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“You can’t talk to me that way. Who the hell are you? You’re from the market. Why are you following me?”
“Because you look like her. Like from the news stories, and you’ve got the same kind of car.”
“The same kind of car as what?”
“The same kind of car that came to my sister’s boyfriend’s place. His old place.”
The woman struggled for what to say next. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police.”
“Maybe you should,” Tyler said.
She grabbed some of her bags and headed for a door at the side of the house. Tyler picked up the remaining bags.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
“I don’t want your help,” she said, her back to him. When she got to the door, she set the bags down so she could free up a hand to unlock the door. But as she inserted the key she looked at Tyler.
“I can’t talk about this,” she said. “I’m sorry if what happened upset anyone, but I just … You have to leave.”
“What are you saying?” Tyler asked. “Was it you?”
She had the door open, set the groceries inside, took the other bags from Tyler, then stepped into her house and closed the door. He heard the turn of a dead bolt.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
He walked back to his bike, hopped on it, and started pedaling away. When he was several houses away, the side door opened again and the woman took half a step out, tears in her eyes, her jaw quivering.
Tyler didn’t know what to do next. As he rode his bike back in the direction of Whistler’s, he considered his options.
He could do nothing, pretend he never even saw her, say nothing to Jayne or Andrew. But he didn’t think this was the kind of thing he could keep to himself. So maybe he could call that detective. He’d heard her name—Hardy—when he’d listened to Jayne’s conversation with her and, later, with Andrew.
Yeah, he could do that.
But Tyler didn’t much want to talk to the cops. He didn’t actually know if the police were looking for whoever knocked over those gravestones, and slashed those tires, but you didn’t exactly want to walk into a police station when you’d been doing stupid shit like that. What if someone had actually seen them? What if there were descriptions out there of him and Cam?
There. That’s what he’d do. He’d call Cam.
Cam was his only real friend in Stratford or Milford, the only one he could talk to. When they’d been out last night, he’d told him all about what had been going on at his place. The visit from the cop, all the stuff about Andrew’s wife going missing. So Cam knew the backstory. He’d be as good as anybody to talk to about this, even if he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee.
Another thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going back to Whistler’s to finish his shift, and he was not going back to school.
And having made that decision, he made one more, which was to hop off his bike because he thought he was going to be sick. He wheeled off the road into a small park. Benches, a little creek that ran through the heart of it, even a few swans swimming about.
He let the bike fall to the grass and knelt over, hands on his knees. He didn’t know whether his queasiness was from the bike-riding—he’d had no lunch yet and was feeling woozy—or plain old stress. Tyler felt his stomach roll over a couple of times, but nothing was coming up. He stood, one hand on the back of a nearby bench.
His phone dinged. He took it from his pocket, saw that it was from Mr. Whistler.
Where are you?
What should he say? Quickly he tapped a reply:
Felt sick. Went home.
Hit send.
Seconds later: OK. Take care of yourself.
Now Tyler had a text of his own he wanted to send. He brought up Cam’s number and tapped out with his thumb:
