Chapter 5: The Man Across the Street
The sheriff's dispatcher kept Ryan on the line.
"Is the vehicle currently blocking your driveway or approaching the house?"
"No.
It's parked.
Engine off.
I can't see the driver."
"We have a unit twelve minutes out.
Stay inside, keep your doors locked, and stay on with me."
Caroline was at the top of the stairs.
She'd sent Ethan to the bedroom with Diane and come back down without Ryan asking her to.
She stood at the edge of the hallway, arms crossed, watching him.
Eleven minutes passed.
Then headlights swept across the front blind as a sheriff's cruiser rolled slowly down the street.
The parked car's engine turned over.
By the time the deputy pulled up, the car was gone.
The deputy — a woman named Kowalski, mid-thirties, with a notepad and a direct manner — sat at their kitchen table for forty minutes.
She listened.
She wrote.
She asked Diane to repeat the name twice.
"Marcus Hale," Diane said.
"H-A-L-E.
He lives in a property outside of Pittsburgh.
I can give you the address."
"Do you have documentation of any of the incidents you've described?"
"No.
He was careful."
Kowalski wrote something.
"The note that was left under your door — do you still have it?"
Ryan placed it on the table in a plastic sandwich bag.
He'd thought to do that before he called.
Kowalski looked at him.
"Good," she said.
She photographed it, bagged it properly, and continued writing.
"I want to be honest with you," she said, setting her pen down.
"A note with an address and two words is not enough for an arrest.
What it does do is establish a pattern of contact, which matters if this escalates.
I'm going to flag this for our detective unit tonight and recommend they contact Pittsburgh PD in the morning to run his name."
"He has a connection to a detective in the original missing persons case," Ryan said.
Kowalski looked up.
"Name?"
"We don't know his name.
Diane only knows he went to school with Marcus's brother."
"That's enough for me to make sure this goes to someone outside that circle." She closed her notepad.
"I'd also strongly recommend you contact a victim's advocate service tomorrow morning.
They can help your sister navigate the legal side of this, and they have resources for exactly this kind of situation."
After Kowalski left, the house was very quiet.
Diane came downstairs.
Ethan was asleep, finally, on the bedroom floor with his rabbit.
The three of them sat at the kitchen table.
"She believed me," Diane said.
It came out like she hadn't expected it.
"Of course she did," Caroline said.
"The last time I told someone official what Marcus was doing, they called him to verify my account." She looked at her mug.
"He was very calm on the phone, apparently.
Very concerned about me."
Ryan thought about a man who could sound calm and concerned while a woman he'd locked in a bedroom for four days was standing ten feet away.
"He's not going to stop," Diane said.
"A sheriff's deputy and a note in a bag — that won't stop him.
He'll just be more careful."
"Then we'll be more careful too," Ryan said.
Caroline reached across the table.
She put her hand over Diane's.
Diane looked at it.
Then she turned her hand over and held on.
Ryan watched his wife and his sister sitting there in the kitchen light and felt something shift in his chest.
Not forgiveness, not yet.
But something adjacent to it.
Something that understood why Caroline had done what she'd done, even if the three weeks of silence had left a bruise he hadn't finished feeling yet.
His phone lit up on the table.
Unknown number.
He answered it.
Silence on the other end.
Then a man's voice, smooth and unhurried, like someone who had never once been told no.
May you like
"Ryan.
I think it's time we talked about your sister."
