HER PHONE BUZZED again just as she was dropping off.
Dom, probably, letting her know he’d arrived home safely.
“Hey,” she murmured into it without looking at the screen.
“Julia. Tell me you’re all right.” The voice jolted her upright. Sleep fled.
“Wayne?”
“Are you okay? Is anyone there with you?”
Not anymore, she thought. “Just Calvin and the dog.”
“I’m just outside. Let me in.”
“What the—?”
She took a moment to find her pajamas, tossed across the room in her haste with Dom, and shrugged into a robe.
As soon as the deadbolt slid free, Wayne pushed through the door. He slammed it behind him and locked it, then peered into her face. “You’re really all right? There’s nobody here ordering you to tell me that?”
“God, no! Wayne, I’m fine.”
He withdrew his gun.
“Wayne! What are you doing?”
“Making sure. Stay with me.”
He moved through the hallway, flinging open the doors to the hall closet and half bath, circling the dining room and opening the doors in the built-in hutch before turning to the kitchen, where the lower cabinet doors got the same treatment.
“Basement?”
She pointed.
He clicked on the light and headed down the stairs with Jake, too startled to bark, scampering at his heels. She followed him halfway down, and she watched as he circled the room, stepping over Calvin’s toys, peering into the recessed nook that held the washer and dryer.
He left the basement and headed for the second floor. He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked a question toward her. “My room,” she whispered, pointing left. She jerked her thumb right. “Calvin’s. My office.”
She stood in the hall and watched as he flung her door open and burst into the room, checking beneath the bed and opening the doors to the half-empty closets, pushing aside the clothes hanging there.
She stepped out of his way as he moved to the bathroom, where he shoved the shower curtain to one side, and then silently opened Calvin’s door, letting the hallway light illuminate the room as he again checked the closets and beneath the bed.
He moved on to her office, where he took a long glance around, holstered his gun, and announced, “All clear.”
“I could have told you that. Wayne, what’s going on?”
He paced the room. “I’m on nights this week. Was driving back at the end of my shift. Swung by your street just … well, just a feeling.”
“Because? Wayne, has something happened?” Her hand went to her throat. Was somebody else dead?
“Those things that have been happening to you, the calls and notes. I know it sounds like I’ve been blowing you off, but I didn’t want you to worry.”
So she hadn’t been crazy. Scant comfort, under the circumstances.
“I’ve made it a habit to do a few drive-bys. So far, it’s been quiet. Until tonight when I saw someone running away from the direction of your house. I drove around the block in the car. Then I got out and walked around but didn’t see anybody. Thought I’d better check on you, just for safety’s sake. Okay to take a look at the security camera footage?”
She bit her lip. The footage would indeed show a man sprinting across her backyard, maybe recognizable as Dom, maybe not. Thank God the snow had melted, so at least there was no damning trail of man-size footprints coming and going.
“No need,” she said. “The motion lights went on and woke me up a few minutes before you called. I checked the footage and it was just a raccoon. Thank God. Given that it’s trash day, I was worried it might have been a bear.”
They were ubiquitous in Duck Creek, skulking down out of the foothills to the weekly feast that was trash day—pizza boxes with scraps of crust, waxed paper around half-eaten sandwiches, beer cans with dregs sloshing within—all irresistible, especially this time of year, when the bears awoke famished from their winter’s hibernation.
He hesitated.
“Whoever you saw running never came to my door. I’m sure of it.” She held her breath and crossed her fingers behind her back. “Can I get you anything before you go? Want a cup of coffee?”
Just the act of making it would probably rouse her to the point where she’d never get back to sleep, but it would be worth it if it made him forget about looking at those images.
“No, thanks. What’s this?”
He stood in front of the whiteboards.
“What’s my name doing there?”
Hell and damnation. “It’s a system I have. Sort of a written version of throwing everything against a wall and seeing what sticks. I jotted down everyone I’ve talked to who’s even tangentially involved in these cases. As you can see, your name is crossed out.”
“But why is Harper’s name up here? You don’t have anything to do with her case. There isn’t even a case for the public defenders, given that they haven’t arrested anyone. And I thought I heard you were off Ray’s.”
Damn the courthouse hotline. “I am. This is something I started before I was pulled.” Another lie, adding to the one about the raccoon. Julia was a confirmed skeptic, but vestiges of her Catholic girlhood lingered, manifesting themselves in the heavenly disapproval she felt directed her way. “As for Harper, I’m curious. Just like everyone else.”
“Huh.” He studied it a moment longer. “Interesting.”
“Any thoughts?”
“With a plea agreement already in the works? I know you lawyers have to jump through all your legal hoops, but it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me, at least as far as Ray is concerned. Sorry.” He gestured for her to go ahead of him back down the stairs but lingered in the room. She waited for him at the bottom of the steps.
He stood at the top, looking down at her and shaking his head. “If this is what floats your boat, go for it. It’s actually not a bad system. I might try it myself.”
He came down and walked with her to the front door. “Guess I overreacted tonight. I saw that guy and jumped to conclusions. Hope somebody else’s house didn’t get burgled while I was here. Didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”
“Are you kidding? The fact that you went out of your way to check on me—that means the world, Wayne. I know you guys get a bad rap sometimes. People should see this side of things.”
He threw her a grateful smile, and she watched as he opened the gate at the end of the walk and latched it carefully behind him in the bright glare of the motion sensor light.
She closed and locked the door, trying not to think about how soon her alarm was going to go off, and how endless the coming day would feel as she dragged herself through the hours wanting nothing more than a full night’s sleep.
A line glowed beneath her office door. She’d forgotten to turn off the light. She almost ignored it but reminded herself that the electric bill was not included in the rent.
She trudged upstairs and reached for the switch, glancing at the whiteboard as she did so. Her hand fell. She walked over to the board. She’d X’d out Cheryl Hayes’s name, reasoning that whatever Hayes’s involvement might be in either case, it surely fell short of murder.
But now the X was largely gone, just a few faint traces remaining, all that was left after Wayne Peterson—it had to be him—had smeared it away just a few minutes earlier.