She pulled out her phone and brought up the text exchange, saying, “He actually got my number from my mother. Here.” She gave Mike the phone and a moment to read through.
He handed it back. “This is the first contact you’ve had in how long?”
“Almost a year.”
She could sense Mike’s mind working, but he was silent. He’d traded in his jeans and sport coat for a regular suit today. The time-and-temperature sign at the Main Street bank read eighty-eight degrees and his forehead shined with perspiration. A distant part of her thought he was even handsome – when she’d seen him in the church she thought he looked a bit like Harrison Ford, from his earlier days.
Something occurred to her. “Do police investigators usually attend the memorial in this kind of situation?”
“Not always. Or I’d say, mostly, no.”
“If you don’t mind me asking – why were you there?”
“You think I made anyone uncomfortable?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that… I’m… Is that why you do it? See if someone gets uncomfortable?”
He turned his body toward her, resting his arm on the back of the bench. “What do you think about Jamie texting you?”
“He’s a controlling person,” she said, having thought about it all morning. “I don’t want to think that he did this. It feels so surreal – I can’t even believe I’m talking about it. It feels possible but so remote at the same time, does that make sense?”
“Sure. Yes.”
“I mean, maybe this is just Jamie sensing an opportunity to worm his way back into my life. He saw it on the news; he’s using it as a bridge to get back in touch with me. Start things up again. God… I feel like this makes me sound like such a spiteful person.”
“He’s the one who grabbed you, harassed you, and it sounds like he used your mother to get your number. I think he has the questionable personality.” Mike’s expression was serious.
A moment passed.
“Everyone I can cross off a list,” Mike said, “that’s a good thing. So just think of it that way, like this: We’re getting everything out there, looking at every conceivable angle. Harriet was well liked – she was well loved. But like any good person, there are things in her life she didn’t ask for. Same with you.”
“I think Jamie could be violent. I have no idea what he’s been doing all this time. And our cars – my car and Harriet’s car – they look identical. If this person… I’ve been thinking about Gavin Fuller, even though he’s in jail. His son Grayson was my case. I can’t even… Even talking about this stuff makes me sick, because these are private lives. But if Gavin Fuller, I mean someone working for him… What if they got into the wrong car, attacked the wrong woman – is that even possible?”
Mike seemed to mull it over then surprised her by getting up from the bench and walking around behind her. “Let me show you something, okay? Just face forward. It’s alright – bear with me.”
Bobbi felt her heart speeding up, but she did as he asked. Mike moved behind the bench, his shadow falling over her. Then he lowered down into a squat.
“Okay.” His voice was soft, but close. “This guy, he’s sitting in the back seat of Harriet’s car. The sun was setting behind them.”
Bobbi’s heart was knocking so hard she thought it was visible through her shirt. This felt like some kind of exposure therapy, but in one huge dose.
“She got in,” Mike said, “like anyone would, facing forward, like you are now. He’s sitting behind her. But at some point, she’s more than likely to have turned around. We know because of the wounds. And because he probably reached out…”
Mike touched her shoulder and she instinctively grabbed his wrist then yanked hard. It happened in less than a second. His chest hit the back of the bench and he gulped a breath of surprise.
Her next move would be to bash him in the nose with the back of her skull, but she didn’t.
Mike jerked his hand away when she let go. “Whoa,” he said.
She quickly looked around at him. “I’m so sorry…”
His mouth was open, his eyes wide and sparkling. “Holy shit… That’s something… You study that? Since you dated this guy, or something?”
“Since I was little. Since my foster brothers could get a little rough.”
He stood, still behind her. “Better not mess with you. Wow…” He finally got himself back together. “My point was that we’ve analyzed the crime scene, taken everything into account. Even if for some reason this guy didn’t recognize who had gotten in the car right away – shortly thereafter, he had to know. If it was your ex, he’d know. And presumably someone working for the Fullers would know.”
She felt relieved when Mike moved back around the bench, sat down. He had that kindness in his eyes again when he looked at her. “What I’m saying is, it doesn’t support a theory of mistaken identity. So let’s put that to rest.”
She understood but said, “Well, unless he realized it wasn’t who it was supposed to be and then at that point figured he’d keep going…”
Mike didn’t have an answer for that. “Like I said, let’s try to cross off your ex. We’re looking into all these other possibilities too. I don’t take any of it lightly.”
“What will you do? I mean – to cross him off?”
“Your ex? I’ll talk to him. I’ll just give him a call, talk to him.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“No?”
She sipped her drink – feeling a bit better now that she’d just turned a grown man pale, that he’d made some sense debunking the mistaken identity – and shook her head. “The stuff that he got in trouble for when he was a kid – he really hated police, thought they liked to humiliate people, acted superior, all of that. How they played God.”
“I’ll be totally un-Godlike,” Mike said. He was so deadpan it made her laugh. “If Jamie was eight hours away in Rochester on Thursday night, then we’ll know.”
Twelve
Mike drove to the medical examiner’s office in Plattsburgh, wishing he could tell Bobbi Noelle that they had another potential victim, one they were having a hard time linking to Steve Pritchard, let alone an ex-boyfriend of hers. But he couldn’t. Not now. Plus, it wasn’t out of the range of possibility that this was some violent ex of hers; that he’d gotten into the wrong car and slashed up Harriet Fogarty by mistake.
Mike called the state police captain, Gary Walker, along the way.
“We could post someone near her residence,” Walker said, “but it would be a short-lived detail. Resources are tight, Mike. And as you know from zero hundred to oh five hundred all cars are double-manned. I can’t have two troopers sitting outside this woman’s house all night because she had a bad breakup.”
“How about a local guy? I’ll call Placid PD,” Mike said.
“Do that. If you can’t get anybody, call me back. We’ll figure something out.”
* * *
He reached the medical examiner’s office, turned in, and parked in one of the available slots. Overton was supposedly on her way. The body had been at the morgue for four days. He’d seen emails from the examiner, Bernard Crispin, on the external autopsy, and what he’d told Bobbi was sound – the victim had definitely faced her attacker at some point, given the wounds. It was hard to imagine a killer realizing he’d gotten into the wrong car and still completing the murder, but then, like Bobbi had said, maybe by then it had been too late to turn back.