by Amy Vastine
“I’m nice on the radio.”
“Yeah, but being nice on the radio and being kind seem like two different things to me.” This is how Donovan had spent his night. Trying to make sense of the little bits of evidence that they had. “I also think he sees you sometimes but not all the time. He knew I was with you at the apartment the other night, but he asked you on the radio if you were wearing the earrings he gave you.”
“Do you think he was in the apartment when we showed up and got out before the other cops got there?”
He knew she wasn’t going to like his answer. “I don’t think he was inside when we got there. I think he watched us go in, though. Maybe it’s Trey or maybe it’s someone else who lives in your building. You have this tendency to be nice to everyone.”
“You say that like it’s a terrible thing. I need your laptop so I can get a new place and get my niceness away from you,” she said, turning to leave.
He pulled her back against him. “I think your niceness is one of your best traits. I also don’t know for sure that he lives in your building because if he did, it makes more sense that he would have sent the first few gifts to your apartment. Everything was focused on the radio station to begin with. That makes me think it isn’t someone who lives by you. I feel like this guy knows you through the radio.”
“Well, I don’t live by anyone I work with. At least, I don’t know of anyone. Some guy in accounting used to live in my building, but he moved out after he got married. I doubt it was him.”
Donovan’s head hurt from trying to make sense of clues that added up to practically nothing. He only saw one solution to their problem.
“I think we need to set a trap. I’ll have to coordinate with the other detectives, but I think we have you say something on the radio and you invite him somewhere to make amends. If he thinks you want to apologize, he could come into it without any thoughts of doing harm.”
Kelly cringed. “I don’t like that idea. Lying to trap this guy? I feel like that could backfire. What if he finds out I’m lying?”
Donovan rested his forehead against hers. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Kelly wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in the crook of it. He held her tight, hoping she knew how serious he was. No one would lay a finger on her as long as he was around.
“Can I go to Davey’s? Whoa, sorry. I didn’t know—” Graham was in the doorway one second and gone the next. So much for shielding him from this relationship. Kelly and Donovan untangled themselves and Donovan went after Graham.
“Hey,” he said, trying to get his attention as he walked away. “You weren’t interrupting. We were talking about the stalker and she got upset and I was trying to console her.”
“You call it whatever you want.” Graham held his hands up like he was under arrest. “I am not judging. I already told you that Avery and I give you a big thumbs-up when it comes to Kelly.”
Donovan was no good at making things less confusing for these kids. He decided there was no point in trying to deny anything else. “You want to hang out with Davey? Was that what you were coming to ask?”
“Yeah, is it okay if I go over there?”
“It’s okay. Thanks for asking.” The last couple of months, Graham would walk out, announcing where he was going, not asking.
“Cool. You can go back and hug it out with Kelly, who is not your girlfriend.” Graham flashed him a big, old grin.
Donovan shook his head. Smart aleck.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“ARE YOU SURE you know what you’re supposed to say?” Detective Hermann asked for the third time. If there was one thing Kelly was good at, it was reading a script over the radio. That part wasn’t going to be difficult at all. The hard part was going to be mustering up the courage to follow through with things later on.
“I’ve got it.” She held up the paper with her lines all written out. They had spent three days coming up with this plan. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.
“Just stick to the script. We have everything in place to trace a call if he calls in.”
Stick to the script. The plan was to repeat the same message throughout her show. They had no idea if he listened every day or not. They had no idea if he would call in so they could get to him first or if they would have to go through with the actual trap and lure him in with Kelly as the bait. That was the part she wasn’t feeling too good about.
“It’s going to be okay,” Donovan reassured her. “There are lots of people working on this. Lots of cops will be in the area if we have to smoke him out. No one is going to touch you.”
She wasn’t sure if he was saying that for her sake or for his own. She had listened in on his conversations with the other detectives and he was very vocal about what he would allow her to do and what he wouldn’t allow her to do, much to Detective Hermann’s dismay. If anyone was as anxious as she was about this, it was Donovan.
It was like being in the middle of her worst nightmare. She felt like a prisoner. Police monitored her every move. They told her what to say and do, who she could interact with and when. She had lost all sense of independence, and she wasn’t happy about it.
Lyle gave her the cue that the song playing was coming to an end and she was going on air in three...two...one...
“Good morning, Nashville. This is Kelly Bonner, excited to be spending this fine Wednesday with you. We are halfway through the workweek and I don’t know about you guys, but I am so ready for the weekend. My favorite part of the weekend is kicking it off at the Nashville Farmers Market located right downtown. I will be there this Friday from four until six giving away some prizes, chatting it up with listeners and hopefully signing some of you up to be K104 Insiders. But what I’m really looking forward to is hopefully mending some fences, which leads me to my question of the day. How do you tell that special person in your life you’re sorry? I recently hurt the feelings of someone who has been nothing but nice to me. He bought me presents, he writes me the sweetest notes, he puts up with my carelessness. You guys have to help me out. How do I say I am sorry?” Kelly rattled off the station’s phone number and begged Nashville to call before playing the next song on the playlist.
Kelly didn’t really want all of Nashville to call. She only wanted the person who thought she needed to say it to call in. She wanted him to call in, give up his location and get arrested. Once this guy was off the streets, she could be free.
“Great job. That was perfect,” Donovan said, entering the studio and taking a seat next to her.
“Are you going to be my cohost? Juliette is going to be missing you today.”
“I think Juliette will understand. I want to be here with you if he calls. I’ll help you with what to say.”
“I thought that was Detective Hermann’s job.” She knew it originally was, but clearly, Donovan had weaseled his way into that role.
He grabbed her hand. “You’re shaking.”
She was way more nervous than she had been letting on. Her stomach ached and her shoulders were so tense they hurt.
“I hope I don’t mess anything up or make him madder than he already is. Plus, I feel like I’m thirteen again and all I want to do is go to the movies, but I’m not allowed because it wouldn’t be safe to go unsupervised.”
Donovan pressed his lips against her knuckles and she felt some of the tension leave her body. Maybe it was better that he was here instead of Detective Hermann.
“I get it. You feel trapped. It could be worse, though, right? At least you’re trapped with me and I’m not so bad.”
He was cute. “I guess you’re not that bad.”
He laughed and nodded. “Oh, really? Great.”
“I like being in control of my life, but I can’t be. And I’m worried I’m not going to live up to everyone’s expectations. I’m going to mess it up and we won
’t catch him.”
“You aren’t going to mess anything up. This is a great plan. If he’s listening, his curiosity is piqued. He is going to want to know what you’re willing to do to prove you’re sorry. He’s either going to tell you what it is by calling in or he’s going to show up at the farmers market.”
That was the plan. She was supposed to repeatedly mention her appearance at the farmers market and keep the apology theme going throughout her show. The hope was that if he chose to listen at any point in the show, he’d get both messages and either call or show up at the market on Friday.
“Calls are coming in,” Lyle said through the headphones. “Operation Catch the Stalker has begun.”
Kelly spent the next five minutes fielding calls from listeners. One lady told her that a simple I’m sorry should be all it takes if the man really loves her. Another caller said she should cook him his favorite dinner and dessert because the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. That was great advice for people who could cook.
The first batch of calls didn’t get them their stalker. Not even one male caller. Kelly reminded herself that she might have to do this all week long. They had no idea if he was even listening.
At the top of the next hour, Kelly made a second attempt at reeling in her stalker. “That was Boone Williams’s song ‘Too Late for Sorry,’ which goes along with our theme today. I took a bunch of calls last hour from our lady listeners who had good ideas on how to say sorry. I have someone out there I need to apologize to and I’m hoping I don’t end up like Boone, feeling like it’s too late. So, I need you gentlemen out there to call in and let me know what the best way is for the lady in your life to show you they are sorry.”
Round two of calls didn’t lead them to the stalker, either. Kelly did get a few men to call in with some good answers and a couple with answers she couldn’t put on-air.
“I’m frustrated and we aren’t even halfway through the show,” she said to Donovan, who sat there with incredible patience.
“Don’t get frustrated. This could take all day. It could take the rest of the week. We might completely strike out. We have to be prepared that he might not be listening.”
The anxiety of not knowing made Kelly want to crawl out of her skin. She propped her head up on her hand and blew out a long breath. It wasn’t going to be easy and she needed to prepare for the long haul.
Hour three and four didn’t get them what they wanted, either. Going into her last hour on-air, she wasn’t confident that they were going to catch any bad guys today.
“So, what does this thing do?” Donovan pointed to the VoxPro controller.
“This is what I use to cut down the calls that come in. When somebody calls, we answer it and record it through this. You would be surprised how much of a call actually gets cut when we talk to people. I can take out long pauses, I can take out parts of the conversation that ramble and I can erase parts that aren’t appropriate.”
“Interesting. I thought you used a time delay to catch people swearing or whatever, but I didn’t realize you sometimes shortened the conversation altogether.”
“Radio is all about time management. We need to play music, get our advertisements out there and squeeze in our original content. It’s harder than you’d think.”
“What does Lyle do in there?”
“Lyle is my content producer and my board operator. He helps me come up with content for the show, he handles music choices, makes the playlists. He helps me when we have a special guest. He also operates all the technical stuff like volume control. He can screen calls for me in there. He does a lot actually.”
“If someone calls in and requests a song, can you play it or do you have to do what the computer tells you to do?”
“We could play something that was requested, but we don’t usually take requests. Lyle has to go into a program and search for the song and mess with the playlist, which could screw up the flow of the show. Like I said, it’s all about timing. We can’t have any dead air and we have to make sure we fit in all of our advertising.”
“Do you feel better now?” Donovan asked, a pleased expression on his face.
“What?”
“I was trying to get your mind off your worries. Did it work?”
She actually did feel better. She’d totally forgotten that she was in the midst of a sting operation.
“Nice work, Detective Walsh.” Kelly smiled and ran her fingers through her ponytail. He was good at distracting her. “Can you keep that up for another hour?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“This is Kelly Bonner, coming to you from the K104 studio. I’m getting ready to pass things off to Jax, who’s going to get you through your commute home this evening. No apologies for that, but we have been talking about what it means to say you’re sorry and we heard from a lot of you loyal listeners who shared your ideas of the best way to apologize. My last question to you all is this—what do you do when your apology is not accepted? I need to apologize to someone special, who has been so kind and generous to me over the last few weeks, and I’m a little worried he’s not going to accept my apology. What do I do then, people? Help a girl out.” Kelly gave the number for the station one last time, hoping the stalker had finally tuned in.
“Fingers crossed. You did everything we asked you to do,” Donovan said. “Let’s pray it works.”
The phone calls slowly trickled in. The two o’clock hour wasn’t very interactive on a good day. Caller number one was a young woman who wanted to request a song for her boyfriend. Caller two wanted to know when Kelly was giving away tickets to the Grace Note concert. She started to worry they weren’t even going to get any calls answering her question.
“K104, this is Kelly,” she said, hitting Record as she answered the next call.
“Did you mean it?” His voice was like a shot of adrenaline. She motioned to Donovan that this was it. Detective Hermann and his partner jumped into action in the control room with Lyle. Donovan put on headphones so he could listen in.
“Did I mean what?”
“Did you mean it when you said you were sorry for how you treated the person who has been nothing but nice to you?”
“I did. I do. I mean it. I feel really bad because my intention was never to hurt anyone.”
“You hurt me. You hurt me more than once by treating me like I am some kind of bad guy.”
Kelly’s heart was racing. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”
“Then why did you call the police?”
“You damaged my car. I had to file a police report so the insurance company would fix it.” She was so nervous. This wasn’t one of the questions she had been prepared to answer. Donovan gave her a thumbs-up.
“Don’t lie. You have a cop with you at all times. He’s either looking for me or he’s your boyfriend. Which one is it?”
Kelly looked to Donovan for help with that one. Neither answer was going to make this guy happy. Donovan wrote a note on a piece of paper and held it up.
Blame your uncle.
“That’s because my uncle is a police officer. He had his guys follow me around because he doesn’t understand what’s going on between us.”
Donovan jotted down some more notes. Kelly wondered how long it took for them to trace this call.
“What do you think is going on with us?” the caller asked.
Apologize. Say you’re confused. You don’t understand what he wants from you.
“I don’t know. Everything that’s happened lately has been confusing me. I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t even know who you are, but you keep getting angry with me because I’m scared.” Kelly’s hands were shaking and he had to hear how nervous she was.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Who are you? Can you tell me that? Knowing who you are will make me a lot less sca
red of you.”
There was a muffled noise in the background. “Get out of here,” he said to someone. He must have covered the phone or put it down. He began talking to someone, but Kelly couldn’t make out what he said and then there was nothing. He had hung up.
Donovan took off his headphones. “We got all that, right? It’s recorded?”
“Yeah. It’s all here.”
Detective Hermann came in the studio room. “That was great, Kelly. Really great. You did a good job of keeping him on the line.”
“Were you able to get a location?” Donovan asked.
“We have a general vicinity to work off of. A minute more and we could have pinpointed his exact location, but that’s okay. The recording can help.”
Kelly didn’t understand what they thought was so valuable about the recording. He didn’t say anything that made her feel like she knew any more than she knew before she talked to him.
“You look stressed.” Donovan moved closer. “This was good.”
“How was it good? He didn’t tell me his name. I don’t know what he wants. Where’s the good?”
“Don’t worry about it. Let the police handle it. All you need to do is sit tight.”
“I hate this, by the way. I hate everything about this plan.”
“You have to let us do our job, and our job is to keep you safe.”
“Kelly, I need you on-air in one minute,” Lyle said over the intercom.
If they thought they could use what he gave them so far, she wasn’t going to argue about it. She hoped there was something useful on there. She also hoped he’d call back.
Detective Hermann went back to the control room and Donovan needed to go with him. Before he left, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She had to read an advertisement and give the time and weather conditions. “I’ll be fine.”