Stalking

by Blake Pierce

  Her voice faded away again.

  Sheriff Quayle said, “You were right to tell us, Goldie. We’ve got to know as much as possible about whatever was going on with Kimberly recently. We can’t ignore anything at all.”

  Jake added, “You’ve been a great help, Goldie.”

  Then the girl let out a choked sob.

  “I miss her so much,” Goldie said, crying now.

  “I know you do,” Sheriff Quayle said, his own voice thick with emotion. “She was your best friend, and you miss her even more than most of us do. We’ve all just got to do everything we can to make things right for her. And we’ve got to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

  “I know,” Goldie said.

  “Thank you for being honest with us,” Quayle said.

  “Can I go now?” Goldie pleaded.

  “Of course you can,” Quayle told her. “You’ve been a real help.”

  “Thank you,” Goldie whispered as she got up and scurried out of the room.

  The two agents got to their feet, and Quayle did too. The sheriff stepped aside and spoke to Goldie’s mother, thanking her for letting them come and praising her daughter for her bravery and honesty. He also said he knew they’d upset Goldie, and he told her she should spend a little time with her daughter right now to make her feel better.

  When they were back in the police car, Jake asked, “Do you know this boy Goldie mentioned—Jay Napier?”

  Quayle nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ve known him all his life.”

  Riley asked, “Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  Quayle squinted thoughtfully.

  “The truth is, I really don’t know,” he said. “He was just a regular kid growing up—nothing exceptional or unusual about him. But he’s changed some during the last couple of years, since his parents’ marriage broke up. It’s not like he’s done anything really bad—certainly nothing criminal, but …”

  Quayle was quiet for a moment.

  Then he said, “It’s just his general attitude, I guess. He’s not as polite as he used to be. He’s gotten to be kind of … well, snotty, you might say, especially toward adults. And I’ve heard that he hasn’t treated some other girls he’s dated very nicely.”

  “Has he been violent toward them?” Riley asked.

  “No, nothing like that, or at least nothing I’ve heard of. He’s just … well, like Goldie just said, pushy.”

  Quayle drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and added, “I guess we’d better talk to the kid. We can’t leave any stone unturned, can we? As it happens, he should be pretty easy to reach. He works nights right near the police station at the local Tobin’s fast food joint. He’s probably there right now.”

  The sheriff drove back to the station. After he parked the car and they all got out he said, “Let’s walk over to Tobin’s and pay the kid a visit.” Then something else occurred to him and he pulled out his phone and alerted one of his cops to get a vehicle ready for the agents’ use while they were here in Dalhart. He also told the cop to call and make a reservation for Riley and Jake at a local motel. Then he added grumpily, “If we’ve got to have folks like this around here, we might as make things convenient for them.”

  Jake almost laughed aloud to hear the sheriff revert to his sterner persona. Any traces of the fatherly “Sheriff Ed” vanished now that he was dealing with two FBI agents and not regular townspeople.

  As they walked toward short distance to the fast food place, Jake looked at his young partner. She still seemed agitated.

  He asked, “Are you okay, Riley?”

  Riley looked at him as if she were surprised to see him walking beside her.

  She said, “Yeah, I’m … I’ll be okay. I’ll be just fine.”

  Jake didn’t like the note of uncertainty in her voice.

  She’s not fine, he thought. She’s a long way from fine.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As she and Agent Crivaro followed Sheriff Quayle toward the fast food place, Riley winced with embarrassment.

  Crivaro had just asked …

  “Are you okay, Riley?”

  She hated that he’d felt the need to ask her that question.

  Even more, she hated that she wasn’t sure how to answer it.

  Am I okay?

  Am I going to be okay?

  After all her early experiences, her training at the Academy, and working on three murder cases since her graduation, Riley could hardly believe she’d been so badly shaken by a few photographs. She had confronted real flesh-and-blood horrors and was likely to be faced with more of them before this case was over.

  The question still hovered in her mind.

  Am I really up to it?

  She knew she’d better decide one way or the other, and do it quickly. If she didn’t think she could do the job, Agent Crivaro deserved to know right now. It would be terrible to fall apart on him in the middle of a case.

  Riley was still struggling to make up her mind when she, Crivaro, and Sheriff Quayle reached their destination. Tobin’s fast food place gleamed brightly in the midst of the dark, cold, quiet neighborhood.

  She could see through the enormous plate glass windows that there wasn’t a single customer inside. She wondered whether a fast food place got enough business on a weekday night in a small town like this to be really worth keeping it open.

  Before they went inside, Crivaro asked Quayle to say as little as possible during the interview, and to leave the questioning to himself and Riley.

  The sheriff scowled, but then he nodded glumly.

  Riley and her two colleagues walked into the sparkling interior. Riley and Crivaro sat down at a table while Sheriff Quayle went up to the counter to ask if Jay Napier could take a break from work.

  Soon Quayle came over to their table, followed by a teenaged boy who was wearing a Tobin’s uniform and an apron. Quayle was carrying a stack of cards in his hands. They looked like an employee’s time cards.

  Riley saw that the boy was slightly above medium height and quite muscular. She figured he was quite capable of killing—physically, at least.

  The sheriff and the boy sat down across from Riley and Crivaro. When Quayle made the necessary introductions, and the boy’s eyes widened expectantly.

  “So you’re from the FBI, huh?” he said to Riley and Crivaro. “The BAU, even! Wow! What do you want to talk to me about?”

  Crivaro said, “We’d like to talk to you about Kimberly Dent.”

  “The girl who got killed, you mean,” Jay said with a shrug. “Yeah, it was awful what happened to her. But what does it have to do with me?”

  Crivaro stared at him intently and said, “Well, Jay, we’re kind of hoping you can answer that question for us.”

  Jay chuckled nervously.

  He said, “Um, I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

  Riley felt a tingle of interest.

  He’s evading already, she thought.

  She also noticed something odd about the boy’s expression. He didn’t seem to have stopped smiling since he’d sat down with them. She remembered what Quayle had told them back at the station about his “snotty” attitude.

  Is he smirking at us? Riley wondered. Does he think he’s putting something over on use? Or is it a smile?

  Maybe that slightly smug and insolent expression was natural for him—even habitual. Riley knew that his face was going to be unusually hard to read for honesty or dishonesty.

  Crivaro said, “What can you tell us about her?”

  Jay’s eyes darted back and forth between Crivaro and Riley.

  “I dunno,” he said. “What do you want me to tell you?”

  Crivaro didn’t answer, and Riley thought she understood his tactic. If Jay was in any way guilty, the best way to find out was to let him trap himself in his own attempted deceptions. Riley just hoped Sheriff Quayle did as he was told and didn’t interrupt with thoughts and questions of his own.

  After an awkward silence, Jay sai
d, “She was a nice girl, I guess. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. What else do you want me to say?”

  Crivaro shrugged and said, “What do you want to tell us?”

  “She was a nice girl,” Jay repeated. “I can’t say I knew her all that well.”

  Crivaro pointed a finger at Jay and spoke sharply.

  “Kid, don’t play games with me. I know kids your age inside and out. I can smell when you’re lying a mile away. Isn’t it bad enough that an innocent girl is dead? And now you’re going to lie about her?”

  Riley was startled. Crivaro suddenly sounded a lot more like a scolding father than an FBI agent.

  Jay recoiled as if he’d been slapped.

  Then he said, “Okay, we’d been dating.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us so in the first place?” Crivaro said.

  “You didn’t ask,” the boy said, sounding a little frightened now.

  Crivaro said, “Yeah, we pretty much did. Or are you really stupid, so you need me to spell out in big letters that we want the whole truth from you? You told us you didn’t know her all that well.”

  Jay shrugged and said, “Well, I didn’t lie.”

  “It’s a lie the way I see it,” Crivaro said. “And in case you didn’t know, it’s against the law to lie to a federal law enforcement officer.”

  Although that smirk-like twist remained on Jay’s lips, his eyes registered some alarm.

  He said, “Look, sometimes you think you know someone and you find out you really don’t. You know what I mean?”

  “No, we don’t,” Riley put in. “Please explain.”

  “You’ll need to go into more detail,” Crivaro added.

  Jay sighed and said, “So, Kimberly and I grew up together, and after a lot of years we got interested in each other and started dating, but I guess we weren’t exactly what each other expected after all, so she broke up with me.”

  Crivaro grunted with annoyance.

  “Aw, come on, kid,” Crivaro said. “Do you really think we don’t know any better than that?”

  Jay’s eyes darted around.

  “How am I supposed to know what you already know?” he said.

  “You can’t,” Riley said. “That’s kind of the point.” Now she had to stop herself from smirking.

  Jay said, “Who have you been talking to about me, anyway? Did you talk to Goldie Dowling? Because she’s liable to badmouth me. Don’t believe anything she told you.”

  “Who said we talked to anybody about you?” Crivaro said. “All we want to know is, who broke up with who, and why?”

  Jay let out a discouraged groan and said, “Okay, I broke up with her. Things weren’t working out the way I hoped.”

  “And how was that?” Crivaro asked.

  Jay rolled his eyes.

  “I dunno, they just didn’t,” he said.

  Crivaro snorted. “She wouldn’t put out, huh?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jay said.

  “Yeah, but that’s always the reason, isn’t it?” Crivaro said, sounding again like a strict father. “Don’t try to fool me, kid. I used to have teenage hormones myself, you know. I know what it’s like.”

  “She just wasn’t interested in taking the next step, that’s all,” he said.

  “You mean sex,” Riley said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Jay said. “Look, I wasn’t looking for some one-time thing. I wanted a relationship. I hoped we’d get married someday.”

  He looked out the window with wistful eyes.

  He said, “You’ve got no idea what life is like in a town like this—especially when you know it’s a dead end, and you’re going to wind up spending your whole life here, settling down to some shit job forever. I just got desperate for something real, something to look forward to. But with her, everything was … well, it was like we were still in grade school or something. She didn’t treat it—us—like we meant anything.”

  He suddenly sounded perfectly sincere to Riley. And yet she still saw that odd twist at the edges of his lips.

  Is this just an act? she wondered.

  Everything about his demeanor told her he meant every word of what he was saying—except for that strange half-smile.

  Crivaro said, “And after it was over, you went around telling everybody—what?”

  Jay’s voice dropped to a near-whisper.

  “I didn’t tell anybody anything.”

  “No?” said Riley. “You didn’t go around telling your guy friends she was some kind of tease? And you didn’t follow her around making a nuisance of yourself after you ended it?”

  Jay slapped his hand against the table.

  “I didn’t kill her!” he said. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? I’d never do anything like that to anybody.”

  Crivaro said, “So where were you the night before last?”

  “I was right here working,” Jay said.

  Sheriff Quayle had been dutifully quiet so far. But Riley noticed that he’d been studying the time cards while they’d been talking. She figured now was a good time to bring him into the conversation.

  “Is he telling the truth?” she asked Sheriff Quayle.

  “He was working that night,” Quayle said. “He clocked out at 12:45.”

  “That’s right,” Jay said. “We close at midnight, but I’ve got to stay awhile after that to break things down.”

  Riley and Crivaro exchanged glances. She knew that she and her partner were thinking the same thing.

  Goldie said Kimberly left her house around midnight.

  But the girl hadn’t sounded at all certain about the time. If Kimberly had ended her visit later than Goldie had thought, Jay might still have caught up with her as she walked home, especially if he knew when and where to expect her. The punched time card was hardly any kind of alibi.

  Crivaro drummed his fingers on the table.

  He said to Jay, “What about Wednesday night, exactly a week ago?”

  “What about it?” Jay said, with a note of sourness in his voice.

  “Where were you?” Crivaro asked.

  “I dunno,” Jay said. “Here working, I guess.”

  Looking at the cards, Sheriff Quayle shook his head and said, “Huh-uh. You didn’t work that night at all.”

  Jay threw his hands up in the air.

  “Okay, so I forgot, and I don’t know what the hell I was doing that night,” he said. “What’s this got to do with anything, anyway?”

  “Have you got a car, Jay?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah, so what?” Jay said.

  “Do you ever drive over to Brattledale?” Riley asked.

  Jay’s eyes widened.

  He said, “Are you asking me about the other girl now? The girl who was killed over in Brattledale? Her name was Natalie something, right? I sure as hell didn’t kill her. I never even knew her.”

  “So where were you that night, then?” Crivaro asked.

  Jay seemed to think for a moment.

  Then he said, “I was with my pals over at Fritz Montag’s house. We were there way into the morning hours, playing music.”

  “Music?” Riley said.

  “Yeah, we’ve all got instruments, and we get together and jam when we can. We suck too much to play in public, but when we hang out over at Fritz’s, we get to pretend we’re rock and roll stars. You can check with Fritz and any of the guys—Lou, Leroy, and Mitch.”

  Sheriff Quayle said, “I’ll get in touch with all of them.”

  “You do that,” Jay said irritably. “Better yet, call Fritz’s parents. They were really pissed off because we kept them awake half the night. They’ll tell you I was there.”

  Jay got up from his seat and said, “If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work.

  “Hold on just a minute,” Quayle said as the boy started to walk away.

  “Leave him alone,” Crivaro said. “That’s all we’re going to get out of him for now.”

  Riley watched as Jay went
back behind the counter. Then he turned and looked straight at her. And again, she noticed that strange, smirking expression that had never left his lips since she’d first met him. She knew that it might just be his normal expression, something he couldn’t even help.

  But she couldn’t be sure, and she found herself wondering—was Jay Napier just some innocent high school kid?

  Or was he a sociopathic monster?

  CHAPTER TEN

  As Jay Napier disappeared back into the kitchen area of the fast food restaurant, Riley knew she wasn’t the only person sitting at that table wondering about him. Was this insolent boy guilty or innocent?

  At this point, she didn’t know, but someone needed to find out.

  Sheriff Quayle drummed his fingers on the plastic tabletop.

  He asked, “So what do you Feds think of the kid?”

  Crivaro tilted his head and said, “Well, we don’t have anything to bring him in on—at least not yet. You’d better check out his alibi for the killing in Brattledale. And quickly, too, before he can get his pals to coordinate their stories.”

  “I’ll call the Montags right away,” Quayle said.

  Crivaro added, “And have one of your night duty guys watch his movements tonight. Keep watching him tomorrow, too. He might be a flight risk. Of course, if his alibi for Brattledale holds up, you can skip all that stuff. If he didn’t kill the girl there, we can be all but sure he didn’t kill Kimberly Dent, either.”

  “Got it,” Quayle said, rising from the table. “You two must be hungry. This is the only food joint that’s open in Dalhart at this hour, so you might want to grab something while you’re here. I’ll send one of my boys by here with a car you can use, and he’ll tell you how to get to your motel.”

  Quayle looked over toward the kitchen area and sighed bitterly.

  He said, “I never thought I’d see the day when we couldn’t trust our own in this town.”

  Then he glowered at Riley and Crivaro.

  “I’ll sure as hell be glad to see the last of you two,” he said.

  He walked out into the night without another word. Riley stared after him with surprise. Then she remembered how the sheriff had seemed to dislike her and Crivaro from the moment he’d set eyes on them.