She got the voicemail. “Hi, this is Aria Joseph calling to confirm for 1 o’clock on Saturday the 17th with Meka.” Okay, that was done. She wondered if she should make a nail appointment. It was dangerous to walk-in on a Saturday but there was no telling how long her hair would take. Or maybe she should go first thing in the morning before hair. Yes, that’s what she would do. What am I forgetting?
“Hey, there.”
She jumped again. It was him, standing a few feet away from her car. “Yes?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to tell you to have a good night. And have fun at your dance.” There it was, that creepy smile again.
“Okay, you too.” What? That didn’t even make sense. She rolled the window up quickly and started the car. It was definitely time to go.
The car started right up which was never a given. It was iffy sometimes when it was hot. She had gotten a great deal on it but it had a lot of miles and it wasn’t the most reliable vehicle. Still, it got her from home to school to work just fine because she took care of it. Her mother had taught her about staying on top of her oil changes and never letting her gas tank get below 1/4.
She pulled out of the parking lot and turned right. She was about six miles from home. The radio came on and she heard a song she liked. She turned it up and hummed along with the music.
Red light. The usual traffic. No matter where you were in the metro area, there was always traffic. As she waited for the light to turn, she realized her doors weren’t locked. That was something else her mother had drilled into her head. She hit the lock button and happened to glance in her rearview mirror and that’s when she saw him.
The man from the restaurant. He was sitting in his car right behind hers. It had to be a coincidence. That’s what she told herself, anyway. Her heartbeat sped up and her hands shook, and she felt silly for being afraid. He couldn’t do anything to her from his car. It was stupid to worry about him. He would turn off soon enough. He probably just lived in the area.
The light turned green. There were two cars ahead of Aria’s but she was so anxious she stepped on the gas and almost rear-ended the car directly in front of her. This only succeeded in making her more jittery.
She passed slowly through the intersection, taking care to concentrate on the road, then made the next left. She checked her mirror again—he had made the turn and was still behind her. She told herself not to panic, that everything was fine, but her heart continued to race and her hands shook so badly she had to grip the wheel tightly to keep from coming unglued.
She came to a stop at the next red light. He was still behind her. The glare from the evening sun obscured her line of sight in the rearview mirror, but she was able to see just enough of him to know he was smiling at her. She could see his teeth.
She wasn’t sure what to do so she did the only thing she knew to do. She dialed the number with shaking fingers.
“Mommy, I think somebody’s following me.”
“What?” Maya sounded tired.
“I just left work and this guy is following my car.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! He came in Wendy’s right before I left and he’s been behind me ever since!”
“Oh my God. Okay, where are you?”
“I’m on North Fairston, about to turn onto Pine.”
“Don’t come home.”
“What?”
“Don’t come here! You don’t want him to know where we live.”
“Oh my God, he’s right on my bumper. What should I do?”
“Okay, hang up with me and call 911. I’ll call too.” She sounded out of breath. “I’m getting in my car right now.”
“Okay.”
“AJ?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you. It will be okay. Hang up.”
“Okay. I love you too.”
Aria turned onto Pine Street and the man was still right behind her. She began to panic, taking rapid, shallow breaths that made her feel lightheaded. She told herself to stop looking in the mirror but that only made her imagine the worst. She pictured him breaking her window and the image brought on a wave of nausea.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“I’m by myself in my car and there’s a man following me!” She turned right onto Woodbridge Road and there he was, still on her tail.
“Okay, calm down ma’am. What is your location?”
“I’m on, um, this is Woodbridge. I’m on Woodbridge right now.”
“Okay is there a landmark you can give me?”
She looked around, her panic disorienting her until she didn’t even know where she was. “No, there’s nothing on this road. My mom told me not to go home and now I’m lost. Oh my God.”
“Okay, it’s okay. I need you to stay calm for me. Does your phone have GPS?”
“Yes.” She willed herself not to look in the mirror.
“Okay, if you can, go to your GPS and get the coordinates for where you are. If you can, keep me on the line. Don’t hang up.”
“Okay.”
Aria fumbled around and almost dropped her phone. Her hands shook violently and her fingers were out of sync. She kept trying to get them to press the button for the GPS app but they wouldn’t cooperate. After several seconds, she finally got the app open and pressed her trembling finger against the circle. There, a bunch of numbers! She shouted them into the phone, not even sure the lady was still on the other end of the line.
“Very good, you’re doing great. Is he still following you?”
She glanced in the mirror. “Yes!”
“Okay. I’m going to give you some directions. I’m leading you right to the nearest police station, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Just do everything I say.”
The operator gave Aria a series of directions. After several turns, with the man following her every move, she finally spotted the police station on her right, a small brick building with an American flag atop its awning. She turned in as the operator instructed her to do and haphazardly parked halfway in a space. She looked behind her.
He was gone.
Too scared to move, she sat frozen, waiting for her heart the stop racing. The fear and anxiety erupted and poured out of her in waves. She sat there, alone, sobbing.
“Are you there, hon?”
“Yes,” she said, letting out a wail of relief. “What do I do?”
“Do you see the man who was following you?”
“No, ma’am. After I turned in the driveway, he kept going down the road.”
“Okay, we’ve sent an officer down that road to find him. Don’t get out of your car until an officer comes out.”
“Okay.”
“We have your mother on her way to where you are, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, sobbing, barely able to catch her breath. Through her tears, she spotted two police officers approaching her car. The younger one knocked on the window. “Ma’am? Could you step out of the car please?”
Aria turned the car off and grabbed her purse. She opened the door and immediately felt relieved. She hadn’t realized how trapped she’d felt inside her vehicle. “A man...a man was following me and the operator sent me here,” she said between sobs. The young officer put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s ok, ma’am. You’re safe now. We’d like you to come inside and give a statement.”
“Okay. My mom is supposed to be coming too.”
The two officers exchanged looks. “Miss, how old are you?”
“I’m sixteen.”
More looks. “Okay. Well, let’s get you inside. You can wait for your mom in there.”
As she sat in the lobby, she began to feel silly. All that fuss over some man who probably just wanted her number. Why had she freaked out like that? The longer she waited, the sillier she felt.
Maya ran in and ran straight to her daughter. She was a hurricane, if hurricanes wore satin bonnets and flannel pajama pants. Aria’s lin
gering fear quickly turned to embarrassment when Maya began to fawn all over her, examining her for wounds and kissing all over her face. She was a doting mother, especially when people were watching.
HARTLEY TOOK THE REPORT. The young woman described the perpetrator as a black male, approximately 30-40 years old, brown-skinned, and in a four-door black sedan.
“So what do you think?” he asked his supervisor.
“Well,” said Morris, “I think some guy scared the shit out of this girl. Maybe he meant her harm, I don’t know. But there’s nothing we can do at this point. Just log it and file it. Maybe he’ll pop back up and do something and we can arrest him.”
“Got it.”
Hartley entered the information in the incident report and filed the paper copy. Once that was done, he sat back in his chair and thought for several minutes before picking up the phone. He had a taste for Chinese food.
Chapter 28
IT WAS A NICE EVENING. Fallon had taken the kids with her to bible study and as was his habit lately, Barrington had waited until she left the house before coming home from work.
He didn’t quite know how to break the news to her that he had lost all interest in going to church. He was perfectly content to be a holiday saint—and he certainly had the wardrobe for it—but Fallon was not going to go for it. Of that, he was already certain.
So far, his Wednesday routine was coming along brilliantly. He didn’t have a plan for Sundays yet but he was tossing around the idea of saying he had to work overtime. The flaw in that plan was that Fallon took care of the finances, and would therefore know if extra money was actually coming in.
He grunted out loud. He would have to continue sacrificing his Sundays and ten percent of his paychecks for the foreseeable future because he didn’t have the guts to tell his wife the truth. They say ‘happy wife, happy life’, but where was the comparable saying for husbands? All he’d ever heard is “men are simple,” and while that was true in his case, he wanted his share of happiness, too. It would be a long ass life otherwise.
He decided to grab a little piece of happiness on that fine evening by going to the lake by his house. He had cast his line an hour ago and nothing was biting, but the peace and solitude were good enough. He was content. Relaxed. And he needed it after last week. He hadn’t told Tamara, or anyone else, that finding Jeneice Harwell’s body had profoundly affected him. It had actually been Jeneice’s aunt who stumbled upon the corpse, and her screams had stayed with him ever since.
The body had been located about one thousand feet from where Renee and Tiffany had been found. Whoever this guy was, he was consistent. He liked the trails and apparently, he knew how to navigate them without being seen or heard. The medical examiner had found DNA, and that had been a surprise for everyone in the department. The man was getting sloppy and very well may have sealed his own fate. It remained to be seen. Price had wanted to take credit for the successful search but Barrington shut that down immediately, giving all of the credit to the members of the community who came out in support of the Harwell family.
He’d also given his first television interview. Print was easy, and he’d done it many times, but the evening news was a different ballgame. Karen Newton was a pro. She’d put him at ease and he managed to give her sixty seconds of solid information without making a complete fool of himself. Fallon said he looked and sounded good.
The service had been beautiful. Someone sang, really sang, and Jeneice’s line sisters did a beautiful tribute. Barrington also met her grandmother for the first time. Apparently, she had been too ill to leave her home but somehow she drew the strength to come pay her last respects to her grandbaby. Someone threw down with the food for the repast and they sent Barrington home with several plates. They were good people.
Now they would wait. All of them. The Harwells, for news about their daughter’s cause of death. The community, for answers and an arrest. And the police, for a DNA match or some other clue that would make them look like heroes. But for now, Barrington was unplugged. Tomorrow was for the stress of work. Today was for peace.
It wouldn’t last.
“Dunn speaking,” he answered into his ringing phone.
It was Price. “Hey man, I have some good news. We arrested somebody for the Harwell girl.”
Barrington closed his eyes. Mr. Harwell would be so relieved knowing his daughter’s killer was caught. It would be the hollowest of victories, of course, because it wouldn’t bring his daughter back, but it would feel good. Even if just for a moment. “Anybody I know?” he asked.
“Nah, it’s a new guy, actually. One Hansworth comma Charles. White male, 24 years old.”
“White guy?” Barrington paused. “That doesn’t sound right.”
Price was silent for a moment before speaking again, quietly this time. “DNA matches.”
“How’d you match? Did he have priors?” Barrington asked, sitting up in his chair.
“Yep, a burglary out of Cobb County a few years back.”
Barrington’s wheels were turning. “That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, so I just wanted to let you know since you’ve been on this with us,” Price said, deftly breezing past Barrington’s accusatory tone.
“Hold on. Is he in for all of the murders or just Harwell?”
There was another long pause on the other end of the line. “What I can tell you right now is that we’re working on connecting him to the other cases. As soon as we have that, I can get more specific.”
Barrington was out of his chair now, pacing back and forth on the lake shore. Price was treating him like a random citizen. “Has he been interviewed yet?”
“Dunn, I don’t want you to trouble yourself with that aspect of the case. We have it in hand.”
Barrington sighed. “Has the family been notified, at least?”
“Yes, and they’re happy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“So...what now?”
“For you? Nothing. But don’t think we don’t need you anymore. We’ve still got open cases and families and a community that wants answers. We’re doing a presser tonight but you don’t have to be there. I know you’re taking a day. Just enjoy your break and we’ll pull you up when it’s time.”
Barrington hung up and returned to his chair, no longer relaxed or content. A white guy? Serial killers almost always hunted within their own racial and ethnic group. And why leave DNA now when he hadn’t left any before? It didn’t make sense. He placed a hand over his mouth and stared at the water. It was bullshit, and Price knew it, too.
Fallon had talked him to death about job politics and playing the game without getting played, but she had a tendency to ramble and act like a know-it-all. That combination made him tune out every time. But she had been right.
If he tried to talk to her about it now she would gloat. Women love to be right, and it’s not enough for you to acknowledge it. You also have to apologize for ever thinking otherwise and then listen to them clown you for your stupidity. The two had once argued for two hours about whether or not Michael Jackson actually had vitiligo. She finally dug up pictorial proof that he did and she didn’t let him live that down for days.
He loved her, he really did, but he couldn’t talk to Fallon.
“TAMARA, IT’S BARRINGTON. How are you?”
“Oh. Hi. I’m fine. How about you?” Her voice sounded flat and weak.
“Listen, I’m sure you heard by now but they, well we made an arrest in the Harwell case.”
“Already? Oh, thank goodness. That’s great news.”
“Yeah. But keep that close for now. But You can tell Nikki, of course. And let her know they’re doing a press conference tonight.”
“I still haven’t talked to her.”
“Damn. How long has it been?”
“About two weeks now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t understand why she would hold that against you. You were just trying to help us out. That’s called being a good cit
izen.”
He heard a weak chuckle. “Apparently not.”
“She hate snitches or something?” Probably. Everybody hated snitches. Even cops. Black folks had a bad reputation for it but that feeling was prevalent in most insular communities and organizations. Cops, the military, sports teams, sororities, and fraternities...it didn’t matter. Nobody snitched.
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Tamara said. So it was something. He let it go. She didn’t seem like she wanted to get into it and it was none of his business anyway. “So am I allowed to ask who it is you guys arrested?”
“You can but that doesn’t mean I can tell you,” he said.
That got a laugh out of her. “Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“Go ahead with what?”
“Go ahead and ask me.”
She hesitated. “Okay, who did you arrest?”
He waited the appropriate beat. “Sorry Ms. Johnston, but I can’t tell you that.”
“Really, Detective?”
They laughed at the same time, the soprano and baritone sounds merging into something that sounded like music to him. He had recently complained to Fallon that she never laughed at his jokes anymore and she had responded by admonishing him to tell better jokes. After a while he came to the realization that it isn’t the jokes that spawn the laughter, it’s the joy of being in that person’s presence that stimulates the pleasure center of the brain. The implications of that fact disturbed him, so he decided never to think about it again. But sitting there, on the lake, in his chair, listening to the sound of another woman enjoying him made him realize what he was missing at home.
She cleared her throat. “So this person, is he responsible for all the girls?”
“We can’t release that information yet but we should know pretty soon.”
“That’s good. Right? You don’t sound happy.”
He debated saying more. He wanted to talk about it, and he wanted to talk about it with her, but it wasn’t a good idea. “Let’s just say I have my doubts about the suspect. He just doesn’t fit the profile, or what I imagine the profile to be.”
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