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“I’m not a sadist. But I do know people who are.”
Her head whips up, her eyes widening. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. I’m not into dishing out pain. I’m a pleasure guy.”
“You are good at the pleasure.” She straddles my lap and kisses me deeply. “What should we do now?”
“What do you want to do?”
A smile spreads over her face. “I want to swim.”
She jumps off my lap and runs for the backyard, stripping out of her clothes on the way, leaving a trail not unlike Hansel and Gretel. By the time I walk through the open sliding glass doors, she’s already in the water, swimming easily across the pool.
I shuck out of my shoes and clothes and dive in with her, swimming beside her.
When we reach the end of the pool, I pull her to me and easily slip inside her.
“Well, shit,” she says, leaning her head back against the side of the pool. “That feels good.”
“Too good?”
She grins. “Never.”“Hey, Crawford, I have something for you.”
I glance up at Jim Parker, the IT cop I assigned to Starla’s stalker, as he leans on the doorway to my office.
“Okay.” I stand and follow him down the hall to his own office where he has several computers set up, along with Starla’s laptop. “What’s up?”
“I think I followed the stalker email back to the beginning.” He sits in his chair, and I lean over his shoulder, watching as he wakes up Starla’s computer. “It started over a year ago.”
“A year?”
“As far as I can tell. I’ve printed them all out for you, and every single one comes from a different email address, but they’re all the same tone. They’re definitely written by the same person. Here’s the first one.”
It’s your fault. Your fault that she’s dead. You wouldn’t help me. Why wouldn’t you help me? I’ve always been there for you! Time and again, I’ve been there for you, but you were not there for me. For us. And now she’s gone, and it’s your fault. I can’t believe you’re such a heartless bitch.
There’s no signature.
“It’s not threatening,” I say with a sigh.
“No, in fact, they weren’t threatening for about six months. Some of these weren’t even opened, so Starla probably hasn’t seen them.”
“Maybe she assumed they were spam?”
“She might have. But they escalate for sure, and it’s absolutely the same person. When I try to trace it back to an IP address, I hit a dead end. I don’t know how they managed to block it unless they’re a talented programmer or hacker. We’re still working on that.”
He reaches to the other side of his desk and hands me a stack at least two inches thick of printed emails.
“This is them?”
“There are hundreds,” he says. “And those are just the ones I found. I found a bunch in her trash bin, but there’s a chance she’s deleted some that I couldn’t find.”
“Thanks, man. Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
I walk back to my office, set the emails on my desk, and sigh. “Jesus.”
I spend the next two hours poring through them. Marty’s right, they start calm. Sad. And then the tone turns angry. Psychotic. Sometimes, there are several in a day, and then other times, weeks pass between messages.
There’s no rhyme or reason to the pattern.
I don’t like that. I also don’t like that we can’t trace the fucking IP address. That means the person is smart.
But even smart people make mistakes, and this one will, too.
Hopefully, sooner rather than later.
I’ve just read through the final email, the one Starla received with the photo attached when my cell rings.
“Crawford.”
“Sir, I think you should come to Starla’s residence.”
“What’s going on? Is she okay?”
“She’s not here, but we’ve had a car drive past about six times, always slowing down in front of the house. It looks like they’re taking photos, but I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman because the windows are tinted way past the legal limit.”
“Pull them over for that,” I suggest, reaching for my jacket as I shut my computer down.
“I’m in an unmarked,” he reminds me, and I swear under my breath. “I do have a license plate number.”
“And?”
“It comes back owned by a Theodora Fitzgerald of Bellevue. She’s eighty-two. Which could explain the slowing down, if she’s looking for a specific address.”
“So you’re alerting me over a lost grandma?” I demand.
“It looked suspicious to me, and you said to call in anything suspicious.”
“If she comes back, let me know. I’m headed out of the office, but I’ll be on my cell.”
“Copy that.”
He hangs up, and I walk out of the office. Just before I get to the door to the parking garage, I hear my name.
“Levi!”
I look back to see Matt Montgomery jogging toward me.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“We got the ME report on Francesca Smith.”
“Are you telling me we weren’t sure about the cause of death?”
