Page 44 of I Did Something Bad
“There’s more,” Detective Htet’s voice says. “Swipe to the left.”
And I do. And he’s right. Thereismore.Somuch more.
They’re photos of me. In front of my current apartment building. In front of my old house. At the park with Ben. At my favorite café, hunched over my laptop, wireless headphones atop my head. Inspecting a mug at a farmer’s market with Thidar and Nay. There’s a picture of me walking Pizza. Another of me and Ben leaving a restaurant after a double date with Thidar and Patrick.
The last dozen or so are of me getting out of a taxi in Chinatown on the first night I met Tyler.
When I put the phone down on the table, my hands are trembling.
“What—” I breathe, trying to speak through the rush of blood to my head. “What is this?”Who took these?
“That,” Detective Zeyar says as he retrieves and pockets his phone, “was what we found on the dead man’s phone. It washed up a few days later. We assumed it was useless due to all the water damage, but it turns out our tech department recently got quite the equipment upgrade. They also got us an identity.”
“Oh?” is all I can say as I try to stave off the panic attack, unsure which part of this conversation I’m panicking in response to.
Detective Htet nods. “Yes. His name is Jared Kirkwood. He’s an Australian citizen who’s lived here for eight years. Does that name ring a bell?”
I shake my head so hard I almost give myself whiplash. “I’ve never heard that name.”
“Interesting,” he says, furrowing his brows as though he’s doing some quick mental math. “But then… how come his camera roll is nothing but photos of you? We went through the whole thing. There are no pictures of his friends, food, holidays, nothing. It’s all… you. To be frank, it’s like he got a whole new phonejustfor you.”
Despite the thudding in my ears, I retrieve enough cognizance to repeat, “I… don’t know this man.”
“But he knows you.”
“ButIdon’t knowhim.”
“Are you sure?” Detective Zeyar steeples his fingers and leans in. “All these photos, and you don’t know him at all? Maybe you ran into him somewhere? Went on a date with him at one point? Help us out here, Khin.”
At last, a voice inside my brain manages to cut through the jumble of confusion and panic that’s swirling around. “Lawyer,” I say, remembering Tyler’s words.
“Now, Khin, we’re just having a chat here,” Detective Zeyar continues, his saccharine tone making this situation ten times worse. “But if you lawyer up, well, you can see why we might start to get suspicious.”
I steel my spine and swallow, pushing my despair and bile back down. If I’m going to buckle and vomit—either words, or the bagel I had for breakfast—it willnotbe in front of their ugly faces. “And I don’t appreciate you harassing me about a man who has clearly been stalking me,” I reply with a glare.
He sighs like I’m a child who won’t listen to reason. “Look, sweetheart, just because we’re doing our job doesn’t mean we’reharassing—” The “sweetheart” was bad, but when he rolls his eyes on “harassing,” like I’m now a child who throws the word “harassing” around without really knowing what it means, the anger from earlier resurfaces.
“I’m not answering any more questions until I have a lawyer present.”
“Kh—”
“Lawyer.”
They release me without any more questions, but not without a final subdued “You’ve made things very difficult for yourself.”
Tyler’s in the middle of a scene when I slip onto set. I grab an empty chair in the back, take out my notebook and open it on my lap so it looks like everything’s peachy and I’m working as always.
Obviously I have to resume looking into that man. Good news is, now I have an actual lead. I press the tip of my pen into the center of the page as I think it through. What was his name again? Jared Kirkwood. Australian. I write it down in the back of my notebook before I forget.
I have to find out who this Jared Kirkwood is, for two reasons. One, this random man whom I have never encountered apart from those ten minutes in the park was most definitely targeting me, and I want to know why. And second, I need to see how close the police are to finding me out; I need to track down the same leads that they’re inevitably going to, and,somehow,be sly about asking about Jared and why he might’ve been stalking a random woman.
The obvious course of action here would be to call Kira, but what would I ask her?Hey, did Charlie propose yet? Oh, and while I’ve got you, and not to be all “do all Australians know one another,” butdoyou happen to know a Jared Kirkwood who’s been following and taking photos of me for the past several months?But if I do that, I might as well also take a red Sharpie and write “Suspect Number One” on my own forehead.
Tyler was right—this wasn’t a moment of opportunity; this man wasstalkingme. A chill spreads across my arms as that last realization really settles: this stranger was following me around for literal months and I never knew. What was he going to do in that park? Did he come there that night to kill me? How long had he been waiting out there? My stomach starts churning like I had a big meal before getting on a roller coaster, but I’m at the top of the tracks now, and whether I like it or not, the ride has started.
“So are you going to tell me?” Tyler asks as soon as the car divider rolls up.
“Tell you what?”
