SHE EMAILED WAYNE a clip of the security camera footage, the relevant piece thankfully occurring well after Dom’s departure. Wayne was waiting outside her office when she got to work.
Julia gave further thanks that it was one of Marie’s law school days so her intern didn’t have to hear Wayne’s lecture about destroying the note.
Which she hadn’t, but she hadn’t wanted to show it to him, either. Courthouse gossip being what it was—and extending across county lines to where Susan now worked—she didn’t need it getting around that she and Dom were still seeing each other.
“Just one word—whore,” she told Wayne. Really, that was the thing about the note that most frightened her. Well, the second-most frightening thing, the first being the fact that someone had been watching her. “I was so freaked out I flushed it.”
She endured a second lecture on destroying evidence—“I honestly can’t believe they let you practice law”—before they turned to the grainy images she’d sent him.
At three in the morning, a hunched figure in a hoodie opened her gate, scurried to the front door, illuminated by the flash of the security light, stuck something through the mail slot, and sloped away.
“The light didn’t wake you up?”
“No.” The downside of her overkill with the shades and drapes. Plus the relief of Dom’s visit had translated into the best sleep she’d had all week.
He ran the abbreviated clip again.
“Damn. You can’t see any facial features. Can’t even tell if this is a man or a woman.”
“You think it could be a woman?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Julia. You’ve seen the crazies in court.”
She wanted to argue—those crazies were, after all, her clients—but he was right. When it came to crime, men might hold the edge in terms of numbers, but she’d seen her share of women accused of everything from embezzling the church kitty to driving blind drunk with unbelted kids tumbling in the back seat, and she’d even heard of a case where a woman blindfolded her husband on his birthday and then shot him between his bandanna-wrapped eyes. Surprise!
“And that damned hoodie. If I had my way, they’d be illegal. You ever seen surveillance video where the person wasn’t wearing a hoodie?”
“There’s something on it. Zoom in.”
He spread his fingers on the screen, succeeding only in blurring the already-grainy image into unrecognizability. He restored the view and squinted. “Maybe part of a D? For Duck Creek High? Great. There’s only about a thousand of those in this town.”
She’d called Dom first, just as he’d asked, and emailed him the images too. He’d had the same thought about the sweatshirt.
“That’s what—” she started to say to Wayne. But he knew Susan, knew she’d tagged Julia as her sworn enemy. She couldn’t imagine he’d say anything that would get back to her, but you never knew. “That’s what a friend of mine said.”
Wayne almost dropped her phone. “You’ve talked about this with someone else?”
His disapproval vibrated between them, nearly palpable.
“I might have mentioned it to someone. Just in passing.”
He took her arm. “Julia, you have to keep quiet about this. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you’ve truly got a stalker—and it’s looking more and more as though you do—you don’t want to scare him off by gabbing around town about this. We want this person to make a move that allows us to nail him. Or her.”
She looked him straight in the eye and lied. “Of course.” Now that she and Dom had reestablished contact, she had every intention of keeping him clued in. But Wayne didn’t need to know that.
He got out his own phone and snapped photos of the security cam images. “I’ll add these to the file. Thing is, Julia.” He hesitated.
“Spit it out, Wayne.”
Wayne’s hair was stiff with some sort of product, something he probably used in an attempt to tame the cowlicks that now stood up in defiance as he ran his hand across his head.
“There’s nothing really illegal about this. It’s not a threat.”
“It’s harassment! The phone call, the message in the snow, and now this. It’s all part of a pattern.”
He told her what she already knew. “If the same person did it. We have no way of knowing that.”
She folded her arms. “We have no way of not knowing it. Are you going to fingerprint the mail slot?”
He held out his hand for her phone and enlarged the image again, this time just a little.
“Look at the hands.”
In the video, the person yet again hunched toward her front door. Reached out. Shoved the note through. With—even the video’s dreadful quality showed it—a gloved hand.
Julia slumped.
“Sorry. Wish I could be of more help. You don’t have the slightest idea who this could be? You pissed off anybody lately? Some guy who didn’t like his bail? What about a woman?”
She shook her head. “Don’t think I don’t lie awake at night going through all the possibilities.”
“What about Susan?” Wayne, like most of the town, knew that Julia was involved with the former prosecutor’s ex, and unless everybody in town had gone deaf, dumb, and blind, also knew that the principal and Julia hadn’t been seen together recently. People would draw their own conclusions. She just hoped no one drew the right one.
“Not her style. She’ll use the courts.” A move she’d already threatened, but that was another thing Wayne didn’t need to know.
“You’re right. But if you think of anybody, no matter how wild a guess you take, let me know. Sorry you’re going through this.”
He put a hand on her shoulder.
She flinched.
He apologized yet again. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It wasn’t that. I’m just jumpy lately. Thanks for coming by.”
She closed the door behind him and locked it, rubbing her shoulder. He hadn’t scared her. But his touch on her shoulder had awakened a muscle memory.
Deputy Cheryl Hayes, her hands on both of Julia’s shoulders. Shaking her. Shouting in her face.
Have you pissed off anyone recently? Wayne had asked. What about a woman?
Every encounter with Hayes had been tense, if not outright hostile.
She hadn’t told Wayne about them. She wondered if it was time.