Chapter Thirty-Six

Jake didn’t go to bed. He watched Seth’s trailer on the screen for a while and noticed that when Seth carried his sister, obviously to bed, it would be a show for anyone watching. He needed to be reminded that light inside meant people in the dark outside, could see everything you did, if the blind was open. He would have called them except his sister’s body had been shielded, and the lights were thankfully not on in the bedroom.

This set Jake to thinking. Perhaps the stalker had been standing opposite Seth’s trailer watching them, since their trailer was yards away.

Jake thought about this for a moment. Maybe the stalker regularly watched Seth this way. The stalker might know the actor’s schedule and if so that would mean he really was involved in the movie. Jake shrugged. That wasn’t much of a clue because there were heaps of people who might know the schedules.

He made more coffee and sat down to look at the original files for the hate mail case. They contained a complete list of the cast and crew, which also detailed the person’s role or job. Jake looked through it for a while, thinking about the person who attacked Bethany.

They were well-built, tall, strong, and worked out. There wasn’t much to go on facially. In fact, nothing, as only the eyes and the top of the head was visible, in the video that was taken, but the hair looked blond and well cut. Modern, a good cut, Jake thought and ran his hands through his own slighter longer, dark hair.

There had been that smell Bethany described, but in Jake’s experience it didn’t always provide a good clue, so many people used the same stuff these days. He finished his coffee and looked at the list he had made of guys who would need to be very fit, have to work out, and be muscular for their jobs. It felt a little stereotypical to the egalitarian Jake.

He wanted to go outside and look around. He took the alarm off and went out the door. The night air was fresh and everything was quiet under the cloak of darkness. Jake looked at the trailers opposite Seth’s and walked over there. There was a natural sheltered corridor made between them and he went to stand in the entrance. He turned and looked straight into Seth’s trailer at the living end. The light was still on. Jake sighed and looked around him. The other trailers were in darkness, but the one lamp on the path nearby, lit now for crew and actors working on after ten, threw a dim glow at his feet. He saw something vaguely shine down on the ground there and squatted down to check it out. It was a little pencil with an eraser on the end, held in by a band of silver metal. He picked it up by the eraser and walked to where he thought the attack on Bethany had happened. He took out his small but powerful flashlight and shone it around on the grass. There was nothing to see, except a slight flattening of some clover and a small dandelion flower head had been snapped off.

Jake was convinced the stalker had stood between those trailers to watch Seth. He looked around. How had the guy avoided being caught on the video stream until he was upon Bethany? Then he noticed the hedgerow running at a right angle to the path. He walked down to it using the path. He looked along the hedgerow and saw the garden seat and the litter bin. Walking past them to the end of the hedgerow, he realized that although you would have to walk on grass and it was muddy and potholed in places, there was a clear way to the two trailers that he had stood between and where he had found the pencil. Jake nodded to himself. He couldn’t put surveillance everywhere and the perimeter of the surveillance he had was adequate, when the alarm program was on, but it was evident this was the stalker’s route.

He walked, considering what to do next and glanced absently into the full litter bin. Lying on the top was a magazine. It was glossy and slightly rolled as if it had been carried recently. Jake picked it up. He didn’t know why, but it sparked a memory. He couldn’t bring it to mind and went back to his trailer carrying the magazine to look at in the light there. He was confident that no one could have passed him to reach Seth’s trailer, but then he couldn’t let the idea go how someone might have used the back path and he hadn’t seen them. He messaged Bethany.

She surfaced from a light sleep, when her cell phone lit up and made its distinctive musical sound assigned to messages from her brother.

She reached for it and looked at the message.

Alarm was off for a few minutes. Is everything okay in there. No one crept in?

Bethany swung her legs off the bed. She went around the trailer checking. It took a few moments and then she messaged back.

All clear.

She turned off the living area light as she went back along the short hall and into the bedroom. When she snuggled back up to Seth, he woke and kissed her.

“Bethany,” he whispered and she kissed him.

“Go back to sleep.” He held her close and she closed her eyes.

* * * *

Over in his trailer, Jake looked at the screen again where the video from the webcams showed nothing going on. He took his laptop with him into his bedroom and placed it on the bedside table where he could see it. He checked the night watch alarm program to be sure it was turned on and smiled at his own obsessiveness. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

The pencil he found by the trailers was in an evidence bag next to his computer. Tomorrow he would think about that. Jake had tossed the magazine down on the bench seat next to the trailer door. He hadn’t given it another glance because of his worry that maybe somebody had crept into Seth’s trailer in the time he had the alarm off.

He thought about it now, as his eyes grew heavy. He would look at that in the morning too.