“Hey, girl, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“My bad. I forgot.”
“Forgot about what?”
“Your face thing. I’ll point him out to you next time he comes in.”
“You don’t have to. I can remember him.”
“But you told me before that you couldn’t remember faces, so—”
“He’s got that sling.”
“What sling?”
“On his arm.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“The sling—” I mimicked wrapping something around my arm.
“I know what a sling is. He doesn’t have one.”
“Are we talking about the same person?”
She put a hand to her hip. “The man you helped keep from tripping yesterday.”
“He had a sling. He was wearing one. Every time I’ve seen him, he’s wearing a sling.”
“Every time I’ve seen him, he’s not.”
I called Leo again.
Chapter 43
Agent Beyer came into the shop. He worked with the manager to access the guy’s account and contact information. He said there were agents outside at various places. I tried to keep calm, taking orders, then switching with Ty to pull shots and make drinks.
Eventually the agent came over to the counter. “We think we have him. I want you and you”—he pointed to Corrine and me—“to come out with me. Just to see what his reaction is.”
We took our aprons off and left them in the back room before joining him.
As we approached, one of the agents leaned away from the group. He gestured to the man in the center. The one who was wearing a sling.
“Is this the guy?” Agent Beyer asked. “The one who’s been stalking you?”
Corrine nodded. “It’s him.”
The man reacted with outrage. “I am not a stalker!”
“We’re thinking it’s classic Ted Bundy,” one of the other agents said. “You know: wear a fake cast to make girls feel sorry for you. Put them off guard and then use their sympathy to take advantage of them.”
“This is not a fake sling!”
“But you don’t wear it all the time, do you?” Agent Beyer responded. “Ever wear a fake mustache?”
“What?”
The agent repeated his question.
“Fake mustache?”
“You’ve been seen in this area quite a bit this past week.”
“Because I live right over there.” He pointed to the apartment building. “And I come in for iced coffee sometimes because— Is that a crime?” He seemed to look at me. “All I wanted was to ask you out on a date.”
A date? “Why didn’t you?” Every other man with an interest in me seemed to.
“Because I—” He shrugged. “Because— I was going to. I was trying to figure out what dating app to use. That’s why I’ve been hanging out. I figured out when your shift was. I’d try to be here when you got off work. When you left the Blue Dog, I was hoping I’d be able to see you on the geo-locators, you know? Then I could contact you through the app. I was trying not to be a stalker.”
* * *
As I returned to work with Corrine, Leo caught up with me. I smelled his cologne on the wind before I turned around and saw him. But before I could say anything, Agent Beyer called him over. They huddled for a few moments by the curb before the agent got into his car. Leo joined me as he pulled away from the curb.
“They’re going to check out the guy with the sling. Make sure he was telling us the truth.”
“Have they found out anything more about Hartwell? If it was him at the storage unit yesterday?”
“The manager couldn’t identify him by photo. We can’t identify the man in the security camera’s footage. Hartwell swears that he was with a client when the manager says the incident took place.”
“And you’re going to take him at his word?”
“No. We’ve asked him for his alibi.”
“And?”
“He says he’ll get us proof.”
“So the potential of proof is being taken as a real, concrete answer?” The law only worked if it applied to everyone equally. “Do you know what he’s probably doing right now?”
Leo didn’t answer.
“He’s probably convincing someone to lie for him to make it seem like he had an alibi.”
“A lie only goes so far. Eventually the truth comes out.”
“What if it comes out too late?”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I need you to trust the process.”
Trust the process?
He’d been glancing up and down the street. Now he gestured toward the Blue Dog. “Let’s get back inside where we’re not so exposed.” He opened the door and then held it so I could walk through.
We claimed a table at the far end of the room.
“It might seem like he can play by different rules, but he can’t. They won’t let him. You’ve got to trust that they won’t.”
“I wish I had some guarantee, because so far he’s gotten away with just about everything.”
“I only—” He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t ask you to come back inside to make you feel bad. I didn’t come back to argue with you. I wanted to tell you I’m off the case.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. “Off the case? Off what case?”
“Your case.”
I sat back as I tried to make sense of what he was saying. “What?” He couldn’t be off my case. He was the only person I really knew among those who were attached to the investigation.
“I’m off your case. They’ve reassigned it.”
“Who has? The FBI?”
“Arlington County.”
“I don’t want it reassigned.” As much as my feelings for him—and about him—were confused, I had no problem trusting his professional judgment.
“You don’t have any choice.”
“They can’t just—”
“Conflict of interest.”
“Whose interest?”
“Yours.”
“I would think that a detective’s interest would be required on a case.”
“Not your case. You. In particular.”
“Because of Sunday morning? When your boss came by?”
“Right.”
“So is it against the law that you’ve taken me in?”
“Federal law? State law? No.”
“Is it against police department rules?”
“It’s not smart. Let’s put it that way.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Because you had nowhere else to go and I’m a nice guy. I’m the good guy here, Whitney. You can’t choose who you’re attracted to. Or what cases you get. Me being me and you being you created a conflict of interest.”
“But—”
“And I can’t say I disagree.”
“But—”
“Can you?”
“No. But—”
“Although I wouldn’t say I agree either.”
“Did you just—” I was trying to sort out what he’d just said. Or what he hadn’t. “So you do think there’s a conflict of interest.”
“I’d rather say that I think there’s an interest. Don’t you agree?”
“Whose interest? On the part of what? I need to be super clear what you’re talking about.”
“I’m interested in you. So I agree with my boss. But I’m also interested in your case. I think I’m the best person to work it since I was there from the beginning. So I disagree with her.”
I didn’t want to go from being called Whitney to being called Ms. Garrison or “that girl” by someone I didn’t know. By someone who didn’t really know me. I just didn’t. “If I request you personally, then maybe—”
“Then definitely it will just confirm her suspicions that there’s a conflict of interest.”
“If I tell her it’s because you’re the only one I trust to—”
“Conflict of interest.”
“But if I let her know that—”
“Interest.”
“—the only reason I can finally sleep at night is because I know you? And I know that you’re there? In the room next door?” Desperation quickened my voice as I tried, uncharacteristically, to outrun the reach of reason.
He reached forward across the table, cupped a gentle hand around my neck, pulled me close, and kissed me. “Then I’m glad.” He released me. “And I’m wondering why you couldn’t before.”
A tear was making its way down my cheek. I ignored it. To swipe at it would only call attention to it.
He brushed it away with his thumb. “We’re going to identify this killer. And then we’re going to lock him up.”
“It’s not that.”
“You sure?”
“It’s not just that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s everything.” Finding and locating a killer was the easiest thing going on in my life. Everything else, I had to figure out a way to live with. Killers were temporary. Everything else was permanent.
Chapter 44
“Do you want to know what I think?” Leo asked.
“Do I?”
“You should go into hiding.”
“Where? Under a bed?”
“Or down in my basement or the kitchen or wherever. I think you should stay inside until this is over.”
“Leo, I’ve already told you. I have to work. It’s not an option. Remember? And I have students today.”
“The way I see it, if you get killed, you can’t work. And it feels like we’re close. Just give us—give the team—a couple more days.”
“And then what? What if they need a couple more? Do you see how this goes? A couple more and a couple more and then I’m out of a job. Both of them. And I still don’t have anything lined up for after the bar.”
“I think your manager would understand.”
She might. But the parents of my students wouldn’t. “I can’t drop off the face of the earth.”
“Just hear me out.”
I sighed. “I’m listening.”
“Why can’t you FaceTime or Skype with your students? Don’t half of the test prep companies do that anyway?”
“Because I’m not with a test prep company. I offer personal, personalized service.”
“But you could do that over the internet or over the phone, couldn’t you? For just a couple days?”
“The parents wouldn’t like it.”
“But isn’t the test just around the corner?”
“It’s on Saturday. But the SAT is in August. I coach students for both.”
“They’re not going to drop you now. Not at the last minute.”
“But they might let it be known that I did a bait and switch.”
“So offer them a discount.”
“Leo, I’m trying to make money, not give it away!”
“You wouldn’t have to make it free. Just drop your fee by twenty or thirty dollars.”
“And what am I going to tell them?”
“Tell them you have a family emergency, but you still want to honor your commitment to their student. What parent wouldn’t want to hear that?”
Maybe. It might work. “But what am I going to tell my manager?”
“Tell her that you can just about guarantee sirens and police officers if you come to work, but that if she’ll let you have a couple days off, maybe you can help put an end to all of it.”
“How many days do you think this will be?”
“Let’s start with two.”
“So tomorrow, if you think, ‘Maybe she should have made it three,’ you’ll tell me, right? So I can call the next set of parents?”
“Yes. I’ll stay in touch with the detective who replaced me on the team.”
I looked over at the work area. At Ty, who was busy making shots, and Corrine, who was at the register. I glanced away, looked out toward the window. There were a lot of big windows at the Blue Dog. I was actually quite exposed when I worked here. And so were my coworkers. Maybe Leo was right. The killer obviously knew my schedule. He’d observed me as I went about my day. Maybe the smartest thing to do was to stay hidden inside for a couple days.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about the timeline. Some of the things that have been happening have to be Hartwell. There’s no other person they could be.”
“We know he’s been stalking you. He already admitted to the planter. We know he’s the one who tore up your apartment. He may have been the one at the storage unit too.”
“But who took a shot at me? It doesn’t seem like something he would do. And the package is still a mystery. It couldn’t have been the killer, could it? It was a whole day before the shooting even happened. It had to be Hartwell, right?”
“I want him to have pulled that alarm at the library too. But he swore it wasn’t him.”
“Do we have to believe him? Do we really need to give him the benefit of doubt?” Something was still bothering me. “Those first things—the package delivery, the handprint, the planter, the break-in. All of those things seem to fit together.”
“What was the fire alarm at the library, then?”
“An attempt to get me to come back to him? That was his pattern. Take me for granted. I push back; he explodes. He apologizes and starts courting me again.”
“I’m not quite sure I buy that.” But he was nodding. I’m sure he’d heard all of that a hundred times in his years at the police department.
“So it sort of fits. But the storage unit and the attempted shooting don’t. At the most basic level, Hartwell is a bully. He’s not a psychopath; he’s reactionary. His modus operandi was always to make his point and then punish me and yank on the leash. It was scary in its own way, but it wasn’t terrifying. The storage unit? That was creepy. And the attempted shooting isn’t his style. All the planning that was put into Cade’s killing seems more like the storage-unit switch and the library shooting than planter smashing and apartment ransacking. Does that make sense?”
Leo shrugged.
“Some of those events were meant to make me do something—make me go back to Hartwell or make me sorry that I left him. Some of the others—Cade’s killing and the library shooting—weren’t. They were to stop Cade and me from doing something.”
“Good point. Still leaves me unconvinced on the storage unit. We’re back where we started. With an unknown killer.”
“One who’s been following me. One who had to follow me to the storage unit and also follow me—follow us—to the library. Or at least know my work schedule well enough to know when to wait for me.”
“Any thoughts yet on what Cade wanted to discuss with you?”
None. “I’d like to assume that it was something about China.”
“Agreed.”
“I wanted to go back and look through my journal again, but I couldn’t find it.”
“You just had it. Didn’t Beyer give it back to you?”
I nodded. “But when I looked for it in your basement, I couldn’t find it.”
“You had it before you put everything into the storage unit.”
“Yeah. And now it’s missing.”
“That seems significant. You should tell Beyer.”
“And there’ve been things in the news lately. Nothing that seems to connect them to anything, not even to each other, except for the fact that they all have to do with China. Or they might have something to do with China.”
“So, I wonder, does our killer know what you know, whatever it is Cade wanted to talk to you about? Or is he just afraid of what it might be?”
“Does it matter?” It really didn’t. For all intents and purposes, the result was the same. For some reason, he needed me dead. “Is there anything else the FBI has learned? Any theories you can tell me now that you’re off the case?”
It took a while b
efore he answered. “There’s quite a bit they know about the shooter, actually.” He didn’t say anything else.
“Since I’m the person he seems to want to kill, do you think you could share some of that information with me?”
“This shooter is taking you personally.”
“I’m ahead of you there.”
“In terms of how he tried to kill you. And what he did to the storage unit. If it really was him there.”
“I guess I’d take it personally too if someone kept standing in the way of me achieving my goals.”
“But we don’t think he’s a professional.”
“On what basis?”
“It’s more a question of default. If he were a professional, chances are he’d have taken you out by now.”
“So you’re thinking it’s a good thing then?”
Leo shrugged. “I mean—yeah. It’s a good thing.”
“And how do they plan to catch him?”
“By watching him watch you and—”
“That’s not really a plan.”
“—and a little bit of luck.”
Chapter 45
My manager wasn’t working, so I called her. She wasn’t happy about Leo’s plan. But she was even less happy at the prospect of more police cars and flashing lights. “I just want things to get back to normal.”
“So do I.”
“If I did agree, I won’t be able to pay you for the time you don’t work.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll have to treat it as leave without pay.”
“That’s what I was going to propose.”
“And to keep your insurance, you’ll have to figure out how to add in extra shifts this pay period.”
Of course I would.
“But I would rather you stay safe than get killed. Just keep me in the loop. Let me know when you can come back.”
I thanked her and hung up.
I parked myself at the dining room table, texted all my afternoon students and told them I’d decided to Skype with them instead of meet in person. And then I started on my harder task. I called the parents of the students I would be tutoring tomorrow.
“The test is only a week away!”
“I know it is. But your son tested three points better on the last practice test he took.” He’d actually tested four points better, but my policy was to underpromise and overdeliver. “He’s been working really hard. And I’ll still be able to tutor him. Just not in person.”
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