by Ladew, Lisa
Joe was at the receiving desk already, waiting for her, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.
“Aren’t you working today?” she asked.
“Yeah, but this won’t take more than half an hour will it? We don't have to work for four more hours.”
“I don't know how long it’s going to take.” Kara tried not to think about why she had put on her uniform that morning. Truth was, she knew it was probably to keep Sgt. Gale from evaluating and possibly judging her choice of clothes. She still hated it that Sgt. Gale didn’t like her. Two high-speed women working at the same place should be friends, not enemies.
Joe gave her a hug and held her out so he could look at her. “How are you doing? Are you okay? Sorry for taking off on you yesterday.”
She nodded, and they took off down the hall towards the elevators together. “I am good. And it’s okay, I went to the dog park with Zane.”
Joe’s eyebrows shot down. “You went out with him again? Twice in two days? Isn’t that a little much?”
Kara frowned. “So what? I like him.”
“But you barely know him. What’s his last name again?”
Kara shook her head. “I’m not telling you. Just leave him alone. He is a perfectly normal and nice guy.”
They reached the elevators and Kara pressed the up button. The elevator doors dinged open immediately and they stepped inside.
Joe pressed his lips together like he did when he was angry or holding something back. Kara knew all his mannerisms by now. She pressed her own lips together in imitation of him and even crossed her arms, huffing out a breath, since that was probably coming next. Joe could be moody and temperamental sometimes, but he cared about her like a brother and always, always had her back.
She saw his lips twitch and she made her face even grumpier, sticking out her gut and pulling her head backwards, trying to make a double chin. Joe let out a laugh and shoved her into the side wall of the elevator just as the doors opened on the third floor. “I don't look like that,” he hissed at her.
Kara giggled and strode past him, looking for room 312. She saw Sgt. Gale immediately, waiting in the hallway, her back turned to them, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, a briefcase in her hand. For a moment, Kara had the thought that she’d never seen anyone look so defeated. It was something in her slumped posture and the lack of any noticeable energy. But then Sgt. Gale turned to face them and the customary aggression in her expression pushed that thought right out of Kara’s mind. Sgt. Gale was fine - just angry or something.
Kara tried to smile, and fleetingly wondered why she was even bothering. Sgt. Gale didn’t smile back. “There you two are, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Kara reached in her pocket for her phone, then realized she didn’t have it, but she knew they weren’t late. She wasn’t going to grovel. “Well here we are.”
Sgt. Gale open the door and motioned that they should go inside. A woman was sitting behind a desk inside the large office room. She smiled as they walked in and Kara smiled back, happy to see a friendly face. She had never seen this woman before and wondered if she worked for the department or was an independent consultant. The woman looked to be almost sixty years old, with a broad, open face, light skin, and short-cropped white hair.
The woman half-stood and held out her hand to Kara and Joe. “Hi, I am Dr. Holstetter,” she said with a thick European accent. Kara and Joe introduced themselves and sat down in the leather chairs opposite the woman’s desk. Sgt. Gale came last, and pulled a chair over from the corner of the room, to sit next to Dr. Holstetter’s desk, instead of across from it next to Kara and Joe.
“We are all here to talk about Mr. X, yes?”
Kara nodded, apprehension filling her suddenly. Mr. X seemed like as good of a name as any for the creep.
Dr. Holstetter looked straight at her, her eyes fiery. “And you are the young woman he is bothering, correct?”
“Yes,” Kara said.
“Well then, let us get started. I have studied each contact he has made and have drawn some conclusions about him. He is male, between thirty and forty years old but I tend to think he is closer to forty. He is outwardly strong, confident, and probably even a bit arrogant. That is how people see him unless he wants them to see him differently. Inwardly, he’s hiding at least one very serious personality disorder. Probably more than one. My guess is he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, possibly several anxiety disorders, and maybe even bipolar or manic issues. He’s been dealing with these since childhood. He is genetically predisposed and was treated in a way during his childhood to make sure these tendencies became cemented in his personality.”
Kara listen to these words and tried to process them. If she had sat down and tried to think what this guy might be like, she probably would’ve come up with seventy-five of this information on her own. It all seemed too textbook.
Dr. Holstetter pulled out a stack of pictures, and Kara saw a picture of herself on the very top - her Academy graduation picture.
“He is fixated on a certain kind of woman,” Dr. Holstetter said, laying out the pictures one by one so they could all see them. “The similarities between these women are obvious. Dark hair, petite bodies, pretty faces with striking eyes. All of these women could be sisters, yes?”
Dr. Holstetter looked at each of them in turn and Kara resisted the urge to nod. Joe nodded, but Sgt. Gale simply stared. Kara saw a tiny piece of paper in Sgt. Gale’s hands that she folded over and over again until it ripped in half, then she put half in her pocket and started to fold the piece that was left.
“He is fixated on this certain kind of woman. But there was some sort of severe rejection by a woman who looked like this in his past, so he can’t approach her.”
Kara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She could have figured that much out on her own.
“In his current life, he has most likely tried to leave his infirmities behind. He probably does not see a doctor anymore, he may not be taking any medication anymore, and possibly, if he did see a doctor as a child, he may have taken legal action to get all of those records removed so that people in his current social circle could never find out about them. There is a possibility that he has a military or police background. The roles of authority that these types of jobs give people are very attractive to people like him.”
Those words brought a hot blast to Kara’s chest and she suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She never would’ve guessed that. The thought of this guy as a cop made her want to puke.
“He’s accelerating. He’s accelerated with each woman. The first woman, he didn’t contact at all, the second woman something happened to cut his contact short. My guess is some sort of confrontation with the boyfriend, I’m sure. Bad news for the boyfriend. The third woman, he took it to what was completion at that time, but in only seven months. The fourth woman, he attempted to take his contact to completion in only six months but he was shot, yes? He will not have gone to a hospital for this injury if at all possible. He would have doctored himself, or found a trustworthy or bribable friend to do it for him.”
Sgt. Gale broke in. “Bribable?”
“Oh yes, this man will be a big believer in the power of bribes. He doesn’t understand friendship or true relationships, but he still needs to get by in our world, so he will do what he understands. He will find out the worst of a person, and threaten to expose that to the world unless they do what he wants them to.”
Dr. Holstetter looked right at Kara, her gaze dominant. “And now he has chosen a police officer to be his next contact. In my opinion, he has done this in order to ensure a replay of his last lack of completion. He has chosen you, Kara, because he knows you will fight back. He wants that, and his plan is to be sure that he comes out on top this time, effectively erasing the last failure.”
Kara shuddered, knowing she would fight back, but wanting to be the one on top. Wanting to make sure this guy never followed or assaulted another woman again.
“Do you hav
e a boyfriend?” Dr. Holstetter asked her.
Kara shook her head, then recanted as Joe looked at her. “Well, I’m dating someone.”
“He is in danger. You need to warn him that this man may try to get him out of the way at some point, or just scare him off somehow.”
Kara’s mind twisted. Zane’s handsome face slammed into her thoughts and stuck there. God she hated this. She didn’t want to be the reason anyone was in danger.
Sgt. Gale pulled something out of the briefcase at her feet. “That reminds me, is there any chance that this man fits the profile of our perpetrator?”
Kara craned her head to see the piece of paper. It was an arrest record. Joe was also staring at it and suddenly he faced her, frustration on his face. “He’s been arrested? You never told me that.”
Kara stood up and leaned over the desk, desperate to read the name at the top of the sheet. Zane Michael Rowe it said. Her eyes jumped to the arrested-for box. Assault.
Kara slumped back into her seat. “I didn’t know,” she said softly. She could feel Sgt. Gale watching her closely. Dr. Holstetter was reading quickly through the paper and making small hmm noises in her throat.
Kara felt anger rise up in her. This was outrageous! “It’s not him! Don't you think I would know if I were going out with a stalker?” She turned to Joe quickly. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. It just didn’t come up.”
“What does Mr. Rowe do?” Sgt. Gale asked, her tone skeptical.
“He’s the owner of Rowe Construction,” Kara said reluctantly, sure they were going to read something negative into that.
“Rowe Construction,” Sgt. Gale repeated lightly. “I knew I’d heard his name somewhere … I read it in the newspaper. He’s working on the McLean project.”
A memory flashed in Kara’s brain. She remembered Zane telling her about how he had gotten the McLean job. She watched his lips move in her memory as he said, That and his office building seemed like the best places to be in his face but not stalking him, if you know what I mean.
She shook her head. Zane was not a stalker. He didn’t have any personality issues. He wasn’t obsessive-compulsive or manic … Her thoughts broke off again as she remembered him patting his pocket three times. She pushed the thought away. He had explained that.
“How did you meet him?” Sgt. Gale asked. Kara explained how he had been in the house when they had received the alarm call on Seth’s first day on the job. Sgt. Gale’s eyebrows drew together. “Did you ever talk to the homeowner?”
Dr. Holstetter uttered another hmm from behind her desk and suddenly Kara had had enough. She felt her emotions swirling out of control and she knew she had to get out of there before she blew up at someone.
Kara stood and left without a word. Her hands clenched into fists, her mouth pulled down in an angry grimace. More than anything, she was angry at herself for losing her cool, for not being able to calmly and rationally refute everyone’s assertions. What was her problem? Why was she so touchy when it came to Zane?
Chapter 17
Kara charged out of the police station, intent only on getting some distance, calming down. She still had three hours until work started. She took off down the sidewalk, needing to move, needing to burn up some energy. She walked for fifteen minutes until she felt better, ignoring people staring at her. She ducked into a Walgreen's and bought a cheap, temporary phone, then walked back to the Police Department parking lot and got in her car to drive home.
Once there, she took off her uniform and went out into the backyard to sit in the grass with Duke and throw his teddy bear for him. She sat there until it was time to go to work, thinking hard, her thoughts circling the same two issues. Zane wasn’t her stalker and anyone who thought he could be was just wasting their time was one thought. That the stalker had chosen her specifically for some sort of epic confrontation was the other. That last thought made her sick to her stomach. She’d been in danger before, even shot, but it had never been personal. It had been because she was a police officer doing her job, on the street, meeting angry and violent people every day. But this was different. This guy had picked her out personally with the intention of using her to work out his twisted fantasies and issues. She wondered briefly what kind of a sicko he was and if she had ever seen him or talked to him. She wanted to believe that she would know that kind of a person on sight, or at least after talking to him for a few minutes, but Kara knew the truth was probably very different.
She scratched behind Duke’s ears and cuddled with him in the yard whenever he would sit still long enough. She wondered if her stalker’s plan was to kill her. What could she do about it, if so? Only what she had been doing. Only what she always did. Be the safest she possibly could and be aware of her surroundings at all times. She wasn’t going to go in hiding. She wasn’t going to change her life because of this guy. She wasn’t going to run in fear, no matter what.
She kept reminding herself to call Zane and do what the criminologist had said - warn him of the danger he was in - but every time she reminded herself she found a reason not to do it. He’d been arrested and hadn’t told her about it. She needed to look up his records and see exactly what happened. Or should she just ask him and see what he said? And if he had a good story, would she compare it to what was written in the official record? She didn’t know. She really, really liked him and she wanted the arrest to mean nothing, but it did mean something. It meant a lot. Finally, her mind still spinning endlessly, she got up and put her uniform back on. It was time to go to work.
***
Sgt. Aria Gale sat at her desk, her fingers working a paper clip mercilessly. She pressed play on the video on her computer for the third time. It showed a tall, dark-haired man - Zane Michael Rowe - giving an interview about his plans for the downtown McLean Building. She’d already watched it four times, and with each playing she liked what she saw even less. He was the right age, and the right size. He had a military background. She ran back over the traits the criminal profiler had said the stalker possessed. Strong? Yes. Confident? Yes. Arrogant? Maybe. Hidden personality issues? There was no way to tell from this short thirty-second clip, so she would just have to do some digging into his past. The one thing she liked the least was that the first contact with the first woman, Amber Lansing, had happened exactly two months after Zane Michael Rowe had been discharged from the United States Army.
Aria did a quick Google search to find the address of Rowe Construction. Should she start interviewing the people that worked for him? His friends? His family members? Who would be the least likely to tip him off and possibly push him into an early confrontation with Kara Price, if indeed he was the guy? She didn’t want to think he was the guy, but she would be negligent to ignore him, especially since all of the other investigating she had been doing had turned up nothing workable so far.
Aria threw away her mutilated paper clip and started on another one. She would try a couple more computer checks into his past, but then she would be forced to actually talk to somebody who knew the man.
But first she had a phone call to make. Kara had left in anger before she heard the last of what the criminologist had to say. Her obvious attraction to this Rowe guy was blinding her to the slim possibility that he could be who they were looking for. She wouldn’t even entertain the idea. Aria didn’t think Kara would listen to her, so she needed to talk to someone Kara would listen to. Aria grimaced slightly at the thought of whether going to the brass would make Kara upset or not, then brushed it away. Kara was already upset with her. Half the damn department was upset with her these days. She sighed. It was hard to deal with people when the one man who was never supposed to hurt you betrayed you in the worst way possible. With your sister.
***
“You ready?” Kara asked Seth, her eyebrows raised. Seth nodded, his gaze on his feet. When is he going to get comfortable with me? “Let’s go catch some bad guys,” she said, starting up the patrol car and pulling out of the parking lot. “You’ve g
ot the radio today, Seth. Call us in service.”
Seth did so, not stuttering once. Kara smiled and hoped they would have a good day. She was glad to be at work. The busier they were, the less time she would have to think about what was going on in her life right now.
Almost immediately, they were sent to a suspicious person call in an alley behind a bakery. Apparently a man had sworn at an employee when she tried to take the garbage out to the dumpster.
“This sounds like a fairly harmless call, right?” she asked Seth, as she swung the car in the direction of the bakery. He turned his face towards her and nodded, but never quite looked at her. “Don't get complacent though. Complacency gets police officers killed. Assuming the man is still in the alley and he is cooperative, what is the first thing you are going to do?”
“A-a-ask hi-his n-n-n-name.”
“Yes, and then what?”
“D-d-dr-driver's license.”
“And then?”
“Wh-wha-what is he doing there?”
“Okay good, and what are you going to do if he runs from you?”
Seth sat quietly for a moment, appearing unsure.
Kara decided to tell him. “You’ll need to chase him. Because we have a request from the public to determine the safety of this man, until we figure out who he is and what he is doing there, we have to assume he is performing some sort of criminal activity. But if he doesn’t run, and he gives us his identification and doesn’t have any wants and warrants, then we can just tell him to leave the area.”