by Cass Sellars
“I wish I knew, but I don’t. Do you have any insight into what made him so crazy that he wrote two notes?”
Syd closed her eyes and pulled her teeth hard over her bottom lip, cringing at the implication of what she was about to reveal. “I picked Parker up at the office this afternoon, and we were talking at the little park down the street. We were just sitting there, and we were kissing. We ended up, um, together, in the car. I guess he could have seen us; he must have been watching us.”
“In your car?” Mack stared at her skeptically.
“Yes, asshole. My car.” Syd managed a smirk. “And stop trying to picture it because I know you are.”
Mack shook her head.
“The thing is, he would have seen Parker. How can I be cheating if I am with her?”
“He’s obviously not dealing with reality.” She motioned for Syd to follow her to the living room where they waited for the crime scene tech to show up. Syd saw Parker sip from a tall glass of orange juice, and she knew it wasn’t just juice. She raised her eyebrows in question.
Parker straightened and shrugged. “What? Technically, the bars just closed, so one screwdriver before bed isn’t a big deal.”
“You’re right, especially if you share.” Syd took a long swallow and pulled Parker against her, grateful for the soothing strokes of Parker’s fingers down her sides.
“I need to tell you that there are two notes from today. The one from tonight and one Jen found on her car this afternoon.”
“Why Jenny’s car?” Parker looked confused.
“I assume because you were driving it this morning,” Mack said from where she sat.
“This is crazy.” She shook her head and stared at the counter. “I want to read them.”
Syd wanted to shield her from the threatening words and disturbing implications, but she knew Parker wouldn’t welcome the gesture at this point any more than she would have.
Parker finished reading and returned Mack’s phone to her. She stood and stepped toward Syd, speaking quietly. “It means someone was watching me, us—today in the park, Sydney.” She wrapped her arms around her body as if to cover herself.
“I think that’s what it looks like, too. I’m so sorry this is happening.” Sydney rubbed her hands over Parker’s back and pressed her lips softly against her temple as Parker leaned into Sydney’s arms.
A knock jolted them out of the moment, and Mack slid the door open to admit Darcy Dean.
“I saw your address and your call number on the dispatch.” She addressed Syd and then Mack. “What the hell is going on?”
“Right now, criminal damage to property, but likely stalking and communicating threats by the time we finish.”
Darcy hugged Sydney and moved to put her arms around Parker. “You okay?”
“Sure, it’s a laugh a minute around here, Darcy. Don’t you miss us?” Her tone was sarcastic and angry.
“I took a bunch of pictures before you came. Log in to your computer, and I’ll port them over while you’re working back there.” Syd pulled a transfer cable from the junk drawer under the counter.
“10-4, Sy-Fy.” Darcy used the nickname she’d used with Syd more than a decade before. The inference was once a flirtation aimed at reconnecting with her old love; today, she clearly meant only to create a familiar moment despite a stressful encounter at two thirty in the morning. Though Syd could tell Parker wasn’t paying much attention.
Darcy followed Mack to the bedroom as Sydney started the transfer onto her laptop. Parker slid off the stool and walked slowly to the window. She pushed the blinds up and stared into the street, a solo homage to the darkness.
Sydney fought the urge to lower the blinds but chose to turn the lights out in the living room instead. She stood behind Parker and waited for Parker to focus on her. “We’ll figure this out.”
“How? When he actually comes after us? Or hurts you?” Parker turned abruptly and fisted her hands into Syd’s collar. “Do you understand that I need you? That I’m more terrified to live without you than you could ever be to live without me?”
“Not possible, Parker.” Syd pulled her to the bench away from the window and knelt in front of her. “Park, you’re my world, and I’ll make sure this guy pays for what he’s doing to us, okay? Please trust me.”
“I do trust you, Syd. But you can’t stop this any more than I can if we don’t know where it’s coming from. Mack can’t stop it. I’m afraid to leave you because I don’t know where you’ll be when I get back. I’m scared to be at work because I’m afraid my life will have changed by the time I get home. That you won’t be here.” Parker clenched her fists tighter and pounded them weakly against Sydney’s shoulders. “That someone will try to take you away from me again.” The vodka seemed to have only weakened her resolve to stand up and fight against the faceless stranger trying to invade their lives, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Sydney fought the pain associated with Parker’s sobs now creating an agonizing sound in her chest. “We will figure this out. I won’t lose you. Not ever.”
“You don’t know,” Parker whispered, sounding defeated. She again turned to stare into the darkness when she heard Darcy and Mack headed toward them.
Darcy, stopping behind them, looked upset when she noticed Parker’s tearstained cheeks.
“I’ve gotten all I can. We have one smudge on the last note but nothing I can print. I’m sorry.” She held Parker’s hand. “We have a company that’ll come and board that up until you can get someone out here. You want me to call them?”
Syd knew that the offer was the contribution of a friend and not the typical service of a tiny police department. “Yeah, that would be good. We may not find anyone with the weekend.” Syd disconnected her phone from Darcy’s computer and handed it back to her.
“Consider it done. I’ll see if there’s anything else we can find in the meantime.” She turned back to Parker. “I’ll really try, Park.”
“I know you will. Thanks, Darcy,” Parker whispered and stared out at the street. “Mack, please tell Jen I’ll call her later. She doesn’t need to come over.”
“Will do.” Mack walked with Sydney toward the door. “I’ll call you if we get anything.”
“Thanks.” Syd locked the door behind them and turned to Parker. “Will you come over to the couch with me and lie down?” Parker followed without answer, but neither of them slept. Syd pretended to rest, but she was on high alert for every creak of the century-old building, and any shift of any branch outside their window brought her laser focus to study, analyze, and brace for a call to action. She would not fail Parker, whether Parker thought it was her job or not.
Chapter Thirteen
Mack had told Sydney everything she didn’t want to hear. Response from the lab had confirmed that there were no useable prints or any smidgen of forensic data that might tell them who was torturing them. Mack told her she now had an entire accordion file dedicated to the case, which she’d hoped would never even have been called a case.
Syd saw Mack’s car back into the space next to hers but continued to stare toward the front door of Davidson Properties. Mack jerked open the passenger door of the car and dropped heavily into the seat next to Syd, who never moved to look at her.
“First rule of surveillance is to be inconspicuous. Since you’re driving a shiny black Porsche, let’s go to number two…lock your doors.”
Syd was monotone as she replied to Mack, not looking at her. “Do you not think I saw your inconspicuous city ride with the visor strobes? And I unlocked the doors because you’re predictable.” Syd continued her stare at the front of the office building.
“What do you think you’ll see out here?” Mack stretched her legs out under the dash and scanned the confined space.
“Probably nothing. Maybe some guy with three heads pulling his monster truck out behind her. Why are you here?”
“I talked to Davidson. I told him I wanted to do a few interviews with the new guys a
nd see who I could eliminate. Maybe the three-headed guy will show up while I’m here and tap me on the shoulder.”
“Good thought.” Sydney stared ahead, cataloguing every movement. Cars coming and going, employees and visitors arriving and leaving. She knew if she looked away she might miss the crucial moment when she could stop all of this.
“How’s she doing since this all happened?” Mack asked.
“Depends. One minute she’s pissed and the next she wants to give up and not leave the house. If I didn’t think she’d blame me later, I’d take her up on option two. I’m smart enough to know that it would bite me in the ass if this is ever over.”
“So, your fallback position is close your business and tail her until he shows himself?”
“Got anything better?” Sydney asked, clenching and unclenching her fists around the steering wheel. “What would you do if it were Jenny?”
“Likely arrest her every morning on some bullshit charge so she had to ride in my police car for the rest of the day.” Mack grinned, clearly hoping to break her friend’s mood.
“And you accuse me of being irrational.” Syd tried to smile but knew it fell flat.
“Want to do something completely against the rules?” Mack elbowed her.
“Almost always.” Syd pulled her eyes away from the door briefly. “What did you have in mind?”
“Listen to these interviews and give me your gut? Remotely, of course.”
“You mean listen from far away, so I don’t snap someone’s head off?” Syd smirked at Mack, whose SLPD cap was pulled low over her eyes, masking her expression.
“Precisely. See? This is why we work well together. You get me.”
Mack smiled at her.
“Who are you doing first?” Syd suddenly had a reason to focus and could feel valued as a city contractor instead of a crime target’s helpless girlfriend.
“Probably the Chris guy and then Frank. I don’t think he’s good for it, but I don’t want to skip him, either.” She read from her notes.
“Do Frank first. He’s nervous enough to spill his guts about everything before he knows it’s even relevant. He might have a gut on his new guys without knowing it, too.” Syd felt the fire in her return. Not being some helpless bystander was the only thing she thought might help alleviate the frustration of doing essentially nothing.
“Good call. I’ll call you from the conference room in ten. Mute your phone, and don’t move from your car unless your ass is on fire.”
“Yessir, Lieutenant.”
Mack turned to look back toward Sydney’s car before disappearing through the heavy doors.
Syd answered Mack’s conference app call the second it came through. To her delight, Mack had activated the video as well, placing the phone at the end of the table so Syd had a nice visual vantage point. Syd obediently muted her line and watched as Mack settled in and dialed the conference room speakerphone to request Frank Meyers meet her in the Sycamore Conference Room.
“Good morning, Frank.” Mack stood as the small man entered the room. His eyes darted over the table and he took the seat she gestured to.
“Morning.” Meyers’s voice shook as he sat and cleared his throat as if to steady it.
“Frank, do you know why we’re here?” Mack began without small talk and intentionally didn’t reintroduce herself to him.
“No, ma’am. Am I in trouble? Did something happen?” His eyes darted around nervously.
“You tell me.”
The technique rarely worked on the innocent. Guilty people usually redirected or made something up to try to steer the conversation. In Frank’s case, Syd thought he might just black out.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fair enough. Let’s move on.” Syd saw Mack’s hands move to cover her notebook. “If I asked you to identify someone at work that made you concerned or that you thought maybe wasn’t stable, who would you name, Frank?”
He smiled for an instant and then looked unsure if he should smile. Syd watched him visibly censor the obvious flippant response he had considered and she’d heard a thousand versions of.
“I guess I don’t know anyone. There are quite a few people that I don’t know at all…you know, new people.” He scanned the table as if looking for clues he couldn’t find.
“Who are the new people?”
“Ben Barrett, Chris Newkirk…they work for me. Then there’s Randy and another guy named Steve in accounting. They all started at the same time, but I don’t work with them much.”
“Describe them to me, Frank.”
Syd knew Mack never asked a yes or no question in an interview if she could help it. She asked for descriptions or details because then the person had to say something or overtly refuse.
“Well, Ben is quiet, I mean really quiet. For a while I thought he just hated me or DPI, but then I realized he just doesn’t talk to anybody. I took all the new guys out one night, and he just stood in the corner and watched people. He’s great at his job, he just doesn’t talk much. I think he’s shy.”
“Know anything about his personal life?” Mack rolled her pen between her fingers.
“Not a thing. He doesn’t wear a ring, so I guess he’s single. Someone said he has a girlfriend, but he hasn’t ever said anything to me.” Frank chuckled as he relaxed into a comfortable place where he got to talk about other people instead of himself.
“How about Chris?” Mack didn’t let his mind wander too long.
“He’s a mess. Pretty good at his job. Says he did scheduling work for his dad’s company before this, but outside of that, all I know is there’s a long list of things he doesn’t do. Real religious, which is fine, but everything in his world is religion and perfection. He prays before every meal, irons his ties, and carries his own pencils to work. Part of me thinks he had them blessed or something.” Frank smiled at his own joke.
“Tell me more about how everything in his world is religion? How does he bring it up?”
“Well, he had a fight with Mike on his second day ’cuz he was playing the radio, and Chris said he couldn’t listen to it because it wasn’t Christian music. And there was the party for the folks at CTI, which is a big project we’re doing, and he got real quiet ’cuz everyone was drinking, and some of the people were gay.”
Frank had obviously failed to recognize Mack from the party or as Jenny’s wife, a fact that made Syd grin. It could be useful.
“What did he say about that?”
“He said he saw two girls holding hands and another guy was talking about his husband. He said that they had sexual problems, and they needed to find God to fix them because it wasn’t natural.”
“What did you say to him about that?” Mack wrote some key words on the tablet, and Syd scribbled notes of her own.
“I just told him that folks around here wouldn’t like him talking about that. Especially those girls in HR. Around here they call it homo resources.” He smirked and then looked immediately as if he wished he hadn’t said it.
“And why is that, Frank?” Mack’s expression was passive as she spoke.
“Well, because the two women that run that department are gay.” He shrugged as if the officer had asked him an idiotic question.
“Do you know those women, Frank?”
“Yeah, I see them all the time. One of them is running some of my projects now. She’s really good, and she has always been nice to me. Jenny, the other one, is my friend. We talk a lot about stuff, just shooting the crap, y’know?”
“Does anyone seem to have a problem with the people in human resources? Because they’re gay, maybe?”
“Problem? No way. We joke sometimes about them being, y’know, queer because they’re real girly and kind of cute, and we say stuff about them needing a real man to change them back. But it’s just a joke; no one means anything by it.” Frank spoke as if trying to convince the officer of his politically correct intentions.
Sydney itched to choke the
unenlightened idiot, but she kept her promise to stay put.
“Have you ever had any fantasies about anyone at work, Frank? About being with them or hurting them?”
“God, no! What kind of a guy do you think I am? I mean, I might think some chick looks good or something, but I would never think anything sick about them. When I get married, I sure wouldn’t want anyone thinking like that about my wife.” His cheeks flushed as he tried to verbally distance himself from the implication.
“You mentioned the party you went to.”
“Yeah. Somewhere downtown on Meridian, I think.”
“Have you been back there since the party?” Mack stared at her notes, and Syd watched genuine confusion manifest on his face.
“No. For what?” He studied Mack.
“No reason. I just wondered.” Mack spoke quickly and moved past the question. “Did Chris ever mention anything else to you about the people he thought might be homosexual that work here?”
“He asked me if Parker and Jenny were ‘that way,’ but I told him not to ask me stuff like that because I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“Did he say why he wanted to know?” Mack offered an intrigued look.
“Just that he couldn’t figure it out since they were pretty and stuff.” He shrugged at Mack, who leaned a little closer and pushed her notes to the side.
“Do you think only ugly people are gay, Frank?”
“No! I don’t, but I guess he does. At least the ones in his head maybe don’t look like Jenny and Parker.”
“Who else does he talk to around here?”
“No one. Everybody steers clear of him because they’re afraid they’ll get reported for something.” Frank shook his head solemnly. “Kind of sad, if you ask me.”
“Did he ever mention anything about wanting to date anyone or liking anyone?”
“Nope. In fact, he said he would never be around a female alone unless he met them at church. He said his daddy would find him a nice virgin from their church, and then they would teach him about sex so they could have babies. Can you imagine? Having your father pick your wife? Sometimes, I think people spend too much time in other people’s business, and churches seem to be the worst.”
