Targeted (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 9)

by Becky Durfee

  The words sent a chill down Jenny’s spine. “I have to agree with you. And you think he was born this way?”

  “I can’t blame his upbringing; like I said, his parents are lovely people.”

  Jenny thought of her baby at home, hoping and praying that he had been born with all of the correct wiring. Trying to get her mind off of the thought, she remarked, “Okay, I have one more question, and then I can stop bothering you.”

  With a slight laugh, he said, “You’re not bothering me.”

  “Well, I am just wondering how Mark’s wife is doing now. Is she any better without him in her life?”

  “She’s flourishing,” the reverend said proudly. “She just celebrated five months without a drink. It’s amazing how well she can function without the constant fear of her husband losing his temper.”

  Jenny nodded; this was at least one piece of good news. “I’m happy to hear that,” she replied honestly. “Now I just need to figure out a way to get this guy off the streets, and we’ll be all set.”

  “Good luck with that,” Reverend Blakely said. “The world will be a much safer place with him behind bars.”

  She concluded her call and told the story to Zack. “So, unfortunately, it looks like Reverend Blakely won’t be able to get through to him after all.”

  “It was worth a shot,” Zack noted. “He was the best chance we had.”

  “Yup,” she replied as she looked helplessly out the window. “He sure was.”

  “Well, it looks like we have a little time before the electronics store opens. What do you want to do? Pull into a parking lot somewhere and grab a little nap?”

  “Actually, I don’t, believe it or not,” she said, “for two reasons. First, if that guy is following us, we might be sitting ducks if we’re both asleep in the car. Second, if I do fall asleep, I won’t wake back up. I guarantee it. We don’t have that long to wait; why don’t we just go get a coffee instead?”

  Zack turned the wheel, putting the car in the direction of the diner. “One coffee, coming right up.”

  Zack parked in the front of the diner this time, where the lot would be busy and their car wouldn’t be victimized. They approached the diner’s door, and Jenny found herself struck by a handwritten sign taped to the glass that said, “Closed from 8 a.m. to noon tomorrow for Lisa’s funeral.” In smaller print underneath, it read, “Please keep Lisa and her family in your prayers. If you have any information about her murder, please contact the police.”

  “Damn,” Jenny whispered. Somehow, that sign made everything seem much more real.

  Sensing her sadness, Zack placed his hand on her back, “That’s why we’re here. Hopefully, we can keep this from happening again.”

  “That won’t be much consolation to the people who loved Lisa,” she noted.

  “You’d be surprised. If we can catch him, it just might make them feel better.”

  She nodded solemnly as they entered, quickly being led to a booth by the window. Once seated, she used her hands to keep her head up, her fatigue in full swing. “The last time I was here, Detective Brennan and I accused an innocent man of murdering women.”

  “Well, you didn’t know.”

  Jenny thought about responding, but forming the words felt like too much effort.

  The waitress came by, offering, “Can I start you off with a little coffee?”

  “You can start us off with a lot of coffee,” Jenny replied.

  “Actually, can you set me up with an IV drip and just put it directly into my bloodstream?” Zack asked. “It would be more efficient.”

  The waitress laughed. “That bad, huh? Well, I’ll get on that right away, then.”

  She disappeared, and Jenny began staring distantly out the window, focusing on nothing in particular.

  “That guy,” Zack began. “That pervert guy…what was his name again?”

  Shifting her eyes to look at her husband, she proposed, “Jason?” She wanted to argue that he wasn’t a pervert, but rather a man who had been dealt a crappy hand by life. Ultimately, though, the distinction didn’t matter.

  “Yeah, Jason. He was kind of a stocky guy, wasn’t he?”

  Jenny felt herself wake up a little bit. “You don’t think he’s the one who’s been stalking us…”

  “Somebody’s doing it.”

  Somebody was doing it. “But why him?” Jenny asked. “What motive would he have?”

  Throwing his hands up, Zack made a face to suggest he had no answer for that. “All I know is that somebody has been messing with you, and this guy was at the diner the same time our tires got slashed.”

  “But what on earth would he possibly have to gain?”

  At that moment, two steaming cups of coffee, along with a carafe, appeared in front of them. Jenny placed her face over the cup, using her hands to whisk the scent toward her nose. “Oh my goodness, this smells amazing.” Wasting no time, the couple prepared their coffees and started to drink. A few sips in, Jenny added, “I agree that Jason was stocky, but I can’t imagine that he’s the one who has been following us. I don’t think he has anything to do with this at all. The problem is, I can’t think of anybody who would be doing it. Mark doesn’t fit the physical description, and Gary’s expression gave away the fact that he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned it to him. If it’s not one of them, I don’t know who it would be.”

  Zack took a large gulp of his coffee, expressing approval by simply saying, “Dude.”

  “So, let’s think about this seriously for a minute, now that we have the time,” Jenny proposed. “The first incident was at the pharmacy, when my mirror was moved. Then, we had our tires slashed here. After that was the smiley face note on the car on Center Street, and then the note on the hotel door. My face had been made public before any of that, so the person probably saw the picture of me, along with the headline stating why I am here.”

  “Maybe some guy just thinks you’re hot,” Zack suggested. “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with the case. After all, none of the other detectives are being harassed.”

  “Okay, I have a few things to say to that. First of all, I doubt it. Second, I am not a cop. I think harassing a cop would have much stiffer consequences than stalking an average citizen, so this person might be smart enough to not mess with the people that could get him in the most trouble. But I do agree with your point, to some degree. The person doing it might be unrelated to the case. It might just be that this person is upset that I claim to be a psychic or something.”

  “You are a psychic.”

  “I know, but he might not believe that. Maybe my assertion that I can hear from the dead offends him somehow.”

  “What are the odds that we have two, separate, totally unrelated loonies running around the same town?”

  Jenny looked at her husband with half-closed eyes. “In a town this size? Probably pretty high.”

  “My nephew will be coming to live with us,” Zack explained to the employee at the electronics store, “and he’s gotten into trouble in the past. I want to be able to keep tabs on him to make sure he’s only going where he’s supposed to.”

  Jenny marveled at how smoothly Zack was lying, wondering if she should have been concerned about that.

  The middle-aged employee only smiled, appearing to buy the story. “How old is your nephew?”

  “Nineteen,” Zack said. “Old enough to find big trouble, too young to know better.”

  “You got that right,” the salesman said, leading Zack and Jenny to the automotive section of the store. “How sophisticated are you looking to get? We have basic models, where you have to log in online to track the car, or top-of-the-line models that can text you when the car starts moving.”

  “I want that one,” Jenny said. “The top of the line one.”

  The sales associate showed them a few models, and the couple focused on one in particular. “Is it possible that we can put this on the car and he won’t know it?” Zack asked.

&nb
sp; “You can,” the employee replied. “Just stick it under the bumper, and he’ll never know it’s there.” He leaned in toward Zack. “But wouldn’t it be better if he knew about it? Wouldn’t that prevent him from going bad places to begin with?”

  “Not with this kid,” he replied. “He’s smart, so if he knows we’re tracking his car, he’ll just get his friends to drive him.” Zack shook his head. “No, I’d rather be able to confront him when he gets home and say, ‘I know you’ve been here.’ It might freak more him out if we always know where he is and he doesn’t know how.”

  The man smiled. “I like the way you think.”

  Jenny did, too.

  Glancing at the dashboard clock as they approached Mark’s house, Jenny noted, “It’s ten-thirty. Do you think he’s still sleeping?”

  “I would be, if it were me,” Zack replied. “He didn’t get home until three in the morning. Even if he went straight to bed, he hasn’t gotten eight hours yet. I think a lot of bachelors like at least that much sleep, if not more.”

  “I hope you’re right. The one thing I don’t want to have happen is that we’re in the middle of putting the tracking device on his car when he comes outside to go somewhere.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan,” Zack said.

  She glanced at him, wondering what he had in mind. After seeing how smoothly he handled the man in the electronics store, she had confidence that he would pull this off, too.

  Jenny’s pulse raced as they turned onto Mark’s street, seeing the car parked in the same place it had been the night before. “Pull up close to it,” Zack instructed. “I mean, so close you are almost kissing his bumper.”

  She did as she was told, stopping the car when she was mere inches from Mark’s.

  “Showtime,” Zack announced as he got out of the car. He tucked the tracking device under his shirt, walking around and inspecting Mark’s bumper. With one hand, he slid the tracking device underneath; with the other, he traced the surface of the bumper, as if to inspect it for damage. Standing up straight and looking around, he gave Jenny a thumbs-up and jogged back to the passenger side. He hopped in the car, shut the door and said to Jenny, “See that? Like a champ.”

  Jenny left the spot quickly, hoping to do so without being seen—by anybody. Not Mark, and not their stalker. The thought made her shudder.

  “Now to go back to the hotel,” she said, “pump a long-overdue bottle and get some sleep.”

  “Yup,” Zack replied. “Apparently, until this guy is caught, we’re going to be nocturnal.”

  As tired as she was, sleep was difficult for Jenny. The caffeine she’d used to keep herself awake was doing its job, and it didn’t get the memo that it was now nap time. The result was a terrible case of the shakes and a mind that went a hundred miles an hour, despite her body’s inability to move due to the fatigue.

  With her exhaustion keeping her relaxed, her mind buzzed with snippets of exchanges with Mark. “You look like you’ve already started,” he said, looking at a license.

  “Hell, yeah, I’ve started,” a female voice said from within Jenny.

  The scene switched. She was walking out of the bar in giant mass of people, glancing over her shoulder, seeing Mark smiling and waving at her. She was leaning on one of her friends to stay upright.

  In a new image, she danced her way up to the front door, giving a celebratory shout, handing her license over to the bouncer. “The party can start now. We’re here!”

  This bouncer wasn’t Mark. He was shorter and stockier.

  Jenny’s eyes popped open as she wondered if one of the girls had just solved her mystery for her. Had Mark recruited one of his coworkers to be his partner in crime? Was this the man that had been harassing her? She closed her eyes again, not moving, trying to remember the details of his face. Once she felt comfortable that she had committed his likeness to memory, she reached for her phone to call Kyle. Hopefully, he’d be able to put a name to that face.

  When she looked at her screen, she realized she’d missed a text.

  Mark’s car was in motion.

  Chapter 21

  Her heart jumped into her throat, although she quickly realized Mark was not about to strike in the daytime. She blinked repeatedly, trying to get her tired eyes to focus better, eventually getting a clear picture of the map on her screen. The car was currently on a main road and was moving, so he could have been accomplishing any number of things.

  With the initial surge of adrenaline leaving her body, she relaxed into the pillow, lowering the phone so she could see it while lying on her side. The screen quickly flipped to become horizontal, which she didn’t want. She grunted as she shook it, holding it vertically. The little blue arrow skirting across the screen quickly became hypnotic, and her eyelids became heavy.

  She woke with a start, unaware of just how long she’d been sleeping. Silently berating herself, she hoped her moment of carelessness didn’t cost a young woman her life. In a panic, she looked at her phone, noticing the blue arrow was now on a side street somewhere. She wished she was more familiar with the area.

  Forcing herself to sit up, she watched as the car made a right turn, and then another. It seemed to drive slowly, as if in a residential neighborhood. After another right turn, the car had come full-circle and was passing the same place it had before. “Screen shot,” she said out loud, trying to remember what buttons she needed to push to make that happen. Her brain was foggy, her nerves tingled and the importance of this moment was in the forefront of her mind. “Screen shot! How do I do a friggin screen shot?”

  All at once, she remembered the procedure, pressing and holding the proper buttons until she heard the click. She breathed a sigh of relief, collapsing her posture a bit, as she continued to watch the car. It repeated similar movements in two other neighborhoods, circling, although Jenny wasn’t sure which specific houses he was targeting. She also didn’t know how many circles he had made before she woke up. She wanted to kick herself.

  The arrow made its way back to Hazel Drive, stopping in a spot similar to where the tracking device had been attached in the first place. Happy to take a break, she set the alarm on her phone for seven o’clock and drifted back off to sleep.

  Jenny had texted the images to Zack so they could use his phone to look at the still shots while monitoring Mark’s current location from Jenny’s phone. For the time being, it appeared he remained at home.

  Most of the dinner patrons had left the hotel restaurant, allowing Zack and Jenny alone to freely discuss their plan for the night. “It looks like he circled these three areas,” she said, referring to the cartoonish map of the Bennett area that had been available for free at the check-in desk. “When I looked at them on a satellite image, all three places seemed to have small houses lining the streets. He could have been scoping out a hundred different homes.”

  “We’re better off parking near where he lives and just watching him. If we try to hang out by one of those targeted areas, we might choose the wrong one. He works quickly—by the time we catch up with him, he might be done already.”

  Jenny nodded. “I hope he has to work tonight. Then we’ll be able to know where he is for the majority of the evening. As it is now, he could head out at any time, and that’s horrifying.”

  “He could head out soon,” Zack said, “but I don’t think he’s going to attack anybody until much later. These are college kids. They probably go to bed late. He couldn’t be guaranteed that they’d be asleep until well after midnight. Probably even later if these girls are partiers.”

  “This could be another long night,” she muttered.

  “It’ll be worth it if we can catch him.”

  Just as Jenny was about to agree, she glanced down at her phone and announced. “Time to go. He’s on the move.”

  Mark’s car stopped on Seven Springs Road, which was not one of the areas he had circled earlier in the day—at least, not to Jenny’s knowledge. He may have scoped that place out while she had s
till been sleeping.

  From the passenger seat of the rental car, Zack looked at Jenny’s phone and guided her toward where Mark’s vehicle was parked. “Take a right on Harrison Avenue,” he instructed, “it should be the third cross street. It looks like a major intersection.”

  Jenny drove as quickly as she could without putting herself in danger of getting pulled over. While she was on the side of the road getting a speeding ticket, Mark Neighbors could have been slitting the throat of an innocent woman, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Zack apparently sensed her fear. “I doubt he’s attacking anybody right now. It’s too early in the night. We should be fine.”

  Jenny wished she could have shared in his confidence. After taking the right Zack had suggested, she followed his instructions to get to Seven Springs Road. Mark had been at that location for about five minutes total; she wondered if that had been enough time for him to do the unthinkable.

  His car was in the driveway of a small ranch house, where lights shone through the bay window of the family room. Beyond the open curtains, she could see two men inside, appearing to watch television—one of them she recognized to be Mark. She continued to drive past the house in order to remain inconspicuous, but the relief that surged through her body almost left her without control of her limbs. She could barely press the gas pedal with her tingling foot.

  “I told you,” Zack said, “it’s too early.”

  Jenny didn’t mind hearing the I-told-you-so. She was just glad he had been right. “Okay,” she said in a huge exhale, “we’re not too late. We need to just park down the road from him and not let him leave our sight.”

  “As long as he doesn’t leave in a friend’s car, we should be all set.”

  Jenny hated those words. The tracking device could easily have been useless. “We have to be able to see him leave. We can’t afford to be sitting here keeping tabs on an empty car while he’s out killing somebody. Do me a favor, though…when I drive by again, can you get a look at the house number where he is?”