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I wrote that down and returned to scrolling through the messages. They seemed to be mostly benign at first, appearing in his inbox from a new account every night he had a drag show. The messages sounded encouraging, saying things like “you killed tonight” and “I’m so happy I found you”—not entirely unhinged but enough to throw big red flags onto the field.
At around the month-and-a-half mark, the messages shifted into much darker territory. More aggressive. It began with DollWorshipper6 telling Elijah that they didn’t like being ignored and that he needed to be more appreciative of the people who made him successful or he’d regret the day he ever put heels on and danced across the stage. It screamed of a delusional fan putting on way too much self-importance for anyone’s own good.
“They stop after that last one, telling me to watch my back before it gets stabbed twenty-five times. Well, they stop online, at least. Then I started finding notes in person.”
“Did you bring those?”
“A few,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a few folded pieces of paper, edges crinkled and stained blue from being inside a pair of jeans for too long. “I got rid of the rest after I brought them to the police station and they told me they couldn’t do anything about it. Not without someone to go after.” He shook his head, eyes rolling to the ceiling. “Like, okay, let me go get physically attacked and completely fuckin’ murdered so you guys can get your asses up and working.”
“That’s why you’ve got me,” I said, looking down at the notes spread out on my desk.
They were all handwritten, I noticed that. Ballsy move, or a sloppy one, depending on who we were dealing with here. They’d been written in bold black marker, each tip of the letter pressed down into the page to create a series of dark dots. The first note read, “Your show tonight was flawless. Make it your last.” The next three notes weren’t much different in their message, all of them signed with the initials D.W. and a lipstick red kiss.
DollWorshipper.
“Where’d you find these?” I asked.
“In the dressing room. Sometimes right there on my chair, other times inside my bag.”
“And no one at the club’s spotted anyone leaving them?”
Elijah shook his head. “It’s the craziest thing. It has to happen sometime during my show. I started checking my bags before every one of them, thinking maybe someone was sneaking into my house or something. But it only happened at the club.”
“All right, at least that gives us a location I can home in on.”
“Home in on this guy,” Elijah said, flipping his phone back around so that I could see the Facebook profile that filled the screen. “His name’s Walter Hooper. He’s a guy who started coming to the bar when I started performing. He came to almost every one of my shows but never talked to anyone. And he’d always leave the second I got done with my performance. I told the police about him, but once again, they didn’t do anything.”
I did a quick scan through Walter’s page and didn’t find anything too concerning. There wasn’t much of a presence and not many friends, it seemed, but the few things he did share seemed to be simple quizzes about what color aura he had or what his perfect vacation would be. He worked at a temp agency and had a high school degree, without any locations made public. The pictures he had posted were mostly of flowers and pixelated memes that were difficult to read, but a few of the photos showed Walter, a lanky guy with a gentle smile and saucer-like brown eyes.
“I’ll look into him,” I said, reassuring Elijah as I handed his phone back. “We also have someone who knows her way around a computer blindfolded. I’m going to send all the digital messages to her, along with anything else you feel comfortable sending her. Anya’s a magician when it comes to this—she might be able to tell us who’s behind the messages before the sun sets.”
“Damn, really?” Elijah shrugged. “Give her access to all my accounts. Whatever she needs, it’s hers. I just want this all to be over with.”
The exhaustion played loud and clear in his voice. I looked across my desk and saw a man who had been broken down by the dice roll life had tossed his way. A man who had the potential to shine like a thousand suns, if only he had a period of peace in his life, a time to grow and nourish and flourish. I saw all that in him and more, unexplainably. As a detective, I felt like I could always get a quick grasp of someone’s character, but what I experienced with Elijah was much more than just a quick grasp. It was like holding a book, reading the synopsis, knowing you’d absolutely love the fuck out of every page, all to get to that so very bittersweet end, when the story and characters come to a close, only to live on and on in your heart.
