Who Are You? (9780307823533) (2 page)

T
here are more questions, and—worst of all—detectives show me photos. My hands shake as I see myself caught in time, totally unaware of a camera. There are pictures of a younger me, taking a bow after a ballet recital, and walking up the steps to someone’s front door. I’m carrying a beautifully wrapped birthday present, and my flyaway blond hair is captured in a gigantic white bow. But there are later pictures … current pictures. In one photo I’m talking to Lindy, my best friend, while we wait for the school bus. In another I’m shopping in the mall with Mom, and there’s a picture of me watering our front lawn in the shade of the elm tree.

The skin on my back prickles. I’ve been targeted.
I’ve been spied on. I’ve been photographed. And I didn’t know it was happening.

Sergeant Balker takes one look at me, then turns to Mom and Dad. Maybe he thinks he can spare me some of the horror and outrage I feel if he talks
about
me instead of to me. “There’s a possibility Kristi was being stalked,” he says.

“Stalked?” I’m so shocked I can only stupidly repeat the word. Mom and Dad are too stunned to say anything, but Mom grips my shoulder and hangs on, as if she’ll never let me go.

Balker continues. “Did Kristi ever suspect she was being followed? Have there been phone calls? Threats?”

“No!” My voice cracks, but I manage to speak up first. “Nothing like that.”

Sergeant Nims breaks in. “Douglas Merson seems to have taken a strong interest in you, Kristin. We need to know why. Do you have any idea?”

Her look is almost accusing, and some of my shock turns to anger. “Why ask me?” I demand. “Why not ask Mr. Merson?”

“I’m asking
you
,” she answers.

Sergeant Balker’s drawl is reassuring, smoothing Nims’s sharp edges. “Merson can’t talk to us. Among other things, his jaw was fractured by one of the bullets that hit him, and right now he’s full of medicine to kill the pain. The doctors had to do a lot of work to put his jaw back together again.”

Mom’s sympathy takes over. “The poor man,” she murmurs. “Is he going to recover?”

“They think so. Two bullets, but they missed the
brain and the other vital spots. That’s what the docs told us.”

“Do you have a picture of him?” I ask.

My question startles both detectives. “The crime scene photographs wouldn’t be appropriate for you to see,” Sergeant Nims tells me.

“That’s not what I meant,” I tell her. “I mean a snapshot, a posed photo—whatever would have been taken during the last few years. I want to see what he looks like. Maybe I’ll recognize his face. Maybe not. But I have to know.”

“We have no photographs of Merson,” Sergeant Balker answers. “He seems to have been camera shy.”

A fresh spout of anger bubbles up inside me. “Then I want to see him,” I say. My mother’s mouth makes a little circle of surprise, and even Sergeant Nims’s eyes widen, but I go on. “I have to see this man who was stalking me, even if he can’t talk to us. I need to know what he’s like.”

Sergeant Nims shakes her head. “From what you’ve just told us, it doesn’t seem likely you were stalked. A stalker usually tries to frighten his victim. That’s a major part of his plan. In your case all we have is evidence that Merson was putting together some sort of record or report about you.”

“But what about the photographs?”

“He could have hired someone to take those photos.”

“Why?”

Frown lines deepen on Dad’s forehead, and I’m startled to see that his skin looks gray, as though all
the color has been sucked out. “This Merson … he’s in the hospital. Does that mean Kristi is out of danger?”

“We don’t know that Kristi was ever in danger,” Balker drawls, the deep slowness of his words giving them a kind of solid comfort.

“Then why—”

“That’s the question we’re trying to answer,” Nims tells Dad.

Mom has been thinking hard. Little wavy lines in her forehead have puckered together between her eyebrows. “What about Mr. Merson’s son?” she asks. “How long ago did he die? Losing a son could be …” She shudders, takes a deep breath, and goes on. “I mean, did it affect Mr. Merson mentally? Could he have picked a child—any child—as a kind of replacement?”

In the silence that follows we all stare at Mom, but she answers her own question. Her face flushes with embarrassment. “Sorry. I guess that’s too farfetched.”

“Anything’s possible,” Balker says, and he gives Mom a reassuring smile. “That’s what Detective Nims and I are here for—to find the answers. We’ll check it all out.”

“What does Douglas Merson do for a living?” Dad asks. “Perhaps that might give us a clue as to why he has some sort of special interest in Kristi.”

A quick glance passes between Nims and Balker before Nims says, “His occupation doesn’t seem relevant.”

I’m more blunt than Dad. I don’t hesitate to ask, “Why don’t you want us to know?”

Nims tightens up again, but Balker shrugs and smiles. “Kristi, we’re not trying to keep things from you. We don’t have the facts ourselves. Merson lives well—
very
well, but we’ve just begun this investigation. Right now we aren’t sure ourselves where the money comes from.”

“We’re not at liberty to discuss this,” Nims says.

Sometimes I watch cop shows on TV, so I’ve seen the good cop–bad cop routine. I always thought it was something made up for television, but now I know it’s for real. And I know Sergeant Balker is a lot easier to talk to than Sergeant Nims. If there really was something about Douglas Merson I wanted to tell them, I’d go to Balker, not Nims. Is that why they’re doing this? Or are they acting the way they normally act and I’m only imagining we’re in the middle of a planned routine?

“The one who died—what was his name?” I ask the detectives.

Nims raises one eyebrow. “We told you. The victim didn’t die, and his name is Douglas Merson.”

“Not the victim. The son. What was his son’s name?”

“Oh,” she says. “The son. Roger. His name was Roger Merson.” She studies Mom and Dad. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No,” Dad says.

All the wavy lines draw together again as Mom shakes her head. “It means nothing at all,” she says.

“How old was Roger when he died?” I ask. “Was he a little kid?”

Nims impatiently shoves her pen and pad into her handbag, but Balker says, “He was twenty-one.”
He answers the next question as if he knows I’m going to ask it. “Suicide.”

He hands each of us one of his business cards and gets to his feet. “If you think of anything you can tell us—” he begins.

But I jump up and face him. “I really do want to see Douglas Merson,” I say.

Nims pops up from her chair and straightens her skirt. “I don’t think that can be arranged.”

“Why not?” I try to pin her down. “In school in American history class I learned that every citizen has a right to face his accuser. This is the same kind of thing, isn’t it? I mean, our family is involved with this man, who—for no reason—has kept a secret file—on me. I have a right to see him. I need to find out exactly who he is and if he looks familiar. I’ll tell you so it will help your investigation.”

“Kristi, dear,” Mom says quietly, and puts an arm around my shoulders.

I shrug it off and step forward. “I should have the right,” I tell the detective again. “Just because I’m only sixteen, just because you consider me a kid, doesn’t mean I can forget about what happened. This man butted into my life. I need to know why. I need to see him.”

Nims’s face tightens into what is going to become a “no,” but Balker steps between us. “We’ll ask the docs,” he says. “Merson is in intensive care right now, so I doubt if they’d let you in. But when they give the word, I’ll be in touch.”

He smiles. After a moment I reluctantly smile back. It’s easy to see from the crinkle lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth that Balker
smiles a lot. He has a nice face. I like him. I decide I’m going to believe him.

Mom has one more question. “Is any information about our family going to be in the newspaper or on television? Are we going to have to hide Kristi from reporters and photographers?”

“The information about the folder hasn’t been released to the media,” Nims assures Mom with a hard look.

But Mom isn’t satisfied. The look she gives Nims is every bit as steely. “And it won’t be?”

“I can’t promise anything,” Nims says.

Balker steps on Nims’s words. “Sooner or later the story is bound to come out. A folder kept on a girl who doesn’t even know the man—it’s unusual, which means it’s what they call newsworthy. But by the time the media hears the story, we hope to find out what the folder is all about so we can wrap up that part of the case. Okay?”

Mom reluctantly nods agreement, but after the detectives leave she gives me a worried look. “Don’t be frightened by all this, honey,” she says. “You’re going to be all right. You’ll be safe. The police—”

She breaks off and stares at Dad. “We should have asked about police protection. We can’t leave Kristi alone. Somebody should always be with her, even at school. I know this is our busiest season of the year, but we can hire some part-time help for the clerical work—maybe a university student from Rice or the University of Houston—”

Mom is like a wind-up toy with new batteries, ready to go on for hours without stopping, so I grab
her shoulders to interrupt her. “Mom, nobody’s after me. No stalker. No threats. Some guy has just kept pictures. No one’s going to hurt me.”

“We don’t know that,” she says quickly.

“Yes, we do. Douglas Merson is the one who was shot, not me. That shooting has nothing to do with us.”

“In a way it does,” Dad tells me. “We wouldn’t have been aware of that folder if the police hadn’t discovered it.”

Mom’s question comes out like a wail. “Oh, Drew, what does all this mean?”

Dad’s answer is little more than a whisper. “I don’t know, Callie. Apparently, no one knows.”

“Douglas Merson does,” I say. “And I’m going to ask him.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sakes, Kristi, be reasonable,” Mom says. “You heard the police tell us that he’s in intensive care and can’t have visitors.” She turns toward the kitchen. “I know. I’ll call one of my clients, Edna Grayburn. With her public relations job, she knows something about nearly everyone in Houston. Maybe she can tell us about—”

“But we didn’t finish,” I complain.

“Finish what?”

“What we were talking about when the detectives came. About my application to that summer art program. It will help if I’m going to major in art in college, and—”

Mom claps her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut. “Oh, please, honey! Not one more word! We’ve said enough about it already! Pick a career that will support you. Can’t you see that
those little cartoons you like to draw will never pay the bills?”

“Drawing cartoons is just part of what I do. You know I’ve even won awards for my watercolors. Ms. Montero is a terrific art teacher. I trust her. And she tells me over and over that I have real artistic talent. She wants me to develop it when I go to college. She says the world would be a happier place if everyone loved their job.”

I can hear the hurt in Mom’s voice, and I wince, as she says, “Do you care more about what Ms. Montero says than what we tell you? Think about it, Kristi. Ms. Montero isn’t going to pay for your college education. Your father and I are going to put out a fortune to get you through college. Shouldn’t we have some say in the major you chooser?”

Dad steps between Mom and me. “This is no time to talk about college plans. Kristi has almost two years to think about college,” he says. “Callie, go ahead and call your client Edna. She may know something about Douglas Merson that will help us figure out what the folder on Kristi is all about.”

Mom gives me an agonized look, then leaves for the bedroom phone.

I ask Dad, “When someone’s in intensive care, how do you get in to see him?”

“You usually don’t, unless you’re family,” Dad says, and shakes his head.

“I’m just trying to help,” I tell him. “And besides, it’s like the bear. You know?”

For a moment he looks puzzled. Then his eyes spark, and I can see that he has remembered. He
smiles at me. “You mean the nightmare bear,” he says.

“That’s right. The one that I’d dream about and then wake up crying when I was a little kid. You taught me to face the bear and say, ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ so he’d go away. And finally he did.”

“Mr. Merson’s real. He’s not a nightmare bear,” Dad says.

“But I have to face him, Dad—just like I did with the bear. I have to know what he looks like. And I have to know why he kept a folder of pictures and stuff about me. You understand, don’t you?”

Dad nods. “I understand, Kristi. I’m your father. I want to know too. You’ll have to be patient. So will I. Ben Taub Hospital has one of the best emergency rooms in Houston, and most gunshot victims are taken there. But Mr. Merson’s a wealthy man. When he’s able to leave intensive care, he’ll probably transfer to a smaller, private hospital. Then Detective Balker can arrange a visit.”

“But—”

“You don’t have a choice,” Dad says firmly.

Oh, yes, I do
, I tell myself. This intrusion is something that makes me totally uncomfortable. It’s terribly important to me to see Douglas Merson. I am not a baby. Hospital rules or no rules—I must see him as soon as I can, no matter what anyone says.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE