Was it not really Stefan she wanted to hurt, but instead me, to punish Stefan by taking away yet another person he loved?
Of course, if she and I did meet, there would be police at the ready, but would they be close enough and quick enough to save me? Dire things happened in seconds. They happened every day.
14
I finally spoke with Pete Sunday and we met at a local coffee shop.
“I wish I had better news,” he said. “We basically came up empty. I don’t know who this girl is, or if she even exists and I can’t find anyone who ever saw her. We’ll have to ask Stefan what else he knows.”
Before I agreed to that, he told me there was no Emily Lundgren or Lindquist in Black Creek anywhere near to Belinda’s age. There were six with similar names, but five were women in their forties and fifties, and one was a three-year-old girl. There were also plenty of female students from Chicago at the school, at least a couple of dozen in Belinda’s year, more in the year before and after, but none of them, to my surprise, was named Emily or Esme, and a search of their records showed that none of them looked anything like the girl in the picture I’d shown to him. Among that number were also several girls named Emma, but the only one from Chicago was Emma Doll, an Olympic speed skater who was African-American and whose face was famous around the world. Pete had spoken with Emma Doll, now a senior, and though she knew about the case, she had never met or seen Belinda before her death. There were girls with the surname Lundgren or Lindquist. One of them was called Caroline Lindquist and she had, in fact, known Belinda fairly well, she told Pete Sunday. In fact, she had been so shaken by Belinda’s murder that she had taken the semester off. Caroline was a name on the list Jill made of Belinda’s close college friends. Had Stefan somehow confused the first and last names?
Of course, it was possible that Esme was not the girl in the picture.
Pete wanted me to know that he hadn’t given up.
He thought that my suggestion to Esme that we meet up in person was spectacular, and we created a plan. As soon as a place was set, I would inform him and he would find a way to be there as well, undercover, with other police to back him up. He promised that I would be safe.
As for the solitary figure in the hoodie, who somehow felt bold to haunt and despoil our lives according to his whim, a few rosebushes one time, maybe next time a piece of wire strung at neck height in the dark, Pete had no idea. Did he know Esme? Was he sent by her? All we knew was that he watched, and that he bided his time.
I had put way too many hopes in a basket that turned out to have a hole in the bottom.
I went to bed.
For once, nothing was required to shove me down into sleep and keep me there.
When I woke to hear Molly scratching at my bedroom door, the clock said 3:00 a.m. Molly didn’t ordinarily fuss to go outside in the middle of the night; but when she did, there was a reason, and I hoped it wasn’t a skunk that she wanted to harass.
I reached out to nudge Jep so he would go down and I wouldn’t have to face the literally rude awakening of the first raw blast of winter dawn, then remembered he had gone on another overnight trip. I got up, wrapped myself in my old robe, shoved my feet into slippers and followed the dog downstairs, ruefully waking myself with every step. I let her out through the patio door, leaving it cracked so she could come back in when she’d done her stuff, and shuffled into the kitchen to put the electric kettle on for a cup of chamomile tea.
The kettle boiled and I turned it off. Molly whined at the door, somehow having managed to close it. She followed at my heels, whimpering a little, the way she did sometimes. Back in the kitchen, I turned on the countertop light, got out a mug and a tea bag, filled my mug and flipped Molly a freeze-dried chicken treat, which she let fall at her feet. She ignored it. Molly wouldn’t let a rabid raccoon stand between her and a chicken treat. I should have known then.
When I looked up, the figure was standing in the corner of the room, ten feet from me. His hoodie was drawn down over his slender face, and his hands were jammed in the pockets of his sweatpants.
You wonder all your life what you’ll do if something like this ever happens, and you try to prepare. You talk to yourself about the pros and cons of running or fighting. You ask, will I open my mouth to scream and nothing will come out except a whistle of air? Will I advance, rage lending me unwonted strength, or submit to the inevitable, like a goat in the tiger’s jaws? I roared, grabbing up my electric kettle and throwing it at him, sending boiling water across his chest. He was the one who keened, some sort of strangled syllable, and took off out of the room, falling in the kitchen over a chair, rolling to his knees, as Molly growled and barked wildly and I heard Stefan come pounding down the stairs, just as the man burst through the patio door to the yard.