“He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
“The shooter is your ex-boyfriend?”
Hartwell’s reaction was immediate. “Shooter? Wait. Wait a second.”
My reaction wasn’t far behind. “It was you?” I struggled with the concept, trying to reconcile what I knew of Hartwell with Cade’s killer.
“Shooter?” Hartwell was shaking his head. “What are you talking about? What did she tell you? Did she tell you I’m a—I’m a shooter?” He leaned around Leo to speak to me. “Tell them, Whitney. I don’t even own a gun.”
“Whitney?” Leo hadn’t moved. He was still protecting me from Hartwell. Or maybe he was protecting Hartwell from me. It was difficult to tell.
“I may have cheated on her, but I swear to you I didn’t shoot anyone!” Desperation thinned his voice.
One of the agents took over the questioning. “Do you know Cade Burdell?”
Leo stepped away from Hartwell and stood beside me.
“Cade? Yeah. He worked in my dad’s office. Good guy. Why?”
Disappointment had hollowed out my stomach. It would have been gratifying to see Hartwell forced to own up to something. And to have found Cade’s killer. “I don’t think he’s the person we’re looking for.” I wished he were. It would have solved all my problems.
The agent ignored me. “Where were you on Monday afternoon?”
Leo nudged me with an elbow. “He’s clearly been stalking you.”
Hartwell heard him. “Stalking her?” He took a step toward me.
Leo slipped back between us.
“Wait.” Hartwell held up a hand. “Just wait. Hold on. I haven’t been stalking her. I’m not a stalker. She just didn’t know I was following her; she can’t recognize me. Did she tell you that?”
“So there’s a reason you’ve been following her.” Leo’s tone was dangerously even.
Hartwell’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. Yes. I mean yes.”
The FBI agent’s head had tilted. “Care to tell us what it is?”
“I wanted to talk to her.”
“You’ve been following her around this week to talk to her?” Suspicion laced Leo’s words.
“If I’m being honest? Longer than that.”
Wait. What? I stepped to the side so I could see around Leo. “For how long?”
“I came to the coffee shop. Ordered coffee from you.”
“When?”
He shrugged.
“From me? I took your order?”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you been coming to the Blue Dog?”
He shrugged. “Whenever I was on this side of the river, meeting with my client.”
His client. His company’s big cybersecurity contract was with the FDIC. I pointed a finger at him, but when I spoke it was to the agent. “His company is HARTAN.”
A murmur went around the group. Everyone had heard of HARTAN. In an otherwise bleak market, its stock was soaring.
“He owns it. And it was awarded a huge contract with the FDIC last year.”
An agent was pulling her handcuffs out.
“Don’t do this, Whitney.” For once, it was Hartwell doing the pleading. “HARTAN has nothing to do with you and me.”
The agent tried to take hold of his wrist.
He wrenched it away. “I wasn’t stalking you at the coffee shop. I knew you wouldn’t recognize me. It wouldn’t matter, so—”
“It matters.”
“I know. I have no excuse. I’m sorry. I can see now that . . .” His voice trailed off. “The alarm went off and I was trying to get you out of the building. You were always so stubborn. I was stupid and I’m sorry. I want you to come back. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“The thing is, you didn’t think you were stupid back when we were together.”
Leo had given up trying to stay between us. He stepped away and I had a clear view of Hartwell.
“I think you thought you were clever. You thought you could cheat on me in plain sight. And that is inexcusable. It’s cruel.”
“I know. There’s no excuse. I hurt you.”
“And I have a restraining order. Which you’ve just told me you’ve violated multiple times.”
The agent finally captured one of his wrists. “Did you ever wait for Ms. Garrison after her shift?”
He tried to shrug a shoulder. “Once or twice. When I didn’t have to hurry to a client meeting.”
“Where would you wait for her?”
“By the alley. She didn’t always leave that way, but I figured if I could catch her when she did, then maybe we could talk in private.”
“After she’d leave by the back, then what would she do?”
I was having trouble breathing. I thought I’d left Hartwell on the other side of the river. But he’d been here, right beside me, the whole time.
“She usually walks around toward the metro and jumps on a scooter.”
Fear took root in my stomach. He’d been watching me—for days, for weeks—and I had never once noticed him.
“So where would you wait for her? By the door?”
“At the end of the alley. I didn’t want to scare her. I just wanted to talk.”
“Which end?”
“Fairfax Drive. I know how this makes me look, but it wasn’t like that.”
It was like that. It was exactly like that.
“Were you there Monday?”
“What day was that?”
“The eighth.”
“Yeah. I think I was. I’d have to check my calendar to be sure.”
“Then you must have seen it!” The words leaped out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The agent talked over me. “Tell us what you saw while you were waiting.”
He shrugged. “Nothing. As I got to the alley, I got a text message from my client. Had to call him. By the time we were done, I assumed I’d missed her, so I left.”
“Did anyone run by you?”
He didn’t reply for a long moment. “Yeah. I think. Maybe? There was some guy. He was trying to make the light so he could cross the street.”
“What street?”
“Fairfax.”
“Which corner?”
“Monroe.”
“Do you remember what he was wearing?”
He shook his head.
“Jeans. Birkenstocks. Running shorts. T-shirt.”
“No. A suit. Look, Whitney, I really miss you. And I really meant what I said. If you’d just give me a second chance, I wouldn’t screw it up.”
I shook my head. “No.” No more chances.
“Then I apologize. For everything. I’m not a bad guy.”
“Actually, I agree with you, Hartwell. You’re not a bad guy. You’re the worst.”
One of the agents snorted a laugh.
Leo put a hand on my arm. “Did you try to deliver a package to Whitney on the weekend?”
“A package? What kind of package? What are you talking about?”
I added a question to Leo’s. “Were you the one who knocked over my planter?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
The blood drained from my face. He not only knew where I worked. He’d found out where I lived.
“That’s one of the times I came by.”
One of the times?
“I knocked on the door and everything. I wanted to talk to you, Whitney. But you weren’t there. I thought maybe you were and you just weren’t answering. So I sat on the wall for a while to wait and then I got to thinking maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. And when I jumped down, I knocked it over. I’m sorry.”
“Did you ever talk to the owner of the house? Mrs. Harper?” Leo asked.
“Who?”
“The woman who owns the house. You didn’t tell her you had a package for Ms. Garrison?”
“No. What package?”
I interrupted. “How did you even know where I live?”
“I got your address from your father. I called him.”
&nbs
p; “How did you know where I work?”
“I asked at your old job.” The job he had always tried to get me to quit. Because “people like us order coffee, we don’t make it.” That’s what he’d always said. But in that one thing, I’d resisted him. That job was my medical insurance. Before I moved I’d told my manager about the restraining order, but Hartwell was charming when he wanted to be.
“Did you ever enter Ms. Garrison’s apartment? Did you ever ransack it?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you break into Ms. Garrison’s apartment?”
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
Leo answered. “The kind who violates restraining orders.”
The agent continued. “Did you ever try to approach Ms. Garrison inside the library before today?”
“No.”
“Did you pull the alarm today?”
“Why would I pull the alarm if I wanted to talk to her? I, uh— Are we done here? Can I go now? I need to meet my client.”
“You realize the library has security cameras.”
“I would hope so. Can I go?”
It seemed like the FBI was going to question him further, but I wanted more. I wanted him in jail. “I want to press charges.”
Hartwell swept a hand across the top of his head. “Charges? I haven’t done anything. What for?”
Leo answered before I could. “Continued violations of the restraining order.”
“Those weren’t violations. And she really didn’t mean to file for one. She was just mad at me. I’m not the bad guy here.”
He most certainly was. “I want to press charges.” I wasn’t just mad at him. I was scared. Terrified.
Hartwell took a step toward me.
Leo put a hand to his chest.
He backed off. “Don’t do this, Whitney.”
“You can work it out with the FBI.”
Chapter 25
As we were talking, a man approached. Leo reached out and shook his hand. They spoke for a moment. Then Leo gestured me over. “Whitney? This is Agent Beyer. He’s in charge of the investigation now.”
His hair was a fading brown. His height, his frame were both average. He was stylish without being trendy. Nothing about him was memorable, except for the manner in which he held himself. He was absolutely professional. If Leo couldn’t be in charge, then I was glad that Agent Beyer had been chosen.
The agent extended his hand.
I shook it. Guessed he was probably about ten years older than I was.
He handed me my journal. I slipped it into my backpack. He wanted to know what happened in the library. I told him everything.
“You didn’t know it was your ex?”
“He didn’t say anything—he just grabbed me. I might have recognized his cologne, but I don’t think he was wearing any.” They still hadn’t taken Hartwell away. He seemed to be arguing with the agents about something.
“Did he try to take you anywhere?”
“There wasn’t time to tell. One of the staff members came up and he let me go.”
“You say you have a restraining order?”
“Since April. Which he’s clearly violated, more than once.”
“I understand. I can help you report that if you want to.”
I did want to. It was terrifying that he had been hanging out at work, and in my neighborhood, and I hadn’t even known he was there.
Leo broke in. “She wants to press charges.”
I hoped there would be jail time involved. I wanted him to think twice—three or four times even—before he violated that restraining order again.
I had a question for the agent. “So my ex was your suspicious person? He was the one loitering by the coffee shop?”
“That was him.”
“And you knew I was in the library and you let him come in?”
“We didn’t—”
“Even when you didn’t know it was Hartwell, even though you didn’t know I had a restraining order, he might have been the killer.”
“You have a restraining order against him. Violent people tend to be violent. And he knew Cade Burdell too. He admitted that. Is he the jealous type?”
Most definitely.
“Maybe your ex is the killer.”
“How is that— Is that possible?”
“In any case, we didn’t know you were at the library. Not until Detective Baroni contacted us, after the alarm went off. We’re just lucky he was here.”
What if he hadn’t been? Hartwell might still be following me all over Arlington. “A lot of strange things have been happening to me in the past few days.”
“And Mr. Thorpe has just admitted to them.”
“Not all of them.”
“Which incidents are unaccounted for?”
Leo answered. “I detailed all of them in my notes. He didn’t admit to the attempted package delivery over the weekend. He didn’t admit to having broken into her apartment.”
Agent Beyer didn’t speak for a long moment. “Timeline says the package can’t be attributed to our killer. Unless the killer is Mr. Thorpe.” He signaled to an FBI agent and then turned aside to speak with her for a few moments.
“I’ve asked someone to watch Mr. Thorpe,” Agent Beyer said when he returned to us. “But I do need to talk to you, Ms. Garrison, about your relationship to the victim, Mr. Burdell. That’s how you can be most useful in our investigation.”
Leo gestured toward Hartwell. “Can we do it somewhere out of sight of him?”
I sent Leo a silent message of thanks. Just seeing Hartwell had brought back everything. All of the things I’d been working so hard to forget. And the thought that he might be Cade’s killer made me sick.
“Of course. Yes. By all means,” Agent Beyer replied.
I had a suggestion. “There might be a room available in the library.” It didn’t close for another half hour.
Soon I found myself sitting across from Agent Beyer, beside Leo, as I answered questions about Cade.
“I listened to the voicemail he left you,” the agent explained. “I’d been working with him on a matter related to his work at the FDIC. I really need to know what he was hoping to find out from you.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know.”
“It seemed to strike him as important. Important enough to reach out to you.”
“I know. And I wish I could help you. But I just don’t remember talking to him about anything like that.”
“If you do remember, I need you to call me. Immediately.” He passed me his card. “Cell phone. Anytime, day or night.”
I pulled out my wallet and put it inside. “Can I ask you what you were working on with him? That might jog a memory.”
“It was a hacking incident back in 2010.”
“Of the FDIC?”
“That’s right.”
“It hasn’t been solved?”
He shook his head. “We know who it was. It was China. There was a big investigation at the time. A commercial firm was brought in to unravel it all.”
“But Cade hadn’t been working at the FDIC that long.”
“Only since last fall.”
Something wasn’t making sense. “Is there anything else you can tell me? I don’t remember ever having a conversation with him about the FDIC.” Did anyone ever have a conversation about the FDIC? It was one of those government agencies no one ever really thought of. “If you gave me some context, it might help.”
“I really can’t.”
There wasn’t much to say after that.
He did ask me a few questions about face blindness, though. How I handled the disorder. What kinds of things I might recognize about a person.
Leo drove me home. He drummed on the steering wheel as he waited for the light to change at Kirkwood.
“You could just turn on the radio.”
“Hartwell Anderson Thorpe IV might be our guy. But if he isn’t, we’re back where we started. If it’s not him, then who is it?”
I didn’t know. That buoyant feeling I’d had earlier in the day, when I’d anticipated a break in the case, had been weighted down with dread.
“We need to rethink this. We need to rethink everything. When do you work tomorrow?”
“Seven.”
“That’s at the coffee shop?”
I nodded.
“Are you at the library too?”
“Yes. All afternoon.”
“Somebody pulled that fire alarm. It might have been our killer, might not. Thorpe might be the killer, might not. But there are too many unattributable events happening wherever you go. Give me your work schedules for the rest of the week and I’ll let the FBI know. I’ll see if they can assign an agent to you.”
That was a huge relief. I felt the knot in my stomach begin to unwind.
The light turned. He drove through the intersection. “So. Hartwell Thorpe. The Hartwell Thorpe. You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
He held up a hand. “Okay. Thought I’d ask.”
“I just feel like I should have been smarter. I should have known better. I should have realized what he was like sooner.”
“The thing is, sometimes we don’t recognize people for who they are. But it’s not our fault; it’s theirs. It’s his.”
I knew that. I really did. But I didn’t feel it yet. I couldn’t. I was having the hardest time forgiving myself for my own betrayal. “For a while with him, I thought it might be okay.”
“What would be okay?”
“Everything.” I had a social circle. I had a boyfriend. I had a life. “We were talking about moving in together. He’d made plans. I didn’t renew my lease because we were looking for an apartment together. And then he cheated on me.” That had been the last straw. I’d managed to excuse almost everything—the emotional abuse, the physical abuse, the controlling behavior—but cheating? It was one ask too many.
“If he did that, he’s a jerk. If you have a restraining order on him, that means he’s abusive. And he’s a stalker. He knew you couldn’t recognize him. He took pleasure in getting as close to you as he could without you knowing.”
He had. It terrified me.
“He’s dangerous.”
“I wrote him a note when I left. Put it on his kitchen counter. And then I moved across the river. I thought I was really smart. The thing about renting a basement from someone is that your name isn’t in anyone’s property records. It’s not on utility bills. And I changed my phone number. I’d never really done social media, so that wasn’t a problem. I tried hard to cover my tracks.”
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