“It was nice seeing you at Thanksgiving, but we’d be happy to see more of you.”
Zachary turned his head and looked out the front window again, catching a movement out the corner of his eye. But the car continued to drive on past the house. Not Lorne Peterson.
“He’ll be coming through the back,” Pat advised, following his gaze. At that moment, Zachary heard the grinding of the garage door motor in the attached garage.
Zachary turned toward the kitchen and watched as Mr. Peterson entered with a couple of grocery bags. He put them down on the counter and joined Pat and Zachary in the living room without putting his purchases away.
“Zachary, it’s so good to see you!” He sat down on the couch with him. “How are you? Is everything okay?”
“No. I don’t know. No.” Zachary shook his head, not sure what to say.
“Okay! That’s a little confusing. Tell me what’s up.”
Zachary pulled out his phone and brought it to life. It was still open to the email. He handed it over.
Mr. Peterson looked at the phone screen. He put on a pair of glasses, looked at it again, and took them off. “I really can’t see those little phone screens worth a darn. Can you bring it up on my computer? Or just tell me what it says?”
“Uh, yeah.” Zachary swallowed and nodded. “Sure. Where’s your computer?”
Mr. Peterson led him to a bedroom that was being used as a study, and motioned to the computer on the desk. Certainly not the latest model, but it had a big screen, and it would do. Zachary sat down in the swivel chair and brought up the browser, logging out of Mr. Peterson’s email and into his own account. There were several new emails in his inbox, but he didn’t look at them, navigating to the deleted mail to open the email with an attachment. He clicked the jpg and it filled the screen.
It was even more disorienting to see it on the big screen than it had been on the phone. Mr. Peterson gazed for a moment at the picture of the family on the screen. Mother, father, and six children, apparently at a Christmas party in the late eighties. Mr. Peterson lifted his hand so fast it made Zachary jump. He pointed at the third child, the oldest boy. “That’s you!” He looked at Zachary’s face and then back at the screen again. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“This is your bio family?”
Zachary nodded.
“Where did you find it?”
Zachary closed the picture and pointed with the mouse to the text of the email.
This was your family before you destroyed it.
It’s hard to believe that kind of evil can be allowed to exist.
“Oh, Zachary…” Mr. Peterson breathed. “You can’t believe that. Who sent you this?”
“Tyrrell.” Zachary clicked on the photo again and indicated the smiling six-year-old. “There.”
“Are you sure?” The older man shook his head. “I really can’t see something like this coming from a member of your family. I know there were issues with your mother, but the other kids…? They wouldn’t do this.”
“You never even met them. How could you know that?”
“It’s just… it doesn’t make sense. He was just a little boy. He wouldn’t have blamed you. I don’t know if they even would have told him any details of what had happened. Social Services wasn’t too keen on sharing that information, even with foster parents who needed it.”
“He was old enough to remember. He was six.”
Zachary had to admit that the little boy in the picture looked closer to three than to six. But he could remember their ages. They had probably all been small for their ages. Zachary knew he had been endlessly teased and bullied for being so small. But that was normal for children who were neglected and malnourished. Then, years of meds that stunted growth had ensured that Zachary would remain shorter than average as an adult too, even though he had been fed better in later years.
“It’s not signed. What makes you think it was Tyrrell?”
“He sent me a letter. I didn’t answer it, so he sent these.”
“He sent you a letter? Snail mail?”
“Yes. I guess I should have answered, like Kenzie said. Maybe he wouldn’t have resorted to this.”
Mr. Peterson shook his head. “I’m so sorry this happened. The boy obviously has some lasting problems. To blame you for everything thirty years later… maybe he has some kind of psychosis…”
Zachary couldn’t envision Tyrrell as a man. In his mind, Tyrrell was forever that six-year-old who had cowered in Zachary’s arms as their parents fought. Tyrrell would always be a little boy in his memories.
“But something good did come of this,” Mr. Peterson offered.
“Good?”
“You got a picture of your family. You’ve never had anything to remember them by.”
Zachary hadn’t. He hadn’t had anything after the fire. Had that one picture survived? Had there been anything else that had been saved from the fire? He scrutinized it, looking for any signs of scorching or smoke damage, but it seemed to be in good condition.
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you print a copy out?”
“I should adjust it first.” Zachary studied the lighting and color in the old photo. “Balance the lighting and fix the color…”
“You can do that later. Just print a copy for now. We’ll go sit down and you can tell me about them.”
Zachary downloaded the picture and sent it to the printer. He and Mr. Peterson waited while it printed.
“You should report him to the police,” Mr. Peterson commented.
“No. I couldn’t do that to him.”
“He could be unbalanced. He could do something to harm you.”
Zachary thought about Richard Harding, getting struck down on the road that night. What had happened? Had his stalker shown up? Had he been running away from someone or chasing after them? From what Ashley had said, he wouldn’t have been likely to have chased after the man. Running away, then. Running right into the pathway of a speeding semi? Maybe he had been trying to flag Rusty down for help and had turned away at the last moment to protect himself when he realized the truck wasn’t going to stop.
Mr. Peterson put his hand on Zachary’s shoulder.
“I’m okay,” Zachary told him, his voice hoarse. He leaned forward and plucked the photo from the printer. Holding it in his hands somehow made it more real than just looking at it on the phone and computer screens. He felt like he could reach out and touch each one of them. It was like the fire had just happened the day before. Or like it had never happened.
Mr. Peterson squeezed, then let go of Zachary. “Let’s go sit back down.”
He shuffled a little when he walked. Mr. Peterson had always seemed so big and solid; it was only in the last couple of years he had started to show some frailty. The fact brought a lump to Zachary’s throat. Mr. Peterson was his only family. Zachary had thought that he would be around forever, even though he knew it wasn’t true. Maybe his thoughts of the end of his own life had prevented him from seeing that Mr. Peterson would die one day too. Zachary had never been able to see more than a year ahead in his own life. Never past the next Christmas.
Zachary sat back down in the spot he had vacated. He took a sip of the tea, which had cooled enough to drink. He hesitated, then handed Pat the family picture. Pat was family too. He’d been with Mr. Peterson for almost thirty years.
“That’s my bio family. Back… before.”
Pat handled the picture carefully. He gave a little laugh. “Is that you? Man, look at how young you are!”
Zachary ducked his head. “Yeah.”
“How old were you when we first met? Fourteen? You’re a lot younger here.”
“Ten. Before I went to the Petersons’.”
“Wow. Where did you turn this up?”
Zachary looked at Mr. Peterson, not sure he could explain it himself.
“Zachary has been getting… some disturbing letters. This was with one of them. Maybe from one of
his brothers.”
Pat looked again at the picture and then handed it back to Zachary. “That’s what happened. That’s why you came here.”
Zachary nodded. “I just… it’s the only place I could think of. I couldn’t go to a therapist or group… I needed… somewhere grounding.”
“Family,” Pat said firmly.
“Yeah.”
Zachary held the photo, staring down at it. Mr. Peterson’s eyes were on it as well.
“It’s hard to believe that’s just before you came to us. When the social worker brought you… you were a very sad little boy.”
The children in the picture were happy. They were all together and their eyes sparkled with the excitement of the party. There was something else different too; the arm Zachary had around Tyrrell was unscarred. No burns from the fire. No cuts on his wrists. There were a couple of visible bruises, but all active boys had bruises on their arms and legs. And Zachary had been very active.
“No scars.”
Mr. Peterson squinted and nodded. “The fire must have been just a few days after this.”
Zachary held his breath, waiting for the images to subside. “I guess. I don’t remember this party.”
“Maybe this is the year before. You don’t look ten.”
“No, I was.”
“How soon did you go to Lorne’s?” Pat asked. “Right after?”
“I was in hospital… then Bonnie Brown. It was a few months.”
They didn’t discuss how long he’d been at the Petersons’. That he’d been too much for them to manage and Mrs. Peterson had insisted that he be reassigned to another foster family within a few short weeks. But even so, Mr. Peterson had become an anchor for Zachary. He had given Zachary his first camera for his birthday and allowed him to keep in contact after he had been moved. They had processed hundreds of photos together and Mr. Peterson had never made him feel unwelcome.
“I want you to tell me about your family,” Mr. Peterson said, though of course he’d heard their names and what stories Zachary could remember before. “But first, I want you to tell me what you’re going to do. About the letters.”
“I don’t know.”
“It should be reported to the police.”
“If I don’t respond, he’ll stop.”
“There’s no guarantee of that. Something must have happened to trigger this behavior. You don’t know what it was. If he’s just been through some kind of breakup or tragedy… you don’t know how much it might have affected him.”
“I can’t report Tyrrell.”
“If he starts making threats…”
“He hasn’t. Let’s just wait and see if it blows over.”
Chapter Eleven
Z
achary had never stayed over at Mr. Peterson’s house before. He was close enough that he could drive over in the afternoon for dinner, then drive back home for bed. There had been invitations, but he’d never accepted them. But Mr. Peterson refused to take ‘no’ for an answer.
“I want to make sure you’re okay. This has been very upsetting for you.”
Zachary’s moods had been all over the map as he’d tried to process both the hate-filled messages from Tyrrell and the precious picture of his family. He’d had several vivid flashbacks, and more than once had excused himself to the bathroom because he didn’t want Pat and Mr. Peterson to see him cry. He hadn’t been able to touch anything at supper.
In the end, Zachary was too exhausted to argue about it. Mr. Peterson wasn’t giving him a choice and it was immensely easier to just accept the edict than to try to fight him on it.
“We have everything you need,” Pat assured him, “and we have the space. You’re not in the way; you know we’ve been trying to get you to stay over for years.”
“I don’t like to impose…”
“Good grief, Zachary. Sleeping on the guest room bed is not imposing. Listen to Lorne.”
“Okay.” Zachary held up his hands. “Fine. Okay. I’ll stay.”
And then came the invitations for Christmas. They’d always invited him to join their observance, other than the couple years he’d been with Bridget, but Zachary was always physically unable to accept.
“We might get a visit from my family this year,” Pat offered. “Fingers crossed.” He held up his hands with this index and middle fingers crossed on both. “One can always hope.”
Zachary had rarely heard Pat even acknowledge that he had any family other than Mr. Peterson. He looked at Pat curiously. “Who’s coming? Your parents?”
“My dad passed last year. Maybe my mother and sister will come. For years, they’ve all refused to come anywhere near here.”
“They wouldn’t have anything to do with me,” Mr. Peterson said wryly. “They were fine with Pat going home for a visit, but I’m the person who corrupted him.” Mr. Peterson looked at his partner affectionately. “Apparently, I’m very persuasive.”
Zachary felt a flush creeping up his neck. He’d never been comfortable talking to them about their romantic relationship; how they had met, what had attracted them to each other, or what other relationships they might have had other than each other.
Pat laughed. “They always hoped I’d decide it was a big mistake. That it was just a phase I was going through. My dad was very religious about this one thing. He was never particularly concerned with any of the other Biblical teachings, but he believed our relationship was unnatural and a sin and he wouldn’t do anything that might be taken as condoning it.”
“Too bad he missed out on spending time with you,” Zachary said. He wanted a family so badly, it was hard to believe anyone would choose to push their child away.
Pat nodded, looking pensive. “We could have had some good years together. But that was his choice.”
After a couple of days at Mr. Peterson’s house, Zachary was feeling a lot calmer and more stable. Pat and Mr. Peterson repeated their invitations for him to return for Christmas, invitations which, again, were met with fumbling silence.
“You know you’re always welcome,” Mr. Peterson assured him. “Any time you want to come join us, just do it. I don’t need a commitment ahead of time.”
Zachary nodded and got back into his car. Heading back home, he had mixed feelings. It would feel good to get back to work and his own apartment and just put the incident behind him.
But he knew that it wasn’t over. Tyrrell had demonstrated that he wasn’t going to just send one letter and then wait for a response. He had a deep-seated anger and resentment toward Zachary, and he was going to continue to vent it, just the way Harding’s stalker had not only continued his harassment, but escalated it. Zachary continued to send the messages to his email trash, but he also found that he couldn’t just ignore them and leave them alone. Instead, like picking at a scab, he kept digging back into the trash to read and re-read the messages. Like if he could just figure out what to say to Tyrrell, he could stop the influx of poison pen emails. Even though he knew it was impossible, he couldn’t stop himself from obsessing over the contents of the emails and what responses to give.
Probably, there wouldn’t even be a way for him to reply if he wanted to. The anonymous email service Tyrrell was employing wouldn’t even accept an answer. But knowing that fact logically and being able to stop the obsessive re-reading of the vitriolic emails were two different things. He had put on a mask of dispassion for Mr. Peterson and Pat. Oh, it’s nothing. As long as he’s not making threats, I’ll just delete them. But he suspected they didn’t believe that for a minute.
As he entered the city limits, work started to call to Zachary. He could hyperfocus on his files and push everything else out of his mind. That would be a relief, and would bring in some extra cash. His phone rang and Zachary answered it on Bluetooth.
“Zachary, are you okay?”
Zachary took a deep breath. He had answered Kenzie’s various messages while he’d been at Mr. Peterson’s, but he knew she wouldn’t believe he was really okay until she’d had
a chance to see him face to face.
“I’m fine, Kenzie. Just got back into town.”
“Thought you might want to go over the details of the Harding autopsy.”
“Oh!” He hadn’t been expecting that, and it was a welcome surprise. “Sure, that would be great. Take you out this time? Buffet?”
“Why is it always buffet when we’re reviewing autopsies?”
Zachary thought about it. It wasn’t like he had taken that many homicides. But Kenzie might be right. “I didn’t realize we did that. Do you want to go somewhere else instead? Somewhere nicer?”
There was a moment of hesitation. “I don’t know if it would be kosher to pull out autopsy photos somewhere nicer.”
Zachary thought about her response. “We don’t have to look at the photos while we’re there. We can have a nice dinner and then go back to my place to look at them and go over the results.”
“Maybe…”
So perhaps Bowman had been right about Kenzie being interested in a deeper relationship. But maybe it wasn’t too late to advance it. As long as she was still calling him, there was a possibility.
“You want to try the Inn? It’s been a while since we’ve been there.”
Not since New Year’s the previous year. The night that they had been in a serious wreck after someone had cut Zachary’s brake lines.
“It was really nice last time, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t mind that.”
“I don’t remember much about it,” Zachary admitted. His memories of the dinner had been clouded by everything that had happened afterward.
Kenzie laughed. “Then I guess it’s about time we went back. And this time, you don’t have a psychotic killer stalking you.”
Zachary’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t even thought to check his car for tampering before he’d gotten into it at Mr. Peterson’s house. He would have to be sure to check it before and after they ate. He wasn’t about to have another accident.
“Zachary?”
“Yeah, I’ll make the reservations. Was there anything interesting on the autopsy?”
He was Walking Alone Page 10