by Dawn Eastman
“How so?”
Danny looked at the ceiling. He lowered his eyes and met Katie’s gaze. “She was a manipulative bitch.”
Katie felt the anger behind his words and reflexively leaned back away from him. Before she could respond, Danny continued. “She liked to play guys off of each other. She’d break up with one guy and then parade the new one around. She’d always act shocked if there was trouble, but she had to know what she was doing. She’d go to a party where she knew the ex-boyfriend would be. Between alcohol and male jealousy, she managed to put herself at the center of a lot of drama.”
“Did she do that to you?”
Danny snorted. “She tried. But I was a little older than her usual guy and I didn’t get drawn in.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“The night she died.” Danny held his hands up. “Before you say anything, we had a brief chat and I left the party. She was trying to push my buttons and I wasn’t playing. Listen, I have to get back to work. I’ve got an owner coming in two hours and I still have to finish the detailing.”
Danny stood and gestured to the door. Katie didn’t think she’d get any more out of him. She was surprised he had told her as much as he had. Which made her wonder how much of it was true.
15
Twenty minutes later, Katie parked in her driveway and was disappointed to see that Caleb’s car was gone. She had hoped he would help her scroll through whatever was on the thumb drives. With a sigh, she opened her car door and pulled out her messenger bag. Lunch seemed like it had been days ago, but she was too anxious to look at Taylor’s files to worry about eating just yet.
She dumped her coat in the kitchen and went straight to her room to get her laptop. She flipped it open and waited briefly for it to wake up. She grabbed the elephant first and put it into her USB port. As her computer read the thumb drive, Katie chewed on her thumbnail. A box popped up on her screen showing absolutely nothing. The thumb drive was empty. The cow and rooster were the same. Empty.
There was a momentary spike of excitement when the shark yielded a folder, but when Katie clicked on it, it was just photos. Katie scrolled quickly through them and didn’t see anything of interest. Most of them were snapshots and selfies dated over a year ago.
Finally, with the monkey, she got lucky. This one seemed to be her school backup. There were multiple files labeled by class with documents that seemed to be notes from class and papers. She clicked on SOCIOLOGY.
Several files popped up, but Katie’s eye was drawn immediately to the one labeled EUGENE LOWE. She clicked it open and was rewarded with more files. Taylor was obsessed, as her boyfriend had said. She had files with police reports, newspaper articles, notes, and a rough draft of her paper.
Katie felt a frisson of unease as she pulled her notebook out of her bag. Looking through Taylor’s computer files felt more invasive than she had expected. After the strange questions Taylor had asked, Katie felt she had to see what she’d been working on before she disappeared. Katie had to swallow her squeamishness and get to work.
She clicked on the first file, labeled NOTES, and a dialogue box came up demanding a password. Katie felt her eyebrows draw together. She clicked on the rest of the files and was met with the smug password request box each time.
She shut her laptop and pushed away from the table. She’d make something to eat while she waited for Caleb to get home. He could probably break through the password protection in a couple of minutes.
A text confirmed he was out with friends and wasn’t sure when he’d be home. When he still hadn’t returned by midnight, Katie went to bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
* * *
Katie woke up in the dark. Something had disturbed her sleep, and before she had time to think, she heard it again. Someone was pounding on the kitchen door. She glanced at her clock, which told her it was 2:14 AM.
Her first thought was Caleb. Had he forgotten his key? She stumbled to the door, grabbing a long cardigan on her way. She met Caleb in the hallway.
“Who the hell is that?” he said.
“How should I know?” Katie said. “I thought it was you.”
The two of them went into the kitchen and flicked on the light. The pounding had begun again but stopped when the lights came on.
Caleb held up his hand to Katie and cautiously approached the door.
He peeked around the curtain.
“It’s some guy,” he whispered.
The pounding came again. They heard a voice on the other side of the door. “Dr. LeClair, let me in, please!”
Caleb crooked his finger in the direction of the door. “It’s for you.”
“Well, open the door,” Katie said.
Caleb left the chain on and opened the door a crack.
“Who are you?” said the man outside.
“Who are you?” said Caleb.
“I’m a patient of Dr. LeClair’s. Is she here?”
Caleb glanced back at Katie, and she nodded that he should let the person in. Caleb shut the door and took the chain off. When he reopened it, Eugene hurried through the door and slammed it shut behind him.
“Thank you,” he said. He flicked the bolt. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Katie stepped toward the intruding patient. “Eugene, what are you doing here?”
When Katie said his name, Caleb looked more carefully at the man in front of him.
“I’m so sorry to barge in like this,” Eugene said.
“Where have you been?” Katie asked. “Your mother is worried.”
Katie felt like she was reprimanding a teenager.
Eugene leaned against the door and closed his eyes. “I had some things to do and I didn’t want anyone following me.” He held up his hands. “I know that sounds paranoid, but I feel like they’re tracking my every move.”
Caleb stood between Katie and Eugene. His arms were crossed, and he blocked Eugene from coming further into the house.
“Caleb, it’s okay.” Katie put her hand on his arm.
Caleb stepped back to allow Eugene into the kitchen but didn’t change his threatening stance. Eugene looked at Caleb curiously and stepped past him into the room.
“Eugene, this is my brother, Caleb.” The two men nodded briefly at each other.
“You’d better sit and tell us what’s going on,” Katie said.
They all pulled out chairs at the table and sat.
“I was headed back to my mom’s house earlier this evening when I realized someone was following me.”
“Did you see who it was?” Katie asked.
Eugene turned toward Katie. “No, he stayed in the shadows, but I know he was there.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Caleb asked. “How did you know where we live?”
Eugene smirked at Caleb. “You think there’s anyone in town who doesn’t know where the new doctor lives? And I didn’t go to the police because I’m not the sort of person they worry about protecting. I thought I would be okay if I just went home, but when I got to my street, I saw that there were people watching the house.”
“What do you mean, they were watching the house?” Katie asked.
“There was a car just a couple houses down with a guy sitting in it. I might have walked right past him, but I smelled his cigarette. I waited, thinking he had just stopped to have a smoke, but he finished it and then just sat there. I’m sure he was watching the house.”
“How can you be sure he had anything to do with you?” Caleb asked.
“I’ve spent a lot of time the last month or so watching for these guys. I recognized the car. It’s one of the cars that drives past the house several times a night just to scare me.”
Caleb glanced at Katie. She knew what he was thinking: that Eugene was paranoid and maybe a little unstable. But Katie wasn’t so sure. Certainly, after everything he had been through, he was allowed to be on edge.
“Why did you come here?” Katie asked.
�
��It was the first place I could think of when I realized I couldn’t go home,” Eugene said. “You were nice to me and I figured they would never suspect I’d come here. I just blended back into the shadows and hid for a while. I wanted to be sure they were watching my house before I did anything else. I also wanted to be sure my mom was safe.”
“So you hid for most of the evening and then made your way here?” Caleb asked, and didn’t hide the disbelief in his voice.
Eugene wouldn’t meet Caleb’s eyes, but he nodded.
“What are you planning to do?” Katie asked.
“I’ll go home tomorrow when the coast is clear.”
Katie wasn’t sure the coast would be clear in the morning either. She was also starting to wonder just what was going on with Eugene. Where did he have to go that necessitated all of this skulking around? Why couldn’t he have told Gretchen? She started to revise her theory about what Taylor had discovered. He certainly wasn’t acting like a person with nothing to hide. And it sounded like he planned on spending the night.
“Eugene, what happened to Heather Stone?” Katie asked. She figured she might as well be blunt. He was hiding out in her house, after all.
Eugene’s head snapped up. “You think I killed her?”
Katie put her hands up. “I don’t know anything about it. I wasn’t here in Baxter—I wasn’t even in Ann Arbor.”
Eugene’s shoulders slumped. “I have no idea.”
“What do you mean?” Katie leaned forward, arms on the table.
Eugene sighed. “I followed Alicia to Ann Arbor.” He shrugged and hesitated. “She was my only friend. I didn’t think I’d be able to face every day at school without her there.”
“Were you trying to bring her back home?”
Eugene nodded. “That was my plan. I thought if I could bring her home, her dad would forgive me and drop the restraining order and everything would go back to the way it was.”
“It’s not easy to get a restraining order,” Katie said. “What did you do?”
Eugene rolled his eyes. “It sounds really stupid now, but we just had this game we played. It was Alicia’s idea. We got talking about weird things people do. She’d read some story about friends who stole things from each other and earned points if it took the other person a long time to figure out what it was.”
“If it was all just a game, why did it escalate so fast?”
“I don’t know.” Eugene looked at the table. “I thought it would be funny. I figured if I stole all of her underwear, she’d have to notice pretty quick. We were just kids, playing a prank. What did we know? Alicia thought it was hilarious, but when the police found all that stuff, it wasn’t so funny.”
Katie and Caleb exchanged a glance. Truth or lie?
“The night that Heather was killed. Did you argue with her?” Katie asked.
Eugene shook his head. “I never spoke to her. I had a fight with Alicia because she didn’t want me to get in trouble for breaking the restraining order. I walked to my car and then changed my mind and walked back to the party. I saw Heather lying in the Law Quad. I thought it was Alicia.” Eugene stopped and pulled the pink beads out of his pocket.
Katie and Caleb waited for him to continue.
He clicked the beads through his fingers and seemed to be trying to calm himself. After a moment, which seemed like an eternity and had Katie itching to grab the bracelet out of his hands, he continued his story.
“I ran over to her—she was dressed the same as Alicia. She had the same blonde hair, but I was so glad it wasn’t Alicia that I didn’t even think. I just stood there and then some security guard came along, and before I knew it, I was in jail.”
Eugene looked up and met Katie’s eyes. “It’s the truth.”
“But why didn’t you ever tell anyone?” Caleb asked.
“I did,” Eugene said. “No one believed me. Not even my own lawyer.”
“That’s probably enough for tonight,” Katie said, then stood.
“We can give you a blanket and a couch if you want to stay here,” she said, and then handed her phone to Eugene. “Call your mother. She’s worried sick.”
Eugene took the phone, dialed, and held the phone to his ear.
Caleb shot her an “Are you crazy?” look, but Katie ignored him.
After a brief conversation, which left Eugene blushing furiously, he handed Katie her phone back, thanked her for her offer of a couch, and followed her into the living room.
Katie pulled a blanket out of the linen closet and handed it to Eugene. Caleb hovered in the hallway.
As Katie turned to go back to her room, Caleb stepped toward her and whispered, “Lock your door.”
She started to protest and then just nodded. Caleb waited while she went into her room.
She leaned against the door and took a deep breath. Did she believe Eugene? She honestly wasn’t sure. Part of being a doctor meant being a good judge of people. Katie felt like she had a pretty good BS meter, but everyone got fooled once in a while. Considering the story she’d heard from Danny, maybe Heather had pushed Eugene in some way that had made him lash out. Katie only had his word for it that they’d never spoken. As Alicia’s friend, would Heather have known what to say to get a reaction out of him? Had she been the kind of person who liked to mess with people just for the fun of it?
Unfortunately, only Heather could answer those questions and she had been gone for years. And Katie was convinced that Taylor had asked her cryptic question about whether to let someone get away with a crime because of her research into Eugene’s case. But even that left Katie with more questions. She had said that someone had gotten away with a crime. Could Eugene have had an accomplice? Or was he innocent? And even if he was innocent in Heather’s death, and even though he had been just a teen, the story of stealing the underwear creeped her out.
As she debated with herself, she remembered his changing story about his injuries. First he had tripped; then he’d run into a door. Either he’d fallen off a ladder or had been attacked by anonymous miscreants. Maybe he wasn’t the innocent victim he claimed to be. He had lied to her before, so how could she be sure he was telling the truth now?
She was angry with herself for being so suspicious, but she’d never sleep now with her room unlocked.
She pushed away from the door, turned the lock, and then, in a moment of paranoia, pulled a chair over and shoved the back of it under the doorknob.
16
The next day was Saturday. Which would have been great except that Katie was scheduled for morning clinic. At least it would all be quick visits. Saturdays were urgent appointments only. Which could be dead boring or run-ragged busy.
After Eugene left for home, Katie had called John Carlson to tell him that Eugene was safe. Caleb had taken all of the animal thumb drives and promised to let her know as soon as he figured out how to get into the password-protected files. She was hoping to hear from him soon.
Fortunately, clinic ended up moving more smoothly than she’d expected and Angie didn’t have to sigh heavily even once. She finished up her charting and was ready to leave the office by one o’clock.
Katie knew Caleb was working on his app and the thumb drives at home. She called him from the office and told him her plan.
“Okay, I’ll see you there,” he said, and disconnected.
Caleb was up for anything if food was used as a bribe. She’d offered him lunch in exchange for helping her to research Eugene’s case.
Just as she stepped into the parking lot, her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the display. COLIN. Taylor’s boyfriend. Finally.
“Hello?”
“Dr. LeClair? This is Colin Masters. You left a message on my phone.”
Kate unlocked her car and slid behind the wheel, clutching the phone between her ear and shoulder.
“Colin, hi. Thanks for calling me back. I’m so sorry about Taylor. I’m sure this must be a very tough time for you.”
“H
ow do you know Taylor?” His voice was clipped, almost aggressive. “Are you her doctor?”
“No, she worked with me this past summer.” Katie kept her voice calm and steady.
Colin exhaled and softened his voice. “I would have called sooner if I’d made the connection. She really likes you. You haven’t heard from her, have you?”
Katie closed her eyes at the hopeful tone and hesitated. “No, I haven’t. I’m sorry.”
“Every time my phone vibrates, I think it will be Taylor.” Colin stopped and released a long sigh. He cleared his throat and continued. “Telling me she’s on her way back home.”
“I’m sure it must be very hard for you. Just waiting.”
“Plus, everywhere I go, there’s either a cop or a journalist ready to pounce. They say I’m not a suspect, but it doesn’t feel that way. And they say they aren’t even sure she’s in danger, but it doesn’t feel that way either.”
“Colin, did Taylor tell you anything about a project she was working on for school? She was looking into an old criminal case?”
“She never stopped talking about it. She was obsessed. And that smarmy professor just encouraged it. In fact, we had a big fight about it a week or so ago. I told her to give it a rest.”
Smarmy professor? That was two students who thought Russell Hunt was not as great as Gabrielle believed.
“Smarmy professor?”
“Professor Hunt.” Colin’s voice was hard. “Everyone knows he has a thing for undergrads. I tried to tell Taylor, but she just laughed and said she didn’t care about him, only the project she was working on. She said she was sure there was something wrong with the case.”
“Do you know if she had drawn any conclusions?” Katie mentally crossed her fingers, hoping Colin knew whom Taylor suspected.
“No. She wouldn’t say. I know she thought the guy who went to prison was innocent, but she got sort of secretive about it after our fight. First she wouldn’t shut up about the project, and then, nothing. It was like she wasn’t even working on it. And, to be honest, I was just as glad not to have to hear every detail. His voice became quiet. But now I wish I’d asked questions and really listened. She may have just stopped telling me about it to keep the peace. If something happened to her because of her project …”
