“Goddamn, Dev,” Mark snaps. “Chill out for one minute so I can tell you why it isn’t his fault. I know you’ve had a bad few days, but we all have, so I need you to be a little less vicious for one minute while I explain.”
Brother or not, cop or not, I want to punch Mark right in the face. “Don’t talk to her like that, Mark.”
There’s a pregnant pause in the air as we all take a minute to regroup our feelings.
“The reason Sebastian doesn’t remember Crystal is because she doesn’t look the same in the pictures on her wall as she does today.”
“What?” we ask in unison.
“Crystal changed everything about herself. The images on her wall with Sebastian look similar to her but not quiteher.We thought maybe she had a sister, so we began pulling up her files and running through everything, but there’s only a history of Crystal Simmons when she started at Midtown. That’s it. We tossed her apartment trying to find out anything we could on her, but came up with nothing. Your PI, Veronica, gave us everything she found during her investigation, so when we ran the prints she had for Crystal, we found out her identity. I guess Veronica only ran the prints through your employee database, otherwise she would have found out sooner that Crystal is Michelle Jenkins from Richmond, Virginia.”
Mark pulls up a picture on his phone and shows it to us. I study the image of a woman with short auburn hair, brown eyes, and freckles covering the top of her nose.
“Holy shit! Is that Crystal?” Devin gawks. “That doesn’t even look like her!”
I remember her. “I’m pretty sure I met this woman early last year. I bumped into her outside a restaurant after a client dinner. I remember that birth mark on her neck. She doesn’t have it now or she covers it up or whatever, but I remember it. She had a bit of a southern accent and giggled like a school girl when I gave her the slightest bit of attention.”
A wave of nausea rolls through me at the idea of Crystal, or Michelle, or whatever the hell you want to call her, doing this. “I don’t understand. Why would she do this? Why would she change her appearance and her name, and fuck with me and Devin, Mark? I still don’t understand how the hell she even knew Devin and I were together more than that one time when she took the photo. We haven’t spoken at the office. Seen each other outside of it. I’ve spent every free moment with Arianna. Why Devin?”
Mark’s face hardens as he tells the rest of his news. “I’m not sure, but three years ago, Michelle Jenkins murdered her sister and mother. She was deemed unfit for trial and placed in an institution where she was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder with violent tendencies. From what the doctors could get from Michelle, her sister made a comment about her looking fat in a dress, and she lost it, killing her and her mother when the woman tried to intervene. Dad was abusive, and Michelle was deemed to be the pretty one by him, suffering years of sexual abuse because of it. She found validation in her appearance, which is what finally set her off when the sister made the comment. Her file is filled with the craziness in her head. It’s scary.”
So many emotions course through me, but in the end, the nausea wins.
Crystal is not only a stalker. She’s insane and violent. A murderer.
“Shouldn’t she still be hospitalized?” Devin asks with a hitch in her voice.
Lance sits quietly next to Mark, looking at me as if he wants to chime in but Mark told him not to.
“Is there something he’s not telling us?” I ask his partner.
I watch him look toward Mark before nodding. “Crystal escaped from the institution a year and a half ago. The facility she was placed in reported her escape after she strangled the night guard with a bedsheet and was able to use his access cards to flee through the basement. Surveillance from the bus station down there shows her getting on a bus headed to Buffalo about thirty minutes after her escape. But no one was able to find her after she got off at a stop in Baltimore. We spoke to her doctors in Richmond. They think she met you shortly after she arrived here and the obsession started after the night you guys spent together.”
Another wave of nausea rolls through me, and I stand from my seat, heading toward the kitchen to grab a glass of water.
The moment I enter the room, I hear Devin following close behind.
“Sebastian, are you okay?”
I swipe a glass off the counter, filling it with the water from the filter, and take a deep breath before drinking from it.
No, I’m not the least bit okay. I slept with a woman who’s now stalking me and most likely trying to kill me and my girlfriend.
Jesus fucking Christ!
