“To what, Jules?”
She took an exaggeratedly long breath and lifted her chin even higher. “To masturbating and rubbing the, ah, ejaculate all over her windows. Banging on her windows. Trying to get in.”
Coming on her windows.
He sounded like a real prince.
“Cops?”
“She said she called every time. They never got there fast enough to catch him, and she got the feeling they thought she was just trying to get attention and started being deliberately slower.”
“Alright,” I said, shrugging. We didn’t do stalkers. If I did stalkers, I’d be fucking swimming in stalker cases. “I’ll call her and tell her to contact a PI or a private security firm. Not our kinda thing. That it?”
“Yeah,” she said, giving me a nod and starting away before stopping suddenly and turning back, a finger raised. “Just one thing…”
“What thing?” I asked, brows drawn low. Jules did her job, no more, no less. She didn’t get involved in cases. It was strange that she seemed to be trying to.
“It’s just… she said she knew,” she said, shrugging a dainty shoulder.
“Knew what?”
“She said she knew that last night was the night.”
“The night?” I prompted.
“The night he was going to get in finally and rape or kill her. She said she never believed in something like a gut instinct, but she woke up with one, and she knew.”
I sat back, looking at her for a long second, wondering if she was yanking my chain or not. Because she, like everyone I worked with, knew all about how I trusted my gut. The majority of the time, things needed to be dealt with rationally, needed to be thought through. But sometimes, yeah, it was all about that fucking gut instinct. Mine had never steered me wrong before.
Deciding Jules wasn’t the type to do that, I nodded.
“Alright, I’ll call her now.”
She nodded and turned to leave again, then turned back suddenly. “Hey, Quin?”
“Yeah, babe?” I asked distractedly as I reached for the note with this Aven Armstrong’s number on it.
“Can you maybe just… go over?” she asked, almost a little shyly.
“Go over?” I repeated, watching her.
“You didn’t hear her. She just… sounded so hopeless, Quin,” she said, sounding almost a little emotional which was, yet again, not like her.
If this Aven woman’s gut was telling her shit was going to go down, and Jules’ gut was telling her shit might already have… yeah, maybe all my reports could wait. Maybe I did need to head over.
I stood, nodding. “Alright. Her address isn’t on this paper,” I said, picking it up and stuffing it into my pocket.
“I will text it to you,” she said, seeming at once both more relaxed and somehow more tense all at the same time.
With that, I nodded and passed her and made my way back outside toward my car, dropping in, exhaling hard, and turning it over. My phone bleeped, and I looked down at the address, then plugged it into my GPS. I had moved to Navesink Bank a couple years back, but not long enough for me to know every damn side street of the sprawling town yet.
I drove out, noticing the For Sale sign on one neighbor’s yard and the boarded-up windows on the other house.
Perfect situation for a stalker.
Then there were the fucking woods behind her house too.
It was like she was asking for the least amount of protection possible. That being said, it was in a shit area, and it was a tiny little shack of a house that needed serious work. She probably got it on a song and had, at one time, had neighbors within yelling distance.
No wonder shit had escalated, I decided, parking my car beside what must have been her busted up silver sedan, a good twenty years old and one that had probably been a lemon to begin with.
She wouldn’t have been able to afford my firm. That was just the plain truth. And she, so long as she wasn’t a complete idiot, must have known it.
She had been desperate. I walked up the front path to the front door, finding the screen closed, but the solid door open.
Maybe anyone else might have missed it, but I saw them – the tiny scratches that said someone had tried (maybe successfully) to pick the lock.
Feeling my stomach clench, the unmistakable feeling I got when I knew shit hit the fan, I reached into my chest-holster for my gun, pulling it out and holding it only halfway up as I pushed the door open and silently stepped inside. There was a bookshelf sitting awkwardly in the middle of the floor; it was a place no one in their right mind would put a bookshelf. So chances were, it had been in front of the door, and it had been pushed open.
Yep.
The Aven woman must have been right about her gut instinct.