“Was it your decision or Richard’s? Were you someone who didn’t want to give up your own independence?”
Again, Ashley weighed her answer carefully before saying anything. Zachary didn’t like how cautious she was. Her answers were not natural, unplanned replies. They could easily be lies.
“I admit I didn’t want to give up my own place,” she said, looking around. “I don’t like to be… subsumed in a relationship. I don’t like the idea of only being a part of a couple, instead of an individual. I don’t like how at the end of a relationship, someone has to move out, and all of the belongings that you had together have to be divided. You give up some of your own stuff to combine households, and then when you break up again, you don’t have it anymore. Unless you left it in a storage locker or your parents’ house.”
As a foster kid, Zachary understood the loss of status that went along with losing his home and his material possessions. While he was at a foster home, he had stuff. He had a bed and clothes and books and toys. He had access to a TV and fridge and closet space. When it was time to go, he would get his toothbrush and a change of clothes in a plastic bag, and the camera he kept on his person at all times, and everything else was stripped away.
But as far as relationships went, his experience with the dynamics of two people becoming one couple was the opposite. He had loved the feeling of being a part of a completed whole. He had felt like for once he was a full person instead of one that was damaged and missing vital parts. He had been absorbed into Bridget’s life. Her full, engaged life. He wasn’t just Zachary anymore, but Zachary, Bridget’s husband.
Her name was like a password that had opened up a magical world he could never had been a part of before. People knew her, admired her, and wanted to please her. Everywhere she went, she made friends. Even in places that were previously Zachary’s domain, like the police department, Bridget quickly knew and was friends with more people than Zachary. And while they had been together, he had been a part of that.
Zachary forced himself back into the conversation with Ashley. “That makes sense.” He saw her shoulders dip, her body language relaxing. “So you didn’t know Richard in New Hampshire.”
“No. I never met him until he moved to Vermont.”
“When did he tell you about his past? That he had been in prison and had unintentionally killed someone in a hit and run?”
“I don’t know when, exactly. We started getting serious. I knew that he avoided some topics, social situations, that he had problems with his health and with sleeping. It didn’t all come out at once. Little revelations that he’d lived in New Hampshire, that he’d been involved in an accident, that he’d served time for his fault in it… it was difficult for him to talk about, so I didn’t push to know everything at once. Just a little bit more every now and then, until I had the whole story.”
“So you know everything?”
She pursed her lips, looking at him. “What do you classify as ‘everything’? He was driving, he’d had a couple of drinks, he hit and killed a girl. He was disoriented and left the scene.”
“There were others in the car.”
Ashley nodded. “Yeah. He was driving the others.”
“Did you know that one of them died too?”
No indication of surprise on her face. “Well… yes.”
“Did he ever have any contact with anyone else involved in the case? Hope’s family or friends? The other guys who survived the collision?”
“No. Except, I guess, whoever was stalking him. But I didn’t know that before he died.”
“So he might have had contact with any of them without you knowing it.”
“Yes. But you’ve looked at all of his phone records and emails, right? So you’d know if he’d had contact with them.”
“In the last couple of months, yes. We haven’t gone three years back in phone records. Where did you live before?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Before what? I live here.”
“Before you moved here.”
She obviously hadn’t lived there forever. It wasn’t her family home. She complained about losing her home during a previous relationship or relationships. She must therefore have had several addresses before the current one. The fact that she wasn’t answering automatically made him wonder why she wanted to hide it. Had she lived in New Hampshire? Did she have connections she didn’t want him to know about?
“I’m not sure what you mean. I grew up in Burlington.”
“And you came here from Burlington?”
“No… I’ve had a few other residences. But I’ve been here for three years.”
About the same time that Harding had gotten out of prison. Zachary pretended to be occupied with Ashley’s computer, clicking through a few screens to see how the virus scan was progressing and giving her time to relax between questions.
“You like it here?”
“Sure. It’s a nice town. I’ve got a good job. No reason to leave any time soon.”
“It has a nice atmosphere,” Zachary agreed. It had felt like a good place for him to settle down too. After spending his life moving around, it had seemed like a good place to put down his roots. Big enough for there to be plenty of work for him, but small enough that it felt like a community instead of a big metropolis. “How about Richard, what did he think of it?”
“Well, he lived where it was more rural… I don’t know if he really liked it, though. Most people choose to live on rural properties because they want gardens, or animals, or to be out in nature. But I think Richard just wanted to be away from people. He got anxious when he had to be in the city. He was… I’m not sure what the best word for it is. He was always watching, like something was going to happen. And in the city, he had to watch everything at once, all the different directions at the same time.”
“Hypervigilance,” Zachary supplied. That was something he knew plenty about.
Ashley’s expression cleared. “Yes, that’s the perfect word. When he had to be in the city, whether it was out on the street or in a grocery store, he was hypervigilant. He was okay for a while if he was here, in a house, but after a while, he’d get… jittery and want to go back home.”
“Was he afraid of being in another accident?”
“Yes… but I don’t think that was the only thing. He didn’t like being around a lot of people. I don’t know if he thought people were going to recognize him, or maybe bad things had happened to him in prison that had affected him… he was happier when he was at home, or just with a small group of friends.”
“Did the two of you have shared interests? How did you spend your time together?”
“Like I said before. Just watching TV together, talking, relaxing. Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but it worked for us.”
Zachary nodded. “And you weren’t aware of it when the stalker started harassing him?”
“Thinking back… maybe… he said he was depressed. He started shutting down different accounts, saying that he needed to spend more time IRL—in real life—instead of so much of it online. I didn’t really think anything of it. I thought he was exaggerating about being depressed. Maybe he was a bit down about things, but not really depressed.”
Harding was probably just good at hiding his feelings. His time in prison had probably taught him that. Like Zachary’s time in Bonnie Brown had taught him to mask his anger and pain, to keep anyone from thinking he was weak and a good target. If Harding’s feelings about the cyberstalker’s messages had been anything like Zachary’s, he had probably been seriously depressed. The cutting and antidepressants were pretty big signs that he hadn’t just been trying to get attention.
“So you couldn’t narrow down the timeframe when the stalker first made contact.”
“You can tell from his emails, can’t you?”
“He deleted them and emptied his trash, so I can’t be sure exactly when he started getting them.” He watched Ashley’s expression closely. “You don’t know when the stalker
started to send them?”
She shook her head. “So, sorry. And I don’t understand why it’s important.”
“Don’t you want the cyberstalker to be caught and punished?”
“Yes, of course…” her voice was uncertain.
“I would think you would want his stalker punished just as much as the person who killed him. After all, the person who killed him didn’t cause any suffering. The person who stalked and harassed him did.”
She didn’t offer anything up. If she was the stalker, she didn’t seem to be experiencing any regret or sorrow for it. If she wasn’t, she didn’t seem to have any comprehension of how much pain those words could cause. She acted as if it were nothing, instead of something that could have led to Harding’s death just as surely as being hit by a truck.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A
s he got back into his car to return home, Zachary called Campbell to give him a heads-up on the latest developments, aware that it unraveled all of the progress they thought they had made with the realization that the stalker had stopped harassing Harding immediately after his death. Campbell wasn’t as dismayed about it as Zachary was. Zachary could practically hear his heavy shoulder-shrug over the phone. “That’s one mystery solved, anyway. You got the number that sent this suspected malware? We’ll see if we can chase it down.”
“He’ll have thrown it out.”
“Undoubtedly. But we still might be able to figure something out.”
Zachary gave him the number. Campbell didn’t hang up immediately. “And you’re okay? You sound discouraged.”
“I’ll be fine. Just tired. Haven’t slept much the last few days.”
“Make sure you get it tonight, then. You need to get enough sleep for optimum brain function. If we’re going to close this case, we need you at your best.”
“Thanks.” Zachary wasn’t sure anymore there was any chance in bringing it to a successful conclusion. He hadn’t been able to provide anything that showed that Rusty Donaldson hadn’t just killed Harding by accident, just as the police had initially determined. “I’ll try.”
“Take care of yourself. We’re going to need you on other cases. Got to have someone keeping us honest.”
Zachary tried to laugh at the suggestion of him keeping the police in line. “I don’t think this was anything other than an accident,” he admitted.
“No. Neither do I. But at least we’ll have independent confirmation of that.”
Zachary grunted. After a bit more casual conversation, they hung up. Zachary put the car in gear and drove for a few minutes before calling Kenzie.
“Thought I’d let you know I’m back in town. Got back last night.”
“Oh, good! How did it go?”
“Well… there are still a lot of bad feelings for Harding. No one was too sorry to hear he’d died. But I haven’t been able to connect any of them to Rusty Donaldson or the cyberstalker.”
“Maybe it just was a coincidence.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Well, maybe you’ll be able to close this case before Christmas.”
“Yeah.” And then what? He had plenty of little jobs to keep him busy, but they wouldn’t occupy his attention like the Harding case had. And he needed something to distract him from the poisonous email messages. If they were from Harding’s stalker, would they just go away when he had closed the case? Or had the stalker transferred his obsessive interest to Zachary, and would just keep taunting him? And if it wasn’t Harding’s stalker, if it was Tyrrell like Zachary had originally thought… then what was Zachary going to do about it?
“Still there, Zachary?”
“Yeah. Just thinking. Sorry. What are your Christmas plans again?” He was pretty sure she had told him, but he tended to withdraw from any conversation about Christmas.
“I thought we were going to have dinner together and go see Rhys.”
“Rhys. Right. Did you manage to get something set up with Vera? Rhys said he was going to see his mom on Christmas Day.”
“You were supposed to talk to Vera to hammer out the details.”
“I was?” Zachary searched his memory, but couldn’t remember anything of the sort. Had Kenzie told him to do that? Had he offered? Did she just think she had mentioned it? “I… guess I forgot.”
“You’d better call her and find out. It’s just a few days away, Zach.”
“Uh, yeah. I will. I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to do it?” She gave him a few seconds to answer, in which Zachary tried to formulate an answer, but failed to find the right words. “Don’t tell me you’re going to if you’re not.”
Zachary swallowed. “I don’t think I can.”
“Fine. I’ll call her. But that means you’ll have to abide by whatever plans I make.”
“Yeah. Sure. No problem.”
“You are nothing but problems,” Kenzie complained, blowing her breath out in a sigh. But she didn’t say it in a mean way. It was lighthearted, just a bit of teasing between friends.
Zachary pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building and headed toward his parking space. He hit the brake and swore.
“You okay?” Kenzie asked. “Did something happen?”
“Uh—fine. Everything is fine.”
“It sounded like something was wrong.”
Zachary tried to breathe long and slow. If he breathed slowly and calmed his body, then his heart would stop racing like it was going to drill right through his chest and everything really would be fine. There was a beep behind him. Zachary glanced into the rearview mirror and saw one of the other tenants trying to navigate to his own parking space. Zachary was stopped right in the middle of the lane, blocking him from entering. He eased his foot off the brake and crept forward, steering slowly, driving like he was a hundred and three and half blind. He managed to get into his spot and put the car into park. He was okay. There was nothing to worry about.
“What’s going on? Should I hang up so you can focus?”
“No. I’m here. Just got home.”
A few seconds of silence passed. “What happened? A black cat cross your path?”
Something just as ominous for Zachary. He swallowed.
“Apparently… the manager of my new building decorates.”
“Decorates… for Christmas?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice. I like it when businesses take part in the festivities of the season. It’s nice to look around and see everything looking Christmas-y.”
Zachary’s mouth and throat were too dry to agree.
“Okay, well, if you’re back home, I’ll let you go. Have a good night.”
Zachary whispered a hoarse goodbye and hung up the call.
He took the key out of the ignition, gathered his things together, and got out of the car. He stared at the Christmas display inside the lobby apartment. Twinkle lights, a couple of decorated Christmas trees with fake presents underneath, and garlands around the windows.
He could deal with it. Every year, there was no avoiding Christmas decorations completely. He stuck to the stores and restaurants that did not usually decorate, didn’t accept Christmas invitations, and was generally a Scrooge. But there would always be a few times when he had to walk past decorated trees or window displays or when he couldn’t avoid Christmas music piped into a store. He still managed to do it.
The longer he took, the harder it would get, so Zachary forced himself to walk down the sidewalk to the building’s doors, to push them open, and to use his security card to unlock the inside door. There was no one else in the lobby. He aimed his body toward the elevator doors, closed his eyes, and started walking, hands held slightly in front of him so he wouldn’t walk right into the wall.
But his brain knew where the trees were and the fact that he was focused on them meant that he course-corrected to walk into them instead of past them. He felt the prickly needles and stopped. He didn’t want to open his eyes, but he wasn’t
going to be able to get back on track without looking. The sharp smell of pine filled his nose. He opened his eyes and it was like he was inside the tree. His face was only inches from the upward-reaching branches, lights, and decorations. Zachary backed up, found the elevators again, and shuffled toward them, hands still held out in front of him in spite of the fact that he could see the trees and the walls and wasn’t going to walk into anything. When he reached the wall, he put his hands flat against it. He bent his head forward slightly and rested his forehead against the cool wall.
He heard the lock on the lobby doors beep and then swoosh open. Trying to avoid looking like a complete idiot, Zachary managed to find the up button and push it. One of his neighbors fell in behind him to wait and didn’t ask him what he was doing worshiping the wall.
When the elevator bell dinged, Zachary peeled himself away from the wall and shuffled into the elevator. He didn’t turn around immediately.
“Floor?” the neighbor asked helpfully.
Zachary cleared his throat and gave it hoarsely, turning himself around as the elevator started up with a stomach-dropping lurch. The other man’s eyes flicked over him.
“A bit too much Christmas cheer?” he suggested.
Zachary nodded, his head swimming. Definitely too much Christmas cheer.
“Do you need a hand or can you get there yourself?”
Zachary held to one of the hand rails inside the elevator. “I’m okay.”
“You’re sure? It would only take a minute. I don’t mind.”
“No. No, I’m good. Thanks.”
He took a few deep breaths. Out of sight of the Christmas trees and decorations, the panic was starting to subside. He’d touched one of those trees. Actually touched it. It had been years since he’d done that. It hadn’t been on purpose, but he hadn’t fainted or thrown up in response. It had just been prickly.
The elevator stopped. Zachary checked the number to make sure it was his floor, and moved forward. The other man reached his hand out, tracking Zachary, making sure he wasn’t going to topple over. His other hand pressed the ‘open’ button, making sure Zachary had lots of time to navigate through them without a problem.
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