Chapter Twenty-seven
Jake left Ryan in his bedroom, then hurried into his home office and closed the door, stricken. He felt the situation ebbing away from him. He flashed-forward on Ryan’s becoming depressed, obsessed with Kathleen, spiraling downward, letting his grades and the team fall by the wayside. It could end in suicide, as if Ryan was doomed by the very actions set in motion to save him. Jake wasn’t about to let that happen without a fight.
He hustled to his desk, logged onto the Internet, sat down, and typed in the name of the company he had seen on Ryan’s laptop. The company website popped onto the screen, and it read GreenTech Enterprises in kelly-green letters. Directly below that was a candid photo of Kathleen Lindstrom, sitting at a laptop on a desk, evidently at the GreenTech office. The photo was framed by a black memorial border, and next to it was a paragraph:
GreenTech mourns the passing of Kathleen Lindstrom, who was the victim of a hit-and-run accident last Friday on Pike Road in Concord Chase. Kathleen was the beloved daughter of web designer Grace Lindstrom, and Kathleen worked for us part-time, impressing our entire office with her intelligence, charm, and beauty. She even started us running at lunchtime and we lost a total of 76 pounds combined! She will be profoundly missed, most especially by her devoted mother, but by all of us whose lives she touched. GreenTech and its employees are posting a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for her death, and if you have any such information, please call the authorities …
Jake looked away, because he didn’t want to focus on Kathleen now. He wanted to focus on Deaner and understand how Deaner was connected to her. Jake hadn’t realized that they could have known each other. He scanned the left side of the website, which listed categories for several different pages; IT Support, Web Design, GreenTech Web Hosting, GreenTech Consultancy, About Us, and Contact Us.
Jake skipped to About Us and clicked the link. Onto the screen appeared the group photo that had been on Ryan’s laptop. It showed about thirteen employees lined up in three rows, and the last person in the last row on the left was Deaner. Jake clicked on the picture to enlarge it, double-checking, and it was definitely him: a short, slight, and bespectacled man, his appearance as nondescript as blackmailers ever got. It must’ve been a recent picture because he had the same thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and oddly controlled expression.
Jake hit a button to return the picture to normal size, then read the caption below, which contained the employees’ names. He scanned them quickly to reach the name of the man he knew as Lewis Deaner, but the first name on the row wasn’t Lewis Deaner, but Andrew Voloshin. Jake blinked, absorbing the information. So Deaner’s real name was Voloshin and he wasn’t a freelance writer, but worked at an IT company.
Jake returned his attention to the photograph and spotted Kathleen Lindstrom in the second row, only two people away from Deaner/Voloshin. Kathleen was standing next to her mother Grace, an attractive woman with curly brown hair. They had their arms around each other, the both of them smiling happily at the camera, wearing almost identical outfits, an artsy T-shirt and skinny jeans.
The photo stopped Jake in his tracks. He could see how close Kathleen and Grace were from their body language; they looked like a mother and daughter who were best friends. Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he felt the deepest ache welling up in his heart. He couldn’t imagine how grief-stricken Grace would be, bereft over a beloved daughter that had been taken from her, so young and so violently. Jake was the one who had taken her young life, as surely as if he had been at the wheel himself, and he felt the full weight and agony of his guilt. He knew how much he had compounded his sin, by lying about it every day since then and by compelling Ryan to lie, too. He’d traded Kathleen’s life for Ryan’s future, and he would never, ever forgive himself. He’d played God, so he couldn’t even ask God himself to forgive him.
He wiped his eyes with his arm, and tried to swallow, but couldn’t. He refocused on the screen, trying to get his thoughts back on Deaner. It was obvious from the photo that Deaner knew Kathleen and her mother. It was a small company, so it couldn’t have been otherwise. Jake wanted to know what they did for GreenTech, so he scrolled down and scanned the company description, which read:
Our offices are in Shakertown, and we’re one of the few companies in the Delaware Valley who offer greener computer services—including solar-power, low-power and low-material-use computer systems, IT support, and green-web-design services. We’ve been in business over ten years and we’re growing! Call us anytime for an estimate to meet your IT needs, in a way that helps you, your business, and our planet!
Jake considered it, vis-à-vis Andrew Voloshin. It seemed consistent with Voloshin’s manner and appearance that he was some kind of IT guy. He logged back into the search engine, then went to White Pages, and plugged in the name Andrew Voloshin and Concord Chase PA, because Deaner had said he lived in an apartment in Concord Chase. The screen changed and read, your search has yielded no results, so Jake tried again. Voloshin worked in Shakertown, so Jake plugged in Andrew Voloshin and Shakertown PA. The screen changed, showing the question, Did you mean this Andrew Voloshin? Underneath was an address with the phone number:
Meadowbrook Mews
37 Meadowbrook Lane
Apartment 2C
Shakertown, PA
Jake grabbed his phone from his pocket and dialed Voloshin’s number. He felt a darkness come over him, a sheer malevolence he’d never felt in his life. He was about to talk to the man who had terrified Ryan. The man who could drive his son crazy, even to suicide. Jake felt in his heart, for the first time ever, that he was capable of committing murder. If he were ever in the same room with Voloshin again, the little man wouldn’t get out alive.
“Jake?” Voloshin answered, his tone surprised, but Jake didn’t let him get out another word.
“Who the hell do you think you are, scaring my son? I’ll kill you for that. Do you hear me? You leave my boy alone!”
“You weren’t taking me seriously.” Voloshin seemed to recover. “I had to show you that I—”
“We made a deal. You’ll get your money. It’ll be there by eleven, and you better send me the copies of that video and photos. The deal is between me and you. You leave my family out of this or you’ll get nothing. Nothing!”
“Oh, I don’t know about that—”
“Don’t test me. It’s killing my kid to keep this secret, so if it’s not going to help him, I’ll blow it wide open. I’ll go to the police myself. We both will. I’d rather have my son sane and in jail than crazy and outside of it.” Jake heard himself yelling and realized that what he was saying was true. “So don’t press me. Don’t test me. You don’t know me.”
“Now who’s the tough guy?”
“I am,” Jake growled, and this time he meant it. He could feel it, a bile and fury inside, bubbling. “If you ever, ever contact my son again, I’ll come after you. I know where you live. I have your phone number. I know where you work. You’ll never get away from me. I’ll find you wherever you go.” Jake heard himself threatening Voloshin, an eerie echo of the very texts that Voloshin had sent to Ryan. Suddenly Jake started to wonder about something. He’d just learned that Voloshin knew Kathleen, so maybe the way Voloshin had gotten the photos of the hit-and-run wasn’t because he lived or worked close by, at all. “Wait. You live on Meadowbrook Lane, but that isn’t anywhere near Pike Road. GreenTech isn’t in the corporate center, either. It’s in Shakertown, three towns over. You didn’t happen upon the accident scene and take that video. You didn’t see it from a neighboring office or an apartment complex. I’m onto you. I have your number. You were on Pike Road yourself. You were there already. You were stalking her.”
“What? No, that’s—”
“Don’t bullshit me. It all makes sense. Kathleen was a young, beautiful girl who works in your office. Her mother gets her a summer job there. You’re a lonely, single nerd, the dweeby IT guy who codes all day.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m friends with her mother. Kathleen was the daughter of my good friend, that’s all.”
“Oh, please. You started out friends with the mother, but you’re not blind. A beautiful young high-school girl comes into your world, and you fall head over heels. You think about her all the time.” Jake sensed he was right, even as he said it. “You took those pictures and that video, no one else. That’s how you got the pictures. That’s why you were so close. That’s how you got such a great video, even in the fog. You found out where she runs, where the track team runs. What were you doing? Hiding in the bushes? In the woods? Waiting for her to run by? Did you know her running schedule? Her route?”
“We were just friends. She was my friend’s daughter. I was a friend of the family—”
“Give me a break!” Jake burst into laughter, but it wasn’t mirthful, just a release of pressure. “You were friends? A man your age is friends with a gorgeous sixteen-year-old girl? Who’re you kidding? Did you hit on her or just fantasize? You’re a sick freak! You’re a predator!”
“It’s not true—”
“If you were such good friends, then why are you capitalizing on her death?” Jake realized it was true the moment he said it. “You’re such great friends with her that when she gets killed by a car, which you witness, you don’t go to the police? You don’t say to them, these people killed my friend? You don’t even give your other good friend—her mother—the information?” Jake could hear Voloshin had gone silent. “Instead, you sneak around and try to blackmail my son, who had an accident? You try and make money from the girl’s death, the daughter of your very good friend? You disgust me!”
“I don’t need to listen to this.”
“Neither do I,” Jake shot back. He pressed END, hanging up. Suddenly he heard some noise downstairs, the slamming of the front door, then someone coming upstairs.
“Jake! Ryan!” It was Pam, and she sounded furious.