He was Walking Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “I never met Harding before in my life. I don’t know what he was doing out on the road that night, but if I’d seen him, I would have avoided him. I would never have hit him on purpose. The thought that I hit and killed a man… it just makes me sick. Whenever I think of the thud that night, my stomach is all in knots.”

  “As far as you know, you never talked with him, never emailed or texted him, never ran into each other at some social event.”

  “No. Nothing. I’ve never heard of the guy before in my life.”

  “You never dated his sister or his girlfriend.”

  “Uh…” Rusty shook his head. “I have no idea who his girlfriend is. How would I know that?”

  “Do you know an Ashley Morton?”

  “Is that her name?”

  “Do you?”

  “No. No, I don’t know anyone named Ashley Morton. I don’t date a lot, and when I do, it’s usually ladies who… hang out around the truck stops. If your girlfriend is one of those gals, then maybe we’ve hooked up before. But I don’t remember an Ashley.”

  “I’ll try to find any connections between you. And I’m a good investigator, you should know that. If you’ve had any contact with Richard Harding or Ashley Morton before or after the accident, you should just tell me now.”

  “No. I swear, I’ve never heard of either one of them before.”

  “Would you mind giving me all of your contact details? Any phone numbers or email addresses that you use? Your home address, anywhere you use computers regularly?”

  “Why would I do that? You could set me up!”

  “I’m not trying to set you up. If you haven’t had any contact with him, then you have nothing to worry about.”

  Rusty motioned for Zachary’s notepad and pen. Zachary flipped to a fresh page and slid it across to him. Rusty wrote down several lines of information.

  “Anything else?” he demanded. “Social security number? Blood type?”

  “If you want to include those, and your birth date, that would make things easier for me,” Zachary agreed, keeping his voice and expression flat.

  Rusty looked up at Zachary in surprise, then broke into a grin again, the mask of indifference falling away. “It’s not in my best interests to make your job easy.” He looked down at the information he had written down. “So why am I giving you all of this?” He pushed it back across to Zachary as if he were afraid that he might tear the page out and crumple it up. “If I had contact with Harding, do you really think I would give you that address or phone number?”

  “No. I don’t. I don’t think I’ll find any of these numbers or addresses on anything with Richard Harding’s name on it. But eliminating them is one more step. One more thing I can do for my client.”

  Rusty shook his head. “Helluva job you’ve got there, Goldman. Helluva job.”

  Zachary knew that if he wanted to avoid another sleepless night, he was going to have to open the letter from Tyrrell. Bridget hadn’t called him or contacted him to see if he’d opened it yet, but he was sure she was thinking about it, wondering how long it would take him to pull himself together and simply rip the envelope open.

  He wore gloves and slit it carefully with a knife, treating it as if it were important forensic evidence. And it could be, couldn’t it? There might be DNA in the saliva that was used to seal the envelope, if it wasn’t a self-sealing envelope and if the sender hadn’t used a sponge-top bottle to seal it. There could be fingerprints on it. There could be other evidence that he wasn’t aware of. A hair stuck in the seal. Skin cells. Other transfer evidence.

  He slit the end rather than the top, and then pressed the top and bottom of the envelope to make it pop open in a tube shape to examine the contents.

  It appeared to be a single sheet of paper. No unknown powders or other contaminants. No letter bomb. Just one piece of paper.

  He used a pair of tweezers to snag the letter and pull it out onto the table. Just a plain white piece of paper, torn off a tablet, slightly jagged at the top. Not a densely-written letter, just a few loose lines of print, the same printing that had appeared on the outside of the envelope.

  Dear Zachary,

  I am looking for my brother.

  Do you remember me?

  If you are the right Zachary Goldman, please get in contact with me.

  T

  He had followed with several lines of contact information. An email address, a cell phone number to call or text. A repeat of the return address written on the outside of the envelope.

  Zachary read the words over again hungrily, like a starving man who, expecting a feast, had been given only a single cracker. Tyrrell—assuming it was Tyrrell who had written the letter—wanted to get in touch with him. But he had left it up to Zachary.

  There were no declarations of love or hate, leaving him to wonder how Tyrrell felt about him. Sorry they had been separated? Angry for what Zachary had done? Maybe he didn’t care about reconciling and just needed a kidney. Would Zachary give him a kidney if he asked?

  Zachary carefully put the envelope and letter into a plastic bag before taking off his gloves.

  Chapter Four

  Z

  achary ran a full background check on Rusty Donaldson. Criminal record, courthouse search, credit check, past residences, family members, all of the public records he could think of. He owned his truck and rented his house. He didn’t have any criminal charges. No DUIs. A few speeding tickets, but none of them at crazy speeds and none of them at night. He’d had stable employment. No marriages, divorces, or paternity suits. All in all, a guy who had been living quietly within the law for many years.

  The next task was to check out Harding’s phone and laptop, which Ashley had supplied Zachary with. The police had looked at his phone and not found anything of interest, but Zachary knew they didn’t usually look at electronics too closely unless there was a compelling reason, and in the case of a man accidentally hit from behind on a dark road at night, there wasn’t a reason to give them more than a cursory look. Zachary had called Gerry Birch, his usual tech guy, who had cloned the computer’s hard drive to preserve any data. Gerry had also broken the news to Zachary that the drive was encrypted, which meant that a simple boot hack like he’d used in other cases would not be helpful.

  The first thing he thought odd was that Harding’s phone didn’t have any social media on it. No profiles, no instant messaging apps, nothing. The apps built in by default had been removed. The email address that was attached to the phone was a new address that had just been set up within the last year and had only a few non-spam messages in it.

  Even the text messages had been wiped. Zachary had looked at dozens of phones that still had every text message since the beginning of time stored on them. People hardly ever deleted text messages, and if they did, it was just a few here and there. The ones that were incriminating. Harding’s text messages had been completely wiped. There were only a few messages exchanged with Ashley, in the day or two before he had died. Then the increasingly worried and frantic texts that Ashley had sent when she couldn’t reach him the morning after the accident. Zachary followed the progression from casual and routine to really worried, demanding Richard call her.

  The phone itself was a recent purchase, within a few months of Harding’s death. For anything earlier than that, Zachary would have to see what he could get from the phone company. Getting call logs, text logs, and old voicemail messages from phone companies could be complicated. It sometimes took weeks or even months to get everything. Even a police warrant didn’t always get an immediate response from one of the big providers.

  Ashley had known the unlock code for the phone, which had saved Zachary the effort of trying to hack it. The computer was another story. Zachary tried a few different passwords, hoping that the computer didn’t have any kind of software on it that would automatically destroy data once the limit of password retries was reached. Variations of Ashley’s name, Harding’s birthday, anniversaries of when they had
met and started dating. The phone unlock code had been a simple pattern, but trying to replicate it on the computer didn’t work.

  Zachary searched through the phone for any note or password keeping app. He glanced at the computer screen and noticed an unlock icon. He turned the phone screen off, sending it into standby mode, and the lock icon disappeared. He could have kicked himself. The phone was a key to unlock the computer. A proximity auto-unlock. Zachary unlocked the phone again and clicked the unlock icon when it appeared on the computer screen. The laptop whirred and the screen came to life. He was in.

  At first look, the computer was much the same as the phone. It was of recent vintage and didn’t have a lot stored on it. The email address was the same as the one attached to the phone and all messages and messaging apps had been removed.

  When he opened the browser, it booted automatically into a private window instead of the usual browser experience. The kind that didn’t leave electronic footprints showing what sites had been visited. In Zachary’s experience, it was rare that the average computer user even knew about private browsing modes, much less had their default browse mode set to private. He dug into the computer’s connection details and found that it was also set up to connect through an IP anonymizer, making it more difficult to track where the computer was logging in from. It was some serious online security, which was surprising considering how easy it had been to get onto the phone and computer in the first place.

  Private mode on the browser was set to automatically wipe the history of the sites visited. Zachary switched over to regular browsing, and found that the history had been deleted there.

  He switched over to the built-in operating system app that could save and autocomplete passwords, and found that it had not been cleared out. Zachary went methodically through the list. All of the main social media sites. Some news sites. Harding’s email address. But there was another email address too, one that neither the computer nor the phone were logged into. Zachary typed the webmail URL into the browser and accepted the autofill suggestion. The inbox had obviously not been checked in some time and was overflowing with unread messages. Zachary stared at the bold black subject lines.

  How could you live with yourself?

  You are a piece of s***

  You should be ashamed of yourself

  You should die

  Zachary swore to himself under his breath. He had begun to suspect that there was something strange going on with Harding. The lack of social apps and texts on his phone, the private browser, and a brand-new email address were not exactly red flags, but had made him curious. If Harding was being electronically stalked and harassed, that would explain why had had started taking countermeasures to cover up his online activity.

  Zachary started to read through the accusatory emails. They were, unfortunately, vague and rambling and did not outline exactly what the writer believed Harding had done. The accuser had known and had assumed that Harding also knew exactly what he was talking about.

  The emails came from a number of different addresses with odd combinations of letters and numbers, obviously from a system that generated one-off addresses. The kind you could use when you wanted to download a free guide without getting spammed by the company afterward. Chances were the email addresses themselves would be untraceable.

  Zachary logged into each of Harding’s abandoned social media accounts in turn. It didn’t take long to find the vitriolic messages in the direct mailboxes of each of them too. It was no wonder Harding had stopped using them. There was no escaping the messages. Harding’s banned, muted, and blocked user lists were long, but his stalker had obviously just kept creating new identities and harassing Harding relentlessly.

  After spending hours going through Richard’s social media and poison pen messages, Zachary was almost afraid to look at his own phone when it buzzed to indicate that he’d received a text message. He knew it was silly, because he wasn’t the one who had been getting the harassing messages. The only unusual contact that he’d received recently was the letter from Tyrrell. But after seeing how the stalker had hounded Richard, Zachary couldn’t help feeling a little vulnerable himself.

  As a private detective, he knew how easy it was to find out all kinds of supposedly private details about the average person, but he had never been particularly careful about protecting his own information. Maybe in the back of his mind, he had hoped that by leaving a trail, one day some member of his family would come along and track him down. If he made himself too difficult to find, then there was no chance he would ever be reunited with his loved ones.

  Zachary picked up his phone, and instead of seeing a message from Richard’s stalker or from Tyrrell, he was almost surprised to see a message from Kenzie.

  Hear you’re on the Harding case. Give me a call when you’re free.

  Zachary stretched and yawned noisily. He unfolded himself from his chair at the desk and made a trip to the bathroom and then to the fridge before calling Kenzie back. If they ended up having a longer discussion, he didn’t want to be interrupted by inconvenient physical demands. He’d been hunched over the computer for hours, which was not good for his body or his mind. He walked briskly around the apartment for a minute to get the blood flowing and to clear his head.

  He sat on the couch and gave Kenzie a call. He closed his eyes and visualized her masses of dark curly hair and her bright red lipsticked lips as the phone rang. He felt a rush of warmth when he answered and heard her “Hi, Zachary.”

  “Hi. How are you?”

  “What’s this I hear? You get a new case out of my office and you don’t give me a call? What’s going on with you?” Her voice was teasing, not really angry with him. Usually, she was irritated when he asked about a case that she believed was clearly accidental but he thought might just be something else.

  “You hear it from Bowman?” he asked.

  “Where else? You apparently didn’t think it was important enough to call me.”

  “I don’t need you yet,” Zachary returned, teasing her gently back.

  “Ha. Exactly! I know how it is. The only reason you’re interested in me is to get someone to interpret pathology reports for you.”

  “Kenzie, you know that’s not true… I’m getting pretty good at reading them by myself.”

  She chuckled. “Well, your friend is in autopsy right now, so I thought maybe you’d like to get together for supper to go through initial findings. Full report won’t be ready yet, of course, but I can hit the high points.”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” Zachary looked at Richard’s phone and computer, and thought he might want to show Kenzie what he had found there. Which meant that a restaurant wouldn’t be the best place to meet. The two of them huddled over a laptop at a restaurant would be awkward, even if he waited until after they had eaten. “How would you like to come over here and we’ll order in?”

  “Oh,” she was obviously surprised at the invitation. They really didn’t stay in. Most of the time, she was trying to make sure he got out of the house for something other than surveillance. “Sure, that sounds fine.”

  Chapter Five

  K

  enzie showed up on schedule and she and Zachary went through a few takeout menus before settling on pizza and placing their order. They talked in general terms about work and the weather and current events while they waited for the pizza.

  “Are you getting ready for Christmas?” Kenzie asked.

  Zachary tried to figure out how to respond to her. She didn’t mean anything by it, she was just making more small talk, the events of the previous year and what she knew of his past far from her mind.

  Kenzie lifted one eyebrow, waiting for his answer. Then he saw realization enter her features, and her mouth formed a small ‘O’ of surprise. “I wasn’t even thinking, Zachary! I forgot that Christmas is a hard time for you. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Zachary tried to brush it off and move on to other topics. “It’s just my thing, you shouldn’t
have to tiptoe around me.”

  “Well, since I already put my foot in it, how are you doing with it? Does your therapist have any tips for getting through holidays and anniversaries of bad things happening?”

  “I… never thought to ask.”

  “You know that you’re seriously depressed every Christmas, and you haven’t addressed it with him? Don’t you think that might be a good idea?”

  Zachary shrugged. “I’ve had so many psychiatrists and therapists in the past… none of them have ever been able to do anything about my state of mind around Christmas. I’m just used to… trying to get through it on my own.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You need to get help and not be left alone with your own thoughts at a time when you know you’re likely to be suicidal.”

  Zachary scratched his jaw, his face and ears burning. “Uh…”

  “I’m sorry if being blunt embarrasses you. But it’s not a topic to be delicate about. Do you know how many people end up in the morgue because they didn’t talk openly about being depressed and having suicidal thoughts?”

  “I guess more than would if they talked about it. I’m just… not used to it. People just usually don’t want to hear. It makes them uncomfortable.” He was aware that he was echoing Bridget’s words. How many times had she chided him that talking about depression or mental illness in front of their friends made them uncomfortable, and he should never do anything that he knew would make them uncomfortable. He had grown up knowing this rule in the back of his head and knowing that talking about depression and suicide was taboo, but he’d never had anyone tell him that explicitly before Bridget. It just wasn’t discussed in polite company.

  “Taking care of yourself means letting other people help and explaining when there is a problem,” Kenzie said. “If you push everyone away, then you’re going to find yourself alone and that’s going to be a problem.”