It was nine o’clock, by the time Rainey parked the car outside the Wilson home. The hard rain had subsided to a soft drizzle. Rainey had a different vantage point tonight, but she could still see the right side of the house and hedges. She did not have a good view of the front lawn or the driveway side of the yard, but both areas had outdoor lighting that would probably prevent anyone from trying to enter there, unnoticed. She settled in, got the webcams rolling and called Mackie.

“Mackie,” he growled into the phone.

“Hey there, hope your evening is going well,” Rainey said, cheerfully.

“It’d go a whole hell of a lot better, if I could get this asshole to come out of this damn house.”

Rainey laughed, “And which asshole would that be?”

“I got Charlie ‘Butterbean’ Beasley laid up in his girlfriend’s house,” he grumbled, “but the little fucker’s been in there for four hours and I know he’s got to come up for air sometime.”

“Maybe he’s sleeping over,” Rainey suggested.

“Nope. She’s got a husband and I know he gets off work in an hour, so Butterbean better get done with his business.”

“Well, stick around,” Rainey said, “You might see some action, if he waits too long.”

Mackie chuckled and it rumbled through the receiver, “I hope the husband comes home and shoots his fat ass. I’m tired of tracking him down every time he skips. How’s it going over there?”

“Got another note today… with a picture of me shaking hands with Katie,” she finished quickly, hoping he would not over react.

Mackie remained surprisingly calm, for the moment, and then asked, “What did the note say?”

“Why do you tempt fate?” Rainey answered.

Mackie was quiet. She could hear him breathing. Rainey knew he was thinking it through before making a decision. Mackie liked to mull things over. She had learned to be patient when he was quiet like this.

Finally, he broke his silence, “Look, after I get old Charlie locked up, which should be any minute now, I’m going to come over there so we can talk. You up for company?”

Rainey was glad he suggested it. She did not want to ask him to come and sit with her, but she really wanted to go over the case with him, get his feel for this guy. Mackie could have been a criminal analyst with no problem. He had a keen knack for knowing how their twisted minds operated.

“I’m parked on the south side of the block. Park on the other side and walk up,” Rainey told him.

“Okay, I gotta go now. It looks like Butterbean’s finished gettin’ his grove on. He’s coming out the door now. See you soon.”

After her talk with Mackie, Rainey pulled up the pictures she had taken yesterday. She clicked through the files until she found the three hundred and sixty degree shots she took, in front of the Wilson home. This was when the stalker had taken her picture, so there was a good chance she got a shot of him or his vehicle. She flipped the visor down and looked at the picture again. From the angle of the shot, the person who took it had to have been standing somewhere across the street, near where Rainey was currently parked.

She looked out the window at the row of hedges that nearly came to the edge of the sidewalk. The guy could have been lurking on the other side and she would never have seen him. Damn these people and their old boxwoods. Rainey found the picture of the area where she suspected the stalker had been standing. She looked carefully at the hedge, zooming in on a dark spot behind the thinning boxwood. There, just off the sidewalk and hidden by foliage, the shape of someone blocked the sunlight from coming through the hedge. That son of a bitch had been right there, watching, listening to them talking.

She checked the images before and after she met Katie, but there was no way to tell if any of the people belonged with the shadow behind the hedge. She paid very close attention to the males who fit the description that she developed while waiting at the Center. She made notes on her legal pad and labeled a folder on the laptop screen, “possible suspects,” dragging the pictures into it. He had been there and she missed him. She probably walked right past the guy. She would have to show the folder containing the pictures of “possible suspects” to JW. Maybe he would recognize someone.

“Damn it! I forgot to ask about the bathing suit picture.” Rainey said, slamming her fist down on the legal pad resting on her knee.

Rainey checked the time. It was now after ten and most of the lights were off in the Wilson home. She would have to ask JW where the photo was taken, tomorrow. She hoped he was resting comfortably, in bed, holding his beautiful wife. They did make a handsome couple. JW had George Clooney good looks that seemed to age so favorably. She was stunning all by herself, but Rainey was sure they turned every head in the room, when JW walked in with Katie draped on his arm, his dark good looks complementing her fair-haired beauty.

She glanced at the picture, on the visor, and was catapulted away from her imagery of Katie and JW, making their grand entrance.

“Start with the victim you idiot,” she said aloud. All those years of training and she had not yet utilized a major tool of the investigator. When law enforcement is faced with a seemingly motiveless crime, a hard look is taken at the victim. Sometimes the victim’s particulars could tell all that was needed to know, to establish the type of person, who would commit a crime against this individual victim. She needed to ask herself who the victims were and what attracted the stalker to them? Rainey was sure, at this point, that both of the Wilson’s were being stalked and it was not clear who the real target was. She had to look closely at both JW and Katie and the nature of their relationship.

JW had turned out better than Rainey had imagined he would. He was a wild child, rebellious, always taking risks. He and Rainey were never romantically involved or even best friends. They were part of a neighborhood group that kind of watched each other’s backs. She was along on many of his misadventures, from the time they were in elementary school until graduation. None of their misdeeds was serious, more mischievousness than malice was involved, but JW had gotten into some serious trouble in high school.

Both Rainey and JW had been highly skilled jocks. He played football, basketball and baseball, while she played volleyball, basketball, and fast pitch softball. They of course both played golf, having grown up in the clubhouse, during the summers. JW’s hopes, for a college baseball career, were crushed when he broke his leg in two places, during a snow skiing accident, in January of their senior year. Later that spring, the “misunderstanding” happened.

Because of his legacy status, his father and his father before him having been members, JW attended fraternity parties, long before he was ever a student at the university. After a hard weekend of drinking with his future frat brothers, JW did not come back to school for several days. Rumors swirled around his involvement in a rape, at a frat party. Rainey had not believed JW would rape anyone. Why would he? He had girls falling all over him since grade school. Usually, all he had to do was ask.

The details of the event began to emerge, as the days went by, with no word from JW. A college freshman had allegedly been beaten and raped, by someone fitting JW’s description. In fact, everyone was pretty sure it was JW. When Rainey finally saw him days later, she confronted him with what she had heard. That is when he explained it had all been just a “misunderstanding.”

“I was drunk,” he had said. “She kept coming on to me and insisted that we go upstairs and make out. We had sex and then she said she was going to tell everyone I raped her.”

JW was so calm, when he said it, that Rainey had found it hard not to believe him.

He continued, “The doc’s had me on steroids for my leg. I’ve had trouble lately with my temper and I got really angry at this chick. I knew she was just after money. I guess I just lost it and hit her. I didn’t beat her up, like everyone is saying.”

Rainey had been shocked. She knew JW had a temper, but he had always been such a gentleman around her. She believed, in her heart, it was a onetime thing. Anyway, the whole mess just went away. Money talks and it can also shut people up. Soon everyone found something else to gossip about and the incident turned into a forgotten “misunderstanding.” Rainey had not thought about it in years. She was sure it was something JW wished he could erase from everyone’s memory.

When Rainey left for Virginia, she and JW lost touch. She kept up with him through her mother, during the infrequent times she talked to her each year, mostly around holidays and birthdays. She knew about him becoming a partner in his father’s law firm and his political career. She had even been invited to his wedding, but work prevented her from attending. That is pretty much what she knew about JW, except what she read in the newspapers about his politics.

Rainey Googled JW and when the results came up, three images appeared, at the top of the page. One was the standard Representative shot, in front of a blue backdrop, flanked by the national and state flags, with the NC State seal in the background. The next shot showed the handsome politician cutting a ribbon on some property. The last image was of JW and Katie together. Rainey clicked on the image. A page came up showing JW in a tuxedo with his exquisite bride by his side. She wore a simple black evening gown and pearls, but there was nothing simple about the way she looked. Rainey had been right. They were stunning.

The hyperlinked caption under the picture read, “Representative JW Wilson and wife, Katherine Meyers Wilson (shown here at a Republican fund raiser last year) involved in auto crash. Wife in critical condition. Details on page 2.”

Rainey clicked the link for more details. An article came up on the screen, dated January fourth, and was accompanied by a picture of a crumpled sedan, the passenger side embedded in a tree. Rainey read the article. It explained how JW and Katie had been coming home from a fundraiser, when a teenager on a bike had come out of nowhere, crossing directly into the car’s path. A popular off road bike trail was located nearby. In an attempt to miss the biker, JW had crashed into a tree. Katie, who was sleeping in the passenger seat, was ejected from the car when, unexplainably, the door had flown open and her seatbelt had come undone. JW had survived with minor injuries from the airbags, but Katie had not fared so well. Along with the bruises and lacerations, she suffered from internal bleeding. She had been six months pregnant and subsequently lost the baby. She remained hospitalized in stable, but critical condition. The teenager had not been found and there were no witnesses. This was the accident JW referred to in Rainey’s office.

Rainey looked at the picture in the visor again. Wow, she thought, you would never know Katie had gone through such an ordeal, just six months ago. Rainey could understand feelings of loss and the pain of recovery. Katie bore no outward signs of trauma, at least none that Rainey had seen, even in the bathing suit picture. Looking again at the crumpled car, Rainey thought, it was a miracle that anyone survived. It was hard to say, but Katie may have been lucky her seatbelt failed and she was thrown away, from the car.

Rainey looked away from the picture, because it made her feel queasy thinking of the anguish the Wilson’s had gone through, especially Katie. It was obvious, from watching her interact with her students, that Katie loved children. How cruel it must have been, to lose a baby JW said they had wanted so much. She looked out through rain-streaked windows, at the traffic slowly passing. The glistening, wet roads were black as night. The drizzle kept the foot traffic to a bare minimum. Still Rainey took a hard look at everyone who even came close to matching the stalker’s physical description.

The rest of the results on the search page were mostly about JW’s politics. He was a rising young star in the Republican Party, a family values candidate, who did not mind giving people a hand up, but he was staunchly against Obama’s handouts. A short biography on his State webpage contained no new information for Rainey. She switched her focus to Katie.

She typed in the name from the newspaper article, Katherine Meyers Wilson, and hit search. The same pictures from JW’s search popped up on the page. There was a link to her elementary school, a link to an article about the Literacy Center and one concerning the accident. All the other links were redundant or were related to JW. The elementary school link turned out to be a bust, just a picture, so she tried the Literacy Center article. This article contained some personal details about Katie. It turns out that Katie was the former Katherine Anne Meyers, a granddaughter of one of Durham’s tobacco mogul families. She had earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Early Childhood Education. The focus of the article was on the opening of the Center and the fundraising efforts of Mrs. Wilson and her husband. Katie had been instrumental in opening this and two other Literacy Centers, in the triangle area.

Rainey now had enough information to start a victim’s analysis, which she would discuss later with Mackie. Ernie had packed another cooler, but Rainey wanted something hot, and she had to go to the bathroom. She decided to leave her post, slide over to the Franklin Street, for a hot sandwich and coffee. She would also use the time to cruise the neighborhood a few times, just to take a look. She hoped she would get back before Mackie came looking for her. She thought about calling him, but changed her mind. Rainey did not want Mackie to think she was worried about being alone, after last night. She would not be gone that long, and he would know she was probably just doing surveillance around the area.

Her cell rang on her way back to the car, after stopping at the closest fast food restaurant. She checked the caller I.D. and seeing Mackie’s name flashing in the window of the phone, she opened it.

“Hey Mackie, I’m on my way back from a potty break. Can I get you something?” She said this while trying to open the car door and balance the coffee, without dropping the hamburger.

“No, I just stopped for coffee. Finished locking Mr. Beasley up about ten minutes ago.” Mackie answered. “Wanted to let you know I’m on my way.”

“What took you so long? I thought you had an eye on him two hours ago,” Rainey asked.

Mackie laughed, “That damn fool tried to run on me. We had to stop by the hospital before we went to the jail.”

“You didn’t run over another one with your truck, did you?” Rainey teased Mackie.

“No, this time I let Junior tackle him,” Mackie said, followed by a loud chest rumbling laugh.

Junior was Mackie’s twenty-two year old nephew. He was as tall as Mackie and built like the defensive end Mackie had been, back in the day. And Junior was bad fast. He worked for his uncle, because he just would not buckle down on the books in high school and missed his chance to play college ball. Mackie rescued him from the streets when he was nineteen and he had been working his way back to football ever since. Junior just was not the college type, so he was training for the arena football league tryouts, next January.

“He sure does come in handy, doesn’t he,” Rainey said, laughing along with Mackie.

“Yes, that he does,” Mackie, said through more rumbles of amusement. “See you in a few.”

“Great, I’ll be back in my parking place in five minutes. I’ve got lots to talk over with you,” she said, finally getting situated in the car. “See ya’.”

Mackie arrived before Rainey. She passed his parked Escalade. The rain had stopped and the streets were beginning to dry. When she turned the corner, she saw the giant man standing in the street, where she had recently been staked out. In his hand, he was carefully holding, by one corner, what looked like a manila envelope. It appeared to be like the one JW handed her earlier. Mackie turned when he saw Rainey’s car coming. He stepped back up on the sidewalk, so she could pull in and park.

Rainey popped the lock on the passenger door and the tall man twined his broad body down into the seat. Good thing Rainey kept the seat pushed back, as far as it would go. He shut the door and held out the envelope.

“I found this in the street, look who it is addressed to,” his tone was ominous.

Rainey looked at the envelope. She tried to be careful of leaving her prints or smudging possible prints from the suspect. It was unsealed and appeared to have one sheet of folded printer paper inside. She turned it over. On the front, where the address would be, there was only one word typed out in capital block letters, Caroline. Rainey’s heart began to pick up the pace. She carefully removed the piece of paper from inside the envelope. She expected to see a picture fall out, but none did. The plain white sheet of paper appeared to be blank.

Rainey checked the inside of the envelope again. There was nothing left inside. Mackie peered over her shoulder at the blank sheet of paper.

“That’s it just a blank sheet of paper?” Mackie commented.

Rainey took the flashlight from its holder on her waist. She clicked it on and examined the paper closely. She had not seen it at first, but there, in the center of the page, was a single letter, Y.

Rainey froze. She stared at the letter in disbelief. Then, as a reflex, her eyes darted around her in every direction. Mackie saw her reaction and immediately placed his hand on his hip, where his own Glock rested in its holster.

“What is it?” he asked, his eyes darting from the paper to his surroundings.

Rainey looked back down at the paper then turned to Mackie. In words that revealed her deepest fears, she simply said, “He found me.”