He was Walking Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “Yeah. I know you’re right, but over the years… people have their own family traditions at Christmas. I don’t like to impose on anyone.”

  Kenzie pulled her phone out. “Look, let’s start planning now. Christmas Day, you and I are going to get together for dinner. My place.” They never went to Kenzie’s apartment, so this news startled Zachary. He figured since she had never invited him to her apartment, that she was protecting her own safety. She didn’t want someone else in her space. She didn’t want someone else to have access to her living quarters. It was a matter of keeping safe. She knew she could always leave Zachary’s apartment, but she couldn’t leave her own. Kenzie didn’t seem to notice Zachary’s consternation, tapping the details into her phone. “Don’t expect a big turkey dinner. I’ll do a two-person version. Turkey breast, gravy, mashed potatoes. But I’m not doing a whole bird, there’s no point in that.” She looked up from her phone, raising both brows.

  “Okay,” Zachary agreed. “Sure. Thanks, that’s really nice of you.”

  “Aren’t you going to put it into your phone or planner?”

  Zachary’s guts knotted tightly. He could barely breathe. “I’ll do it later.”

  “You might forget later. Just put it in now.”

  Zachary looked for a way out of it. He knew that he’d never be able to put anything on his calendar past Christmas Eve. That was always the way. He couldn’t plan anything past that cliff.

  He swallowed hard and pulled a sticky note out of the dispenser on his desk. Putting it on the desk, he hovered his pen over the note for a few seconds, with no idea what to even write. Finally, he forced himself to scratch out the words, “Kenzie X-mas?” He unstuck the note from the desk and stuck it to the edge of his monitor. Kenzie looked satisfied with this process.

  “Good. You know what can really help around Christmastime when you’re feeling really overwhelmed with everything?”

  She really didn’t have any idea how paralyzing it was for him. He didn’t just feel stressed at Christmas. He didn’t have problems with Christmas lists and trying to buy presents for loved ones. He didn’t worry over baking cookies for Santa or some community potluck. For him, it wasn’t overwhelming because there was too much to do. It was overwhelming because he couldn’t stop thinking about his family and how he had ruined their lives and his and how the pain would stop if he just chose to put an end to it.

  He shook his head in response to Kenzie’s question. “No. What helps?”

  “Doing something for someone else. Taking the focus off yourself and thinking about how you can help someone else to have a good Christmas.”

  Zachary grunted noncommittally.

  “I know. You think it sounds cliche. But it isn’t. Reaching out to someone else, taking the focus off of your own problems, it really does help.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You know what would be a really good idea?” Kenzie’s voice rose excitedly as the thought came to her. Zachary shook his head. “What about doing something for Rhys?”

  Rhys was a young black boy whom Zachary had met on a previous case. Rhys’s mother had ended up in prison, which meant he really was going to have a bad Christmas, his first one without her. Or maybe going to the prison to visit with her on Christmas. Not quite as bad as Zachary’s experience of burning the house down and losing everything he had on Christmas Eve, but it was a contender. Rhys had selective mutism, which had developed after his grandfather was murdered when he was still just a child. If anyone could compete with Zachary for rotten childhoods, it was Rhys.

  Zachary swallowed, his throat dry. “Yeah. He’s going to have a pretty sad Christmas this year.”

  “So let’s do something for him. Think about it, okay? We’ll brainstorm, and maybe talk to Vera and see what she suggests.”

  “Yeah.” Despite his misgivings, Zachary found that his heart did lift a little at the thought of doing something for Rhys so that his Christmas could be a little better. He forced a smile for Kenzie so that she would see he agreed it was a good idea. “Thanks.”

  There was a knock on the door and Zachary peered through the peep hole at the pizza deliveryman before opening it. The spicy and sweet smell of freshly-baked pepperoni pizza wafted into the apartment. Zachary settled up the bill and tipped the deliveryman, then put the box out on the table and opened it up.

  “That smells great! I could eat a horse!” Kenzie declared.

  Zachary had disposable plates and he had nipped across the street to pick up some beer before Kenzie’s arrival. He put out the extra items. Kenzie twisted off the cap on a bottle of beer.

  “You having anything tonight?”

  He considered the possibility, then shook his head. He hadn’t slept the night before, and if his thoughts turned to Tyrell’s letter he might want to take something to help calm his thoughts and help him to sleep. He wasn’t supposed to mix alcohol with his medications, so if he didn’t want to eliminate the possibility of taking pills later, he’d have to pass on beer at supper.

  “I’ll just have water.”

  “You know, I admire you being careful not to mix your meds and alcohol,” Kenzie commented as she took a couple of big slices of pizza from the box and slid them onto her plate. “Too many people just ignore those problems and end up with liver damage or a really bad reaction. Or a toxic combination. I’d rather not see you on Dr. Wiltshire’s table.”

  Zachary shrugged and looked for the smallest piece of the pizza. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Actually, it is. I’m proud of you for not allowing yourself ‘just one’ or saying you’ll have burned it all off by the time you need to take anything. A lot of people ignore those warnings.”

  “Well… thanks.”

  They sat down in the living room to eat. Kenzie lounged comfortably against the armrest and closed her eyes to savor the pizza. “This is great. I’ll have to remember them next time I’m ordering in.”

  As disgusting as it might seem to outsiders, Zachary and Kenzie often talked over autopsy results while they ate, so once they were settled, Zachary started to think about Richard Harding and his sudden death on the side of the road that night.

  “So you have some initial autopsy findings on Harding?”

  Kenzie took another big bite and nodded while she chewed it. “Yeah. Nothing shocking. Blunt force trauma that shattered everything down his left side. Consistent with what would happen if he was walking down the right side of the road with his back to traffic. Death was probably instantaneous. Not a lot of bleeding despite the trauma.”

  “That will make Rusty Donaldson feel better.”

  “Who is Rusty?”

  “The trucker who hit him. Having nightmares about Harding slowly dying in the ditch because he didn’t see him in the dark, even when he went back and looked.”

  “Oh. That sounds pretty awful. I didn’t know they’d caught the guy. But yeah, Harding didn’t likely suffer.”

  “And there wasn’t anything out of place or unexplained?”

  “Tox screen was clean. He wasn’t drunk or high, so I have no clue why he was out walking on the road in the dark.”

  “Wearing dark clothing and walking with his back to the traffic.”

  “A lot of people don’t seem to know they’re supposed to walk on the left. They’re so used to driving on the right, that’s what they automatically do. But dark clothing… that’s pretty stupid. From what I understand, there’s a fair bit of traffic on that road.”

  “Yeah. It’s not exactly a quiet farm road, from what I gather. I’m going to go out and take a look at the scene in a day or two.”

  “Well…” Kenzie shrugged. “Who knows what his reasons were. Maybe he was out looking for his dog. Or checking on a strange noise. Or a UFO.”

  Zachary chuckled. He nibbled at his slice of pizza. Kenzie had already worked her way through one big slice and was starting the second.

  “The girlfriend thinks it wasn’t an accident. She thinks that the driv
er hit Harding on purpose.”

  “Is that why you’re on the case? Looking to prove intentional homicide?”

  “Yeah. I mean… not trying to prove it, but investigating whether it’s a possibility. I don’t have any intention of railroading the guy.”

  “I hope not. Not the Zachary I know. Why does she think it was on purpose?”

  “She didn’t give me a cogent reason. But I might have found it without her help.”

  “What?” Kenzie inquired, mouth full.

  Zachary motioned to Richard’s computer. He crossed the room to sit at the desk, putting his plate to the side so it wouldn’t be near any sensitive equipment. He hated the feeling of crumbs crunching under the computer keys.

  “I’ve got his computer. A lot of stuff has been deleted from his phone and computer. All of his social media apps. He had been using a new email address recently, but I did get into his former email address.” Zachary beckoned Kenzie over. She stood behind his shoulder, keeping her pizza well back from the computer. Zachary switched back to the email screen he’d been looking at previously and waited for Kenzie’s reaction. She leaned forward to read the subject lines and her mouth dropped open.

  “Holy crap!”

  Zachary nodded his agreement. “He tried to block the guy, but nothing worked, he just kept rotating email addresses. So Harding created a new email account and stopped opening the previous one. And he started using IP anonymizers and private browse windows to keep from leading the stalker to the new email address.”

  “That’s pretty hard core.”

  “The stalker was sending stuff to all of his social media accounts and probably his phone number, and was harassing him through whatever means possible. I mean… look at these.”

  Kenzie was looking at the subject lines. She shook her head. “Things were really bad. Poor guy. You think this is why the girlfriend said it was intentional homicide? Because she knew he was being stalked?”

  “He must have told her about it, right? I can’t imagine him just going on with his life and not even mentioning it to his partner.”

  “You’re right. He’d need to tell someone. He couldn’t just deal with it without anyone else even knowing.”

  Zachary nodded. He held a lot of things in. He put up with the pain and didn’t tell those closest to him. He thought he could deal with it himself. But keeping the extent of the harassment Richard was dealing with a secret seemed impossible.

  “So does the girlfriend think that this Rusty, this truck driver, is the one who was harassing Harding?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say anything about it. But that’s going to have to be my next step. Trying to trace the cyberstalking back to Rusty. Matching up his schedule with the IP locations of the emails. He’s a long haul trucker, so these emails should originate from all over the area he covers.”

  “Yeah. Good thinking. Unless he’s been masking his IP addresses, which I certainly would if I was stalking someone. If he knows how to track Richard’s email address and other details, then he wouldn’t leave himself open the same way. He’d cover them up so no one could get back to him.”

  “Even if he did, there should still be a pattern to the timing as well. No emails when he was actually driving from one place to another. More during his down times. And some kind of connection between the two of them, because he needs to have a reason for this. They must have belonged to the same club, gone to the same church, something. And they don’t exactly live in the same neighborhood. They must have some kind of shared history. This sounds personal, don’t you think?”

  “Have you read through them to see what they’re talking about? What it was that triggered this guy?”

  Zachary randomly clicked on one of the subject lines, opening the email. The subject line was “you should be too ashamed to even live,” and when the email opened, it was filled with dark and violent moving gifs. Kenzie winced and pulled back.

  “Oh. Yuck.”

  “There is text in some of them.” Zachary closed the email and clicked on another. There were a couple of lines of rambling text. Zachary, staring hard at the words to make them stay still and make sense, ended up just shaking his head. “I can’t make heads or tails of it. You’d think that with my experience, raving lunatics would make at least some sense.”

  “Don’t put yourself down. If you’re going to catch this guy, you’re going to have to outsmart him. You’ve done that before and you can do it again. He’ll have made a mistake somewhere, we just have to find it.”

  Zachary closed the email again and just stared at the flickering screen. “Do you think it’s the trucker? Or do you think it’s coincidence that he was being stalked and then got killed?”

  “I don’t know… Obviously, the girlfriend would disagree with me, but this doesn’t have the hallmarks of a stalker or a crime of passion or insanity. It feels like an accident. Like the truck driver was just lighting a cigarette or changing the radio tuner, and looked away from the road in the instant that he might have caught a glimpse of Harding. Night driving, going a bit too fast, Harding is all dressed in dark colors. Rusty wouldn’t have been able to see Harding until he was on top of him, and then it’s too late.”

  Zachary nodded. So far, he didn’t see anything that suggested otherwise. The fact that Richard had a cyberstalker did not mean that the stalker had killed him.

  Chapter Six

  A

  shley griped and groaned about having to meet Zachary at suppertime out at Harding’s house, and Zachary wondered if maybe she thought he was fishing for a date or even just a free meal. That wasn’t what he had been doing, and he tried to explain to Ashley without saying anything that might disturb her.

  “I’d like to see the road while it’s still light enough to see where they found Richard’s body and scout around a little. But I also want to see it at night. How dark it is, how busy it is, how far ahead a truck would have been able to see. I don’t want to have to put you out twice, so I thought if I could catch the daylight and the nighttime both in one visit, that would work the best.”

  “Oh.” Ashley thought about this. He didn’t know if she were looking for an argument, a way to talk him out of his logic, but if she were, she didn’t seem to find it. “I guess… I can see your point.”

  “You don’t need to feed me. I realize it’s suppertime and it’s inconvenient. I don’t want to put you out, so you just go about your business and have your meal like you normally would. I’ll want to look around the house about that time. You don’t need to entertain me.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  “If you were concerned about it, you don’t need to be. I’ll be around for a few hours, but other than a few questions, I won’t need you most of the time.”

  “Well… okay, I guess. I’ll have to get out there to tidy things up for the real estate agent anyway. May as well do it all at once.”

  “I’m sorry to put you out…”

  “No, like I say, I have to get out there anyway…”

  So he got his way and showed up at Richard Harding’s home after a slow drive down the road Harding had been killed on, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was no sign of the accident that had occurred there, no marker showing where he had been struck or where his body had been found. Zachary didn’t see any significant marks on the pavement, though there were occasional light skid marks, some of them perhaps made as cars avoided wildlife, and one by Rusty Donaldson after something bounced off his front fender, when he pulled his rig over to have a look.

  Ashley stood in the open doorway of the house watching him as he pulled into the gravel pad to park. She didn’t greet him, but simply asked, “What do you want to see first?”

  “I’d like to have a look at where his body was found. I have the GPS coordinates from the police report, so I don’t need you to go with me.”

  “Why didn’t you just look at it on your way in?”

  Zachary hesitated, trying to work it out
in his own mind. It just hadn’t seemed like the right thing to do.

  “I didn’t want to be poking around without checking in with you first.” He gave an awkward shrug. “I guess you probably don’t care, but it didn’t seem proper.”

  Ashley didn’t disagree with his assessment or say it was stupid. She just looked at him for a minute. In the afternoon sun, her complexion was washed out and she seemed older and more worn than she had at Old Joe’s.

  “You don’t need to come with me,” Zachary told her again. “But if you want to be there to supervise or… be where it happened… we can go out together.”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “Should we take my car or yours?”

  Zachary grimaced. “I know it’s not environmentally conscious, but we should probably take both. I have cameras and other investigative equipment in my car that I might need and you might want to come back before I’m done. If you have your own car, you can decide how long you want to stay.”

  Ashley headed over to her own car, a shiny blue VW Bug, and got in. It was a far cry from Kenzie’s beloved red convertible or Richard’s nondescript black four-door Cavalier. He pondered what it might say about her personality. Fun loving? Artistic? Outgoing? It was hard to reconcile in her current grieving state. He slid back into his white compact, which looked exactly like hundreds of other white compacts in the county, commonly used in rental and courier fleets and by people who were concerned with maintaining a good resale value. A private detective’s car, intended to be invisible and unmemorable.

  He let Ashley lead the way rather than relying on the GPS coordinates, though one thing he would do when he got there was to verify the location against the police records. He couldn’t think of any reason Ashley would have to lead him to the wrong location, but people’s memories could be faulty. The record the police had made was unlikely to be.

  The irrigation ditch was close to the road, so there wasn’t much space to pull over. He did the best he could and hoped that the passing traffic would take care and not hit his car.