Stalked. Elizabeth Heiter
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think her parents don’t want Haley to come home, with all the shit they’ve started pulling. I don’t know where this is coming from. Maybe Bill wasn’t the easiest guy to deal with, and Linda was a bit hysterical, but none of them fucking impeded the investigation before now.”
“So, what?” Quincy broke in. “Bill made the video three hours ago, and we already have a note from Haley? That’s fast for coercion. It would mean—”
“If the note is really from her, then someone is holding her nearby, to be able to see the video, tell Haley what to write, then deliver it to the station this quickly,” Sophia finished.
“And if not, the person who sent this is still nearby, somewhere close, so hopefully it won’t take long to nail his ass,” Quincy said.
“It could be Bill himself,” Sophia said. “Whether he has her or not. I’m sure he has samples of her handwriting he could copy.”
“You have cameras, right?” Evelyn asked.
“We sure as hell do.” Sophia headed for the front desk, even as she barked at another officer who’d come over. “Bag the note. Get it logged into Evidence now.”
“Someone just got sloppy,” Quincy said, keeping pace with Sophia. “Maybe this will be the break we need.”
“Wait,” the officer who’d told them about the note called, running after them. She was young, probably not long out of high school herself, and bursting with newbie enthusiasm. “It came in with the mail. I took the stack of mail from the carrier myself.”
The young officer took a step back as both Quincy and Sophia stopped in their tracks, spinning toward her. Evelyn hurried to catch up, wishing she had a longer stride.
“The normal carrier?” Sophia demanded. “How did it come so fast, then, if it went through the postal system? Unless Bill’s video was a coincidence. Or he sent the letter himself, before he posted the video.”
“Why did you get the mail?” Quincy asked.
“I—” She glanced from one detective to the other. “Sergeant Jett stepped out, so no one was at the desk out front. I was there. I took the stack. Yes, the normal carrier brought it. I dumped the stack on the desk and was going to leave, but I noticed this letter had no postage. I was going to ask the carrier, but she’d left and—”
“You sure she gave it to you?” Sophia said. “No one dropped it in the pile?”
“I’m sure.”
“Shit,” Sophia said. “Okay, we’ll talk to the carrier. Let’s take a ride.”
Sophia was already racing for the door, but Evelyn snagged her elbow before she could get far. “Hang on. Let’s look at the cameras first.”
“But if—”
“How would a piece of mail with no postage get into a mail stack coming into a police station?”
Sophia frowned back at her, then nodded slowly. “It must have happened nearby. Otherwise, the person couldn’t be sure it would get delivered. It might end up being sent back, since there was no postage.”
“Except the envelope had the station as the return address, too,” Quincy called out. “It would have ended up here either way.”
“But not in the stack. They would have asked for the postage, right?” Evelyn asked.
“I guess so. All right, let’s pull the tapes.” Sophia turned, heading back toward the front desk, where the sergeant who usually sat there was returning. “We need the footage from around the station for the last few minutes, Amber,” Sophia told her.
Amber stood, frowning as she set down the sandwich she’d just started eating, and gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right. Come on.”
She moved to the side, letting Sophia behind the desk. As Sophia’s raised an eyebrow, Evelyn joined them in the tight space.
“Here we go,” Amber said, picking up a remote and rewinding on the tiny screen mounted beneath the desk.
Evelyn glanced at Sophia, who nodded.
“We have live picture surrounding the station. Amber can go back and look at anything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours. After that, it automatically backs up. It’s a good system.” She leaned closer to the screen. “Stop!”
Evelyn leaned forward, too, as the mail carrier suddenly pitched forward at the edge of the camera, and a hand darted out and steadied her.
“There!” Sophia shouted, making other officers glance their way.
“What?” Evelyn asked as Sophia rewound once more, then hit Pause and pointed.
“He bumped her on purpose, then grabbed her arm to steady her while he slipped an envelope in the stack with his other hand. Sneaky bastard. Not quite pickpocket good, but that was pretty ingenious.”
“He?” Evelyn pressed. “All I see is an arm, in a dark sweatshirt. Do we have another angle on this?”
Sophia glanced back at Amber, who frowned and shook her head. “This is at the far side of the station. We have cameras mounted on all sides of the station, but not just out on the street. And the person who did this was standing in the alley. Probably waiting for the mail carrier to come by. There aren’t cameras there, not even from other businesses.”
“Are you sure?” Sophia pressed. “Maybe the bank has an angle that we can—”
“I’m positive,” Amber insisted. “We had a couple of muggings there a year ago. The station took a lot of heat because it was so close and it took us a long time to identify the person.”
“I remember,” Sophia said. “But I also remember you pushing to get cameras in there.”
“That’s a battle I lost,” Amber said. “We barely have the budget for this.” She gestured to the screen still on pause below the desk. “Sorry.”
Sophia handed over the remote and leaned against the wall. “We can’t catch a break. And this can’t be dumb luck, the guy being so perfectly positioned.”
“If whoever took Haley is from around here, he’d probably know about the muggings,” Evelyn said. “If the police took heat for not having cameras there, I’m guessing it was in the press?”
“You’d be guessing right,” Sophia said. “Amber, I want you to get a hold of our mail carrier. Get her in here and ask her to describe this person as soon as you can find her.” She looked at Evelyn. “And since we already think Haley’s abductor is someone she knows, let me introduce you to a guy who wears a lot of sweatshirts.”
Evelyn followed as she headed for the door, glancing back to see Quincy step behind the desk. “Who?”
“His name is Jordan Biltmore.”
“Haley’s boyfriend? The one everyone saw drive away after he dropped her off at school?”
“That’s the guy,” Sophia replied, not slowing down as she left the station and got into her car, parked in front. “Let’s go for a ride.”
* * *
“School is in session,” Sophia said unnecessarily as she drove onto the Neville University campus.
They’d driven across a ridiculously ornate bridge over a man-made pond to enter campus. Students’ tuition money at work apparently, because Sophia told her the university had put it in at a cost of several million. It made for a hell of an entryway, but the whole thing seemed a little ridiculous to Evelyn, who’d never before been on the relatively small Neville campus.
Now, they were moving at ten miles an hour as they wove down narrow cobblestone streets lined with hickory and maple trees. Students darted out in front of the car in laughing groups as they chatted and hurried to their next classes.