Chapter Thirty-Two
As I crash toward the ground, the rifle slips from my grasp and clatters across the forest floor.
I struggle to escape the weight on my back, trying to catch a glimpse of who took me down.
I scramble after the rifle, but my arm twists, and I’m back on the ground, my face shoved into a pile of wet leaves.
An elbow presses into my back. And auburn-colored hair cascades across my face.
“Do you have any idea how many perps I’ve taken down in my day, Harold? ” Freya hisses into my ear.
I try to turn. Ginger lunges, and Freya shouts “Off!” before the dog’s jaw can clamp onto my leg.
“Don’t point a gun at anything besides a target,” Freya says, tightening her grip on my arm. “Ever. You’re not trained, and I don’t need a protector.”
“The rifle wasn’t loaded,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter,” Freya says.
I breathe in the loamy scent of wet leaves and mud and will my heart rate to slow. Usually, I do my best not to act the part of an alpha male, but getting taken down by a woman crushes the ego. I stop struggling, and Freya relaxes her grip, if only a bit. “Can I trust you?” she asks.
I nod.
She releases my arm and rolls off me. “Are you hurt?”
I spin away from her, keeping my hands visible, until I’m sitting cross-legged. Dampness seeps through the back of my jeans. Ginger crouches at Freya’s side, transformed into a snarling, drooling killing machine.
“She’ll rip you to pieces if she thinks I’m in trouble,” Freya says, catching Ginger’s eye. “Down.”
Ginger drops to an active down, but the snarls don’t stop. Freya crawls to the rifle, breaks it open, and checks the empty chamber. Then she sits by the truck, her legs splayed out. I join her, but when I put my hand on the rifle, she yanks it away. “You lost your privileges.”
Another text beeps into my phone. I silence it without looking at the screen, and nod toward the graffiti on the truck. “What’s that?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Freya says.
“What if whoever did that is still here?”
“Ginger will let us know. And I can load a rifle in two seconds flat.”
Despite Freya’s tough demeanor, she’s shivering. I go to wrap my arm around her waist. “Do you mind?” I ask.
“Don’t make a move on me,” she says. “You won’t be likable.”
“I don’t care if people like me.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
Freya rests her head on my shoulder, and Ginger’s growls are replaced by a whine.
“Come,” Freya says, and the dog shimmies right in between us.
“Paul warned me not to play those shows at the Landing.” She adds, “Too much publicity. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but anything can be a big deal these days with social media.
” She inhales. “I have a stalker. I’ve had one for years.
He comes and goes, disappearing for months and years, then reappearing out of nowhere like we’re planning storylines for May Sweeps. ”
I scratch Ginger’s belly. A canine tooth peeks out from under her lip. “What can I do?” I ask.
“I don’t want you involved,” Freya says.
“I’m involved already. I’m so involved, I nearly set myself up for a murder charge with that rifle.”
Freya manages a tired smile. “Manslaughter, actually. There was no intent. And being famous isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. When you’re beamed into millions of living rooms every week, the line between what’s real and what isn’t gets blurred.”
“How long has this been going on?” I ask.
“Since I was on Eternal Flame in the nineties. The first time it happened was at a mall event in Albany. There was a problem with the car service, so I rented and drove myself. Hundreds of people were there—soap fans were so devoted then—and when we finished, I found a handwritten note under my wiper that said, Nice to see you in person. You look great in green. I didn’t think anything of it.
I’d been sitting by a fountain at the mall meeting strangers for hours at that point, and any one of them could have left the note, but on my way to the city, I started feeling like someone was following me.
I pulled over when I saw a state cop, and he listened and sat with me for a bit, but I couldn’t show him anything tangible.
After the cop took off, I realized whoever had left the note had seen me arrive at the mall, like they were waiting for me. ”
“Otherwise,” I say, “how else would they have known which car was yours?”
“Exactly. So, they were either there when I pulled into the parking lot—”
“Or they followed you.”
“A few days later, I found a second note in my dressing room on the set—same handwriting. This time he wrote, I wish we could have spent the weekend upstate. The cops took a statement and collected the note as evidence, but didn’t do much about it.
I was a public figure at a public event.
There were no stalker laws on the books then in New York, so the cops couldn’t do anything unless he physically harmed me.
The producers on the show wrote it off, too.
As far as they were concerned, stalkers came with fame, but the notes kept coming, and they got more aggressive, more threatening.
In the last one, he told me not to leave my apartment after dark.
It said, You should be terrified. That’s the real reason Brenda Jackson disappeared at that costume party.
Paul arranged for me to get out of New York and stay with a friend in the Hamptons.
He told the producers I wouldn’t return to set without additional security. ”
My voice tightens. “What happened next?”
Freya puts a hand to my chest and pushes me away. “Don’t go all testosterone on me. I have Duncan for that. You’re my gentle soul.”
I don’t want to play that part this time. “Didn’t you see how I wielded a rifle?”
“And I don’t want to see it again,” Freya says.
“But I walked away from the soap for good a few months later. I couldn’t take being afraid anymore, and once I left, the stalking stopped for a while.
I had a fallow period between Brenda and Gina Shock where I took guest spots or had roles in off-off-Broadway or waited tables.
I hoped he’d moved on to someone else, or—”
“Or he believed he’d won and had you to himself.”
Freya nods. “Scene of the Crime debuted in 2000, and it was as if I turned on a faucet. The threats started at once, and we suddenly had the web and internet cafés to protect his anonymity. He’d send emails and attach photos of me on the set or leaving my apartment.
In the second season, there was a continuing storyline about a serial killer who targeted gay men.
This guy hated that storyline. He thought we were writing about him and implying something about his masculinity, and he went from annoying to threatening.
” She nods down the road toward Burkehaven Farm.
“One night, I got home from meeting Paul for dinner and there were photos in my inbox of the two of us at the restaurant. That time, the stalker threatened to kill me. He threatened to kill both of us.”
“You told me you and Paul hadn’t dated,” I say.
“We haven’t, but the stalker couldn’t have known.
He imagined whatever he wanted. By then, the laws had changed in New York, and the cops took stalking more seriously.
They traced the source of the email to a public computer but couldn’t identify who’d used the machine.
I almost left Scene of the Crime like I had with the soap.
Instead, I learned what I could about self-defense.
Journalists used to come to set and focus on how much of my own stunt work I did, how I was in such great shape.
The stories were supposed to be empowering, but I did all that work because I didn’t feel safe. ”
She stops for a moment, her brow furrowed.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“That time Isaac Haviland showed up on the set,” Freya says.
“When he asked me to invest in the Landing, part of me suspected he might be the stalker. He’d always given me the creeps, as though he was watching me no matter what I did.
One summer, this necklace I’d gotten for my birthday went missing, and I’m certain Isaac took it.
I asked him to go to the diner because I wanted to see if I could get him to confess. ”
“I’m not the only reckless one,” I say. “Sounds dangerous.”
Freya waves a hand. “We were in a public place in the middle of the West Village. Nothing would have happened to me, and besides, it was clear Isaac had no idea what I was talking about. I felt bad enough that I gave him the hundred bucks in my wallet.”
“Maybe he was playing you,” I say.
Freya jerks her thumb toward the truck. “From the grave?” she asks.
“Isaac Haviland’s dead and buried. My stalker’s very much alive.
I hadn’t heard from him much since I left Scene of the Crime, but last year, when I shot the true-crime pilot with Duncan, the threats started again.
I was almost relieved when the show didn’t get picked up.
That’s part of the reason why I came to New Hampshire. I thought I could escape.”
She stands and looks at the letters written on the windshield.
She taps the blue W in Welcome with her fingertip.
“Nail polish,” she says, holding her own painted nails against the glass.
“It’s the same color I’ve been using. I have a bottle of it at the condo.
” A shadow crosses her face. “You were in my bathroom.”
I back away, holding my hands out where she can see them.
Freya snaps her fingers. Ginger leaps to her feet, the fur at her neck standing on end.
“Ginger’s fickle,” I say.
“She sees who people really are.”
“I’m taking my phone from my pocket, that’s it,” I say, retrieving the phone and entering the code. “I’ve been with you at the firing range since you left your truck down here, so I couldn’t have done this without help from someone else. Go through my texts. See if I plotted with anyone.”
I hand her the phone.
Freya scrolls through the first few texts and whistles. “Wow, you pissed off nearly everyone you know.”
The podcast.
“Tell me about it,” I say.
Freya keeps scrolling. “There’s nothing connecting you to this crap,” she says, returning the phone to me. “You’re off the hook, for now.”
“Who else has been to your condo lately?”
“You, Paul,” Freya says. “And Duncan.”
Maybe Duncan Gilcrest is a suspect, after all. “Gilcrest went to Columbia,” I say, remembering my conversation with the detective at Burkehaven.
“What about it?” Freya asks.
Columbia is in New York. And Gilcrest is forty-eight years old, which means he’d have gone to college in the nineties, right when Freya’s stalker first appeared. “What was the name of the security company the producers used on Eternal Flame?” I ask.
“I don’t want to play detective anymore,” Freya says.
“Humor me.”
“You’re testing my memory. That was a long time ago.” She thinks for a moment. “It was a pun, Safety Pin, or something similar.”
I pull up Gilcrest’s résumé on LinkedIn. There, in the first entry, is a part-time job working for Pin Safety in Manhattan.
“Do you have security footage at the condo?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“You probably have all the evidence you need sitting somewhere in the cloud,” I say. “We should call Seton. She can meet us here.”
Ginger suddenly growls. I turn to the thick forest surrounding us. Beside me, Freya slides a bullet into the rifle’s chamber. I tap Seton’s name on my phone. A twig snaps, and Ginger charges into the trees. Freya takes off after the dog, rifle in hand.
“Charlie,” Seton says on the other end of the line, “what’s with this teaser? You couldn’t give me a heads-up?”
I cut her off. “We’re at the trailhead by Burkehaven Farm,” I whisper. “Come. Now.”
I sprint into the woods after Freya. In the distance, a snarl follows a splash.
“Off,” Freya shouts.
I emerge from the trees. Freya stands on the banks of the brook, the rifle pointed at someone sprawled in the water wearing a pair of black capri pants. As I approach, Reid rolls onto his back, his hands raised, his thick-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose.
“Get your dog away from me,” he shouts.