by Diane Kelly
I took the paperwork from him and looked it over. Sure enough, it was a protective order signed by one of the judges at the Tarrant County Family Court. The order required Adriana to stay at least two hundred yards away from Ryan’s residence and not to stalk or follow him. Ironically, it also required her to cease any direct communication with him, as well as any attempts to communicate threats or harassment through third parties. I was beginning to wonder if Adriana had used me to do that very thing—harass her ex. Then again, there would have been much easier ways to annoy Ryan if that was her aim. Ways that didn’t involve the police and the potential for criminal charges for making false reports.
“Mind if I snap a pic of the order?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “Fine with me.”
I snapped a quick shot of each page. “I’m also going to have to take your shoes in as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Vandalism. There were footprints outside Miss Valdez’s house that appear to match those shoes.”
He rolled his eyes again. “You get what happened, don’t you? She made those prints with my shoes and then brought them back here to try to frame me.”
Could that be possible? There was no way I could know for sure. And he’d certainly come up with that theory quickly, almost as if he’d thought this scenario through in advance and had an explanation locked and loaded.
“Frame you?” I asked. “For what?” I hadn’t mentioned the brick to him yet. How he answered might further implicate him.
He gave me a pointed look and grunted. “Hell if I know. Spying on her? Stealing her stupid zucchinis? You’re the one with the information. You tell me.”
When I said nothing, he went on. “If I were going to creep around her place,” he said, “I’d have been smart enough to put paper booties over my shoes so they wouldn’t leave prints. I’ve got a whole case of them in my apartment. I use them for work.”
I fought the urge to tell him that while paper booties might corrupt a footprint, it wouldn’t prevent one from being left entirely. After all, there were several factors involved. Weight. Ground surface. Moisture. Instead, I handed the paperwork back to him and asked about the bricks on the landing. “What are they for?”
“Toby and I were painting a model car out here earlier,” he said. “Models are a hobby of mine. It was a little windy so I used the bricks to hold the newspaper down while we worked.”
“Where’d you get the bricks?”
“Had ’em for years,” he said. “They were leftover from when my parents built their house down in Crowley.” He cast a glance at the newspaper and frowned. “Looks like one of them’s missing now, though. There should be four, one on each edge of the paper.”
“That fourth one ended up on the floor of Adriana’s bedroom.”
His head snapped back in my direction and the pitch of his kazoo voice rose in what seemed to be surprise. “Say what now?”
“Someone threw the brick through her window tonight. That’s why I’m here.”
His mouth gaped for a moment. “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me!” His eyes went wide and he shook his head. “I tell you, she’s just trying to get me in trouble. She probably threw it through the window herself!”
At this point, my mind was reeling. Who was the bad guy—or bad girl—here, and who was the good one? I had no idea. Ryan was sort of a jerk, but what he’d told me about the demise of their relationship had seemed credible. Then again, Adriana had seemed believable, too, even if she was a little uptight. Until I figured things out, it was best to tell these two to stay away from each other. “I’ll look further into this,” I told Ryan, “but you need to refrain from contacting her, okay? Nothing good would come of it.”
“Trust me,” he said. “If I never see that woman again I’ll die a happy man.”
I dipped my head. “Looks like we’re in agreement, then.” I handed him my business card. “Here’s my contact information in case you need it.”
He glanced down at the card before looking back up at me. “Are you going to see Adriana again?”
“Probably.”
“When you do, tell her I know she took my Wonder Woman #1 and I want it back.”
“Wonder Woman #1?”
“The comic book. I had one in good condition but I just discovered it’s missing. I paid over two thousand dollars for it five years ago, and it’s gone up in value since Wonder Woman was named girls’ ambassador or whatever you call it.”
I realized he was talking about the controversial decision to designate Wonder Woman as the United Nations Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls. Some thought the superheroine was more than worthy of the appointment. Others thought that naming a character who wore skimpy, overtly sexual clothing sent the wrong message, especially to girls in countries where modesty was valued. Personally, I was on the fence. I liked being a tough, smart cop, but I enjoyed being feminine and sexy on occasion, too. Why couldn’t women be all of these things at the same time?
“How can you be sure she took the comic?” I asked.
“’Cause other than my nephew, Adriana’s the only one who’s been in my apartment since the last time I saw it. It had to be her. Besides, she got all pissed off when I showed it to her. I’d told her I wanted to show her something really cool that I’d dropped two grand on. I think she expected me to give her an engagement ring.” He grunted. “Any guy who puts a ring on that woman’s finger is nuts.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of this information. He’d certainly given me some food for thought.
“That’ll be it for now,” I told him. “If I have more questions I’ll be back in touch.”
Once Ryan went back into his apartment, I collected the shoes and one of the bricks. My work at the apartment done for the time being, I led Brigit down the stairs to the parking lot. On my way back to the cruiser, I stopped to listen for the telltale pings of an engine cooling. The only ones I heard were coming from my squad car. The painted numbers at the end of each parking spot told me that the shiny blue Camaro in the spot marked 206 must belong to Ryan. I led Brigit over to the car and put my hand on the hood. It was cool. The car hadn’t been driven recently.
Looked like Adriana Valdez was mistaken about who had thrown the brick through her window. That, or she was the bold-faced liar Ryan claimed she was.
Either way, I was damn sure going to find out.
SIX
MIDNIGHT SNACK
Brigit
Megan had turned their car into the parking lot of the fire station, which meant two great things. One, Brigit would get to see Blast, the yellow Lab who’d become her favorite playmate. And two, she’d get some kind of yummy meat snack. There was always meat at the fire station. Yippee!
SEVEN
CRIMES OF PASSION
The Devoted One
Lying to the police might be illegal, but the cop seemed to have bought the story. Good.
So why was the Devoted One having such trouble sleeping? Because it’s hard to fall asleep when your mind is going a mile a minute, thinking of that special someone, remembering how it felt when things were good.
Soon I’ll have that feeling again.
And it would all be thanks to Officer Luz. She’d become their go-between.
Little did she know that her work had just begun …
EIGHT
SYRUP AND SUCKERS
Megan
It was nearly three in the morning when I pulled my cruiser to a stop in the parking lot of the fire station. Seth’s seventies-era blue Nova sat in the adjacent spot. Orange flames adorned the sides and the license plates read KABOOM. Appropriate for a member of the city’s bomb squad.
I let Brigit out of her enclosure, not bothering to attach her leash. Blast stood in the open, lighted bay of the firehouse, wagging his tail and barking in greeting. Woof! Woof-woof! His handler—my boyfriend—stepped to his side. Like the dog, Seth sported short blond hair and well-developed muscles
. Unlike his dog, Seth wore more than just a nylon collar. Shame …
The two walked out to meet us as we approached the building. While Blast and Brigit greeted each other with a friendly sniff of each other’s hindquarters, Seth greeted me with a warm kiss. For a guy whose job it was to defuse bombs and put out fires, he sure knew how to ignite a spark in me.
He nuzzled my neck. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, yourself.”
Along with the crisp smell of soap from the shower, Seth bore a faint scent of chlorine from his daily swims. Not that I was complaining. Those laps in the pool had given the guy shoulders as hard as the Texas granite used to build the Tarrant County Courthouse downtown. Between his muscles, gorgeous green eyes, and sexy chin dimple, he could easily land the cover of any firefighter fund-raising calendar. Fifty copies, please!
Of course there was much more to Seth than the hot guy that met the eye. Like the fires he fought and the water he swam in, he was a man of contrasts and contradictions. Underneath the strong, sexy exterior was a man who was more fragile than he’d ever admit. Not broken, but fractured. Whether those fractures would eventually heal or widen, only time would tell. Though his mother had recently come back into his life and was trying to forge a relationship with Seth, he still struggled with deep-seated abandonment and attachment issues arising from her leaving him as a child to be raised by his grandparents. Add in several harrowing years spent in Afghanistan working explosive ordnance detail for the U.S. Army, as well as the devastating things he’d seen on the job as a firefighter and member of the bomb squad, and Seth had some heavy things weighing on him. Not that he spoke of them often. But on rare occasions he let his tough façade slip, providing a glimpse of the hurt child and the battle-scarred soldier that lived within him.
But enough of that. I was here for one thing and one thing only. “Any chance you’ve got a waffle maker in the kitchen?”
“Sure do,” Seth said. “You got a craving?”
“Yeah.” No sense telling him the hankering arose after I’d seen the waffle pattern on the bottom of Ryan’s shoes. That was weird. Maybe even disgusting.
He motioned for me to follow him and turned to go into the building. “We’ve got real maple syrup, too.”
Of course they did. If there was one thing firefighters knew how to do—besides fighting fires, of course—it was how to eat. I’d stopped by at mealtime before. They downed a day’s worth of calories in one sitting. But given that they worked out routinely and burned a lot of energy carrying their heavy hoses and equipment, they managed to stay in great shape. I, on the other hand, spent most of my shifts sitting on my butt in my car. That’s why I had to be careful about what I ate. Usually, anyway. Right now I wanted a darn waffle and nothing was going to keep me from getting one.
I patted my leg. “C’mon, Brig.”
Our dogs trotting after us, Seth and I walked into the station, crossing through a lounge where two men and a woman were engaged in a penny-ante poker game. Judging from the pile of copper coins in front of the woman, she was thoroughly besting her male counterparts. The four of us exchanged nonverbal greetings. A lifted chin. A nod. A wave. A raised hand. Nothing more formal was needed. Seth and I had been dating several months and my presence was nothing new around here.
Seth pulled out a chair for me at one end of the long kitchen table. “Take a seat. I’ll whip you up a waffle and fry Brigit some bacon.”
On hearing her favorite word, Brigit issued a questioning arf?
Seth chuckled and reached down a hand to ruffle her head. “I’m moving as fast as I can, girl.”
While he set the bacon to frying in a pan and whisked up the waffle batter, I told him about my night. “One of them has to be lying to me,” I told him. “I’m just not sure who.”
“Most stalkers are guys, aren’t they?”
“That’s true.” While studying criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville—go Bearkats!—I took courses in criminal psychology. I’d learned that the vast majority of victims knew their stalkers, and that while a small percentage of males would be the subject of a stalker at some point in their lives, females were far more likely to be the victims, with up to nearly a third of women being victimized. “I’m just not sure I can rely on statistics in this case.”
“Sometimes stats don’t hold up,” he agreed. “Besides, hell has no fury like a woman scorned, right?”
“You’ve got a point. That crazy ex-girlfriend stereotype didn’t come from nowhere. Unfortunately, these are just theories. They don’t really tell me anything.”
“Okay, then,” he said. “What does your gut tell you?”
My gut was tied in a knot, telling me nothing other than that it was hungry. “My gut says it wants a waffle ASAP.”
Seth cut me a grin. “Guess you’ll have to use your brain, then.” Seth plugged in the waffle iron to heat up. “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so,” I said, “and I hope I’ll figure it out very soon. These types of things can escalate and get out of hand.” Ryan had said he didn’t want a suicide weighing on his conscience. I certainly didn’t want a murder weighing on mine.
Would the situation between Adriana and Ryan come to that? I had no way of knowing. Those college courses I’d mentioned had also taught me that the reasons why people commit crimes weren’t always as clear as they might seem, and could stem from any range of motives. Stalkers, specifically, could be broken down into five subtypes.
One type of stalker was the intimacy seeker, erotomaniac, or “love obsessional” stalker. These types identified another person, often a complete stranger, as their one true love and behaved as though they had a relationship with the stranger. In these situations, the perpetrator was delusional, believing their target reciprocated their feelings. Country-western singer Shania Twain had been the target of such a stalker. He’d sent her love letters and attended her grandmother’s funeral even though he had no connection to the family. Creepy.
Another stalker subtype was known as the incompetent stalker. Unlike intimacy seekers, incompetents realized their feelings were not reciprocated, yet they continued to pursue their love interest, hoping their affection would lead to a relationship. Having poor social skills, they did not engage in standard courting rituals and instead took actions counterproductive to their aims, frightening off their targets rather than enticing them. Britney Spears had been the victim of such a stalker, who’d sent her messages saying, “I’m chasing you.” Eeek.
The resentful or “grudge” stalker subtype was motived not by any desire to have a relationship with the victim, but rather by a sense of injustice and a desire for revenge. These stalkers saw themselves as the victims, and resented the humiliation and unfair treatment they believed their target inflicted on them. These types of stalkers commonly reported having highly controlling fathers, and the continual focus on their unhappy pasts contributed to mood disorders. John Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman, was a classic grudge stalker. He saw himself as a loyal rock fan and admired John Lennon until he read a Lennon biography. He murdered Lennon after becoming angry at what he felt was a major hypocrisy—that the former Beatle preached love and peace yet had amassed a vast fortune.
Predator stalkers weren’t interested in having a relationship with their victims. Instead, they sought power and control, taking pleasure in gathering information and engaging in sexual fantasies about their victims. These types of stalkers generally had serious sexual disorders.
The most common type was the rejected or “ex-intimate” stalker. These stalkers were people who’d suffered the end of a close relationship and weren’t happy about it. In most cases, the person who ended the relationship was someone the stalker had been romantically involved with, but rejected stalkers had also been known to target family members, coworkers, former friends, or other acquaintances. In most cases, the former relationship between the stalker and the victim had been abusive or controlling. Rejected stalker
s often first attempted a reconciliation. When those attempts failed, they sought revenge. In fact, their behavior could fluctuate between conciliatory and vengeful. These types of stalking situations were the most likely to lead to violence, with fifty percent of such stalkers who made violent threats carrying them out.
While the motives for each stalker subtype differed, they shared some similarities. All tended to rationalize their behavior, making excuses and minimizing consequences, expressing little or no embarrassment or discomfort from their actions. Virtually all stalkers lacked good interpersonal and social skills, despite the fact that they tended to have above-average intelligence. They were often narcissists with a sense of entitlement, and loners with few personal relationships. They didn’t take no for an answer and had obsessive personalities. They had mean streaks and leaned toward sociopathic ways of thinking.
Those with such deep fixations were psychologically unstable, and often suffered from undiagnosed personality disorders. Many had serious mental health issues. Treatment for offenders involved programs designed to teach empathy for their victims and social and relationship skills. Though they engaged in criminal behavior, at their core they were individuals in need of psychological help.
I wasn’t sure whether the guilty party in this case was Adriana or Ryan, but I’d peg either as a rejected or ex-intimate stalker. Statistically, it was more likely Ryan was the perpetrator. But given what he’d said about Adriana’s strict dietary regimen and her excessive cleanliness, she seemed to have the typical obsessive tendencies. And while there had been no witnesses to her alleged attack on Ryan, the judge who’d presided over the hearing regarding the protective order must have believed the story. On the other hand, Ryan sure was full of himself, a sign he could be a narcissist. He’d also been quick to say mean things about Adriana and to paint himself as a good guy, a virtual romantic hero who’d swooped in to rescue her from a life of loneliness and, later, thoughts of suicide.
The batter ready, Seth poured it into the waffle maker and closed the lid. The enticing scent of warm waffle filled the air. Seth rounded up a napkin and fork and set them on the table in front of me. My place set, he turned back to tend to the waffle iron. When the green light came on, he lifted the top of the iron and used a fork to pry the waffle free. He set it on a plate and slid it in front of me, along with a half-gallon jug of pure maple syrup. The way they ate around here, they bought food in industrial-sized quantities. “Here you go.”
