“Go on,” Alicia said. “What happened?”
Laila bit her bottom lip then began describing what had taken place with the cable man in her house. She included everything she saw, everything she felt, and everything she did before he left. Her hands were shaking when she finished.
Alicia’s mouth fell open slightly in disbelief.
“Oh my God. You’ve got to report him.”
“To the cable company?”
“To the police.”
“Police? But he didn’t hurt me.”
“Not physically. Not this time.”
“What do you mean ‘not this time’?”
“What if he comes back? He’s been in your house, knows your address. What if he was just scoping your place and came back some night when Darrell wasn’t home?”
Laila fell silent, twisting her ring.
Alicia recognized she’d unintentionally frightened her friend, so she pulled back. “Okay, I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said.
“Well, he sure scared me.”
“Look, I know he didn’t hurt you physically, but what he did must constitute a crime, some form of assault that needs to be reported.”
“After it happened,” Laila said, “I was thinking he must have some kind of sniffing fetish, that he gets a thrill from smelling underwear.”
“It’s so, so yuck, so perverse, makes my skin crawl. You’ve got to report him. You’re probably not the first person he’s done this to,” Alicia said.
“Probably not.”
“Think of the other women he could’ve done this to, or worse.”
“Worse?” Laila said.
“In one of the true-crime books I was handling, the author, a psychologist, said that some serial killers have the fetish of smelling women’s underwear.”
“Serial killers? Jeez, Alicia.”
“I’m sorry. I’m scaring you again. But honey, you’ve got to report him.”
Laila nodded. They tried shifting to another subject, to catch up and talk about other things, but it was futile. Their conversation kept coming back to what happened to Laila, until it was time to leave.
* * *
Yes, Alicia’s right. I should report it, Laila thought later, while driving home. But I’m not sure I will. I’m not sure I can.
Maybe Alicia had forgotten, because it never came up, why Laila was reluctant to deal with police about the cable guy incident. It was because of what had happened the last time Laila reported a man to police.
Her senior year in college, after meeting friends at a bar one night, she was walking home alone. No one had wanted to leave when she did. A man started following her.
She walked faster. He walked faster.
She ran. He ran.
He caught up to her, grabbed her arm, and tried to pull her into an alley. Terrified, she’d reached into a pile of trash and hit him with a glass bottle, twisted free of him, and ran home.
That night, she reported it to police. They told her to come in the next morning to file a complaint. She went in to recount the incident but couldn’t believe the officer’s reaction as she reported the attack.
“Maybe you just had a bad date? Did you know this guy? Were you flirting? Did you say something to tease him in the bar? What were you wearing? How much did you have to drink?”
His questions made Laila feel like it was her fault.
She left the police station humiliated, belittled, embarrassed, and convinced her report hadn’t been taken seriously. Nothing ever came of it. Not even a follow-up. She vowed never to deal with police again.
And now this.
Stopped at a light, scenarios blazed through her mind.
What if I misread everything? What if I reported the guy and he lost his job? Maybe he has kids? Maybe he’s just a jerk with a sickness? Maybe I don’t know anything. Maybe I’m afraid?
A horn sounded.
The light was green.
Laila brushed at her tears and continued driving, biting back on her frustration of not knowing what she was going to do.
She was oblivious to the fact that a few cars behind, a white van was following her.
Twenty-Three
Buffalo, New York, Trailside Grove
“I’ll start with your right thumb.”
Greg placed his thumb tip on the postage-stamp-sized platen of the fingerprint scanner, a mobile device that looked like a cell phone.
The forensic tech was absorbed in her work while Greg withdrew into his desperate hope that this was not real.
This isn’t happening.
He ached for the hum of the garage door opening; Jenn parking her Corolla, entering the laundry room; her keys jingling as she placed them on the counter; then she’d walk up to him saying: “You are just not going to believe what happened, Gregory! You’re just not going to believe it!”
And their nightmare would end.
Because she would be home.
But Jenn wasn’t home.
The nightmare was deepening because it was late afternoon and here he was, sitting at his kitchen table while state police investigator Twyla Wilton collected his fingerprints—later she’d get Vince’s, Kat’s, and even Jake’s—to use as elimination prints in the case of his wife’s disappearance.
Just like they did with homicides.
Warrants to take his cell phone, obtain phone records for it and their landline, take their laptops, and all devices with internet connections, sat on the table near him while the questions the detectives threw at him earlier that day echoed in his mind.
Ever strike your wife?... How did you get those scratches?... Is there a life insurance policy for Jenn?... Are you involved in any way in your wife’s disappearance?
“Sir?”
Greg looked at Wilton.
“Next finger. Place the tip of your forefinger on the platen.”
“Sorry.”
During the procedure, Greg’s phone, sitting on the table next to the warrants, vibrated with calls and messages. When Wilton finished, the two other investigators, who were there to execute the warrants, allowed Greg a moment to respond to them before starting the process of taking his phone and all the devices in the house.
Greg took a call from Kat.
“Any news there?” she asked.
“Nothing. Anything there?”