Chapter 28
I’m in my car out at the main highway, but I’m too late to know if the author of the It’s You scrawl has gone north or south where the highway meets an intersection a little ways down the road. And I still don’t know if it was one person or two.
I drive back to the dumpster site and catch the truck that arrived while we were both there. He’s pulling out. I flash my lights, roll down my window, and wave for whoever’s driving to stop. A graying man lowers his window.
“Did you happen to notice the make of the other car that was next to mine when you came in?”
“You mean over on the other side?”
“It was the only other car besides mine when you drove in.”
“I want to say it was some sort of SUV. Too dark to see the color or make of it, though. They steal somethin’ from ya?”
“No. Just a little graffiti.” I smile and roll my window up before he can ask more.
He gives me a salute-like wave and drives on.
I go to the spot where I first parked and search the area again. The ground is too hard packed and well trodden for any distinct footprints or tread marks.
I hop back in my SUV and check my phone. More notifications pour in, including several alerts from my new surveillance app.
When I look at the surveillance feed to my front entrance, I see Deputy Zane out of his vehicle speaking to about three people.
I dial Zane’s number.
“Crosbie,” he says. “You okay?”
“I’m good.”
“It’s late. Where are you?”
“Just finished some work. Who are those people you’re talking to?”
Zane sighs loudly. “You’re not going to like my answer.”
“Why?”
“Reporters.”
“What? How did they get involved?”
“I don’t know. Apparently, some stories have come out with your name.”
“Do not let them anywhere near my home. I’ll be right there.”
I flip to one of my news apps. At the top are several Top News national headlines regarding politics, Russia, and Ukraine, a weather update about a hurricane in the Atlantic, and below those—second down from the top, after some headline about Kevin Costner—it reads: Sketch Artist’s Next Victim Possibly ID’d.
Damn.
My pulse pounds in my ears as my world shrinks and spirals into more of a madhouse than it’s already been. As I click on the article, a call from Jess takes over my screen.
“Jess,” I answer a little breathlessly, but still try to conceal that I’m reeling over the marker on my car.
“Where are you?”
“Heading home.”
“Oh my God, Cros, no. You can’t go home. This has gotten crazy. Have you seen the news?”
“Only the first headline on The Daily Beast. Did they mention my name?”
“Yes, and there are photos of your earrings. I have no idea how they got them. There’s a picture of you wearing them at that banquet you went to with Fiona and Trey. Looks like it started with TMZ or Page Six.”
“Fiona,” I say.
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Would and did. Probably sold the photos, if it’s TMZ or Page Six.” I know how those news outlets work. Although paycheck journalism isn’t a big thing in the US, it still occurs when a rag wants a good story with fresh photos and finds someone eager to cash in.
“You don’t know that it was her.”
“Come on, Jess. Who else?”
“Maybe it was the department. You stopped in there, too, right?”
“Possibly.” I think about it. There were a lot of cameras that night at the event, but the earrings? That level of detail, about me? “Hold on a sec.”
I change screens, keeping Jess on speaker, and pull up The Daily Beast article.
I scroll down to see close-ups of my earrings on top of a white, marble-like countertop, exactly like Fiona and Trey’s new one.
A flame of rage ignites at the pit of my belly.
I can barely hear Jess talking, and when I tune back in, she’s saying that it’s beside the point who gave them the photos, that what’s more important is making sure I’m safe.
“If you won’t come here,” she says, “we need to figure out where you need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going home.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes, I can. If anything, this makes my home even safer.” I explain to her what Alderson shared with me earlier today about the woman in Texas, and how having reporters around might deter the killer.
She thinks about it. “I don’t like it, Cros. Look, I know this doesn’t seem real, like it’s some bad dream, but those two others, they’re dead now.”
“And I promise you, I’m not going to be one of them.”
Silence.
I’m disliking how she’s taken to going quiet on me. This no-response thing is new for her—one more aspect of her that’s changed.
“Jess?”
Still nothing.
“Jess, did they . . . is there any mention of you being my sister in any of the articles you’ve read?”
She doesn’t reply. Tension creeps higher. Finally, she says, “No, not yet, not in the ones I saw. But I’m sure there will be soon.”
“God, I’m so sorry.”
“Look, it’s not your fault, and they have no need to dig further into my life.”
“But they might call you and come to your house to ask you questions about me.”
“I know, and I’m prepared to shut them down.”
She seems stronger than usual, and I feel my chest loosen slightly. She’s almost sounding like her old self for the moment. “Okay. I’ll call you when I get home.”
I hang up and put my car in drive, snapping back to wondering who followed me out here and scrawled the ugly message on my door.
I race across the valley, knowing that if things haven’t already gotten wacky enough, they’re going to change even more now.
I crack a window for some air. The lights of gas stations, car dealerships, pot dispensaries, dog kennels, and other storefronts slide by in a blur along the highway from Kalispell to the north end of the valley.
The stretches of dark fields beyond them, usually comforting, suddenly seem menacing.
The Flathead Valley, and the surrounding wilderness, is my haven.
It makes me feel whole, wipes away my past troubles, and for years now has helped make my dad’s and mom’s deaths and what happened to Sophie seem like clouds stretching over the mountains—in sight, but far away.
But now, cast into this strange, deepening technological nightmare, the serenity of nature and all its balance and rebirth seem like a load of crap.
When I come to my gravel drive cutting through my own pitch-black field, I find Zane standing outside his car, his lights on, talking to a knot of five reporters, all carrying cameras with long lenses and huge flashes. There aren’t that many local reporters, so I’m thankful it’s not a mob.
I pull in tight next to Zane and park. The reporters waste no time. They crowd around him and my car, firing questions at me like darts through my barely cracked windows.
Crosbie Mitchell, do you believe it’s you?
How scared are you that you’re next?
What do you need to confess?
Are you going to confess?
Flashes explode in my face as they take pictures of me behind my windshield. I’m glad the reporters are either in front of me or behind Zane on the driver’s side. The writing on my car is on the passenger door. None of them have seen it or will be photographing it.
I wave Zane in closer and speak through the narrow opening of my window. “I’m going to drive in. Do not let them near my house. And if more arrive in the morning, whoever comes on shift after you, please make sure they also understand that my house is off-limits. Okay? Can you handle this?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says. He turns, spreads his arms out like the wings of a giant bird, and begins pushing the reporters away from my car so I can drive past. Suddenly, I’m beyond thankful to have him around.
When I get into my garage, my heart settling once again from the invasion of the press, I take pictures of the side of my car where the message is and call Alderson to tell him about what happened out at the dump site.
He scolds me like a tardy child, saying I shouldn’t have been out at dark alone.
He asks me to send the photos and instructs me not to touch anything on that side of the car so that they can dust for prints and take samples of the marker as soon as they can get someone from forensics, probably first thing in the morning.
I lock myself in my house, go straight to my computer, and find all the articles.
Jess is right. So far, they haven’t made the connection that Jess, the semifamous podcaster and DNA sleuth, is my sister.
Jess is also correct that it began with the tabloids, specifically TMZ.
They mention my name, that I live in the Flathead Valley, that I was a former police officer, and most saliently, that I own a pair of unique earrings that perfectly match the ones in the sketch.
God, I want to wring Fiona’s neck. The fury is disorienting. I don’t even know the time. Maybe I should resist the impulse, but screw that. I pull up her number and call.
“Crosbie,” she answers, her voice sheepish. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t me.”
“Fiona, seriously—”
“I know you didn’t want it out there that you have those exact earrings, but Trey .
. . he, I mean, well, Trey said that it could only protect you in the long run.
That the more attention you get, the safer you’ll be.
And Cros, things have been hard financially, we should have never done that remodel, and daycare’s gotten—”
“Fiona, stop.”
She does. What follows is a long, freighted silence.
What am I going to do, threaten her and Trey?
Yell and scream at her that she’s violated my life?
Tell her that she’s robbed me of my own choice to handle this the way I think best—that I would’ve preferred to gain some momentum in my own investigation before the press got involved?
“Fiona,” I say at last, with all the calm I can muster, “it wasn’t for you and Trey, of all people, to decide for me how this thing goes down. You should have asked for my permission.”
“But Trey said you’d be safer, and—”
“Fiona,” I say, “you’re not listening. You should have asked.”