by Camy Tang
“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him.
Everyone told him that. A part of him knew it, logically. But a part of him just didn’t believe it. It was his job to protect, and he hadn’t been able to protect them. He hadn’t been able to protect anyone.
“I quit the border patrol the next day,” he said.
Her hand squeezed his.
They sat in silence for a long moment, while he waited for the images to fade from before his eyes. The wind didn’t chill him anymore, because he was already stone cold.
“You need help to heal,” she told him.
“I’m fine,” he ground out.
“Your frustrations are eating away at you from the inside.”
It did feel like acid, burning a bigger and bigger hole in his gut, but he didn’t tell her that.
“You don’t have to go to a counselor,” she said. “But maybe a pastor. Pastor Lewis is—”
“I’m fine.” He shot to his feet, letting go of her hand. Somehow, he felt smaller without it.
Monica rose more slowly. “Just think about it.”
He didn’t need to. He wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. He didn’t need to talk to anyone.
He could handle it himself.
Shaun had closed himself off from her, and it was her own fault.
Monica glanced at him as he drove his Suburban through downtown Sonoma, heading out toward San Francisco. She’d wanted him with her today because she had an appointment with her accountant about the clinic, and it would be sure to upset the stalker. But Shaun’s silence and the subtle way he kept himself at arm’s length from her told her volumes about what he was feeling.
“Still no notes from the stalker?” he asked.
“None,” she said. It was ridiculous how her pulse jumped at his voice, at the realization that he was speaking to her. Since the moment in Union Square Park, he’d only spoken to her when she’d asked him a question or he’d wanted her to do something.
When he had been telling her about the coyote, the pain etched across his face had broken her heart. He had spoken in a monotone, as if he didn’t realize he was speaking out loud. This was a dark place inside him, and he needed healing.
She wanted to heal him.
And in hearing how the deaths of those people had affected him, she had also started to realize something for herself.
She knew it hadn’t been that often, but it had seemed like the Emergency Room where she worked had always gotten trauma cases of policemen and firemen injured in the line of duty. She had seen the men’s wives in their grief and brokenness when their husbands died in the Emergency Room. Their pain had been so deep, it had cut through Monica even though she’d only been the nurse, not the spouse. She had vowed she wouldn’t put herself in a place where she would have to endure that.
But as she heard the horrible things Shaun had had to witness and endure, all by himself, she suddenly realized that those men needed their wives to be there for them, to help them heal. Shaun could have used someone to hold him, to help him release his frustration and anger, to force him to talk to a counselor. Instead, his feelings had festered and made him hollow with guilt.
Monica admitted she had never really been in love. But now she could see how love would make a woman risk the ultimate pain in order to share in the ultimate intimacy. She still wasn’t sure if she herself could do it, but she understood it now.
They were on a main street, with no stoplights but with several small side streets. Shaun slowed down.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing serious. It’s just that sometimes people shoot out of these side streets without looking.”
As he spoke, he had turned his head to look down a side street they were passing, and Monica followed his gaze in time to see the dark shadow of a pickup truck fill her vision.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
Shaun hit the brakes and yanked the wheel. The Suburban skidded out of the way of the oncoming pickup, which had been on target to hit them square in the side. Instead, it rammed into the edge of their bumper with a jarring crunch.
The airbags deployed just as the Suburban shuddered to a halt. The slap of the bag against her face sent her head backward.
“Are you okay?” Shaun asked.
“I’m fine…” She looked out his rear window. The pickup truck, after missing them, had apparently swerved around to avoid slamming into a bank and was now heading toward them again. “Shaun!”
He stepped on the gas and jerked the Suburban out of the way of the oncoming truck, then zoomed down the street.
Monica turned to look behind him. “He’s after us.” The truck was a newer model with a strong engine. He could have moved up alongside them, but instead he hung back and slightly to their left.
“He’s trying to do the PIT maneuver on us,” Shaun said, looking into his side view mirror. “Hang on.” He gunned the engine and aimed straight for a lamppost.
“Shaun!”
At the last second, he swerved the Suburban out of the way.
However, the pickup had been focusing on trying to ram them and didn’t notice in time—it hit the lamppost straight on.
The crunch of metal grated in her ears as Shaun’s driving slammed her against the side of the Suburban. Then he slowed the car and pulled over onto the side of the road. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door.
“What are you doing?” she said.
Shaun raced back down the street toward the pickup truck, but Monica could see a dark figure crawl out of the ruined truck and run away. He was too far ahead of Shaun, but maybe he could narrow the distance between them.
Then she noticed that several other cars had crashed as a result of the pickup’s wild pursuit. She immediately got out of the Suburban and raced to the nearest vehicle. “Are you all right?” Monica asked the young woman who was stumbling out of a minivan. “Are your kids okay?”
“I hadn’t picked them up yet, thank God,” the woman said, pressing a hand to her temple. “I’m all right.”
Monica didn’t see any blood, but she told the woman to sit down on the curb nearby. She reached into her pockets and realized she’d left her phone in the Suburban, so she asked the woman, “Do you have a cell phone? Can you call the police?”
Monica went from person to person until the police and an ambulance arrived, comforting a shaking gray-haired woman and helping to stop the bleeding of a minor abrasion on a teenage girl. She didn’t think, she just acted, going into nursing mode, saying the right things, working efficiently and gently.
And then as the paramedics arrived to check an old man with a tender ankle, she felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Shaun standing there, clutching his side and breathing heavily.
She burst into tears.
His arms went around her like bands of steel, holding her close. She was shaking. She was probably in shock. But Shaun’s solid presence helped her to calm down quickly after that release of emotions.
Unlike the last time she’d cried on his shoulder, when her tears stopped, he gently stepped back. He held her shoulders at arm’s length away from him, and it seemed like a chasm.
“You’re okay,” he said to her.
She nodded numbly.
“I’m going to go talk to the officer,” he said. “You’ll be okay here?”
“I’m fine,” she croaked.
She watched him walk away. He had saved her life. He had pushed her away.
And she realized she loved him.
Monica squinted at the fuzzy video of the man getting out of the wrecked pickup truck. She turned to Detective Carter. “That’s the best video you could get of him?”
“We’re lucky we got video at all,” the detective replied, leaning back against the table in the Sonoma Police Department audio/visual room. “The place where he would have T-boned you doesn’t have any cameras, but since he missed you there, he had to chase you and he got in range of this camera on the office building dow
n the street from the crash.”
She leaned in to look at the video again. “I can’t tell who it is at all.”
“When I was chasing him, I could tell he was about Phillip Bromley’s height,” Shaun said. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
Monica shook her head. “Look at the way this man moves. He doesn’t quite seem like Phillip.” She glanced at Detective Carter. “Did you talk to Phillip?” They’d told him what Phillip had confessed to them a few days earlier.
“I did yesterday. He said the same thing you did.” He looked at her squarely. “I’m looking into it, Monica. I’m not sure yet if he’s telling the truth or not.”
The detective turned to Shaun. “You said the man had a car near the intersection where he was going to T-bone you?”
Shaun nodded. “It was parked down Elm Street. When I chased him, he was too far ahead of me. He got into the car and took off.”
“I ran the license plate number you gave me,” Detective Carter said. “The man’s getaway car was stolen only that morning, same as the pickup truck.”
Shaun sighed.
“You got DNA off the steering wheel of the pickup, right?” Monica asked.
“We sent it to the lab. They did a quick screening and it looks like it might be the same DNA from Shaun’s attacker, but it’ll take another week to be sure. If it is the same person, we know his DNA isn’t in any of the databases.”
Monica and Shaun thanked the detective and left the station, but as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she suddenly felt vulnerable and open. She looked around at the busy streets of downtown Sonoma, filled with tourists.
“What is it?” Shaun asked. “Do you see him?”
“No. I just think I do.” She walked quickly toward Shaun’s car, a small loaner sedan while the garage repaired his Suburban. “I got photos this morning.” Candids taken a few days ago, again with the red bull’s-eye drawn over her face. “I liked it better when I didn’t know if he was watching me and taking photos or not.”
Her cell phone rang as they were passing a group of young Hispanic men loitering at the corner of the hardware store, and she had to walk quickly to move out of range of their chatter.
It was Phillip Bromley. “Hi, Phillip.”
Shaun frowned at her. She turned her back to him.
“Monica, I, uh, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit busy—”
“It won’t take more than a minute. I’m in Sonoma right now.”
“You’re here?” She glanced around. “Where?”
“I’m at Lorianne’s Café.”
“We’re only a couple blocks away. We’ll meet you there.”
Shaun’s lips were pressed together as he watched her put her phone away. “The man could be a stalker and a murderer.”
She hesitated, then she said slowly, “I don’t think he is.”
“What? Why would you believe him?”
“I can’t explain it.” She began walking toward the café. “When I was watching him, my gut said that he was telling the truth about seeing that man outside of Clare’s townhouse.”
“It was pretty convenient, don’t you think? Especially since he’s the only one who saw him.”
“Did Nathan’s friend in the LAPD ever find that convenience store clerk and show him Phillip’s photo?”
Shaun scowled. “Not yet. They can’t find him because he quit the store a few years ago.”
“Until he positively identifies the man wearing the duster as Phillip, there’s no way to know for sure if Phillip is lying or telling the truth.” She stopped and looked Shaun in the eye. “You can believe he’s lying. Fine. But I’m going to believe he’s telling the truth. There’s no difference between us. We’re both choosing to believe something without proof.”
He had a stunned look on his face, but she turned and kept walking toward the café.
Inside, she spotted Phillip sitting at the bar, but he wasn’t drinking anything. His expression was serious as he greeted her. He seemed worried.
He held something out in his hand, and she automatically reached for it. It was a flashdrive.
“After I talked to you, I started to think back to the time I spent with Clare in L.A., and people we both knew or saw. So I dug up some old digital photos on my computer.”
Monica’s heart started to beat faster.
Phillip continued, “I think I saw the same guy in the background at three different places, on three different days. In two of the pictures, he has a camera in his hand.”
A camera? Monica’s hand closed securely over the flashdrive. “Are the photos dated?”
“I downloaded them from my digital camera on different days over a three month period. Just look at the date of the file to see when it was created.”
“Did you recognize the man?” Shaun asked. Monica had almost forgotten about him. He had a tight edge to his voice as he spoke, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be sarcastic or earnest in his question.
Phillip shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before, which makes it strange that he’d be at those three parties. We usually knew all the people who went to the same parties.”
“Thank you, Phillip,” Monica said.
“Don’t thank me yet. I don’t take very good pictures, especially after I’ve had a few drinks.”
“Anything is better than nothing.”
He headed toward the door to the restaurant, but then he paused and looked back at her. “Even if I don’t do anything else in my life,” he said fervently, “I wanted to help you catch this guy. I wanted to do something that I would be really proud of.”
And then he turned and walked away.
TWELVE
Monica frowned at her laptop computer screen and reflected that Phillip Bromley really did take terrible pictures.
Shaun scooted his chair closer to her at the kitchen table, where Monica had set up her laptop. Behind them, Evita was preparing lunch at the stove, and the smell of fajitas filled the air.
Phillip had included all the photos he’d shot during the months when Clare had been in L.A. Some of them were of the same party Clare had gone to, but not all the pictures included her in it.
But he’d put three pictures in a folder to single them out, and it did indeed look like the same man was in the background of all three.
One was a shot of Clare with her roommate at a restaurant, posing for Phillip’s camera. Over Clare’s left shoulder was a dark-skinned man sitting at a table behind the two girls. He had dark blond hair that contrasted with his skin. On the table was a camera.
The second picture had been taken in a nightclub, and the camera’s flash had blinded out much of the three people Phillip had been taking a picture of. One of them was Clare, one was her boyfriend, the third was a girl Shaun didn’t recognize. Between Clare and her boyfriend’s heads could be seen the figure of a man leaning against a pillar. The photo was very fuzzy even when they blew it up on the computer screen, but something about the way he held his head, positioned his shoulders, seemed like the man in the first photo. The nightclub was dark and they couldn’t see much of him.
The last photo was of Phillip sitting down in a movie theater with Clare at his right. He had taken the picture himself—his left arm stretched to the side of the picture to show where he’d held the camera out in front of them to take the shot, but he hadn’t been centered, and the picture showed only half of Clare’s face cut off by the edge of the photo.
But because of Phillip’s bad shot, the majority of the photo showed the rows of chairs behind them. And directly over Phillip’s left shoulder, a few rows back, was a man.
It was the least blurry of the three pictures, but even then, the man’s features weren’t very clear. He had an oval face, tanned skin and long, wavy hair that was a darkish blond color. His eyes might have seemed a little close together because they were small for his face, but since the shot was head-on, it was hard to tell if his nose was big or n
ot.
Monica stared at him. “Something about him seems familiar, but I can’t place him. I don’t think he looks like any of my investors.”
“I don’t think so, either.” Shaun leaned in so he could stare at the picture, and it brought his face close to hers. Her skin prickled at his nearness, and she scooted her body away from him.
The man in the third picture was almost definitely the same man as the one in the first picture, and possibly in the second picture, too.
“He looks like a day worker.” Evita laid a hot plate of fajita-grilled chicken in front of them.
“You mean Hispanic?” Monica asked her.
“Not just that, but he looks like one of the migrant workers or one of the field laborers.”
“How can you tell?” Shaun asked.
Evita pointed her spatula at the computer screen. “Look at his eyes. No raccoon eyes tan lines. Because they wear sunglasses, a tourist or an athlete will usually have a band around the eyes that’s lighter than their tan. But day laborers don’t since they don’t usually have sunglasses.”
She was right. The man’s face was very evenly darkened. “You don’t think he’s just naturally dark-skinned?”
Evita shrugged. “He could be, but he’d be a little dark for a Hispanic man. When I first looked at him, I thought he looked tanned.”
“I think he is tanned,” Shaun said. “Look at the dates on these pictures. This one, where his skin is darkest, was taken only a couple of weeks after Clare moved to L.A. These two pictures were two and three months later, and his skin looks a lot lighter.”
“So he was tanned when he was up here in Sonoma, when he first started stalking Clare,” Monica said. “He was a day laborer somewhere in this area.”
“I don’t think that helps us any,” Shaun said. “There are hundreds of migrant workers and field laborers in Sonoma county.”
“But he had to have been working close to Clare. Let me call Rachel’s boyfriend Edward. He hires field laborers for both his greenhouses and also his mother’s farm. It’s a longshot, but I can’t think of anything else.”