or else maybe they’d found Josie’s name and number somewhere in the house.

  “Okay, calm down. I know.”

  “You know? How do you know?”

  Madison did not want to get into the fact that she’d been there. Frankly, she didn’t want Josie to know she was in trouble right now. Josie was suspicious enough, and it was hard to explain things to her in the best of times. And right now, Madison didn’t even understand what was going on.

  “Yes, the police called me. I think they went through Felicity’s phone, and she had called me yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s how they got my number.” Josie started crying again.

  Madison tried to get her to talk. “Did they give you any idea of her condition?”

  “No, they wouldn’t tell me. They just said that she’d been stabbed.”

  “Do you know who she was planning to see? She sent me a DM on Twitter saying that she knew who it was and that it was a cop and she was going to confront him. Do you know what she was talking about?”

  More crying. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Josie. You need to calm down. I want to understand what’s going on and I want to help. But I can’t understand you when you’re crying. What do you mean, it’s your fault?”

  Madison had found that if you gave someone sympathy when they were upset, it just made them cry harder. But if you told them kindly to knock it off, they generally did. Sure enough, Josie got it together. “I got Jethro to tell me what he did.”

  For a minute, Madison couldn’t remember who Jethro was. It felt like she had lived two years in the last week. But how could she forget Jethro? The ape who was the manager at Hank’s Dive. What did he have to do with this? “And? What did he do?”

  “I got him drunk. I made him think I was going to sleep with him. He’s such an idiot; he is so convinced of his manhood that he thinks a lesbian is going to sleep with him. Fucking asshole.”

  Madison was silent, wanting her to finish without interruption.

  “I started talking about who was working there when Samantha went missing. I asked him about the bouncer that was creepy, and I said, ‘What was his name? Larry?’ And he said yes. And then I asked if Larry was short for Oliver.”

  Someone turned on a porch light near where Madison was parked. She had such a loud voice that she wondered if it had carried in the silence of the night in this quiet neighborhood. She started the BMW and drove two streets over while Josie continued to talk.

  “He laughed at me and said Oliver was a dweeb who got fired for stealing. He wasn’t the bouncer. Then he said, ‘You thought the bouncer was creepy? I liked him,’ and I knew I had him.”

  Madison found another space between two houses to park. She pulled over and turned off the engine. She kept her voice soft and low. “So what was the bouncer’s name? Was it on the list that I read you?”

  “No! That’s the thing. He told me that the bouncer wasn’t creepy, because he was an ex-cop.”

  An ex-cop? Who in this scenario was an ex-cop? Tom was a current cop, and he certainly had never worked at Hank’s as a bouncer. Madison had been doing all of her figuring assuming that the only current or former law enforcement connected to this case was Tom; if there were another, it would mean there was someone else who could’ve done all the things she’d been attributing to Tom.

  “But was his name on the list of employees that they gave to the police?” Madison had been through the list that Tom had given her over and over, and she didn’t remember seeing anyone who even seemed old enough to have been an ex-cop at some point.

  Josie had picked up steam. “No, the guy’s name was not on that list. The ex-cop/bouncer guy called Jethro on the phone after it hit the news that Samantha had been at the bar that night, and he told Jethro that he was helping the police on the investigation of Samantha’s disappearance. He actually asked Jethro to compile that list of names and to have it ready for when the police called for it. I think the guy figured that the police would call for it, and Jethro was too stupid to see that he was being played. Because then the guy told him, ‘Obviously, you don’t need to put my name on the list, because I’m helping the police and they know that I worked there.’ So Jethro left his name off the list of employees that he gave to the police.”

  This was it. Madison could feel it. Her skin was electrified. An ex-cop would explain everything: they might still have contacts within the police department and could get a BOLO put out on her. They could convince Ryan they were a cop—Ryan had never actually said Tom’s name, had he? Had he? Hadn’t he just said “a cop,” and Madison had assumed he meant Tom?

  Madison’s heart was pounding. She turned on the car so she could roll down the window and get some air. “What was the guy’s name?”

  “His last name was Larrabee. Remember how I said we called him Larry? That’s because of his last name. Larrabee. Larry.”

  Madison didn’t remember anyone connected to this ca
se with that last name. Could this be somebody completely new that she’d never heard of? Someone who hadn’t come up in the investigation? That would explain why she hadn’t figured it out so far.

  “What was his first name?”

  “Ken.”

  Madison sucked air in so fast that it caused her to inhale some saliva and she started coughing.

  “Are you okay, Madison?”

  Madison kept coughing, trying to get control of her breathing diaphragm and her nerves. My God, how could she have been so stupid? She had taken Ken’s word for it that Tom had asked him to follow her. When Madison first met Ken, she’d thought he was a cop. And Madison was pretty familiar with cops. So if she’d thought he was a cop, probably other people had thought that as well, like Ryan. Which would mean that it was Ken who’d hired Ryan to document Madison’s activities and to leave the notes on her door. It was Ken who’d made the phone call to Felicity, the wording of which matched the note left on Madison’s door. Arlo had said that the MaddieKelly12 Twitter account had been opened on the computer in the lobby of the police department. Ken loved hanging out with cops at the cop bar; there was no reason to suspect that he wouldn’t also hang out with his friends at headquarters and use the computer in the lobby. Everything that Madison had assigned to Tom worked for Ken as well, now that she knew Ken was an ex-cop.

  Madison got her coughing under control. “I’m okay. So I guess you told Felicity all of this?”

  Josie started to cry again. “Yes, I told her. Jethro gave me the application for this Larrabee guy from his personnel file, and I gave Felicity his address and phone number. I thought she wanted to see if she knew him. I didn’t know she was going to try to confront him. I mean, how stupid? Why did she do that?”

  “Because she wanted to be brave,” Madison said to herself.

  “What?”

  “Nevermind. Right now, you need to go stay with a friend. You have been tweeting me, and you tweeted me asking me to call you. He follows me on Twitter, and he will have seen that. You need to get yourself to safety. Will you do that?”

  “But what about Felicity?”

  “I’m sure they are taking care of her at the hospital, and I’m sure that there’s nothing you can do right now for her. You can, however, save yourself. He might be watching the hospital for either you or me, so don’t go there, okay?”

  It all made sense now, but Madison wasn’t willing to completely buy it without some outside corroboration. She needed to talk to Ryan, to find out if he’d meant Tom or Ken when he said “a cop” had paid him to document Madison’s activities. She didn’t have his phone number in the burner phone. This meant that she had to go back to her apartment to see him. It was dangerous, but she had to confirm this theory before she was willing to call Tom.

  “Yes, I will go to my friend’s house. What are you going to do?” Josie asked.

  “I’m going to catch him.”

  Madison disconnected the call and started the BMW. She still had blood all over her arms and hands, but she didn’t want to stop to clean up. If it all went according to plan, she could get in the shower when she got home. What would that be like? A shower in her own apartment. The thought of it made her want to cry—the thought of her life before two weeks ago, before someone started stalking her, before her home didn’t feel safe anymore. Back when she still had Dave.

  She passed by the large homes on the eastern and then southern edge of Balboa Park. They were huge, built at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Spanish Colonial style, but late at night they looked spooky. Like haunted houses. She leaned over to get a glimpse into their second floors and saw no lights on, no toys in the front yard, no individual style other than the historic architecture. Madison loved historic homes, but these seemed to have no soul. Then she realized that anyone looking out the window at her would see a woman covered in blood staring up at their windows. She was the one who was spooky tonight.

  She didn’t know how Ken could have gotten a BOLO put out on her, getting her license plate put on electronic signs on the freeway, without being current law enforcement. But he had a lot more chance of doing it then someone who didn’t used to be a cop. It was conceivable that he could’ve done it. And it made so much more sense than Tom.

  As she took the exit onto La Jolla Parkway from the 5 freeway, she thought back to her dealings with Ken. He had seemed so charming. It was hard for her to believe even now that he was the stalker and the killer. She normally would have noticed a red flag with a guy like this, but not this time. She had totally trusted him. She tried not to beat herself up: if he were a true sociopath, she wouldn’t have been able to tell. They didn’t have the remorse or shame that was normally the thing Madison picked up on. Sociopaths could lie with abandon, and when it came down to it, they could even admit their crimes freely and fully with no sense of responsibility. Madison didn’t think she’d ever met one before. There was always a first time.

  She didn’t park in her parking space. She pulled up on Bonair and parked in front of Ryan’s house. She went to the front door but then realized everybody would be asleep and she’d have better luck tapping on his window. She went to the back of his house, cautiously, and tapped. It took a minute, and then Ryan’s face appeared in the window. He looked afraid at first; his eyes got really big, and he started to back away from the window. Madison realized she had blood all over her arms and hands. She waved at him to say it’s okay, but waving your bloody hands at someone was not exactly the way to reduce their fear.

  “I need to talk to you. Can you come to the door?” she said through the window. She put her arms down by her side and tried to look nonthreatening. He nodded and walked away from the window.

  She walked over to the side door, and he opened it slightly. He looked like he had his foot up against it so she couldn’t rush the door.

  “Hi. Excuse my appearance. I was trying to save someone’s life earlier and I haven’t had a chance to clean up.”

  “Sure. I figured,” Ryan said. How did he figure that she was trying to save someone’s life? Madison decided he was trying to be polite, and she probably would have laughed if the circumstances had been different.

  “You told me that a cop hired you to document my movements.”

  “That’s right. I said I was sorry. Can’t we get past this? I really needed the money—”

  “No, I’m not here to stab you for documenting my activities, Ryan. I want to know which cop hired you. Did you get his name?”

  Ryan stood still for a moment. “Wow. I don’t think I did. I think he showed me a badge. Or did he?”

  Madison wasn’t sure why she’d ever thought Ryan was smart. Some guy walks up to you and says he’s a cop and you don’t even ask for ID? You don’t even ask his name?

  “What did he look like? Was he big with a huge chest, sort of Italian looking, with slicked-back hair?” She was leading the witness, but she was describing Tom. He was very different from Ken. If it was Tom, she wanted to know right now.

  “No, not at all. That’s the other cop that comes to see you. I’m talking about the other one.”

  Now Madison did want to stab him. The other cop? There was no “other cop” that ever came to see her.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Ryan. There is only one cop that has ever come to see me. His name is Tom, and he looks Italian like I just described.”

  “No, this guy is medium build, kind of wiry, bald head and blue eyes.”

  Ken.

  Ryan started to look worried. “I fucked this up, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, Ryan, you kind of did. He’s a murderer. If you see him, call 911. Okay?”

  Madison didn’t want to walk into her apartment until she had straightened things out with Tom. She went back to the BMW and sat in the driver’s seat. She didn’t have Tom’s cell phone number with her. She called dispatch and told them she needed to talk to him urgently and that he would want to talk to her. She said her name was Maddie
.

  She sat listening to the waves as she waited for them to find Tom on his cell phone and connect the call. She was so exhausted. She was trying not to think about whether or not Felicity was going to make it; if she thought about that too hard, she wouldn’t be able to keep doing what she had to do to bring this case to a conclusion. She could fall apart later.

  She remembered the memorial slip of paper in her pocket and pulled it out. “I’ll love you all the days of my life.”

  Madison liked the way that surfers memorialized their fallen soldiers with a “paddle out”: when a surfer died, all of his surfer friends paddled out past the breaking point of waves and sat on their surfboards in a circle with joined hands. After a moment of silence, they threw flowers into the center of the circle. It was a hallowed event in surfing and breathtaking to observe. She set the note in the console. Madison decided that tomorrow, when this was all over, she would take the note to the beach and toss a flower into the ocean for the loved one who had passed, finishing the delivery of this message without endangering wildlife with a popped balloon.

  But what if the message has already been delivered? she thought. What if the message was for me?

  Suddenly Tom’s voice came through the phone. “Maddie? Where are you?”

  “Tom. I’m sorry, Tom.”

  “What did you do? There’s a BOLO out for you for assaulting a police officer! What did you do?”

  So that was how he did it. An assault on a police officer warranted a “blue alert,” which was shared with all of law enforcement throughout California and got put on the electronic message boards on the freeway. Somehow Ken had gotten someone to report her for assaulting a police officer.

  “I didn’t, Tom. This is Ken. This is all Ken. I thought it was you, but it was Ken.”

  “Ken? What are you talking about?”