Think Twice

When you look at Rotten Swale’s first followers — when you cross-check these profiles against Rotten Swale’s activity — well, this is when you hit bingo. Rotten Swale hit the “like” button on several Instagram posts by women he follows. Two posts are for women named Kathy Corbera and Jess Taylor, both of whom live in the Paramus, NJ, area — one in River Vale, one in Midland Park. You do a bit more digging and find a connection. The women follow one another plus a page called “Glen Rock High School 1980s alumni.” Okay, cool. You go to that page. Now you search for the men who follow both that alumni page and Kathy Corbera and Jess Taylor.

You find three men who fit that criterion.

Closer.

So now you’re down to three men. One, Peter Thomas, lives in New York City. One, Walter Stone, lives in Fair Lawn, close to Paramus. One, Brian Martin, still lives in Glen Rock, also close to Paramus.

Now you take a step back.

Why did this guy choose the name Rotten Swale?

It’s never totally random. There is always a reason. And the reason here was easy once you had it down to three people. Rotten Swale, Late Towners, Seattle Worn.

They were all anagrams for Walter Stone.

How clever.

Game, set, match.

The problem for you then is a simple one. Walter Stone, the stalker you want to kill, lives in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Amy Howell, the stalkee you’d like to frame, lives in Salem, Oregon.

How can you pin Stone’s murder on her?

Here you get lucky. Amy Howell has a brother named Edward Pascoe who resides in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey — a twenty-minute car ride from where you are now parked.

You like this. The one-step-removed killer. Something a little different. Something that requires new skills.

Edward Pascoe has a pretty sophisticated alarm system at his house. You debate waiting to find a way to break in to gather DNA and use his car — your semi — modus operandi — but you come up with something that will work just as well. He drives a 2020 white Ford Fusion. It’s a very common make, so you rent one under a fake ID. Pascoe parks in his driveway, which does not have the same security as the house. An hour ago, you sneaked up that driveway and switched his license plates with the ones on your rental. When this is over, you’ll drive back to the house and switch them back. No one will be the wiser. Your white Ford Fusion with Pascoe’s plates will have been spotted and recorded by several street cams during the drive.

Pretty clever, no?

You also have printouts of your legwork in figuring out that Rotten Swale, the troll threatening Pascoe’s sister with violence, is Walter Stone. They’ll find that paperwork hidden behind Pascoe’s garage. And finally, the closer: Before switching the license plates back, you’ll drive the Ford Fusion to the Woodcliff Lake reservoir, making sure the license plate is picked up on CCTV, park the car, and toss the murder weapon into the water.

That should be more than enough for the police, but despite what you see on television, the police are not omniscient. So if all of this isn’t enough for law enforcement to home in on Edward Pascoe as the culprit, if a few days pass and nothing happens, you’ll make sure the police get an anonymous tip, a little nudge. In truth, you almost hope for that. You get to be involved again.

And you love that.

You leave the car door unlocked. You go to the window. You see Walter Stone in front of his computer. The lights are off, but the blue from the monitor illuminates his face into a ghoul mask. You push the barrel against the window opening. He is smiling, looking like some grotesque monster as he types away. You knock on the window. He looks up.

That’s when he dies.

For Walter Stone, the horror is over.

For Edward Pascoe, it’s just begun.

Chapter Thirteen

When Win’s plane reached ten thousand feet, the Wi-Fi came on. Myron called a former client and retired basketball star named Chaz Landreaux. Chaz didn’t pick up. Myron sent a text to give him a call when he had a moment, then he checked the notifications on his phone.

Terese had texted their standard emojis: a telephone and a heart. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out their complicated marital code. The telephone said, “Do you want to talk?” The heart said, “I love you.” They often sent these emojis before calling because one (on the lighter side), the other may be busy or in a meeting or in some other way not alone and ready to talk, and two (the darker side), they both led lives where things went wrong and a phone call out of nowhere might cause a few seconds of unnecessary worry.

Myron opened his phone to Favorites and tapped the fourth one down. Myron’s father held the top fave spot, Mom the second, his parents’ home phone — yes, they still used one — was the third. Win had been fourth, Esperanza fifth, but both got knocked down a peg when Myron and Terese tied the knot.

Terese answered on the second ring and said, “How was your day?”

“Good.” Then Myron added: “I almost lost my baby toe.”

“Left or right foot’s?”