He was Walking Alone

by P. D. Workman

  “I’m afraid not, no. You can look, but I don’t think you’re going to find much enlightenment in this one.”

  “He seems to be quite the enigma,” Zachary said. “I should be getting the rest of the background reports today, but so far I haven’t turned up much of anything.”

  By the time they met for dinner, Zachary had followed up on the background searches, and not only had they not turned up much of interest, they had come back almost blank. He was used to being able to find at least a few points of interest on a subject, but Harding was different. He didn’t seem to have a history. Even his electronic footprint only went back a few years. Before that, he might not even have existed.

  “Have you ever had that happen before?” Kenzie asked. “I mean, he could just be a really boring person, right?”

  “It’s not just that he’s boring. Or law-abiding. There’s just nothing there.”

  “So…” She took a polite bite of her salmon. “Are we talking witness protection program?”

  “I guess that’s a possibility. More likely he was in the country illegally. Or he created a false identity.”

  “And which do you think it is?”

  Zachary poked at his potatoes. “I need to talk to the girlfriend. Ashley. See if she knows anything about it. I know she’s been holding back on me. She never could explain why she couldn’t believe it was an accident.”

  “She knows, then,” Kenzie decided. “How about her? Did you run any background on her?”

  “Well…” Zachary was hesitant, wondering whether she would approve or whether she thought it was an invasion of privacy. He didn’t usually run background searches on his clients. Not without a good reason. “I did do some preliminary searches on her. Hers come back more normal. Credit history, mentions of awards and scholarships in school, work history on her LinkedIn account. Interests, hobbies, and family on her social media accounts. She comes back as a real person, but he doesn’t.”

  Kenzie pondered this and had a sip of wine. “It’s fascinating to hear how it’s all done. It really is.”

  Zachary smiled. Most people, finding out how mind-numbingly boring private investigation could be, were let down. Real private investigators weren’t Dick Tracy or Nero Wolfe. Real private investigations work involved a lot of paper, thinking time, and waiting around.

  Back at Zachary’s apartment, Kenzie unpacked her portfolio briefcase while Zachary got out drinks and ducked into the bathroom to take a couple of pills unobserved. When he sat down on the couch with Kenzie, she turned the bottle around to look at the label.

  “Sparkling white grape and peach,” she read. “Sounds nice.” She poured it into the two brand-new champagne flutes and had a taste. “It’s good. This is really nice, thank you for a great evening.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Zachary pointed out, smiling a little, “there are still autopsy photos.”

  Kenzie laughed. She pulled the written report out from under one of the pictures and started to tell him the findings, outlining Harding’s numerous broken bones. Zachary listened closely.

  “Can you tell by the broken bones how fast the vehicle was going when it hit him?”

  “Not with any accuracy, no. The breaks are sharper and there is more shattering the faster the vehicle is going, but we can’t say ‘this was a truck going fifty and this was a truck going sixty.’”

  Zachary nodded. “And you can’t tell what he was doing—whether he was walking or running, what position he was in when he got hit…?”

  “Not much more than that he was standing and he was hit on the left side.”

  “Is there anything that doesn’t make sense? Anything that stands out? Inconsistencies?”

  “It’s a pretty straightforward MVC.”

  Zachary nodded. He hadn’t really been expecting anything different, but he had hoped that there would be something illuminating. Just one or two little facts that would point him in a different direction. He took a sip of the sparkling juice Kenzie had poured for him. While he would have preferred a Coke, the sparkling juice was to help set a romantic scene. He thought too late about putting on some background music. It might seem awkward to get back up and do it while they were discussing dead bodies. And there were no candles. Never any candles. He had been relieved that the flickering candles on the tables at the Inn had turned out to be little electric lights rather than the real thing.

  “How about this…” he said slowly. “You’ve seen the body. Say it’s a John Doe. You don’t know anything about him. What does the body tell you about what kind of a person he was? Where he lived, what he did, health issues, medical history…”

  “Interesting question.” Kenzie considered. She stared up at the ceiling as she thought about it.

  Zachary looked through the photos as she thought.

  “Caucasian male in his thirties. He was in good shape,” Kenzie said, “Body Mass Index put him at a healthy weight for his height. But not really muscular. A bit of stooping in his shoulders and back, which says he was probably sedentary, sitting for long periods of time. Maybe a computer gamer. Hands would suggest some manual work, though. Some dental work that wasn’t really up to first-world standards, so maybe he had lived out of the country for a while.”

  Zachary picked up one of the photos. “He had tattoos.” He didn’t know why that surprised him. A lot of people had tattoos, even forty-something stay-at-home moms and minor children.

  “Yeah, a few of them.” Kenzie shuffled through the pictures to pull a couple more out. “I thought this one a little odd.” She handed him a picture of a snake tattoo. “It looks like it was applied over broken skin, which is a big no-no. You see how the ink tones are uneven.”

  “Trying to hide a scar?” Zachary suggested.

  “Maybe that was the idea, but any self-respecting tattooist would wait until it was properly healed over, so you don’t end up with these color shifts.”

  “Why put a tattoo over broken skin, then? Wouldn’t that be painful?”

  “I would expect it to be quite a painful process.” Kenzie took a sip of her drink, then suddenly frowned. “Actually, you may be onto something there…”

  “What?”

  Kenzie looked at her written report, and then tracked down a photo. She handed it to Zachary. He saw an expanse of skin, with a little group of parallel cuts.

  “What’s this from?”

  “We weren’t sure when we looked at it to start with. But now I’m wondering… if he was self-harming. You see cutting more often with girls, but some guys still do it. You said he was on meds for depression. Maybe he was cutting too.”

  “And the tattoos were to cover the areas he’d been cutting? To hide them?”

  “Maybe… or maybe to amplify the pain.”

  Zachary grimaced. “Ouch. You think?”

  “Sometimes body modification aficionados are addicted to pain or using it the same way as someone who self-harms. Tattoos or other mods could be socially acceptable ways to harm himself.”

  “Maybe. He was depressed; if the meds weren’t giving him any relief or he was looking for something that would work faster…”

  Kenzie looked sideways at Zachary and didn’t agree or disagree.

  “What about this one?” Zachary held up the initial tattoo picture he had grabbed. “I don’t see any scarring in or around this tattoo.”

  Kenzie studied it. “This one looks different. Like maybe a homemade tattoo instead of a professional one.”

  “You think he did it himself?”

  “I don’t think he could have done it alone. He would have needed help, even if he was trying to do it at home.”

  “Another question to ask Ashley.”

  “I think you should definitely talk to her. Maybe this is enough ammunition to get her to open up.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Z

  achary met with Ashley at the police station. He hoped that if he talked to her there, she would be uncomfortable and off-balance, and mor
e likely to talk about what it was she had been keeping a secret. Since he wasn’t a police officer himself, it had taken a little finessing to get the use of one of their meeting rooms. In the end, Bowman had reserved it in his own name, and insisted on being present for the interview since his was the name that was on the record.

  He started with a disclaimer that Zachary was not the police and that she wasn’t required to answer anything he asked. Ashley nodded, but her eyes went back and forth around the room, anxious at the unfamiliar setting.

  “Some things have turned up in my investigation,” Zachary explained.

  “What things?”

  “You haven’t been completely honest about who Richard was, have you?” Zachary pressed, keeping his language vague. “You thought it didn’t make any difference, but I need all of the details if I’m going to sort this out.”

  She chewed on her lip, uncertain. “I just want you to prove that the truck driver intended to murder him. You don’t need to know every little detail about Richard’s life for that.”

  “I do need to know. Keeping it from me doesn’t help.”

  “What did you find? You said you had turned things up in your investigation.”

  Zachary studied her, waiting for her to fill the silence. She was sweating and squirming uncomfortably, but she didn’t break down. He put down a copy of the photo of the DIY tattoo that Kenzie said Harding would have needed help with. Maybe Ashley had been the one to assist him. If not, he was sure she would at least know the history of such a thing. She wouldn’t just see tattoos on her boyfriend’s body and not ask about them.

  Ashley wiped her forehead and grimaced. “I promised never to tell anyone,” she said plaintively.

  “I think he would have made an exception for when it would help convict his killer.”

  “But I don’t see—it can’t help you. And if you already know, then me telling you would just be betraying him for no reason!”

  “I need the details. I need you to explain it to me.”

  He waited. He had certainly attacked the right weakness on his first try. There were several ways the conversation could have gone and he was happy it had worked right away. There was something about that tattoo. Something that had made Richard different. Something that explained it all.

  “I told him he should get it removed,” Ashley said. “I told him it could come back to bite him if the wrong person saw it. But he said… no one but me was going to see it, because it was covered up normally. He said no one else would ever see it.”

  “And maybe they didn’t. While he was alive. But now we’ve seen it. I’m still waiting for an explanation.”

  Ashley sighed. She looked over at Bowman, as if asking whether she really had to tell Zachary. Bowman just lifted his eyebrows and waited, arms folded.

  “He got it while he was in prison,” Ashley finally admitted.

  Bowman shifted. Zachary was careful not to look at him. He kept his eyes on Ashley. He nodded, showing no surprise, as if she were only confirming what he had already known. And maybe he should have figured it out. A prison tattoo. That’s why it was lower quality. That was why it looked homemade.

  “How long ago did he get out of prison?”

  “Three years.”

  “Around the time you guys met.”

  “Yes. I was one of the first people he met when he moved to Vermont. He figured that here, he’d be able to start a new life. He’d be able to be a normal person instead of someone that everyone knew was a convict. You can’t live a normal life when everyone knows you’ve been to prison. They judge you. They don’t treat you the same way.”

  “No,” Zachary agreed. And it was true of other facilities as well. A psych hospital, juvie, drug rehab, residential care. People looked at him differently when they knew. They looked at him like he was an alien, a completely different species. “Why didn’t you just tell the police that when they started the investigation? Instead, you’ve had everybody running around not knowing where to look.”

  “Where to look for what?” Ashley challenged. “You already know who it was that ran him down. You just need to prove that it was intentional instead of accidental.”

  “How can we do that without being able to tie him to Richard’s earlier life? Or even to his original name?”

  “He wasn’t that person anymore. It was a tragic accident, and he paid for it. He wanted to leave that chapter of his life behind and be able to leave a normal life as Richard Harding.”

  “But it isn’t that easy, is it?”

  “No. He was always paranoid someone would recognize him or would be able to track him down in spite of the name change. I told him that was silly. No one was going to be stalking him. Everyone else was just going to go on with their own lives, and he could to.”

  “Except that it did catch up to him.” Zachary thought about the words in the accusing emails and messages. People like you. What you did. Unforgivable. “Someone did run into him or track him down and was sending him those emails.”

  “He never told me. Did he think I wouldn’t believe him? Why wouldn’t he trust me with that?”

  “Maybe because it was from a part of his life that you hadn’t had anything to do with.” Zachary thought about how he had instinctively gone to Mr. Peterson when he got the first few messages from Tyrrell, not to Kenzie or Bowman or another of his friends. Zachary had been sent to the Petersons’ house after the fire, when he had been put into foster care for the first time. He associated them with that time in his life. Sharing information with Kenzie about his early life wasn’t easy. She had not been a part of it. “Is there someone he might have gone to? Someone from his previous life that he would have gone to with his problems?”

  “No, he’d completely cut himself off from his former life. His therapist suggested changing his name and moving away. His family didn’t really want anything to do with him. So he figured, why not? He didn’t want to be punished over and over again for something that wasn’t even his fault.”

  “How much do you know about his life before, when he was—what was his name?”

  “Brandon Powers.”

  Zachary wrote it down in his notepad. “Did he give you his version of what happened when he was Brandon Powers? What it was he went to prison for?” Zachary said it as if he already knew the details, and just wanted to check to see if Ashley did.

  Ashley sighed. Zachary could see that even though she had been fighting against telling him, trying to keep the secret she had promised to keep for Harding, she was relieved to have someone to tell it to. She wanted to get it off her chest, to have someone to share the burden of knowledge with.

  “It was an accident. He had half his life taken away from him because of a car accident.”

  Zachary couldn’t suppress a shiver. Harding had been convicted because of a car accident and then he had been killed in one? He could already begin to see the parallel that had convinced Ashley that it must have been an intentional homicide.

  “Just tell me about it in your own words,” he told her. He didn’t want to have to drag each individual statement from her. He didn’t want to be left with a hodgepodge of unconnected statements and with no overall picture. He wanted to know the story, as if it had happened to him.

  “He was in college. He and some of his friends had been out to the bar, and Richard was driving them home. He was the designated driver. But then a girl stepped out in front of the car, coming from nowhere, and he couldn’t stop in time.”

  Vehicle versus pedestrian. Just like Harding’s death.

  “Did he kill or injure her?” he asked, pushing her to provide the lynch-pin. Everything else would be easier to tell once she had gotten that part off her chest.

  “She was killed. Instantly, I guess. Richard… wasn’t really clear telling that part.”

  “Was he arrested at the scene?”

  Ashley swallowed. “No. Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly.” He waited for the rest. What, exactly?
>
  “He was woozy. He hit his head during the accident. He couldn’t really be responsible for his actions after the accident.”

  Zachary knew what she was trying to avoid saying before she managed to get it out.

  “He sort of… wandered away from the scene. He was disoriented and didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “Hit and run.”

  “Yes, that’s what they called it.” She looked straight at Zachary for the first time. “You see? You see why him getting killed in a hit and run just couldn’t be an accident? You understand why I’m sure it was intentional?”

  “I see your point. It stretches the bounds of plausibility.”

  “Yes. It does. I don’t know what happened out there that night. I don’t know how the trucker is connected. But I know it wasn’t an accident.”

  “I’ll do my best to find the connection. But for that, you have to tell me the truth. The whole truth, without covering anything up because you don’t think it’s relevant.”

  She nodded, eyes down.

  “Good. It’s time to hear the real story. Do you know why he was out on the road that night?”

  “No. None of that has changed. I still don’t know why he went outside and why he’d be out on the road. Like I said, he didn’t go outside for walks, he exercised at home on the bike. He didn’t spend a lot of time outside the house. He was afraid someone would see him and know who he was.”

  Zachary thought of what Kenzie had said. At a healthy weight, but not muscular. As if he’d done a lot of sitting, hunched over for long periods of time. The curse of prison life. Free time. Time to sit and think and do nothing else. Waiting for the seconds, minutes, hours, and days to pass. Waiting for the time to tick slowly away, until his release day finally arrived.

  Then he’d been released, but he’d been afraid to go out. Whether it was paranoia or agoraphobia, Zachary didn’t know. Harding’s stint in prison had damaged him. It had affected him for the rest of his life, even though he had tried to put it behind him.

  “He was the designated driver the night of the accident.” Zachary repeated what Ashley had told him.