“Calvin? You better have something good for me, I just walked out of a very important gathering to talk to you,” I said, knowing I was ready to walk out at any second anyway.
“I think you'll be pleased then. I have some information on Paul Griffin and Maggie Weissman. They have history. It seems that they were a couple, unmarried but cohabitating. There are police reports from a few years ago, some domestic disturbances, and arrests for Paul.”
I felt hot. Them being together wasn't news to me, but the fact that the police had had to get involved was. I knew I had a bad feeling about him from the start and it wasn't just jealousy. I had a legitimate reason to hate him now.
“Did he go to jail?”
“Charges were dropped so it doesn't seem like he did any time. This might be interesting though, there are two restraining orders against him filed by Maggie Weissman. One from a few years back but the other one was filed just two days ago.”
I went from hot to cold. I was angry but now I was terrified. He had a history of violence? Something made Maggie scared of him and he was not behind bars where he should have been. If she filed it just yesterday, it meant that he had been following her. He was a liar. It was either they were together and they were going to get married or she was scared of him and she wanted the cops to intervene. It couldn't be both. That was not the guy she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
“Have you seen that man, Paul around her apartment at all? I think he's stalking her.”
“More than just her apartment,” Calvin said.
“I'm going over there. I'm going to her apartment. I don't think she's safe.”
“Don't do that yet, I'm sending back up.”
I got off the phone before pausing to even thank him for his work. My night was officially over. Paul Griffin had been confirmed as dangerous and he was stalking Maggie. I needed to know what was going on between them. I refused to believe his side of the story anymore. And the baby, I needed to know whose baby that was.
I made my way straight to the elevator. Maggie's place was fifteen minutes away by car. I was going to make it in five.
30
Maggie
I worked my key into the door of my apartment building. It hadn’t been a busy day, but I was so relieved to be home. It wasn’t even late. It was just after seven o’clock and I was exhausted. Tiredness was supposed to be a pregnancy symptom, right?
When I got to the house, I was goin
g to clean up, cook, no, wait, order something in, and relax in front of the TV until I fell asleep. Yeah, that sounded like a good night. I didn’t know why I was so tired, it had to be the pregnancy. I wondered whether the whole nine months were going to be like this.
It happened so fast that it was over before I noticed. He came up from behind and rammed me into the door, pushing it open so that he got inside without letting me have a chance to stop him. He pulled my key out of the lock and closed the door behind him. Inside, I spun around to see who it was.
“I swear to God, Paul if you don’t give me my keys back,” I said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Give me the keys.”
“Not a chance, now let’s go.” He grabbed me and dragged me up the stairs with him to my unit. I fought back, pushing against him and trying to stop him from physically moving me, but he was bigger and stronger than I was. When we got to my door, he still had my keys so he opened it and pushed me inside. He was so rough that I almost fell over, when I stabilized myself he was locking the door.
“Fine, if you want to play that game,” I opened my purse and took out my phone. “You had your warning.” I thought that when he saw I was serious about calling the police on him, he would hand the keys over and chicken out, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t backing down at all. He just stood there, looking unfazed. I didn’t like that. It made me feel like he had something up his sleeve. I dialed 911 and held the phone to my ear, and then I heard a phone ring in the room. Paul started laughing. It took a second to realize what was happening.
Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he picked up the call and said, “911. What is your emergency?” His voice came through my phone.
“What the hell?” I almost tossed my phone onto the ground. “How did you do that?”
He ended the call and put his phone back in his pocket.
“Come on now, you want me to give away all my secrets?”
“This is not funny Paul, tell me what you did.”
“You’re so predictable, Maggie. You didn’t even make it hard for me. Your phone password is your mother’s birthday. I didn’t even have to try getting into it. I made it so that all your calls forwarded to my phone. The text messages were a little bit harder, but these days, they have apps you can use to do that.”
He was tapping my phone. Why did I think that is so improbable at first? This was Paul. He was a psycho. He had graduated from just a run-of-the-mill abusive boyfriend to a full-blown stalker. I didn’t want to see any other layers of his personality that I could pull back.