I cocked my head. “Who?”
“Silvia DeFlorez. She came to see you in July. She was about to undergo a biopsy, and as breast cancer runs in her family, she wanted to know what she was up against. You predicted her deathdate to be June twenty-third, twenty forty-eight.”
I didn’t remember. Maybe it was because I was starting to really worry if I’d made the right move coming here without Donny. Faraday was thumbing through the pages of my notebook, and then he lifted his eyes to me and his expression became puzzled. “You okay, Maddie? You look pale.”
“Why are you asking me about her?” I demanded, feeling defensive because I didn’t know what he was getting at.
Faraday cocked his head. “Maddie, I’m not accusing you of anything. If that were the case, no way could I bring you in here without your uncle.”
I let out a breath. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m a little flinchy.”
“It’s okay,” Faraday said, getting back to the notebook. “Well, it turns out that DeFlorez used to be Silvia Carter. Rob Carter was her son.”
I was stunned. “Wait, what?”
“Silvia DeFlorez-Carter was your client. Her son was murdered. Patricia Tibbolt was your client. Her son was murdered. You and Schroder tried to warn Payton Wyly about her deathdate. She was murdered. You babysat for the Murphy’s. Their son was abducted and nearly murdered.”
My mouth went dry, and that familiar chill began to creep up my spine. I believed him when he said he wasn’t accusing me, but I also wondered what his point was. “What’re you trying to say?” I asked hoarsely.
Faraday stared at me. “I’m trying to tell you, Maddie, that whoever this killer is, I believe he’s obsessed with you. And I’m now convinced that he’s also been stalking you and your clients. You’re connected to each of these kids—loosely in one case, but still connected, and it worries me.”
“Why would someone do that?” I asked. I shivered as that chill spread out from my spine to the back of my neck and along my scalp.
“I don’t know. But this is one sick bastard we’re dealing with, and right now you’re our only link to him.”
“Did you check out Mr. Chavez?” I asked. I was suddenly desperate for Faraday to find out who was responsible.
He nodded. “Yep. We checked out Chavez, Harris, and Kelly. Chavez admitted to being a jerk to you—something I doubt very much you’ll ever have to worry about from him again as he got a pretty good lecture from us—but he swears he had nothing to do with driving by your house or stalking you. Of course we checked out his alibis, and it turns out Chavez works the four to eleven shift at a bar not far from here. The bar has a security camera, which shows him working on all the days when the kids were abducted. Plus, he’s got a size eleven shoe.
“Harris also has a pretty good alibi. His mother’s in the hospital with pneumonia, and he’s been there practically every day since he got suspended from his job. Before that, he had several witnesses placing him in a variety of administrative meetings or at the school at the time the abductions occurred. He was helping to paint the gym on the day Rob Carter went missing—so he’s been eliminated as a suspect.”
“And Mr. Kelly’s son?”
“Jack Kelly works for his dad at their law offices in Parkwick. It’s a pretty big firm, and we’ve got more eyewitnesses than we know what to do with vouching for him on the days the kids were abducted. Plus, he and his dad left for New Zealand right before Thanksgiving, which means he couldn’t have abducted Nathan Murphy. So Kelly’s out.”
“Mario Rossi and Eric Anderson?” I was grasping at straws now.
Faraday shook his head. “They also alibi out, Maddie.”
I was feeling worse and worse as Faraday talked. “Then who could it be?”
He sighed. “We have another lead that we’re still trying to check out.”
“Who?”
“Do you know a Mr. Pierce at your school?”
I blinked. “He’s my chemistry teacher.”
“He drives a dark gray pickup truck,” Faraday said. “We noticed it in the faculty parking lot when we went to check out Chavez.”
I looked at Faraday like he had to be kidding. “Mr. Pierce is one of the only teachers who’ve been nice to me during all of this,” I said defensively.
Faraday nodded. “Wallace and I have an appointment to interview him later today, but I doubt it’s one of your teachers.”
“Then who?” I repeated.
Faraday dangled the notebook from his fingertips. “I think it’s someone in here.”
I stared at the notebook. There had to be at least a thousand names and dates in there. I’d kept it for years and years, and I’d talked to dozens of clients and had written down the names and dates of everyone I’d ever met.
“So what I need from you, Maddie,” Faraday continued, “is for you to think hard. Have any of your other clients ever gotten upset by what you’ve told them? Have they ever threatened you? Threatened to hurt you or get even with you?”
I sat there trying to think, sifting through the vaguest of memories I had about any of my clients who could’ve overreacted, but no one was coming to mind other than Mrs. Tibbolt and Mr. Kelly’s son.
“It’s likely this would have been a client you saw last summer, in the weeks before you went on vacation with your uncle.”
I sighed. I could barely remember the clients I’d read in October, much less the previous summer. I tried not to hold them in my memory, actually. That was the whole purpose of the notebook, to write their names and deathdates down so that I could move on and forget them.
“I can’t think of anyone,” I said at last. And that was the truth.