CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Six Years Ago
Soon after I became an emancipated minor on my sixteenth birthday, I got my GED and was accepted into SU. It was far enough from my crazy mom and dad that I didn’t think about them much. The first year I kept to myself. I was younger than everyone, the classes weren’t as easy as I’d thought, and I focused on studying. I just wanted to blend in while I figured out what to do with my life.
The doctor had been wrong—I wasn’t going to be six feet like my dad. By the time I was seventeen, I was six foot one with more to grow. I think I always thought of myself as short because my height felt funny on me. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I tried to disappear in crowds like I used to, but I couldn’t. Too tall, too skinny, and I think people were kind of scared of me because I was so quiet.
Even though I was free, I felt oddly trapped. Like I was waiting. Waiting for someone to tell me my life had purpose. Waiting for someone to tell me what I should be doing. Waiting for answers to all the questions I’d had as a kid—answers that would never come.
Then I met Cami.
Cami was a year older than me. Beautiful. Sweet and shy, maybe a little skittish. We met in the library the beginning of my second year at SU and I think, for me at least, it was love at first sight. Even though we didn’t have any classes together and she lived with her aunt in town, we studied together nearly every afternoon. I looked forward to seeing her, and on the days I couldn’t or she didn’t make it I was sad.
Cami left for the summer, and when she returned in the fall I wanted to marry her. She was everything bright in my life. My past was finally buried; my mother had remarried and moved to Texas, my father was still in Seattle, but I hadn’t spoken to either of them in over two years, not since the day I became an emancipated minor. The time, and college, and Cami all healed me.
For the first time since Rachel died, I was at peace.
The peace didn’t last.
The sensation that someone was watching me again started at the beginning of my third year. I started to feel the pricks in the back of my neck, just like in high school. The mysterious and cryptic notes began again, only instead of being put in my locker they were left in my dorm room. Or in my car. Or as a bookmark in whatever I was reading.
I became jittery and nervous and all I wanted to do was disappear again. I kept it all from Cami because I wanted to protect her. I filed police report after police report, but after the third time, they just stopped caring. I’d become an annoyance, and one of the cops clearly thought I was lying for the attention.
He certainly didn’t know me. I would gladly be invisible if I could.
But I should have realized that whoever hated me, whoever had followed me from Newark to New York, would try to hurt someone I loved.
My junior year, I moved off campus and gave Cami a key to my apartment. I wanted her to move in with me, because she was having problems with her family. But she was a bit old-fashioned, and I liked that about her. She’d often stay until late but always left in the middle of the night. I wished she would take me to visit her aunt, but she said it was “complicated.”
I knew all about complicated families.
It was the morning before Halloween when I had coffee with Cami and asked if she wanted to see a movie that night. She said she’d meet me at my apartment. And she sounded happy for the first time in weeks, and that made me happy. I’d been afraid she wanted to break it off because of my questions about her aunt, and my moodiness.
I got hung up after my last class because the professor wanted to talk to me about a story I’d written. He wanted me to submit it to the campus magazine. I said sure, whatever, but he wanted to talk. Talking wasn’t my strength. So I listened to him, about how talented I was, about how I should be majoring in communication or journalism or the creative arts instead of early childhood education. I listened until he wanted me to give him answers; then I told him I was late for a date.
I had a beat-up old car, but I rarely drove since my apartment was only a half mile from campus. But it was days like this, when I was late, that I wished I had it. I called Cami to tell her I was late, but my call went to her voice mail.
I walked briskly, then jogged, and by the time I got to my apartment I was running. I felt it in my stomach that something was wrong, just like I did the night of the storm when I woke up and went to Rachel’s room and she wasn’t there.
I ran up the two flights of stairs to my apartment and heard Cami crying from my bedroom.
“Cami? Cami? It’s Peter.”
The cries stopped, and I ran down the short hall to where she stood in the doorway. I looked over her head and saw everything.
Arcs of blood on the walls. The smell of death. The butchered pig in my bed.
Cami turned to face me, her face white and wet with tears. “I can’t be here,” she said. “I’m sorry. Oh, God!” She ran out and I let her go. I stared at the gross violence and knew that next time it would be me.
I called the police, and this time a new cop came to my apartment.
His name was Charlie Mead. He looked at my room, then looked at me and said, “Tell me about it.”
I told him everything. I told him about being followed in high school, about the roadkill left in my locker, about my bike being sabotaged. I told him why I ran away, how I was sent to live with my father, and why I filed for emancipation. It all came out in a rush; I don’t think I’d ever said as much at one time in my life.
Charlie said, “Let’s make sure your girlfriend is okay.”
I nodded, and he drove me to her aunt’s house. I’d never been inside, but I’d dropped her off several times over the year I’d known her.
Charlie walked with me to the door. I stood behind him, mostly because I didn’t want Cami to be scared. Charlie could convince her that she’d be safe, and he had some smart questions I hadn’t even thought about. Like had she seen anyone, had she touched anything, had she ever seen someone following us.
Charlie was the first cop I’d met since I filed my first report who I thought might find the person who was doing this to me.
An elderly woman answered the door.
“Ma’am, I’m Officer Charles Mead. Is Cami here?”
“There’s no one by that name here.”
“Cami Jones,” I said. “She goes to SU. This is where her aunt lives; I’m her boyfriend, Peter Gray.”
The woman scowled. “I don’t know any Cami Jones. My name is Edith Jones, Jones is a very common name.”
“You’re her aunt!”
Charlie put his hand on my arm, but I shook him off. “She calls you Aunt Edie.”
Mrs. Jones glared at me. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters; I have no nieces or nephews. I’m a widow, and my only son is married and lives in Montreal with his wife. I’ve lived in this house for fifty-two years!”
I didn’t believe anything she said, but Charlie walked me back to his squad car and made some calls. I sat in the back and stared at the house. This was it. Jones was on the mailbox. I’d driven Cami here a dozen times.
I looked at the houses nearby, and I wasn’t mistaken. Was her home life so bad that she didn’t want me to know where she lived?
Charlie said, “Let’s get some coffee, Peter.”
I didn’t say yes or no, because I was still trying to figure out what I had missed with Cami. I understood pain and knew she was a kindred spirit. She’d suffered but never talked about it.
Charlie drove to a nearby Starbucks and we went inside. He paid for me and we went to a table in the back.
“Thank you,” I said, and sipped the black coffee. I didn’t like coffee much, but I needed something to do with my hands.
“You need to listen to me, Peter. This is important.”
I nodded.
“Edith Jones was telling the truth. She has no nieces. There is no Cami Jones registered at SU.”
“Cami must be short for something. It’s a big school.”
“I had them run every C. Jones registered. There are four. Three are men. One is a senior from Albany, lives with her boyfriend in town. Christina Jones.”
I heard what Charlie said but didn’t understand.
“Maybe—”
Charlie interrupted. “The crime scene unit dusted your apartment for fingerprints. There were none.”
I frowned. That made no sense.
“Someone cleaned your entire apartment,” Charlie said. “Your fingerprints were on the door and the doorframe of your bedroom. That’s all we found.”
My stomach clenched. I looked at Charlie but didn’t see him. I saw Cami put her hands to her mouth.
She’d been wearing gloves.
I ran to the bathroom and threw up. There had to be an explanation. There was an explanation.
Why? I didn’t know her. I’d never met her until last fall. Who would do that to me? How could I not see it?
A knock on the door startled me.
“Peter, come on out.”
I washed my face with cold water and came back to the table.
“Do you have a picture of Cami?”
I slid over my cell phone. “The only pictures I have are on my phone.”
Charlie started scrolling through my phone. He frowned and said, “Your SIM card is missing.”
I took the phone and looked. The card was gone.
Cami had used my phone earlier, before I went to class.
“She planned it.”
“We’ll find a picture of her. On Facebook maybe?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any social media. I hate the Internet. I don’t even have a television. I had an e-mail account once, and a reporter found me and wanted to interview me. So I deleted the account. I have an e-mail account through the university because I had to get something for my classes.”
“You shouldn’t go back to your apartment. Do you have someplace to stay?”
I shook my head. “I need to disappear.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Yes, I do.”
I’d never thought about killing myself. Maybe in passing, but then I’d think of Grams and knew she’d be heartbroken. She was dead, but sometimes I felt her. I lived for those moments.
“Don’t run, Peter. Someone had been stalking you since high school. They’re escalating. Only you know who it is.”
“But I don’t! It was all a lie. Cami was a lie. But I swear, she was not at my high school.”
“Let me do a little research on her. Maybe something will come up. You can work with a sketch artist; we’ll get a good picture of her.”
Charlie Mead really wanted to help me.
“I’ll try.”
“Stay with me tonight,” Charlie said. “I’ll find a safe place for you tomorrow.”
One night turned into two years. I lost a sister when I was nine, but I found a brother when I was nineteen.