by Lynn Ames
“You’d better hope I never catch you messing with her again, you understand me?”
He nodded vigorously, his brown eyes wide.
“I don’t want to catch you messing with anybody. Any. Body. Because if I do?” I pulled him closer and changed my voice to a hissing whisper. “I’ll sneak into yourhouse while you’re sleeping, and I will cut off your tiny little dick and feed it to you. Got it?”
The strangled whimper he made while he nodded some more gave me what I can only call a perverse sense of satisfaction. When I let him go, he ran at the speed of light. I never saw him again. I don’t think Megan did either. Neither of us ever even knew his name.
After that, I at least had an inkling of what the names might mean. And when I realized that Megan’s situation was not life or death, the relief I felt was palpable. It took half a dozen more before I was clear on the fact that they were all people who needed some kind of intervention, and that they weren’t going to stop showing up on my nightstand. Sometimes, I’ll get two names in a week. Sometimes, months will go by with nothing. I don’t know where the names come from. I don’t know why or how they come to me. All I do know is that I was put on this earth to help. I was given more money than I know what to do with so I can help. The only way I feel I can undo some of the bad things my family has done is to help.
So, I help.
Chapter Three
After an unavoidable three-hour layover in JFK, my plane lands uneventfully, thank goodness, and I pick up my rental car not long afterward. The Raleigh-Durham airport is small by airport standards, and I’ve been in the area on three other cases, so finding my way around will be easier than it would be if it was my first visit—which is not to say that it’ll be easy. Durham is a fairly large sprawling city. If New York City is a clump of peanut butter on the middle of a piece of bread, then Durham is a thin layer of it, spread over the entire slice. The streets weave in all different directions, change names in the middle, and are confusing as hell. You can be going east one minute and then suddenly, you’re going south on the same street. It’s kind of ridiculous, and a good map is a necessity. Having grown used to the compact downtown and distinct suburbs of my adopted city of Rochester, New York, driving around such a spread-out area as Durham seems to take forever, but I’ll manage.
The Hilton Garden Inn is in the southern part of Durham, across the street from the Southpoint Mall, which has anything I could possibly want or need during my stay. This will be my headquarters for the duration, unless I’m told Rebecca Cassidy lives way the hell on the other end of town. Then I may have to consider a change of location for the sake of convenience.
I check into a nice, generic room, drop my stuff, and hit Speed Dial 1 on my cell.
“Arrive in one piece?” Hayley asks, and I can envision her sitting at the desk in her office off the back end of our house. The windows look out onto the woods in the backyard—we back up to a county park—and she’ll be gazing out at the numerous bird feeders she’s hung from various trees. It’s still only March, and though the snow is gone, it’s chilly. The bird population consists of only winter birds yet—blue jays, cardinals, sparrows, and Hayley’s favorites, chickadees. My heart constricts as I’m hit with a wave of missing her.
“I did. Uneventful flight.”
“Always a good thing.”
“What have you got for me?”
“Interesting stuff.” I hear papers sliding around on her desk as she lines up her information. “I had to call on Officer Jefferson from the Raleigh police department. Remember her?”
My brain does a quick memory search and I vaguely recall a female cop a couple years earlier whose partner was in up to his eyeballs with the local drug dealers. Tricky case, but everybody came out intact. “I do.”
“Well, I needed her help because I couldn’t find an address for Rebecca Cassidy. Seems she’s had four of them in the past two years, along with six phone number changes, and then went invisible. The only thing Jefferson could give me was a post office box. I’ve got Megan on it now. I’ll call you as soon as I hear from her, which should be any time now.”
“Four different addresses in two years?”
“Yup. You thinking what I’m thinking?” Hayley asks.
“Stalker.”
“Bingo. Listen to this: Jefferson’s got seven police reports and two restraining orders that Rebecca filed in the space of twenty-six months. Guy’s name is Todd Bennett. He violated the first restraining order and went to jail for three months. Came out, found her; she filed a report, then another TRO; he violated that, went to jail again for six months. Now he’s out again. No current address, but Megan’s on it.”
“When did he get out?” I’m jotting down notes as she talks.
“Looks like late December.” She’s quiet for a second or two. “What are the chances he gave up?”
“Slim to none. More likely, she thinks she got away from him this time.”
“Ugh. Poor thing.”
I release a breath loudly. I hate stalker cases. They’re unpredictable and rarely end well. Cops—male cops especially—don’t understand that a man can intimidate a woman, can scare the bejesus out of her, without actually breaking the restraining order. He doesn’t have to be closer than five hundred feet to terrify his victim. I’m hoping maybe this case will be different, but I’ve got a bad feeling already. “All right. Send me pictures of both, so I’ll know them when I see them. Let me get settled in and get something to eat, and you give me a shout as soon as you hear from Megan, okay?”
“Will do. Talk to you soon. Love you.” Hayley’s voice softens on that last note, and I pretend I’m bathing in the light of those green eyes instead of standing in a hotel room alone.
“Love you, too.”
There’s not a lot I can do before Megan comes up with an address. I know you’re wondering right now if I’m talking about the same Megan. I am. Megan Stevenson went on to MIT, if you can believe that, and is frighteningly smart. I think she was one of twenty-six women in her graduating class, and I don’t even know what her degree was in. She’s some kind of engineer that works with computers and math theorems and other numerical things that make my head hurt. All I know is she can find just about any piece of information on any person with nothing more than a few keystrokes. She lives in Manhattan and is an independent consultant for half a dozen Fortune 500 companies. I keep her on retainer for when I need something like today. Finding Rebecca Cassidy’s current address will take Megan all of ten minutes, I’m sure.
In the meantime, my BlackBerry buzzes, and I pull up the pictures Hayley sent of Rebecca Cassidy and Todd Bennett. Both are standard DMV photos, and both faces are somewhat unremarkable, which can be said about most people in general. Rebecca is a strawberry blonde with a plump, round face and kind, gentle green eyes. With thinning brown hair and round, wire-rimmed glasses that shield startlingly blue eyes, Todd looks like any guy I might run into in Home Depot. Sometimes that makes cases like this even harder: everybody looks so freaking normal.
I sigh at the same time my stomach rumbles. I really need to eat. My hotel is near a plaza that has a Chili’s, so I call over and order myself some food to go. Their nachos are so loaded down with cheese that they’re really just a heart attack on a plate, but I can’t resist the melty, stringy, greasy goodness of it. I go for the comfort food when I’m away from Hayley. I won’t tell her, of course. She’d scold me, then make me eat nothing but salad for a week.
Hayley.
It scares me sometimes how much I miss her when I’m away. I still can’t figure out if that’s a sweet thing or an enormous weakness. And as usual when I dwell on my feelings for her, my mind reverts to five years ago.
Hayley Ryan Grafton was born Anna Elizabeth Ryan in a small suburb outside of Cleveland in 1979. She was the only child of Donna and Ken Ryan, who had tried throughout their entire marriage to have children and weren’t blessed with their daughter until Donna was in her mid-forties. Anna was a
good baby, quiet and easy. She remained that way throughout her childhood and into her teen years when she studied hard, played on the volleyball team, and graduated fourth in her class. She went to college at Marietta, but dropped out in the middle of her senior year after losing her father to colon cancer. Less than a year later, her mother died of a massive coronary, and Anna found herself all alone, with no family at all, at twenty-two years old.
Being suddenly solitary can do weird things to your head, and I firmly believe that’s why Anna fell for Brant Collier. Of course, there was also his ability to be devastatingly charming, a characteristic he used to his advantage, one that he could turn on and off as it suited him. He won Anna over completely before the first time he hit her, so much so that she was utterly shocked and ran through the catalogs of her mind to figure out where she had screwed up so badly to deserve a black eye and split lip. Surely, it was her fault; Brant was a great guy, a cop, for Christ’s sake. He was sworn to serve and protect. She must have done something horrible for him to sock her one.
It’s a path of warped logic that has become all too familiar to me since I started this mission of mine. You’d be surprised how many very intelligent women are victims of abuse by their husbands, boyfriends, or partners. It’s staggering the kinds of games that can be played with your mind in order to make you feel small and worthless. Anna was far from stupid, and she didn’t come close to naïve, but she was with Brant for nearly three years before her name showed up on my night stand. Three years being knocked around by a police officer. By that time, she was trapped, broken, and terrified. It’s hard for me, even now, to think back on that time and have my mind’s eye conjure up the bruises on her lovely face. I have to consciously unclench my jaw and force myself to stop grinding my teeth.
One thing an abuser makes sure to do is keep his victim isolated and that actually worked to my advantage when getting Anna away from him. Because he was a cop, there really were no other options. All I had to do was stake him out for a short period of time and have Megan do a little research on his life, and I had all the information I needed about what kind of obsessed lunatic he kept hidden beneath his blues. He’d never let Anna get away from him, never. He’d hunt her forever, and she’d never be free of him; of that I had no doubt. The fact that I’d practically fallen in love with her on sight only stoked my creative fires and my desire to rip her out of his possessive grasp.
The right amount of money can buy you just about anything in this country, including a bogus car accident, a doctored death certificate, and a new identity. That’s how Anna Elizabeth Ryan died and Hayley Ryan Grafton was born. She said she’d always liked the name Hayley, Sue Grafton is her favorite writer, and she wanted to keep one small piece of her parents with her always. How I managed to win her trust and her heart is another story altogether, and it often leads me to long, internal conversations with myself about things like destiny and greater purpose and if Fate started me on these missions so that I’d meet the love of my life, and blah, blah, blah. It’s enough to give me a migraine and has on more than one occasion.
I’m munching on the last bite of my artery-clogging nachos when Hayley calls me back with information from Megan. Nobody ever calls me directly except for Hayley. It might seem a little paranoid, but there are many times during my cases that I’m sort of flying under the radar of the law, and the last thing I want is for any of my contacts to get caught in the crossfire. Anonymity is key to what I do. Most of the people I’ve helped never see my face and many barely know my name, which is kind of interesting given that any time I’ve called one of them for their assistance later, like Officer Jefferson, for example, they’ve never hesitated. The human spirit is amazing that way, more liable to pay it forward than you’d think.
“Rebecca Cassidy lives in the Windy Oaks Apartment Homes. I MapQuested it, and it looks like she’s not that far from you.” Hayley gives me an address that’s only about ten minutes from where I currently am, according to the map I have spread out on the second bed in my room. “Megan found Todd Bennett in another apartment complex about four miles down the street, if you can believe that. Under a false name.”
“Terrific. She probably has no idea he’s that close.”
“Why can’t men just take no for an answer?” Hayley asks, and her tone is such that I wonder if she’s asking me or simply asking the universe.
“I wish I knew, babe.”
“Megan’s still working on details of Bennett…financials, employment and such. I’ll call you when I hear from her.”
“You’re the best. I’ll set up a stakeout so I can get a lay of the land.”
“Did you get dinner?” She changes the subject, her voice moving from employee to wife.
“I did.”
“Something decent?”
“I’m full. Does that count?”
She chuckles and it makes me smile. When I first met her—and by “met,” I mean “started following”—her smile was completely different than it is now. She smiled often; it was her disguise, the only way to keep people from wondering if something was wrong. But the smile never reached her eyes. It sounds kind of corny, but there is little that depresses me more than the thought of those amazing eyes of hers looking flat, dull, and lifeless. The first time I made her laugh—a true, genuine laugh that crinkled the corners of those eyes—I almost burst with the satisfaction that flooded me. There’s nothing more wonderful than the warmth of Hayley’s smile.
God, I’m a sap. I know that’s what you’re thinking, so let me just put it out there for you.
“It doesn’t count if it was greasy and more than five hundred calories,” she gently scolds.
“Oh. Oops.”
“Norah, honestly. What am I going to do with you?”
“Love me forever? It’s really the only solution.”
She snorts, and I can almost see her shaking her head in exasperation. “Fine. I suppose if I have no other alternatives…”
“You don’t. That’s the only option.” We banter a bit more, then I realize I need to get down to business. Time is often of the essence on my cases, and I never know for sure until I can get an overview of the situation. “Okay, babe, let me get some supplies, and then I’ll go stake out Ms. Cassidy and see what I can see.”
“I’ll call you when I have more. Be careful.”
“Always.”
Chapter Four
A stakeout is much less comfortable and way more boring than the cop shows on TV would have you believe. They always show two people, sitting in their car and shooting the shit, drinking cups of coffee, until, as if on cue—and of course, it is on cue; it’s TV—the person they’re staking out suddenly shows up, and they can grab them/follow them/report on them. In reality, it never happens that quickly. Also, the coffee? Yeah, you have to be careful of that because lots of coffee not only gives you the jitters, but makes you have to pee. Not a lot of parking lots are equipped with Port-a-Potties, in my experience. And stakeouts at night are the worst because sitting there in the dark with nothing to do but stare at somebody’s door is a good way to bring on the drowsies.
Hard candy helps a lot. If I suck on a vibrant, punchy flavor like lemon or pineapple or mint, it helps keep me from feeling sleepy. I keep a stash with me; Life Savers are my current favorite. Given how much I can go through, I went sugar-free a while ago, afraid I’d rot out my teeth.
Rebecca Cassidy’s development is nice, as most of them are around here. From what I learned during my last stay, the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina is one of the fastest-growing sections of the country, and in order to handle the influx of people from out of town—or more accurately, out of state—there has been a high percentage of new rentals built. When you move from one state to another, you don’t know the area, you don’t know the market, and buying a house blind is a risky prospect. So, most people choose to rent for a while until they get a feel for the place. I flash back to Hayley’s telling me that Rebecca has had four diffe
rent addresses in less than two years, and I wonder how much money she’s spent buying her way out of her leases. Even a six-month lease will cost you bunches of money if you break it.
I coast gently into her parking lot, slowing way down for the damn speed humps that seem to be everywhere in this town, and find number 612. I continue on by, paying close attention to the other cars in the lot, as well as to any people walking around. It’s not quite dark yet and the mild weather has pedestrians out in droves, walking their toddlers, their dogs, and themselves. I did a GoogleEarth search on my laptop before I came, and I saw that Windy Oaks is laid out in a horseshoe shape, with the clubhouse and community pool nestled in the curve. Beyond that—and on the other side of a chain link fence—is a small office park, which is sort of also in the curve of the horseshoe, but farther up. The office park is notable because it allows me to cruise into that parking lot and see the backs of the apartment homes. Each two-story unit looks to have a sliding glass door and a small concrete patio off the back. Off each patio is a door that I assume is for outdoor storage. Unfortunately, that outdoor storage is only one story high and has a nice flat roof that would make an easy step for anybody who wanted to break into a second-floor window. If Todd Bennett wants in to Rebecca Cassidy’s home, it won’t be hard. I continue to coast through the lot, weighing the pros and cons of staking out the front versus the back.
At the little pavilion that houses the apartments’ mailboxes, I get a glimpse of a familiar shade of strawberry blonde hair. I slip my rental car inconspicuously into a nearby spot so I can watch. Sure enough, when the woman turns to respond to the greeting of somebody near her, I see that it is Rebecca Cassidy. The smile she gives to her neighbor is sweet and kind, but the wariness in her eyes is obvious only to somebody who’s looking for it. Somebody like me.
