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I nodded, wiping away the tears with the back of my hand. ”We have to,” I said, my voice shaking. ”Before anyone else gets hurt.”
”That’s why you need to tell us everything,” Grayson said softly. ”I know you don’t want to revisit it, but it might give us clues. It could help us understand who this person is. Things that might seem minimal to you could be important to finding him.”
I sighed, burying my face in my hands. ”I told you,” I said, my speech muffled. ”It’s all a blur.”
I couldn’t see them, but I could tell that they were looking at each other.
Whatever you remember,” Teo said softly. ”Grayson is right, anything helps.”
”I was working on the disappearance of a man called Brady Mandeville,” I said. ”I thought the Strangler might have targeted him because I thought he fit the MO; you know, vulnerable, worked this beat. His girlfriend had reported him missing, and I was trying to piece together his last movements.”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember the details.
”I’d followed her on social media and I was making a list of people who could be potential subjects from the Charley project. I got her phone number, called her, but she didn’t get back to me. She, uh, wasn’t answering me. It was around seven o’clock when I realized I was hungry, so I walked to the Chinese place a few blocks away from my house. I remember I didn’t take my car because it wasn’t too hot and I wanted to have some time to think.”
”Then what happened?” Jace asked. He’d stopped typing by then, the computer sitting on his lap.
”I got home. Put a Hallmark movie on,” I said. ”I went down the list of people my contact from the ME’s office had told me were definitely victims and the list of people I thought might be getting targeted. I tidied my draft a little bit, but I thought it was still shit, and then I fell asleep at my computer.”
They waited for me. None of them said anything. ”Can I have some of that water?”
Victor snatched it from Jace’s hand when he went to hand it to me. ”Here you go,” he said. ”Do you need anything else?”
The outburst was uncharacteristic for what I had come to know as a pretty stoic man, and when he handed me the bottle, he looked angry.
I turned to look at Teo for a second, who flashed me that half-smile, the dimple appearing on his right cheek. ”Do you want ice water instead?” he asked.
I shook my head, took a deep breath and then a sip of the water, which cooled my throat but did nothing for my hammering headache.
”Then I got this phone call,” I said. ”I thought it was a prank call, at first. I’m not hard to reach, you know, I’m a journalist so it’s important that people know how to get in touch with me. This person, they were telling me to stop. Stop looking into them. They said…”
I close my eyes tightly, trying to remember what they had said exactly.
”Something about how I was good at my job?” I venture. ”Which, like, I am. I’m really good at celebrity gossip. I can give you the rundown on any pop culture scandal. But I’ve never done any crime investigation so…”
”So why would they think that?” Grayson completed my sentence for me when I trailed off.
”Exactly,” I said. ”And how would they know that I was even investigating them in the first place? I mean, I guess they could’ve been related to one of the victim’s families or friends but most of the people the Strangler targeted didn’t seem to have much of a support system.”
”So it could be someone close to you,” Jace said, matter-of-factly. ”In fact, that’s what makes the most sense. You’re not hard to find or anything, but how would this person know to find your apartment?”
A shiver went down my spine. ”You think they were stalking me?”
”It’s a possibility,” Victor said. ”We have to consider all angles.”
I couldn’t believe it. How could someone be stalking me and I not even know it? The thought made me feel sick.
”But we need to know more,” Grayson said. ”Did the caller say anything else?”
I shook my head. ”No, just to stop looking into them. And then they hung up. And then I called the police.”
”You called the police?” Teo asked. He was curious; when I had told them about this before, I skipped over that part. It wasn't because I was trying to hide it from them, it genuinely was a blur, but it hadn't felt important up to now.
”Yes. I told them about the call. They took my info down, said they'd send a patrol car over.”
Jace cocked his head, narrowing his light eyes as he set his gaze on me. ”Do you know which precinct you were calling?”
I shut my eyes tightly. ”I don't know,” I said. ”Eleven?”
