I grab a plastic trash bag from the bathroom and shove it all in, then check the rest of the room. He hasn’t bothered with anything else that I can tell.
I head straight for my truck, toss the bag in the bed, and call the office. Dave, thankfully, was lying; he’d paid cash for the room. Just another of his little mind games. I’m much more worried about the shit he’s left me with; I can’t just dump it. So I drive outside K-ville to a lonely road, build a small fire, and start tossing the filth on top of it once it’s burning briskly. I break the DVDs. I rip apart the videotapes. I tear the magazines. Destroying it feels better.
As it all burns, I take out my phone to do a quick search. Dave taunted me about having plenty of clues to put together. So I start doing that. Malus Navis refers to a navigational beacon. So that’s why he said our stalker probably lives on the coast. Though which coast, and in which state . . . who knows. But Dave’s suggestion is sound: I need to look closely at MalusNavis’s public posts and see what they can tell me. Maybe they can give me some directional hints, after all.
I take a deep breath and slip back into the emotional torture that is the Lost Angels site.
It doesn’t take me long to see it. MalusNavis’s language is spare, measured, but in a way it’s as inexorable as an avalanche. He never seems to have much emotion about what he’s doing, but he does have an enormous interest in the concept of an eye for an eye. I find him posting on several different boards—Tammy Maguire is one, but he’s also interested in other names. I write them down. Not all the people he’s been interested in are female; most are names I don’t recognize. Some barely rate a mention, even on a board obsessed with crime.
But he’s there, gliding from board to board. Hunting.
I write down avenging angel and stare at that for a few seconds. It makes me go quiet inside, because if this person is that, I’ve been him. I know him. I know how it feels to have an inner truth that takes over your whole world . . . even when that all-consuming conviction isn’t true. You’ll compromise your ethics and your morals, cheat, lie, steal, hurt, kill . . . all in the name of justice.
It took coming face-to-face with Gwen Proctor and her kids to break that iron illusion for me, to see that what I was doing was harming me as much as I meant to harm her.
MalusNavis sounds like a man on a mission. I just don’t know what kind of mission. Maybe he, like Dr. Dave, knows where the line is, and stops at harassment. I remember the drenching horror of that phone call asking me about Gwen’s death notice: that could have been our guy. It’s cruel, not illegal, just amoral. Like many of the things that come streaming through the internet aimed at Gwen and the kids. Like the flyers I created.
But it makes me wonder, because Dr. Dave, a sociopath, seemed to think MalusNavis is worse than him. And here in the dark, burning up the horrifying stash of incriminating evidence he meant me to be caught with . . . that’s really something.
I make sure it’s all burned, twisted, distorted, unrecognizable for the filth it was, and douse the fire with dirt. I bury the ashes, and feel horribly like I’m a criminal burying a body.
I text Gwen while I wait for the smoke to clear. All okay. Coming home.
The call comes almost immediately after that. I expect it to be Gwen, but it isn’t. I don’t recognize the number, and I nearly let it go, but then some instinct tells me I’d better not. Not this late.
“Hello?” I make it a one-word challenge. Subtext: this had better be urgent.
“Sam? Mr. Cade? It’s Tyler. From the airfield.” He’s agitated. I can hear his breathing rattling the speaker.
“Not the time, Tyler.”
“Okay,” he says. He sounds subdued, within the limited inflections he seems to possess. “I just wanted you to know it isn’t your fault.”
I pause in the act of opening my truck door. “Excuse me?” A million things race through my head, and all of them are bad. Most of them infuriate me.
“You’re the only person who really tried,” Tyler says. “To understand what was happening to me. And I appreciate that. I just don’t want you to think this is because of you.”
“What are you talking about, Tyler?”
“I’m on the Gay Street Bridge,” he says, as if it explains everything. And after a second, it does. I feel my heartbeat speed up, my mouth go dry.
“Tyler, what are you going to do?” The Gay Street Bridge is just outside downtown, over the Tennessee River. A low, green-painted steel railing. A long drop down to the river.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he says. “I really can’t. It will be better for everybody.”
I yank my truck door open and climb in. Start the engine. I put the phone on speaker and drop it on the seat. “Tyler, I’m coming to you, okay? Let’s sit and talk awhile. Can we do that?” I know that thin edge he’s on. I stood there many times in the past few years, before Gwen stretched out a hand to me and pulled me back to the world. Lots of times nothing seemed worth it, nothing seemed real enough. It’s a very bad place, when you hear the dead whispering to you that things will be easier if you join them.
A fall off that bridge might not kill him, but he’d drown. This time of night, traffic on the bridge is low, and it would be the work of a few seconds to step over the rail and into the dark.
Tyler isn’t answering me. I speed up. “Tyler? Still there, man?”
“I’m here,” he says. “I’m just tired, Sam. I’m just real tired.”
“I know you are. I know how it feels. But I’m coming, and you won’t be alone. Okay? Promise me you’ll wait for me. Please. You don’t know me real well, but you know I’ve been where you are right now. I can show you a way back. Okay?”
He thinks about it for an agonizing, silent few seconds. I glance at my speed. Well over the legal limit.
Then he says, “I’ll wait.”
“It’s going to take me about ten minutes. Stay on the phone with me. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
He starts talking. I’m listening, but mostly I just want him to stay engaged. He talks about finding a photo online of his family, about how it took him back to one particular Christmas just before his sister was taken away. I understand that. Memories are a drug, and sometimes they have a rush to them that brings a horrible, hollow emptiness after. I still remember the last video call with my sister while I was deployed. I’d had to cut it short. I still replay it in my mind and think about what else she might have said, what else I could have done to keep her in my world just a little bit longer.
Tyler is doing the same thing, but he’s got nothing to hold on to. His sister’s killer was never caught, and that never-ending suspense and despair makes people lose faith, lose love, lose hope. My mystery was solved.
His may never be.
Five minutes away. I keep an eye out for patrol cars. If I dared, I’d try to make a call to the cops and send them to the bridge, but the trust I’ve established with Tyler is as fragile as a smoke ring; if he thinks I’m going to betray it, he’ll be gone before they can stop him.
And what if this is something else? A little voice in the back of my head, a cold one, has doubts. You don’t know this kid. What if he’s luring you?