“Nine one one?” he asked.
A faint laugh. “You’re reading my mind. But no. I don’t even see him anymore.”
“You said you lived near here?”
“Four blocks.” She nodded south.
“I’ll walk you.”
“Oh, no, you don’t have to. You’ve got to pick up Meghan.”
“She’s staying at the ex’s tonight. I just came by to drop off a backpack. Maybe if this guy sees me he might think I’m a boyfriend and leave you alone.”
One terrible thought flashed through her head. What if the sunglasses man was dangerous, and, in a psychotic rage, jealous of Ben, attacked him?
“I’m insisting. If you don’t agree, then I’ll have to start following you.”
She smiled.
They chatted for another few minutes until Roonie stepped out of the school. The slim girl, hair pulled back in a ponytail, had a large backpack over her shoulder.
“This is Mr. Nelson. His daughter’s in the sixth grade.”
“Meghan. You know her?”
“I think, yeah.”
Soames was not, of course, going to mention the stalker to her daughter so she said only that their apartment was on Mr. Nelson’s way home and he was going to walk with them.
He glanced in Soames’s direction with a wink at the white lie.
“Cool,” the girl said, and they started on their way.
“Hey, let me carry that.” Ben nodded at the backpack.
“Really?” Roonie asked.
“You bet,” he said, and lifted the heavy pack off her shoulder and slung it onto his own.
The threesome started south.
“So, Roonie, what routine do you like best in gymnastics?”
41
“Oh, I don’t know,” the girl tells me. “Balance beam, I think. Unevens, too.”
I nod at Roonie’s response.
I could tell her what Aleksandra said, about Russian girls: dancers or gymnasts.
Better not to.
Come to think of it, both Taylor and Roonie have a slightly Slavic cast of face.
Of the two, the girl is the prettier. Mom isn’t jealous of you. Not yet. I have a feeling it may happen.
As I walk along beside them — enjoying playing the role of Ben Nelson — I glance over pretty Taylor and skinny Roonie, thinking they have no idea what’s hit them.
It was just like picking a lock. I followed her from her apartment, trying to get Taylor to notice me. I actually had to step in front of a taxi to get him to honk. At last she turned and noted me and seemed to grow suspicious.
She looked once more a few minutes later and I knew the hook was in.
“And tell Mr. Nelson about the camp you have coming up.”
“Oh,” she says, smiling. “It’s the best. We’re going to Wilmington. It’s a famous place. There’ll be a hundred of us from all over the East Coast. Jenna Carson trained there.”
“No way,” I say, exhaling with the breath of the impressed.
After she arrived at the school, I ducked into the deli. Off with the coat, sunglasses and hat — all cheap and disposable. I stuffed them into a plastic bag I bought for a dollar from the clerk. Underneath was a Brooks Brothers suit.
When she wasn’t looking, I slipped around the corner to the back of Hawthorne Middle School and dumped the bag in the trash. I picked the Steel-Tec lock on the school’s service door in three seconds. Pasting a parent’s ID label on my chest, I climbed the stairs to the main floor and stepped outside.
Oh, you’re Roonie’s mom, right? Hi.
I stoked her paranoia about that sunglasses-wearing creep who might have been following her. If you think you’re being stalked and someone independently confirms it, well, then you are being stalked. Set in stone.
Almost too easy.
“Like, what’s your daughter’s sport?” Roonie asks.
I tell her, “She takes after my side of the family. Zip athletic skill. But she likes to act. I’ve done a little of that myself.”
“Cool.” Now it’s balance-beam Roonie’s turn to be impressed.
Taylor looks at me admiringly.
“We saw your gymnastics meet. You were really good. You nailed your routine!”
She grins shyly and I believe she’s blushing.
Taylor now chats, as they walk along the gritty, damp sidewalk and I’m in heaven. I’ve picked the lock of these two females’ lives.
I see that Taylor has fallen silent. She seems troubled and I wonder if she’s suspicious, even if she doesn’t know that the man beside her is not who he seems to be and has a very sharp knife in his pocket.
It occurs to me that maybe what’s bothering her is that by frustrating the stalker, he decided to assault someone else.
Is her gut pinging with guilt at the moment that she might have set in motion a chain of events that will end in an assault, a rape, a murder?
Well, I think, that faint trickle of remorse is nothing compared to the pain you’re going to feel, Taylor.
And, Roonie, you too.
The girl now pulls her phone from her back right pocket and shows me a video of some famous gymnast. Jenna Whoever.
“She’s amazing.”
“That’s the routine I’m working up now.”
“Maybe Mr. Nelson and Meghan can come to your next meet?”
“Yeah, like, sure.”
We cross the street. Taylor points ahead and says, “That’s our building, right there.”
And I think: I know.
“Friends: Follow-up to my news from my home, the West Coast. Remember the post about the government contracts for infrastructure projects around the country, using steel produced by a well-known company, based in California? They were using pig iron from eastern Europe in forging beams for bridges and highways, recall?
“Well, now I’ve learned that in a construction site in Northern California, two workers are in serious condition after beams, made with the substandard steel, shattered. And what was the project? A highway bridge over a two-hundred-foot chasm.
“Next time you drive over a bridge, ask yourself: Was it built with defective steel?
“This is corruption at its worst.
“Why isn’t the General Services Administration in Washington doing anything about it? Because, of course, they’re controlled by the Hidden!
“Say your prayers and stay prepared!
“My name is Verum, Latin for ‘true.’ That is what my message is. What you do with it is up to you.”
42
There but for the grace...
One of the two lead shields on the Alekos Gregorios homicide, Detective Tye Kelly, stood in the double doorway of the old gym, now a homeless shelter, brightly lit and clean but smelling to the back of his nose like disinfectant. Men were the only occupants here. The Department of Homeless Services — a very different DHS than the one that first comes to mind — wanted no trouble. Homeless people were just like homed people with regard to impulse control, or lack thereof. The problem here was that there were no doors you could hide behind and lock.
His partner, the other detective on the case, walked up behind him and looked over the huge room.
“Cleaner than I thought,” Crystal Wilson said, hands on her trim hips. Today, coincidentally, they both wore dark gray suits. Her top was a black sweater, his a powder blue shirt. Each had jet black hair. His was thinning. Hers was done in neat cornrows. Kelly was at first surprised she’d never seen a shelter, but she’d come up in the 112, where there were none.