Known to the Victim, page 16
I’m lying here. I’m not even sure the tip was May—it’s an educated guess, presuming Laura wouldn’t dare use her own voice in case the recording was played for Oliver.
May’s face spasms, confirming our suspicion. Then it hardens. “I was given a script. That’s all.”
“A script you were told to deliver from a pay phone.”
Her lips tighten even more. “Yes.”
“You called the police, pretending to be giving a tip, based solely on a script. You pretended to have firsthand knowledge of the veracity of what you were reading, yet for all you knew, it was a work of fiction. There’s a name for that, Janet, and it comes with two to five years in prison.”
I’m exaggerating, but her expression says she sees the truth of what I’m saying. She lied to the police. That’s illegal.
Again, she finds that hard expression. “Maybe, but if it’s true, is anyone going to care how the police got the tip now that he tried to kill his girlfriend?”
“Someone hired you to phone in a false tip. They also hired you to make a public accusation at my event. Then, the next night, someone hacked my brother’s alarm system and stole his car. That car was used to lure his girlfriend from her home, whereupon someone in that car—someone wearing a mask—shot her two times.”
I meet May’s gaze. “Someone is framing my brother for murder. There is evidence—now being investigated—that it’s the same person who bought your ticket for my event.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Whoever hired you is the prime suspect in an attempted murder. My brother’s lawyer will be turning that evidence over to the police. So you have two choices. You can talk to me, and Oliver’s lawyer will give you time to prepare for when and where the police show up on your doorstep. Or you can kick me out, and she’ll call the police, and they’ll be here before you can get to your car.”
In her place, I’d have questioned my story, but from what I’ve seen so far, Janet May will buy it. She didn’t expect the woman she trolled to confront her at work. She didn’t know that the guy she trolled had been arrested for attempted murder. She didn’t think through the ramifications of delivering a false tip. Now all that has hit her at once, and the last thing she’s capable of doing is stepping back and analyzing my story. It makes sense on the surface, and she’s too flustered to dive deeper.
“I want to contact the police myself,” she says.
“Okay.”
She leans toward me as if I hadn’t just agreed. “I’ll go to the station after work. I’ll tell them that I just saw the news about your brother and realized I had information.”
“Okay.”
“If I tell you what I know, you’ll give me that much time?”
“Oliver’s lawyer won’t notify the police until first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Fine.” She backs up against the desk and crosses her arms over her chest. “It was all legal.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“I was contacted directly, not through the agency, but I still paid the agency their cut. You can check.”
“That really isn’t our concern.”
“Well, I did.” She sounds satisfied, probably thanking her lucky stars she was ethical in that one regard—otherwise, her agency might now learn she freelanced and cut her loose.
She takes out her phone. “I’ll tell you what I know, but the client paid cash. Actual cash, delivered, payment in full the day of the event.” She turns around the phone. “Here’s the correspondence.”
It’s text messages. I screenshot the thread with my phone.
“I tried calling the number afterward,” Janet says. “I wanted to let her know what happened. It was out of service.” She points at the end of the thread. “My last text—after the event—wasn’t delivered.”
The thread starts with someone—presumably Laura—reaching out and saying she got Janet May’s number and is looking for an actor to play a role. That role involves going to a local event and accusing the speaker of something. There’s a bit of back and forth, Janet asking questions, seeming wary, only to relax when it turns out she won’t be accusing me—she’ll be talking about my brother.
According to the texts, Oliver Harding got away with murder. His sister runs a podcast that’s supposed to draw attention to domestic violence, and her own brother is guilty of the worst kind. People need to know.
I can be angry about what Janet May did. I can be furious and outraged. I’m not sure, though, given these texts, that I can blame her. Even if she’d looked up Laura’s death online, it’d be easy to decide there’d been a miscarriage of justice. Men do get away with femicide. Can I blame May if she’d convinced herself that she was doing a good thing?
It also doesn’t hurt that she was paid double her rate. That would make me suspicious, but again, I choose not to judge.
May agreed to the job, and the sender arranged to send the money, the ticket and details before 5 p.m. on show day.
“The ticket came prepurchased,” Janet says. “She’d even printed it out rather than give me a virtual version.”
So the person who’d posted on my forum wasn’t May. I’d already figured it was Laura, given our online interaction two days ago.
“Can I see what she sent you?” I ask.
“It was a script. I’d screenshot it, but I’ve deleted it.”
This proved that May knew the whole thing was shady. Still, not judging. It won’t get me where I need to be.
“I didn’t follow the script exactly,” May says. “It’s better to put things in my own words. It sounds more natural.”
“Okay.”
“All the relevant data was there, though.”
“And after that?”
She shrugs. “Like I said, I tried telling the client that I’d finished—by text and by phone—and couldn’t get through. I figured if they were concerned, they’d get in touch. Otherwise, the job was done, so I gave my agency their cut and moved on.”
“Did she ask for anything other than what I saw?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing extra? No online postings? No follow-up?”
She shakes her head. “Attend the event. Stand up and say my piece. Then leave whenever I want. That was it.”
Chapter 19
I’m in the truck with Castillo. He’s reading May’s text-thread photos on my phone.
“That’s it?” he says.
“Yep, like I said, this was their only point of contact.”
“What about the envelope? The one she sent the cash in?”
“I asked about that. She shredded the envelope with the script, deleted the script photos from her phone and even removed them from her trash. I asked how the script and payment had been delivered. She said they were in a Canada Post express envelope—one of those prepaid ones—but there was no return address, and it didn’t seem to have passed through the postal system.”
“Laura bought it and delivered it herself.”
“Seems so. Janet May lives in a single-family dwelling. Alone—she divorced last year and got the house. No security system. No nearby cameras that she knows of.”
“I’ll check on that,” he says. “You get an address?”
I text it to him. “I know you’re going to need to tell Dinah, and I also know I shouldn’t have promised she wouldn’t contact the police until morning.”
“Nah, that’s fine. Better for Janet to come forward on her own, especially if it meant you got all that without Dinah having to get it through the prosecutor.”
“So what next?”
“Lunch,” he says. “Then I need to talk to Dinah. In person.”
“About Laura?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Earlier, when Castillo said he was going to talk to Janet May, I’d expected to be left on the sidelines. Now, when he says he needs to speak to Dinah, I expect to be part of that conversation . . . and instead, I find myself sidelined.
After lunch, Castillo takes me home. That’s not his first choice—or his second—but I argue that it’s the safest place for me. He checks my car and then escorts me in and sweeps the apartment. There’s no sign that anyone has been near the car or in my apartment. He only departs after imparting all appropriate warnings. Stay inside. Leave the security system on and the door locked. Don’t answer anyone who buzzes—he’d text before he came over himself. Repeat, stay inside. Don’t order food. Don’t open the door for any reason.
I have neither need nor inclination to go out. I just had a late lunch, and half of it is in a takeout container. Castillo even went through a drive-through to get me a coffee and pastry so I could have an afternoon caffeine-and-sugar break. He’s promised to contact me this evening, and if it seems as if he expects me to stay inside tomorrow, too, I’ll have a chat with him about house arrest, but we aren’t at that point yet.
For now, I’m looking forward to a few hours of seeing and speaking to no one.
I settle in at my desk and flip through my email. That only takes a few minutes. I have a half dozen nasty-grams from strangers that get filed—I know better than to delete them. I also have people asking for interviews. Two are legit enough that I forward them to Raven. The rest is just school stuff and spam.
I’m finishing my inbox cleanse when Raven texts.
Raven: Your brother got stabbed last night??? Please tell me you didn’t mention that because you’re madly working on the podcast episode.
Shit! I’ve been so wrapped up with the Laura revelation that I forgot about the stabbing. Not the stabbing itself, obviously, but the ramifications for Oliver’s case and the podcast.
Me: I’m on it!
Raven: When can I expect to see it? The news already broke
Me: I was in the hospital all night waiting for him to get out of surgery, and then I had to do something urgent enough that I couldn’t beg off to record an episode.
Raven: Urgent as in podcast-worthy?
Me: Yep . . . when I can reveal it
Raven: Fine, you’re forgiven—if you can get the scoop. Now give me the stabbing
Me: Nah, you haven’t pissed me off enough for that. Not yet
Raven: Oh, I’m sure there are days you wish you could. You have an hour. Then I want the stabbing episode up and a text telling me it’s there
I’m supposed to run scripts by Dinah. Technically, that was an offer made by me rather than a requirement imposed by her. I know with everything going on she won’t have time to vet it. So I make an executive decision. There’s nothing controversial in the script. I have enough inside information that I don’t need to beef up the episode with extra chatter.
I give Dinah’s version of the events leading to and following the stabbing. I say that I received a call and drove to wait while Oliver was in surgery. I don’t want someone saying they saw me at the hospital, implying that I’m covering up the fact that, in spite of everything happening, Oliver and I are still close.
Do I suggest the stabbing was not accidental? Here, I’d like to think that I was a little bit clever. I laid out the facts, knowing that would be enough. Listeners will question just how accidental it was. There isn’t any need for me to connect the dots for them, and if I had, it would have screamed bias. It would also have set people arguing against any case I built.
Just the facts, ma’am.
Record the episode. Promise additional information when such is available. Post. Notify Raven.
After that, I decide I’ve earned my brownie. I eat it as I haunt my website forum looking for responses to the new episode. I’m nervous posting without either Dinah or Castillo’s thumbs-up, and I want to be the first to know whether I’ve made a mistake or worded something in a way that’s open to misinterpretation.
I watch the counter climb as listeners tune in. It’s no coincidence that they’re so quick on the ball—since I started covering Oliver’s case, we’ve added an alert to our usual subscriber newsletter. Those who sign up are automatically notified when I post a new episode.
There’s some chatter on the board. I’m not in incognito mode, but no one reaches out. They rarely do. They presume it’s a member of my staff, as VAWSurvivor3 did the other night.
I stay out of the actual threads, instead using the cheat of refreshing my screen on the main page so that I can read a preview of all the most recent posts without going in and revealing that I’m reading them.
There’s nothing concerning happening. Just people discussing the latest episode. They’re already debating whether Oliver could have been targeted in the stabbing.
He’s accused of trying to kill his girlfriend. It’s like being a serial killer or a pedophile. Someone’s going to decide to play judge and jury.
Are you sure that’d be it? Seems to me he’s been framed. Maybe whoever is doing that realized they don’t have a strong enough case against him.
And what? Hired someone on the inside to kill him?
No, she has a point. Someone really has it out for this guy.
Yep, his not-so-dead wife, apparently.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around that. Part of me screams that the police need to know. Oliver needs to know. Now. The wife that Oliver is being investigated for killing is not dead and may have shot Martine and framed him. Why am I sitting on this?
Because the only evidence to support my wild claim is my own eyewitness report of seeing her . . . at night . . . in a dark parking lot . . . right after getting the news my brother had been stabbed, when I’d been understandably shaken.
We’re giving Janet May until tomorrow to come forward. I’m giving Castillo the same time frame to make a decision about telling Dinah, and if he doesn’t—or I disagree with his choice—I’m moving forward myself.
I’m about to sign off the forum when someone pings me. The first thing I do is check the user profile.
VanChick84. Location: Vancouver, BC. Occupation: physiotherapist.
VanChick84 joined the forum a month ago, and there’s an established pattern of activity. Not a ton, but enough to show she isn’t another VAWSurvivor3, creating a fake profile and only asking about tickets to my event.
VanChick84: Hey
I reply with a wave emoticon.
VanChick84: I know you probably aren’t really Amy, but that’s okay
AmyGibson: Actually, I am
VanChick84: Well, like I said, it’s okay if you aren’t. I’d just like to get a message to her, please
AmyGibson: Sure, what’s up?
VanChick84: I need to talk to her
AmyGibson: You are
VanChick84: I mean in person. ASAP. I know she lives in Grand Forks
AmyGibson: Okay
VanChick84: I’m there now
The hairs on my neck prickle.
AmyGibson: Okay
VanChick84: I know that’s going to sound weird, but I had to come. I can’t say this in an email or a text or even a phone call
VanChick84: There are things Amy doesn’t know about her brother. Things she needs to know. Secrets I’ve kept since Greta died
Greta.
Oliver’s college girlfriend who died by suicide.
VanChick84 doesn’t wait for a response.
VanChick84: I was her friend. Her best friend. I also . . . I did something awful, and that’s why I never came forward about Oliver, and I’m not sure I can even now. But I need to talk to Amy
AmyGibson: This is Amy. Really
VanChick84: Okay. I’ve been following your podcast since before all this started. You seemed like someone I could talk to. Unburden myself on. I’ve been lurking, trying to work up the courage to reach out
VanChick84: Then all this happened, and I knew I had to speak to you
VanChick84: I hoped that if I flew across the country, you’d know I’m serious
VanChick84: Now I can see it just looks creepy and suspicious
AmyGibson: If you’re going to tell me that Oliver killed Greta, he wasn’t even in the same country when she died
VanChick84: I know. I was . . . I was there. I mean, I’m the one who found her. She definitely did it. But there’s more to the story
My fingers are flying over the keyboard. I’d bookmarked the only reference I could find online to Greta’s suicide. It was a site that had once been run by UBC students trying to call attention to suicides among their classmates. The site had removed actual cases years ago, but I was able to find the reference using the digital archives.
According to the archived post, Greta had died in her college dorm and been found by a friend. That information wasn’t exactly a secret, but nor was it publicly available.
AmyGibson: Oliver was stabbed in jail last night. I’m supposed to stay home until they know what happened
VanChick84: Maybe I can come over?
I almost laugh at that. Uh, no, weirdly, I’m not letting you come into my apartment when I’m here because someone tried to kill my brother and I might be in danger myself.
AmyGibson: I’m not seeing anyone right now
VanChick84: I guess that makes sense
