A horn blared behind him, and Jake came out of his reverie, checking the rearview mirror. A massive construction truck was flashing its lights for him to move out of the fast lane. He hit the gas, powered through a yellow light, and reached for his phone, pressing the buttons on-the-fly to call the office.
“Hey, how are you doing?” Amy picked up instantly.
“I’m fine, thanks. Amy, I’m not going to be back to the office for a couple of hours. Can you deal?”
“Totally.” Amy paused. “But what’s going on? You seem so—”
“I thought I’d work at home. I got nothing done this morning and I don’t need any more interruptions.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Hold the fort and I’ll give you a call as soon as I know what my schedule is. Take care.”
Jake turned left off of Concordia Boulevard, got home in no time, and hit the house running, letting the door slam closed behind him. Moose waddled out of the kitchen, his fluffy tail wagging slowly.
“Hey buddy,” Jake called to the dog, then hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his tie flying. He reached the second-floor landing, slid out of his jacket, and hurried into his home office, where he tossed his jacket onto the couch, plopped down in his desk chair, and hit the mouse to power up his computer.
He opened his email, watched his incoming pile onto the screen, and scanned the countless client emails for Pam’s name. Moose trundled into the office, panting from the effort of going up the stairs, in his characteristic huh-huh-huh. The golden lumbered over to the desk, and Jake palmed his big head before the dog could start his nudging routine.
Jake found Pam’s email, scrolled to the attachments, and clicked OPEN. There was a list of ten photos and he opened the first one. The photo must have been taken from the door to the apartment, and it showed scenes of a tiny galley kitchen next to a small living room, with an old black futon and a wooden coffee table. There was no other furniture in the room, nor were there any books or newspapers. Two windows on the far wall had broken blinds and between them, oddly, was a poster series of tennis player Anna Kornikova.
Jake opened the next few photos, scenes of Voloshin’s apartment, messy and nondescript. The following few photos were of a massive black monitor affixed to the wall and surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling entertainment center, also in black, with plastic video games shoved every which way in its crammed shelves. There was a photo of large black speakers and consoles that lined the top shelf, mixed with an array of weird pornographic figurines.
Jake shuddered. He opened the next photo, which was of a black laminate desk cluttered with Red Bull cans, cellophane Tastykake wrappers, and bags with multicolored Skittles strewn amid a dark tangle of joysticks, headsets with microphones, controllers, wires, a mouse, and a large silver laptop.
Jake eyed the laptop, wondering if it had contained the pictures of him and Ryan on Pike Road. Either way, he assumed the killer had taken the laptop. The right edge of the photograph showed a doorjamb that must have led to a bedroom, but that wasn’t what caught Jake’s eye. What he noticed was the brownish cork edge of a bulletin board on the wall, which must’ve been the one that Pam mentioned.
Jake clicked open the next photograph and sat back in his seat, trying to absorb the shock. It showed the bulletin board full of curling photos of Kathleen, which looked like they had been printed from the computer; Kathleen at work, company picnics, and softball games, hitting the ball, eating a chili hot dog, or smiling with her arm around her mother, who sported an identical grin. Jake cringed at one of the mother-daughter photos, in which both Kathleen and her mother were wearing matching bunny ears.
“I’m so sorry,” he heard himself say, realizing he said it aloud only because Moose nudged his leg. Jake could never begin to imagine the depths of that mother’s pain at losing her daughter, and he knew he could never forgive himself for his responsibility for Kathleen’s death. Everything that had happened since the hit-and-run followed as inevitably as one domino knocking down another, except that the dominoes were the people he loved the most in the world and the mess was their life as a family.
Jake told himself to get a grip. He scanned the photos again to see if he’d missed anything, but he hadn’t. It only confirmed that Voloshin had a crush on Kathleen and that both mother and daughter trusted him as a friend, or they never would’ve posed for the pictures.
Jake clicked on the last attachment and opened the photo. It showed the left-hand side of the bulletin board, and oddly, it was different from the right-hand side. The pictures were darker, printouts of photos taken at night, and they showed Kathleen running alone or with the track team down Pike Road. In the background was the corporate center and the road that came off of Pike, Dolomite Road. A few of them had thumbtacks in the corner and photos underneath, as if they were a series. One of the photos was taken at twilight in the summertime, with the girls running back toward the school in sweaty Chasers singlets and skimpy shorts, a sight that must’ve given Voloshin quite a thrill.
Jake noticed two photos on the far right, mostly hidden under the others. They had also been taken at nightfall, but there were no runners in the foreground; one had a woman with a ponytail getting into the passenger side of a dark car parked along the brush on Dolomite Road, its back bumper facing out. The second photo showed two figures sitting in the same car, the driver taller than the woman with the ponytail, more the height of a man. Their heads bent together as if they were kissing, indistinct silhouettes in the front seat.
Jake didn’t get it. He moved the mouse and clicked on the photo to enlarge it, but couldn’t see the people in the car, whose backs were to him. He squinted at the license plate, which was a Pennsylvania plate, and he could make out only the first three letters, HKE, and none of the digits. A red plastic thumbtack in the corner of the photo suggested, as before, that it was one of the series, but it got Jake wondering.
Who were the people in the photo?
He thought about it, and tried to reason it out. This was a bulletin board about Kathleen, so if Kathleen wasn’t one of the people in the car, that would be the only photo not of her. So did it mean that Kathleen was meeting a man in a car? Jake enlarged the photo on the screen, trying to read the rest of the license plate, but he couldn’t. He scrutinized the silhouette of the man, but couldn’t see anything other than he was in the driver’s seat and seemed to be of average height and build.
Jake squinted at the car, which looked long enough to be a four-door sedan of some type, and it was navy blue or black because it blended with the background. He enlarged it further, and after a few clicks, was able to read some chrome lettering on the upper left side of its trunk—535.
It was a BMW.
Jake thought about deleting the photos, but hesitated. He was already planning his next move.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Jake turned left onto Pike Road, approaching it from the opposite direction than he had the night of the hit-and-run, when Ryan was driving. There was no car on the street, which ran single lanes in both directions, and no police, runners, or dog-walkers were in sight. His dashboard clock read 1:30, so he was assuming that most of the employees at the corporate center had already gone back to work, and there were no students out yet because school was still in session.
Jake decreased his speed short of the blind curve ahead, with its makeshift memorial. The flowers, candles, and sympathy cards sat in a forlorn pile by the side of the road, and he felt a familiar tightness in his chest at the sight, but he pressed his emotions away. It was strange and risky to return to the scene of the crime, but he wanted to see if he could figure out what Voloshin had been up to, as well as the identity of the people in the BMW sedan.
Jake braked, getting the lay of the land. The blind curve was probably five hundred feet up ahead, then Pike Road jogged to the right, then the left and continued straight. Dolomite Road ran perpendicular to Pike Road, about a hundred feet down from the blind cu
rve, and from where he sat, he could see the corner of Dolomite and Pike Roads. He couldn’t see beyond that, farther down on Dolomite Road, because he was at too oblique an angle.
He picked up his iPhone from the passenger seat, scrolled to the camera roll, and retrieved the photo of the sedan from the bulletin board, which he’d enlarged before he left the house. The picture was too dark and unfocused to reveal anything going on inside the sedan, but it did show the sedan’s location and orientation on Dolomite Road, which was all Jake needed.
He drew an imaginary line from the back of the sedan, across Pike Road, and into the brush on the left side of the road, working on the assumption that its trajectory would point to Voloshin’s location when he took the photo. The only thing on the left side of the road was overgrowth and trees, but he had a theory to test and there was only one way to find out if he was right.
Jake took one last quick look around, turned off the engine, slid the keys out of the ignition, and got out of the car. He reached the undergrowth in four feet, then started making his way through the brush, using his arms to shove aside branches and tangled vines. He worked as quickly as possible because he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself. He began to sweat, wishing he’d brought pruning shears.
Jake powered steadily forward, walking a straight line by orienting himself by one of the apartment buildings in the distance, a sandstone low-rise that he kept ahead of him, like the North Star. Twigs snapped under his shoes, and nettles clung to his pants. He consulted the iPhone picture and the sandstone apartments as he kept moving through a grove of evergreens that had grown together in natural tangle.
He passed one tree and behind it found a large area where the grass had been flattened, but it was a large circle, made by resting deer. He kept going, sensing that if he didn’t find anything soon, he’d missed his guess. He fought his way around ivy that clung to one of the evergreens, and suddenly came upon another flat area, but this one had clearly been man-made. Tree limbs had been pruned back, and sucker vines had been cut. The undergrowth had been flattened but the area wasn’t a large circle like deer made. He stood in the middle of the flat area, turned around with his back to the sandstone building, and faced Dolomite Road.
Bingo.
Jake felt his heartbeat quicken. There was a raggedy break through the trees, all the way to the blind curve and to a section of Dolomite Road. If Voloshin had stood in this spot, he would have had a perfect view—the same view as the photos of Ryan and him that had been taken, exactly where the hit-and-run accident occurred.
Jake’s stomach twisted. Voloshin had aimed his camera as if it were a rifle and he’d managed to catch Ryan, Jake, and now, Pam in his crosshairs. And the evergreens would have screened Voloshin from view, and the little pervert would also have been free to spy on Kathleen and photograph her whenever he wanted, especially if he knew her schedule and worked from home often enough that he didn’t have to account to the office for his time. Voloshin had set himself up like a hunter in a blind, waiting for the girls to run by.
Jake looked down, and a few white berries caught his eye, oddly bright in the brownish underbrush. He bent down, moved the undergrowth aside, and picked up the berries, examining them. They weren’t berries at all. He flashed on the photo of Voloshin’s desk, with its bags of Skittles. The white berries were candy, their coating washed away by the rain, probably dropped by Voloshin during one of his stalker sessions.
Jake hurried back the same way he came, keeping the sandstone apartment building directly behind him, moving tree limbs and vines out of his path until he reached the edge of the woods. He stalked through the grass at the edge of Pike Road, hustled to his car, jumped inside, and started the engine. Luckily, there was still no one on the street.
He hit the gas and cruised forward, approaching the blind curve. He glanced over at the memorial as he passed it, sending up a silent prayer for Kathleen, then took a right. His destination was Dolomite Road and it lay just ahead, at a ninety degree angle to Pike. He turned right onto Dolomite, orienting himself, slowing his speed and taking in the surroundings.
The street was quiet and still, with no cars or foot traffic. On its left side was the parking lot that surrounded Concordia Corporate Center, which was screened from the street by thick landscaped hedges and zigzagging evergreens. On the right side of the street were more overgrown woods and trees, the parcel evidently unused.
Jake drove down the street and noticed that the left side of the street stayed the same, with the thick landscaped greenery that screened the corporate center, but on the right side, the woods stooped for a clearing of a few homes, newish clapboard colonials, one of which had a FOR SALE sign out front. He drove to the end of the street, which veered left and led to one of the remote parking lots of the corporate center, where a group of black Goren’s Janitorial vans were parked.
Jake turned around and cruised back up Dolomite Road, heading toward Pike Road. He passed the houses on his left and slowed his speed when he got to the place where he thought the BMW sedan had been parked. He braked, cut the ignition, and got out of the car.
“Sir!” said a man’s voice. “Stop right there! Sir!”
Jake froze. It had to be the police or security for the corporate center. He didn’t see anyone. The voice came from beyond the hedges.
“What are you doing, sir? You hold on! Right there!”
“Okay, sure.” Jake’s mouth went dry, and there was a rustling in the evergreens and movement of the limbs as an older man emerged, dressed in an insulated purplish-blue jumpsuit, with a white patch that read CONCORDIA CORPORATE CENTER. His face was a network of wrinkles, his bifocals slid down his bony nose, and he was as lean and worn as the rake he carried.
“Where do you work, sir? You got the bulletin, didn’t you? I was told all the tenants got the bulletin!”
“I don’t work here.” Jake crossed to his car door, but the old man held up a gnarled hand.
“There’s no more parking back here! I don’t know when you people are going to learn!”
“I wasn’t parking here.” Jake thought fast. “I was thinking about buying that house at the end of the street. Do people park here a lot? Is that a problem? If it is, I don’t want to buy the house.”
“Oh, beg pardon.” The old man seemed to stand down, leaning on the rake. “You don’t want to buy a house on this street, not unless you like a peep show. This is a lovers’ lane, that’s what we used to call it. Everybody comes here to park ’n spark.”
“You mean from the high school?” Jake’s ears perked up.
“Hell, no! I mean our tenants! From these businesses.” The old man gestured back to the corporate center. “They got so many women working here now, and there’s all kinda tomfoolery goes on here at lunch. You’d be surprised what I find in these bushes this time o’ day! Cigarette butts, beer cans, rubbers! Disgusting! They have a damn good time in these cars! Every morning, too, from partyin’ that goes on after work!”
“I bet.” Jake opened his car door. “I’ll be going now. I appreciate your giving me the information. It doesn’t sound like a great place for the kids.”
“No sir, no way! Nice talking to you. Bye now.”
“Take care.” Jake started the engine, steered down Dolomite, and turned right on Pike Road. He felt like he was getting closer to something, but he didn’t know what. He assumed for a minute that it was Kathleen in the photograph of the BMW sedan, because if it hadn’t been, Voloshin would have no reason to put it on his bulletin board with the other photographs of her. If Voloshin had been in his duck blind, watching Kathleen on one of her nighttime runs, he could have discovered that she wasn’t running, but meeting someone on Dolomite Road.
Jake took a right turn, preoccupied. His theory made sense because it answered some of the questions he’d had earlier, like why was Kathleen running alone so late at night? Maybe it wasn’t unusual for the track team, but what if Kathleen was using running as a pretense to get out of
the house at night? What if she was going to Dolomite Road to meet someone, in a car? But who was she meeting? Someone whom Kathleen was keeping a secret, probably from her mother, if she was meeting him in a car.
Jake turned right and joined the traffic on Concordia Boulevard. Ahead lay the manicured main entrance to the corporate center, with its varietal grasses in mulched beds, around the brown sign that read CONCORDIA CORPORATE CENTER, HOME TO AMERICAN BUSINESS! Underneath that was a listing of corporate tenants; Brej Construction Management, Moxico, LLC, Valley Tech, SMS, Goren’s Janitorial, Branson Hospitality Services, with a subhead that read FORTUNE’S 100 BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR! He scanned the list as he approached, thinking that the most likely person to know about the lovers’ lane on Dolomite Road was someone who worked at one of these businesses. He reached the entrance and on impulse, turned right into its campus.
If he got lucky, he’d spot a dark BMW with an HKE license plate.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Jake cruised the parking lot and scanned a row that held a gray Toyota, a lemony VW Beetle, a white Acura, and an older brown Honda, his thoughts churning. If Voloshin had discovered that Kathleen was meeting a lover, he could have become jealous, even angry. What if Voloshin had tried to blackmail her lover, the way he tried to blackmail Jake? Voloshin could have threatened to tell the man’s wife, if the man was married, or to tell Kathleen’s mother, or even the authorities, because Kathleen was underage. The lover would be guilty of statutory rape if it came to light that he’d had sex with Kathleen.
Jake surveyed the parked cars, cruising past the bumper stickers and decals. MY CAT CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT, a navy blue Nittany Lion, a white circle for Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, an oval 13.1 decal, and a puzzle piece for Autism Awareness. He didn’t see the BMW yet, and his head was full of questions. What if Voloshin had tried to blackmail the BMW driver, but unlike Jake, the man hadn’t come up with blackmail money? Or what if the man in the BMW had been the one who murdered Voloshin?