“Then maybe I’m just not ready yet.”
Zachary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Can you think of anyone who is still bitter toward Brandon? Bitter enough to want him dead?”
“I wasn’t in touch with anyone involved in the case. Look at Hope’s family and close friends. I don’t know what any of them are thinking and feeling now.”
“Well, if you think of anyone… if anything comes up that you think might be worth looking into, give me a call.” Zachary slid a business card across the table.
“Don’t count on it. I’ve moved on with my life.”
Max Fulton was the fourth man in the car the night that Brandon Powers had mowed Hope down, killing her in the middle of the street. Zachary had been expecting a clone of Devon Masters. They had been friends back in the day. They had drunk together, had been sitting in the back of the car together. They could have died together, if they hadn’t been wearing seatbelts or if Brandon had driven into the river or been hit by a train instead of hitting Hope Creedy. But Fulton was not like Devon. He was quiet and reticent, a contemplative man. He took his time in answering Zachary’s questions and kept the inner workings of his brain hidden from observers. Zachary had a feeling that people didn’t know much more about Fulton than he was willing to let people see.
“Explain to me what it is you wanted to see me about?” he asked Zachary. “I don’t like this. I don’t like being kept in the dark about people’s motives.”
“I’m investigating the death of Richard Harding.”
“Richard Harding,” Fulton repeated with a frown. He didn’t say it in that same blank way as everybody else had. It seemed to mean something to him. “When did he die?”
Zachary was surprised. “You know who that is, then?”
“I assume that’s why you want to talk to me. There wouldn’t be much point in questioning people who’d never heard of him.”
“Most people have disclaimed knowing Harding’s name.”
“He told me before he moved. Said he was hoping to make a fresh start. I thought he deserved that. He’d suffered through a lot. I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to put it behind him, but why not try? I didn’t begrudge him that.”
“I’m sure the accident made your life harder too. He wasn’t the only one in the car, and I imagine people partially blamed you as well.”
Fulton was quiet for a while. “I had my fair share,” he agreed eventually. “But I wasn’t the one who was driving. I didn’t have to live with that on my conscience. Brandon did. When he got out of prison, he was a different person than he had been when it happened. That guilt over having killed an innocent person through his own carelessness and poor choices… he had to live with that for the rest of his life. However short that might have ended up being.” He scratched his ear, staring off into the distance. “He didn’t contact me again after he moved to Vermont. Did it happen right away? Or was it just recent?”
“It was more recent. He had a few years to try to start a new life.”
“Did he find any peace?”
“I haven’t looked too deeply into his history… but I would say no. He did his best. He was dating. He was working. He hadn’t been in any trouble. But someone had been stalking him, and he was very agitated and depressed over it.”
“Stalking him?” Fulton’s voice went up several notes.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“In person? Or on the computer?”
Zachary watched Fulton’s face for what he was thinking, but he wore a mask, keeping it to himself. But he had brought up the cyberstalking immediately.
“On the computer and phone. Emails, texts, messages. Devon said he’s had a few messages as well. Have you?”
Fulton nodded slowly. “It’s been very disturbing. I’ve done my best just to ignore it, but those times when things are quiet and my mind is looking for things to think about… when I’m going to bed at night or having a quiet drink… I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Do you know who is sending the messages?”
“No. It’s all fake addresses. Nothing that you can respond to or trace back to the sender.”
“Have you talked to anyone about it?”
“No… I don’t really want to remind people about that part of my past. I’d rather not bring all of that up again.”
“You didn’t mention it to Devon?”
Fulton’s eyes flicked to the side. “I might have.”
“He set up his mail so that the messages are automatically deleted and he doesn’t even have to see them.”
“That would be smart. I’ll have to see if someone can help me set that up…”
Zachary noticed he didn’t say he’d get Devon to help him set it up. Obviously, as Devon had said, the two of them were not close friends. Fulton didn’t think to ask Devon to help him set up the same thing.
“That might be a good idea; help ease your mind a little.”
“You don’t think that Brandon’s death and the stalking are related, do you? I mean… I don’t have to worry about this guy coming after me next?”
Zachary had wondered that briefly himself. He didn’t want to tell Fulton that there was no danger, in case there was and Zachary’s advice made him less cautious. But he didn’t want to scare Fulton unnecessarily either.
“I’ve been looking for a connection between the stalker and the motorist who killed Brandon, but I haven’t been able to find anything. None of the messages were overtly threatening. Nothing that said ‘I’m coming after you’ or ‘I’m going to kill you.’ It looks like a coincidence, but I can’t tell you for sure.”
“I appreciate that.” Fulton sighed. “I didn’t report it to the police. I don’t really want to bring myself to their attention. Do you think I should?”
“Cyberstalking is a crime. I’d like to catch this guy, and if law enforcement can help to track him down…”
Mr. Peterson’s words came back to him. His repeated advice for Zachary to report Tyrrell to the police for his similar activities. But like Fulton, he was reluctant to take it to the police. Not because he was worried it would tarnish his reputation, but because he didn’t want to hurt Tyrrell. Not when he had already ruined his life. It was Zachary’s own fault Tyrrell was sending those messages, and they were all true, however painful it was to admit it.
He realized that Fulton was saying something, looking at him with a pronounced frown.
“Oh, sorry. What was that…?”
“Something more important on your mind?” Fulton asked sarcastically.
“Not more important. Just… distracting. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to zone out like that.”
“I guess… I’ll report it. But are they going to want my computer? I can’t really function without it.”
“They might want to look at it, but I think mostly they’ll want your login information for your email address, so that they can examine the messages and try to trace them.”
“I hate the idea of someone going through my email…”
Did he have something to hide? Some other secret that he would rather they didn’t know about?
“I know,” he assured Fulton. “We don’t like people poking around in our private lives. But if you want to help them to find this guy, to get him off your case…”
“I don’t suppose I’m the only one he’s doing this to. There are other people out there who are more vulnerable. People who would take it more seriously or are more suggestible. Children. If he’s harassed all three of us, what are the chances that he’s never done this before and would never do it again?”
“If it’s someone who was hurt by Hope’s death, they wouldn’t be targeting anyone else, I don’t think. The three of you were the only ones in the car.”
“Do you really think so? They could decide to go after our families. If they’re unstable enough to go over the deep end about an accident that happened over a decade ago, what’s to say that they won’t flip out over something else?
Especially if they are getting satisfaction out of it? I don’t think this is someone who is going to be stopped by logic.”
He was right. An obsessive personality didn’t just go away. It would find a new direction. Was the same true for Tyrrell? Was there any danger he would start harassing someone else too? Zachary knew Tyrrell. He wasn’t that kind of a person. He’d always been a very sweet and sensitive boy. His anger toward Zachary was justified. He wouldn’t carry that over to someone who was innocent. Tyrrell understood the difference between right and wrong. He wouldn’t hurt someone else.
“So you think I should go to the police?” Fulton pressed.
“Uh… yes. I think it would be a good idea. You want to stop this guy. I don’t see any way for them to stop him without the evidence. I have some idea of who it could be… but we don’t have any proof connecting them yet.”
“I hesitate to do anything that would harm anyone from Hope’s family. They’ve gone through so much already. Do you think it’s one of them?”
Zachary thought of the people he had interviewed. Mike Creedy, with his vitriol for the person who had killed his daughter. Mrs. Creedy’s suppressed emotions, kept carefully under wraps. The twins, Luke trying to keep Noelle from saying too much to Zachary, with an explosive temper when he’d been drinking. Suzie didn’t seem like a viable suspect. Zachary couldn’t even imagine her finding the time to send that many emails. And Jonathan Roper, the boyfriend who could never be acknowledged, forever excluded from Hope’s circle of mourners, looking in from the outside.
“I suspect it probably is,” Zachary admitted. “I’m going to have to spend some more time on it, now that I’ve had a chance to meet everyone. And I should probably meet Kyle Browne’s family as well.”
Fulton looked surprised at the mention of Kyle’s name. “I don’t think he has anyone left around here. His parents have passed away. There was a sister, but she moved years ago. Even before the trial concluded. She just couldn’t handle being in the spotlight.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“No… I really have no idea. It wasn’t the same for them as it was for Hope’s family. They didn’t get much public sympathy, and Brandon wasn’t even charged in connection with Kyle’s death.”
Which could have left them feeling very bitter toward the man who had taken Kyle away from them. If Kyle’s parents were dead, then it wasn’t them, but it could be the sister.
Zachary decided he’d done all that he could in New Hampshire. He was feeling increasingly anxious in the hotel room and wanted to be back home in familiar surroundings, so rather than stay one more night, he checked out and hit the road, pointing the nose of the car west. He could have sworn that it knew they were going home and was as eager to get there as he was. Traffic was good and the trip uneventful.
At home, he showered off the dust of the trail as if he’d been riding in an open coach. After so many years without a permanent residence, it felt good to have a place of his own. He plugged the computer in and opened it up. He had more notes to compile, research to do, and theories to think about. He was distracted by the email notifications counter and clicked through to see what was awaiting him.
Of course, he knew in the back of his mind that there would be another email or two there from Tyrrell. Should he make contact with him, like Bridget said he should? Should he turn the matter over to the police like Mr. Peterson suggested and like he had advised Fulton? He hated to do that. Tyrrell was hurting. Maybe venting all of the poison would get it out of his system, and he’d be able to move on, if he just thought someone was listening to him.
He clicked on the latest message from Tyrrell, trying to brace himself mentally. He was just there to listen, to hear what it was Tyrrell had to say. He didn’t have to take it personally and let it affect his mood.
You have done nothing but cause pain to everyone who knows you.
Why don’t you just kill yourself?
Zachary swallowed. A pain started in the center of his chest and radiated outward, making it hard to breathe. He knew it was true. He’d brought pain and suffering to his family. To other families he had lived with. He had brought it into his marriage with Bridget and into other relationships. He brought it to the Creedys and other families he had questioned in the cases he investigated. Everywhere he went, he dragged his own pain and sorrow with him and infected everyone around him.
His head throbbed with the heavy beats of his heart.
Why don’t you just kill yourself?
He rubbed his eyes and looked at the words again. He’d seen the same phrase repeated a number of times in the cyberstalker’s messages to Richard Harding. It was hardly a unique phrase; he had seen it in other incidents of cyberbullying before. He read through the other recent messages, analyzing the language and repeated phrases clinically instead of reading them as personal attacks. He did a search and looked at the list of results.
The pattern of send times was similar to what he’d observed in the messages from Harding’s stalker. Most of them before nine, over the lunch hour, after three or four. Like someone fitting them in around a work or school schedule. That didn’t mean anything by itself; a high percentage of the population followed a similar schedule. It wasn’t the same person just because he used a few of the same stock phrases and worked a similar schedule.
Zachary knew that his emails were coming from Tyrrell. No one but someone in his family could have had that picture. They were not from Harding’s stalker. There was no connection between Tyrrell and the cyberstalker, other than their style and the timing of the messages.
That twigged another thought for Zachary. He logged in to Harding’s account and looked at the messages the cyberstalker had been sending Harding. He double-checked the dates.
For a few minutes, he just sat there, thinking things through. Then he called Campbell.
Chapter Twenty
Z
achary,” Campbell greeted cheerfully. “How goes the battle?”
“I don’t know how much progress I’m making with this, but I had another thought.”
“Yeah?”
“When Harding died, he stopped getting emails from the stalker.”
“Well, yes, that makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“How did the stalker know that he was dead?”
There was silence while Campbell thought this through. It was a more complex question than it sounded like.
“When, exactly, did the emails stop coming?” Campbell asked.
“The last one was the night he died. Nothing after that.”
“And he’d been getting them pretty regularly up until then. There weren’t any other gaps in the timeline when the stalker took a break and stopped sending them for a day or two?”
“No. They were coming in several times a day, faithfully.”
“The stalker knew there was no point in sending any more messages. That means that he knew Harding was dead. But no one else knew Harding was dead. Not the truck driver, not his girlfriend, not the police.”
“No.”
“Does that mean he was there? Does that mean that Rusty Donaldson was somehow involved and could report back to the stalker, or was the stalker himself?”
“You might want to get him back in and look into it further.”
Campbell grumbled. “This was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, Zachary. What are you doing to me?”
“Sorry. I didn’t expect to find anything, but…”
“First you find out he was being cyberstalked. Then you find out he’d been in prison for killing someone in a hit and run himself. Then that the stalker knew almost the instant he died. This is turning into a much more complex case than it was supposed to be.”
“I know. There’s more going on under the surface than I would ever have expected.”
“It could all be coincidence. His stalker might have just decided to give up at that point. He might have h
ad enough. Or something else came up in his life and he couldn’t keep it up. Maybe his computer died.”
“I don’t like coincidences. I’ll see if I can find any connections between the people I interviewed in New Hampshire and Rusty Donaldson. Another possibility is Ashley herself.”
“You think the girlfriend is the stalker?”
“She could be. Kenzie suggested it. Ashley is the only one who knew that he was missing the morning after he died. Did she tell someone else? Or was she the one who had been sending him the messages all along?”
“You have a devious mind, Zach. That’s very… disturbing.”
“I know. But it had to be someone close to him. I just don’t know how to explain it otherwise. Either the stalker has a connection with Rusty Donaldson, or he was out there to see the accident, or it was Ashley or someone she talked to that morning. I can’t think of any other scenarios, can you?”
“No… that’s all I can think of. Would she give you access to her phone records if you asked?”
“I might be able to get them out of her. See who she called that morning. And the night before.”
“Get her to show you whatever you can get out of her, it will be easier than us trying to get a warrant for them. If she is the stalker… then I’m guessing she won’t show you everything. Or she’ll have an alternative phone or email that she won’t show you.”
Zachary grunted his agreement. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around why Ashley would stalk and harass her own boyfriend, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. She might have a motive buried deep beneath the surface. She might have gone to school with Hope, she might have had a sister who had been killed in a hit and run, or she might be mentally unbalanced. There was no telling what her motives were. But Zachary didn’t have to know the motive, not initially. If he had proof, or at least strong evidence, that she had been the one harassing Harding, that would be a start. Enough, at least, for the police to question her and look into it further. As things stood, they didn’t have any reason to insist she submit to further questioning.
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