Chapter 7
Harlyn
“Why are you so sure?” I catch Macey leaning in a little when she asks the question, giving me reason to break the stare off I unintentionally started with Special Agent Landry.
I can still feel him watching the side of my face as I hesitate to answer her question.
I understand most people won’t believe me or even understand my rationale, but those people didn’t share the same kind of bond with anyone like the one I shared with Hayzel.
“I just know.” I don’t offer any extra insight, but I doubt that will satisfy her. Everyone wants me to explain, but it’s like describing a color that doesn’t exist or a song you’ve never heard. It’s almost impossible, then add everyone’s automatic skepticism, and it really is exhausting.
“There have been some reports that allude to you having a special connection with Hayzel, a twin bond. Is that what you mean when you say you just know?”
“Yeah.” I nod with my answer, feeling defensive for being questioned about what she could never understand. “I also believe the evidence supports my theory.”
“What evidence are you referring to?” Special Agent Landry’s much deeper voice cuts through the space, causing Macey and me to look in his direction.
My convulsive swallow keeps me from answering, or maybe it’s my body’s way of stalling.
I don’t know if it’s knowing he’s an officer of the law, or just his commanding presence, but I feel compelled to answer him, even though I know I can’t, at least not now when millions of people could hear the things only I and the investigators working my sister’s case are privy to.
“Certain details,” I hedge.
“Are you saying there are things the police are holding back?” Macey prods, yet it’s easy to ignore her.
“Certain details are always kept under wraps,” Landry replies to Macey while maintaining eye contact with me.
I give him a small nod to confirm. His eyes look darker in this light, and the fine lines surrounding them tell me he’s a few years older than me, maybe around thirty or even a little older.
I shouldn’t notice how well he fills out his dark suit jacket, but I do.
I force myself to look away from him again.
“I think Hayzel was being stalked.”
“Stalked, and you’re convinced it was a stranger doing this?
” Macey’s voice is pitched low, as if I just divulged a secret, but I already said as much in the pre-interview notes, so her reaction is probably for the show’s benefit.
“Can you give us and the listeners any insight into why or clues that led you to believe that so we know what to look for?”
I’ve thought about how to answer this or a similar question for a while.
I want to find out who did this and warn others, but I don’t want people to make the wrong assumption about Hayzel, which is what I think the police did.
“A few weeks before… before it happened, she mentioned some things that occurred at home—little things that could be easily overlooked, like her shampoo being half empty when she just bought it a day or two earlier, or things being moved and out of place.”
“Didn’t you guys live with roommates?”
“Yes, which is exactly why I told her it was probably one of the other girls using her stuff the first couple of times.”
“But you changed your mind?” Macey’s eyebrows rise high on her forehead as she asks the question.
“At the time, no. I told her to lock her bedroom door when she wasn’t home and to stop smoking so much.
” My tone is harsher than I intended, but I can’t help being mad at myself.
I’ve thought about how different things could have been if I hadn’t dismissed her worries, but the truth is, I was kind of pissed at Hayzel.
I moved to be closer to her because that was what we both wanted, but she changed in the few months we’d been apart.
She started smoking pretty much daily, whereas before it was only occasionally or socially like at a party or something.
She was also failing a couple of her classes.
When I talked to her about it, she promised things would get better now that she wasn’t so lonely, but it didn’t.
If anything, things got worse. Hayzel became distant and withdrawn.
She wasn’t going to her classes, and she was spending most of her time locked in her room, especially after I told her she was just paranoid about all the shit happening from smoking so much.
“Did anything else happen to lead you to believe there was more to it than a roommate borrowing her things?”
“Once I found her journals and read how many strange things were happening, I knew there was more to it. Plus, you know what they say about hindsight being 20/20. After she was gone, I looked at everything differently.”
I don’t mention how a few weeks after she died, I started to notice little things myself, like a cardigan I knew I’d put away after only wearing it for an hour or so being left out on the end of my bed and some of my perfume going missing.
I tried to tell myself I was overthinking, or that it was Hayzel giving me a sign she was still with me, but I’m not even sure I believe that’s possible.
We didn’t really grow up in a religious house.
Add our parents dying in a car crash when we were seven, then losing our grandparents, I did not exactly have a great relationship, if any at all, with God.
“Did you share her journals with the police?” Macey pulls me from my dark thoughts and a big part of the reason I had to get out of Texas, even if Livy hates me for it. I felt like I was losing my mind there or worried I was about to be next.
“I tried. I even emailed them scans of the pages I thought were important. I was actually surprised I found it in her room after… I thought it would have been something they collected.”
Macey’s eyes shift to Landry, as if she’s expecting him to answer. He doesn’t rise to the bait, and an awkward moment of silence passes. Macey returns her attention back to me. “Would you be willing to share some of those pages with us, so we can make them available to our listeners?”
“I’m sorry—”
“No.”
The agent and I speak at the same time, him with the automatic denial and me with a halfhearted apology.
Our gazes lock again, but only briefly. Since the moment he was introduced to me as a profiler, I knew I wanted to ask him if he would listen to what I had to say, but I had no idea how I was going to go about doing that.
In this moment, the how doesn’t matter. I’m going to talk to Special Agent Landry about my sister’s case no matter what, and I have a feeling he’s going to listen.
“It feels too personal right now, and I feel like there could be something there the investigators missed. Maybe later, after…” I leave my hope of her case being solved hanging, because that’s all it is—hope.
The police won’t say it, but her case has gone cold.
There were times when I would allow the intrusive thoughts to win, and I would think that maybe her killer was after me now, and the only hope of catching him was letting him kill me too, but I don’t want to die, and certainly not the horrific way my sister did.
“Any talk of the journal should be edited out of the show. If Hayzel did have a stalker, you can bet he would keep tabs on the case. Hearing there is written evidence of his signature and the way he operates could be dangerous for everyone involved.” He’s turned to the side, making sure to look directly at Macey, whose face isn’t giving anything away.
“I’m going to need you to agree to edit that and any other information I find could jeopardize the case, or I’ll pull the plug on the interview. ”
She blinks twice as if his quick demand catches her off guard.
“Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would harm the investigation.
” Her voice comes out too high, too airy, making me feel like she’s just agreeing to agree, or maybe he really did surprise her and this is her genuine reaction.
“Glad to hear it.” He gives her a weak curl of his lips that resembles a smile, but not quite.
I’m so focused on the exchange, I actually jump a little when he shifts his attention to me.
“I know you want your sister’s case to get the attention it deserves, but be careful.
Whether it was a stranger or not, someone murdered her, and anyone willing to do that once is capable of doing it again.
” His words come out as a warning, but I can’t help also feeling admonished.
“Okay,” I agree while rethinking everything I have already said.
There’s a slight pop before Liam’s voice rings through the room, “Do you need a short break?”
Macey shuffles her papers, avoiding answering, so I assume the question was to me. “I’m okay to continue.”
“Alright. Mace, let’s go back to the roommate angle, this time we’ll leave out the journal.”
Macey nods quickly before smoothing the papers over her legs. “What happen to lead you to believe there was more to it than a roommate borrowing her things?”
It takes me a moment to reorganize my thoughts and answer the question in a new way. “A few things, but I think what happened to her is the biggest clue that something was going on.” Landry gives me a tiny nod of his head, as if giving me a sign of approval.
From there, Macey asks about Hayzel’s classes and any new friends she made, then she winds it down with some questions about what things were like after.
Those questions are hard. I didn’t think about how to answer those.
The inquiries about her funeral, how I handled it, about me leaving school, and what I’ve been doing since are tough too, but for a completely different reason.
I don’t want to talk about myself and all the things I should be doing for Hayzel because she can’t, like finishing school and doing something other than rotting in the house.
“I think that’s it for me.” Macey leans back in her chair and glances toward Landry, who hasn’t spoken up again since he told me to be careful, as if he may add something now, but unsurprisingly, he doesn’t utter a word.
“Well, okay.” I place my hands on the arms of the chair, preparing to rise.
Macey rises with me. “It will take a few days in editing before we get everything spliced together, and I’m still hopeful to get a call back from the detective assigned to her case.” She holds up her crossed fingers. “If we run into any issues or need any pickups, Michele will reach out.”
“Pickups?” I question.
“Editing stuff, like if the sound is bad or something is garbled. It doesn’t usually happen, but just in case.” She shrugs and walks me toward the door.
It’s not until I turn to say goodbye to her, slightly panicked that I might have to wait in the parking lot for Landry to get a chance to talk to him again, that I realize he’s standing right behind us.
“Thank you for helping me get this out. The more people who are aware, the better.” I’m not really sure how anything I said could be helpful, but it only takes one little thing to crack a case.
I’ve seen and heard about it happening countless times on other shows.
Maybe them digging up information on Hayzel and her case will be the catalyst needed to solve her murder.
“Thank you for allowing us to spread the word. I really hope you can get some answers.” I don’t doubt her words or sincerity. I’m sure nearly everyone feels the same way, but it still feels like a platitude.
I give her a practiced smile then turn my attention to Special Agent Landry. “This may be way out of line, but would you be willing to talk to me?”
“We have—” Macey starts, looking back and forth between us.
“Not now, it can be later, in a week, at two o’clock in the morning, anytime. Whenever you have a spare moment,” I add in a rush.
“How about we exchange numbers? I don’t think it will be two o’clock in the morning, but more than likely it will be tomorrow.” He chuckles, and my face gets hot. It’s on the tip of my tongue to apologize for making it weird, but I decide it would be better to just ignore my blunder.
“Yeah, okay. Thank you.” When he takes his phone out, I rattle off my number.
My phone is still turned off in my bag, and just as I’m about to reach for it to ask for his, I sense Macey staring at the side of my face, and I feel like I am overstepping.
Instead of going for my bag, I reach for the door handle and escape the suddenly tense environment, fleeing the office then the building altogether.
The moment I close my car door, I regret allowing my discomfort to keep me from getting the agent’s number.
If he doesn’t call, I won’t have any way of reaching him, and let’s be honest, I’m sure he has more than enough to do with his job and whatever he has going on with the Unexplained Cases podcast, so calling me could easily slip his mind.
I search the surrounding cars in the lot, wondering which could be his, but there’s no convenient rental car company plate or sticker on any of the vehicles, and from what I can see, they all have Michigan tags.
I let out a long groan when I realize it’s foolish to assume he traveled here like I did.
For all I know, he’s from the local office.
The FBI has an office in nearly every state, which I learned when I watched a series on the highway killer.
I contemplate sitting right where I am until he leaves for the day, but that feels a bit stalkerish. My face twists. I hate even thinking the word now.
I pull my phone from my purse to type in the GPS coordinates of the condo while buying a little time to think. If he happens to leave in the next few minutes, I’ll at least have an excuse to still be here.
My phone cycles on quickly, and the top notification on the screen is a text from an unfamiliar number. A wave of relief hunches my shoulders. His message is straight to the point.
Unknown: Hey, this is Landry
Me: Hi, Harlyn here. I wanted to say thanks again for giving me the chance to possibly talk with you. Call anytime that works for you.
I feel hopeful when I place my phone in the center console, which isn’t how I expected this interview to end.