It just wasn’t the right time in his life.
But he wanted her. And he felt guilty for wanting her.
The thing was, he didn’t quite trust Lincoln Tyndall. There was something about him…. Sure, he played a good game. He was a decent lawyer and performed well enough in the courtroom. He had that slightly scruffy, tree-hugger look that was so popular in Hollywood right now. Him with his corduroy blazers and his economical little car.
But there was something about the way he looked at people. Watched people. Women in particular. He didn’t like the idea that Lincoln watched Casey that way. Casey was someone special.
On impulse, Adam tapped his mouse and his computer monitor lit up. He entered a Web site accessible only to certain employees of the state. It was used mostly by the police and occasionally by correctional facilities. It displayed statewide arrests and allegations against a person back to the time when the state first computerized its records.
He typed in Lincoln Tyndall and a driver’s license photo came up. Right guy. Stupid grin. He scrolled down.
One speeding ticket. Caught in a speed trap in South Bethany. August 2006. Idiot. Everyone knew not to speed there. Adam chuckled. Read on.
And…
He read a line in a block at the bottom-right corner of the screen. He reread it, thinking he had read it wrong.
Nope. The charges were dropped. Lack of evidence, most likely. This kind of charge could be hard to prove, as Casey was discovering. He read the notation again.
Twelve years ago, Lincoln Tyndall had been charged with stalking.
Chapter 25
Casey sat in the parking lot of the flea market and watched the door. She had followed Charlie from his girlfriend’s house to a mini-mart, where he had bought cigarettes and a candy bar, to here. The blue car wasn’t his, she’d learned, but the girlfriend’s. He’d now been inside the flea market about twenty minutes. She was debating whether she should go in and see what he was up to and risk losing him when he left, or sit in the parking lot and wait for him.
She was amazed by how easy it was to find someone. Shocked, really. Because she didn’t want to abuse her position at the hospital, she hadn’t used any source there to find Gaitlin, even though she was quite sure that Linda would have provided information about him to hospital staff or the police. And she didn’t call Adam’s office.
Casey couldn’t let anyone know what she was doing. Not Adam or Lincoln, for legal reasons. Not her sister, because…Jayne wouldn’t understand.
Not to mention that it was against the law. If she got caught, not only could the state lose the case against Gaitlin, but Casey could lose her job.
It had taken less than three hours to find Gaitlin, and that had included phone calls, driving time to the post office, and a stop at the grocery store to buy Cap’n Crunch.
She had read in the newspaper article reporting on the lawsuit that he lived in Georgetown. While pretending to address an envelope, Casey had asked a postal worker for Gaitlin’s address. It seemed that Mr. Gaitlin had become a celebrity of sorts, and the federal employee had been eager to chat about him. His mail, according to the “Chatty Patty,” was being forwarded to an apartment complex nearby, in care of an Angela Carey.
Casey drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel, feeling only slightly guilty for being there. She had dropped her father off at the Modern Maturity Center with instructions that he was to wait inside the lobby for her and that she would be there to pick him up at the end of the day. He hadn’t asked where she was going and she hadn’t offered to tell him. She hadn’t told anyone she was taking vacation time. She was giving herself a week to tail Gaitlin and then she would reassess the plan.
Following Gaitlin evenings would be harder. And she knew she couldn’t follow him twenty-four hours a day, but right now, she was just trying to get a feel for where he went, what he did, what his routine was. He had never let a week go by without making contact with her in some way, whether it was standing in her flower bed peeping in her window or mailing one of those stupid drawings. Surely in a week she could catch him at something.
She had helped one of Gaitlin’s neighbors, a young single woman with two small children, carry groceries into her apartment. The woman had provided Casey with plenty of information about Charlie, including the facts that he didn’t work and that his brother, James, sometimes stayed there with him and his girlfriend, but the woman hadn’t seen the brother in a few days.
Another ten minutes passed and Gaitlin still hadn’t come out of the building. Needing to use the restroom, and a little curious, Casey decided to go inside. The flea market, apparently once a warehouse, had been cleverly turned into a mini-mall of sorts.
Inside, she discovered that the “stores” were makeshift rooms constructed of chain-link fencing lining both sides of a track that went around in a circle in the center of the structure. She was amazed to see that a person could find almost anything in the shops, and at a discounted price. There were hardware and kitchenware, a music store, a Hispanic food market, a newsstand, and even a barbershop. Following the signs for public restrooms, she located a food court where deli meats were sold in one place, pastries, pizza, and ice cream in others. When she came out of the restroom, she halted in front of the Amish deli trying to decide if she should go back to her car or walk around and look for Gaitlin.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a familiar face, but it wasn’t Gaitlin’s. It was her old “buddy” Sarge, from the hospital cafeteria. He was seated at a table at the food court, drinking from a Styrofoam cup and eating a muffin. He must have taken time off from work for the holidays, too. She turned away, hoping he wouldn’t spot her. She didn’t want to get stuck talking to him, for a variety of reasons.
That was when she spotted Gaitlin buying a piece of sausage pizza. She hung back until he paid and then followed him, past shop after shop, and watched him enter a dollar store. A blond woman in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, worked the cash register. She gave a customer his change and the man exited the store. Casey stood one store over pretending to look at pink candles shaped like seashells that smelled strongly of gardenias. She watched Gaitlin and the woman through the fence that served as the store side. Plastic snow shovels, knit scarves, and flyswatters, of all things, hung on the fencing, but from where she stood, she had a good view of Gaitlin.
Casey didn’t remember the young woman who had picked him up that day after court very well, but she suspected this was the same one.
“You still here?” the woman asked Gaitlin. She began to dump pencils from a cardboard box into a plastic bowl next to the cash register. “I thought you were goin’ to apply at the Exxon.”
“I was hungry. That a crime?” He stuffed pizza into his mouth.
She looked at him, hand on her hip. “You bring me any?”
He kept eating.
She finished dumping the pencils into the plastic container with an obvious gesture of annoyance. He chewed. A Hispanic family stopped in front of the store to contemplate the purchase of one of the snow shovels. Casey tried to breathe through her mouth; she hated the fake smell of gardenias.
“Want the crust?” Gaitlin asked finally. His lips were wet with grease from the sausage.
“No,” she answered testily.
The family decided against the purchase of the snow shovel and moved on.
“But you like the crust,” Gaitlin said.
“What I’d like is a piece of pizza of my own, only I can’t spend two twenty-five on a big ol’ slice of hot pizza because I got to stop at the grocery store on the way home and buy bread and peanut butter.”
He shrugged and pushed the crust into his mouth.
She reached under the counter and came up with a brown napkin that looked as if it had come from a dispenser in the ladies’ room. “Wipe your face.”
He snatched the napkin from her hand and blotted the grease on his mouth.
“You were supposed to be returnin’ the c
ar. That’s why you’re supposed to be here. You take my car again, you gotta swear you’ll be back at six. I promised Shonda.”
“I swear.” He raised both hands as if she were holding him at gunpoint.
“And you swear you’ll go by the Exxon when you leave here and drop off your application? It’s on the seat of the car. I filled it all out.”
“I swear.”
She crossed her thin arms over her chest. Like Linda, this young woman had probably been pretty once. But her hair was overbleached, she had on too much eyeliner, and she looked tired. “Rode hard and put up wet” was the sad phrase that came to Casey’s mind.
Casey felt a pang of compassion for Angela Carey. She was tempted to wait until Gaitlin left and then go inside and talk to her. Tell her what Gaitlin was, warn her she needed to get out of the relationship before it was too late.
But Angela already knew who Gaitlin was. She had picked him up the day he was released from jail.
Casey had learned the hard way that you couldn’t help people who didn’t want help.
As Gaitlin walked out of the dollar store, Casey turned away, facing the pink candles. The gardenia scent was so strong that it was making her nauseous.
Gaitlin didn’t notice her. Allowing him to get a safe distance in front of her, she followed him into the parking lot. Out on the highway, he drove past the Exxon gas station. A few miles up the road, he pulled into the parking lot of a dumpy bar that advertised lottery tickets, Budweiser, and “Country Karaoke” every Saturday night.
Casey slipped into a spot on the side of the gravel parking lot under a faded yellow banner that read, “Welcome Race Fans.” She cut the engine and checked to be sure her car doors were locked. Then she fished a pen out of her bag and picked up the crossword puzzle page of the newspaper off the front passenger seat.
She had a feeling it was going to be a long, boring afternoon.
“You going to eat your Jello, Professor?”
Ed looked at the old woman seated next to him in the dining hall that also served as the rec hall. Kate. He liked her. She had once been a teacher too. Chemistry, in high school.
She was nice to him. She didn’t mind when he occasionally used the wrong word, like this morning when he said tulip instead of ace at the card table. But she was still old. Ed didn’t know how he felt about old women. In a way, they made him feel old.
I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there—
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possibler—
Something Emily Dickinson had once written about getting old. Ed didn’t like the word possibler. It wasn’t even a real word, but who was he to tell Emily Dickinson that?
“You going to eat it?” With her plastic spoon, Kate poked at the plastic container on his tray.
He frowned. “It’s red.”
“Christmas Jello,” she told him. “We didn’t eat it all before Christmas. I suppose that makes it New Year’s Jello.” She chuckled as she took it off his tray.
“I don’t like Jello,” he said. “Frazier and I like pudding. Chocolate.”
“You should bring this Frazier fellow one day. He can play cards, too.”
Ed chewed his meatloaf slowly. It was all right, but not as good as he got at home. “Frazier doesn’t play cards often.”
“Neither did any of us, before we got walkers.” She cackled at her joke, elbowing Ed in his side.
She had pointy elbows.
“I don’t want to talk about Jello.” He took another bite of meatloaf. “I want to talk about my daughter.”
“Freckles? Yes.” Kate peeled the foil on the snack container and dove in with her spoon.
Ed tried to concentrate on what he wanted to say. It was so difficult for him to focus his thoughts. One word and he’d find himself flying off in another direction, forgetting the original path he had sought. It was frustrating. Even frightening sometimes, because often he got lost. Lost in his own mind.
He set down his fork. “Kate, I’m worried about her. Someone is watching her. He’s following her.”
Kate sucked the red wiggly gelatin off her spoon. “That could be bad. My son Eli, he had a friend mugged in Trenton. They stole her pocketbook. Muggers follow you.”
Ed stared at the meatloaf, which no longer looked all that appetizing. There were mashed potatoes, too, with gravy. He liked chicken gravy better than beef gravy. There had been a little diner he and Lorraine used to take the girls to whenever they went to visit Lorraine’s family in—
Ed squelched the thought. He pushed gravy out of his mind. “This is a bad man. I know he is.”
“So call the police.” Kate zealously scraped the bottom of the plastic container with her plastic spoon. “That’s what they’re there for. Catch muggers and such.” She gestured with the spoon.
Ed shook his head. “No, this is a very bad man. Worse than a mugger who takes a pocketbook. He might hurt her.” He looked at the wizened old lady with the ruby red lips beside him. She was so tiny that she looked like a dwarf or maybe one of those lady yard gnomes. “I can’t let that happen. You understand, don’t you? You understand I have to protect her?”
Kate suddenly put the spoon and the empty container down on her tray. She took one of Ed’s hands between her tiny, wrinkled ones. “I understand, Professor. You have to protect her. We have to protect those we love.”
“No matter what the consequences,” he said. He shook his head. “It could get messy.”
“No matter what the consequences,” she repeated, looking into his eyes.
She had pretty eyes. Pale blue. They looked even bluer contrasted against her white hair and ruby lips. Kate listened to him. She understood him. That was another reason he liked her.
“You need help protecting her?” Kate asked, still giving him her undivided attention. “I’m slow on the walker, but I’ve still got something upstairs.” She let go of his hand to tap her temple.
“I don’t need any help,” he said. “I can do this. I can protect her this time.”
“Good thing these kids have got us, that’s all I have to say, Professor. You need Katydid, you just give her a call.” She turned to the old woman sitting on the other side of her. “Janice, you going to eat that Jello?”
Ed picked up his plastic fork again. His appetite was beginning to return. He felt better having had this talk with Kate. He had been thinking for some time that he needed to make preparations…in case Freckles needed him. It was reaffirming that Kate agreed.
“He just said he wanted to come over?”
Jayne stood in her cluttered foyer with Casey, a lavender tutu in one hand, needle and thread in the other. Apparently, Chad had been wearing the skirt on his head and had somehow torn off a row of tulle ruffle. Jayne had told Casey that he was currently in a time-out, although it sounded to Casey as if he was running around in the kitchen screaming for juice.
Casey shrugged. “He asked yesterday, too, so apparently it’s been on his mind. He said he hadn’t been over to visit lately and he wanted to come.”
Casey had kept her coat on. She was going to do “the loop” to check up on Gaitlin, and then, as she had promised, she was going to drop by Lincoln’s place. It wouldn’t take her long to find Charlie if he was following his usual pattern. She had learned over the last five days that he was only ever at one of four places: his girlfriend’s; the honky-tonk bar; the flea market; or his brother’s girlfriend’s place, in the same trailer park where Linda had lived.
The trailer park was always the last place Casey looked for him because she hated going there. She hoped he’d be at one of the other places tonight. Every time she pulled onto the gravel road, she imagined that flash of emergency vehicles the night Linda had died. She remembered the somber faces of the police officers and EMTs. Every time she saw Linda’s old place, she fought the same feeling of helplessness that she had felt that night.
Casey glanced at her father seated in the chai
r in front of the television. Joaquin was watching college basketball. Ed was on his best behavior tonight; he hadn’t told Joaquin to change the channel or demanded control of the remote. “Dad, you want to take off your coat?”
“No,” Ed grunted, staring straight ahead at the TV. “Cold in here. Always cold in this darned house.”
The sisters looked at each other and smiled.
“He say why he wanted to come over?” Jayne asked Casey. “Did he want to talk to me? See the kids?” She waved the tulle tutu in the direction of the family room. “Wanted to watch basketball with Joaquin?”
Casey shrugged, chuckling with her. “He didn’t say. But he’s been pretty good this week. Not real talkative, but”—she nodded—“good. No complaints so far about me dropping him off and picking him up at the senior center instead of letting him ride the bus.”
“I’ll definitely help out with that as soon as I can, but with the school holidays, our schedule is just crazy.” Jayne opened the front door. “So you’ll be back at nine?”
“Yup.” Casey buttoned the top of her green wool peacoat. “Just going to run a few errands.”
Her sister raised an eyebrow. “That what we’re calling it these days? ‘Running errands’? I’ll have to remember that when the kids get a little older. Right now, ‘Mommy and Daddy are having a tea party in their bedroom’ seems to be working.”
Casey laughed as she stepped out of the warm house, into the cold. “Back in a little while.”
Ed pretended to watch the TV. Basketball. Tall, young, black men in tank tops. He had never quite understood the game, even back in the days when he could have. Now, he just didn’t care enough to try.
He could hear his daughters talking, but he couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. Didn’t matter; they were talking about him. About how crazy he was. They always were.
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