Eyes of a Stalker (4 page)

I nodded automatically, feeling as though I was somehow to blame. If only I'd thought of calling star fifty-seven as soon as the guy hung up!

Dad called the police, who arrived a short time later. Mom ushered them into the living room. Force of habit, no doubt. The kitchen would have done just as well — better even, because they'd have had the table surface to write the reports in their flip-pads.

Neither officer was familiar to me, though I'd met some members of the force in the past. They identified themselves to me as officers Holt and Stanton.

Holt was older and male, with a square face. He put me in mind of a bulldog, but when he spoke, it was in a kind and fatherly way.

Office Stanton was female, probably thirty at the most. Her approach was matter-of-fact and professional, which I found a bit cold.

They placed themselves one on either side of me, with
Holt on the couch beside me and Stanton in the easy chair. The first few minutes were small talk, probably to relax me. She spoke first when they were ready to take their report.

“Can you tell us what time you received this phone call, Miss Belgarden?”

“It was about five-thirty, I think.”

“And can you recount the conversation, as closely as you remember it?” Holt asked.

I did, feeling almost silly. What he'd said to me wasn't nearly as scary sounding when I was telling it as when it was coming at me through the phone. I couldn't capture the tone of his voice, or explain the way it had almost felt as though his breath was coming through the line.

“So,” Officer Stanton responded, “the caller said, ‘Shelby, Shelby, you belong to me, I'll make you the queen of my world,' and, ‘You're mine for all time.' Is that right?”

I nodded, feeling foolish, feeling I shouldn't have bothered them for something so insignificant.

“And that was it?” “Yes, ma'am.” I don't know why I said “ma'am,” except that it seemed I ought to.

“Well, you certainly did the right thing calling us.” Holt said. “You have to be
really
careful when it comes to things like this.”

I felt relieved immediately. Just knowing he was taking it seriously helped, but I couldn't help thinking Stanton figured I was wasting their time, even though she nodded in agreement.

“You don't have call display on your phone?” she asked, though my mom had already told her that.

“No. But Dad said we're going to get it.” The only reason we hadn't gotten the service before now was that you have to plug the phone into an electrical outlet for call display to work, and there were none close enough to where our phone was mounted on the wall. And anyway, call display just hadn't seemed important… until now.

The police went over the call-trace feature with me and told me to call it
first
if the guy phoned me again, and then to contact them immediately afterward.

“When you dial star fifty-seven, the phone company sends a report to their security department right away, so by the time you reach us, they'll have the information in their logs,” Holt explained. “That way, we can get it immediately, in case this person is calling from a pay phone, or a friend's place.” I promised to do what they told me, and then they each gave me a business card with their contact information. Both of them stopped to talk to Mom and Dad for a few minutes in the other room before they left.

I felt suddenly exhausted, as though I could sleep for days. Greg had joined me again and was sitting next
to me on the couch, his arm around my shoulder. I leaned against him. Neither of us spoke.

“Well, I feel a
little
better knowing that the police are involved now,” Mom said from the doorway. “Still, I don't want Shelby walking
anywhere
by herself until they find out who this person is.”

“I'll be glad to walk her home after school every day,” Greg said.

“That's very kind of you, but we couldn't ask that of you, dear,” Mom said. “Most days I can pick her up, and her father can drive her every morning. But on the days I can't get her, I'd sure appreciate knowing you were with her.”

Greg repeated that he'd be happy to do it, which made my dad, who'd joined Mom, cross the room and shake his hand.

“Now, Darlene, didn't you promise this young man some supper?”

“Oh, my goodness! Of course!” Mom scurried off to reheat the meat for the tortillas and we all headed back to the dining room.

My appetite was completely gone and even the thought of eating made me nauseous, but I joined them anyway. I hate to admit it, but I was really scared just by the idea of being left alone, even if it
was
just in a room in my own house.

Islept fitfully that night, waking a few times to troubled dreams that broke apart and drifted away like dissipating clouds. Bits of them flashed briefly, freeze frames of fear, before receding into a haze of confusion.

I guess I should have been grateful they didn't stay with me, except I was left with the disquieting feeling that there may have been a clue there, something buried in my subconscious, that could have pointed to the caller's identity.

I wasn't what you'd call energetic at school the next day and it was difficult to focus, either on my classes or on Betts's chatter at lunchtime.

“So, I have this strategy all worked out to snag Kevin,” she said, launching into a typical spiel. “You know Edison is his best friend, and Edison's sister is just a year younger than us and she's in tight with Nora Stark, who's also in
the drama club. So, I was thinking, all I have to do…”

She outlined the plan but, quite honestly, all I heard was blah, blah, blah, Kevin, blah, blah, Kevin, blah, blah, blah. Or something like that.

I did my best to hide the fact that I really wasn't listening by smiling and nodding and saying things like, “that sounds good,” or “great idea,” whenever she paused. When she's in guy-snagging mode, Betts only stops talking when she wants you to agree with what she's saying, so it was a pretty safe cover. In any case, it seemed to work.

You're probably wondering why we weren't talking about the phone call I'd received the night before. The answer to that is simple: I hadn't told Betts anything about it. I also hadn't told her about the plant.

The thing with Betts is that, while she has tons of good qualities, she's not what you'd call terrific at keeping secrets. Truth is, she's a bit of a gossip. And even though she's my best friend and would never deliberately do anything to betray me, she just can't seem to help herself in this one area. You tell her something and she's going to blab it. It's practically guaranteed.

So, it's a limitation I've learned to live with, not being able to trust her with secrets. And that's okay, because my life isn't exactly overrun with clandestine happenings. Usually. So there's not a lot I'd ever wanted to hide from anyone, least of all Betts.

But
this
was definitely in that category. I couldn't tell Betts about it because if I did, it would be all over the school and then the community. The average time for news like that to spread through Little River seems to be on par with the speed of light.

You might think it would be helpful to have other people know some weirdo was bothering me (which is how I still thought of it at that time) since someone might come forward with helpful information. But I knew from watching cop shows on TV that it doesn't usually work that way.

It was more likely that I'd be swamped with a bunch of false leads, which would only confuse me and waste my time. And on top of that, the caller would almost certainly hear the talk. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he'd be extra careful about covering his tracks from then on, and that would only make it harder to catch him.

So, I'd told my folks and Greg that I wanted it kept absolutely quiet. They'd agreed it was the best course of action, and none of them had even asked me if I planned to tell Betts, my best friend. They all know her, so they assumed I'd tell her nothing.

And that's why she didn't know anything about the caller, which brings me back to lunchtime and her prattle about Kevin.

“So,” she wound up, “what do you think? You think I'll have a shot?”

Not having actually heard the details of her plan, I wasn't exactly sure how to respond.

“Of course you do!” I said, taking a wild stab. “Any guy would be happy to go out with you.”

“Okay, so you're in?” She looked impatient.

In
? In on what? I cast about in my head, frantically trying to dredge up even a single detail about her “plan.” No such luck.

“Well, you told it all so fast,” I said. “Can you go over the part that I have to do again?”

She did, but I have to say I wasn't much further ahead when she finished. It was a long and convoluted scheme that sounded like a bad script for one of those comedies where everything is in a muddle and all of the characters are confused as they dash all over the place doing increasingly odd things.

“All you have to do,” Betts told me, waving her hands about as she filled in the details, “is persuade Ina to let me fill in for her at her cafeteria job for a week or so. That will put me next to Carly, who hangs out with Tina and Cheryl… and Cheryl's brother, Hudson, goes out with Marlee. It's perfect!”

“Uh, exactly how is it supposed to work?” I asked. I actually understood the plan
less
after hearing Betts's explanation.

“You talk Ina into giving me her job — just for a while,” Betts said patiently, “which gives me a chance to
get friendly with Carly, because they work right beside each other.”

“And this accomplishes what?”

“It gets me in with the other two — Tina and Cheryl — which gives me a chance to be around Cheryl's brother Hudson. And presto, that connects me to Hudson's girlfriend Marlee, which leads to Kevin's best friend Edison!”

“I don't think that will work,” I said hesitantly, trying to unravel the threads of her idea in my head.

“Why not?”

“Well, it just depends on too many things, and some of them are pretty, uh, farfetched. Besides, it would take a long time.” I didn't want to sound so critical, but this was one of the craziest ideas Betts had come up with yet — and that's saying something! It was much more likely to end up embarrassing Betts than anything else.

“Well then, how am I going to get him to notice me?”

“Just be yourself, be friendly, and see what happens.”

“That won't work, and even if it did it could take months!” Patience isn't one of Betts's strong points, either.

“This all reminds me; I think that one of the guys in drama has a crush on you. Maybe you shouldn't be so closed off to other possibilities.”

“Who?”

“Eric.”

“Eric Green?”

I nodded. The question was kind of unnecessary, since that was the only Eric in the drama group.

“He sat beside you the last two meetings, remember?”

“He's not after
me
,” she said. “If anything, he's after
you
.”

“That's ridiculous.” My throat went dry almost instantly and I had to gulp down a drink of water before I could talk again. “What would make you say that?”

“'Cause he asked me if you were still going out with Greg.”

“When?”

“I dunno. Two or three weeks ago. If he was sitting beside me, it was just to get close to you.”

“Or, maybe he was just making conversation and his question about Greg didn't mean anything.” In spite of my words, I found myself picturing him calling me, saying those things. It made me wonder if I was going to start suspecting guys randomly on the flimsiest of evidence. Or no evidence at all.

“Whatever. Anyway, I like Kevin, not Eric.” “Okay, okay.” The conversation was starting to irritate me. “I wonder where Greg is. He's usually here by now.”

As if he'd heard me, Greg came along just then,
sliding into place beside me and taking a sandwich out at the same time.

“I'm starved,” he said, taking a huge bite as if to prove it.

“Shelby was just wondering where you were,” Betts said.

“I had to take care of something,” he answered vaguely. It almost made me smile, because if there's one thing that's certain to get Betts's interest, it's the idea that anyone is deliberately keeping something from her.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing much. So, what's going on with you two? Anything new?”

“Not really,” Betts sighed. “I was just telling Shelby that I… hey! Do you know Kevin Montoya?”

“A little.” Greg failed to notice that I was sending him “don't go there” signals. “He's in my Advanced Math class. Why?”

Her face lit up right away. “I don't know why I didn't think of this before,” she said. She gave him a wide, innocent smile. “Uh, Greg, could you do me a little favour?”

“Sure,” he said, because Greg doesn't know what a “little favour” can turn out to be with Betts Thompson.

Friday evening came with no more contact from whoever had called me. It was starting to feel as though I'd either imagined or exaggerated the whole thing, but I knew that was a dangerous attitude to take. Probably, it was exactly what he wanted: for me to relax, let down my guard… start to feel safe.

And, even though
I
wanted to be able to relax and feel secure too, I knew I mustn't be fooled by the temporary lull.

I have to tell you, feeling that I wasn't safe was the worst thing I'd ever experienced. I've actually been in situations before where there was a risk — even a big one — but nothing like this. Those were specific moments, events that happened and were over with — fortunately without any real harm to me.