Chapter 1

 

A light rain splattered against my office window as April showers at least offered hope of May flowers to replace the gray that lingered from winter into spring. I was checking the box scores in the Globe, and the Red Sox already had a losing record, just nine games into the season. Jessica kept reminding me I can get all the scores and articles on my smartphone, but I felt it my duty to be one of the remaining holdouts who insisted on getting a printed copy of the newspaper.

A freshly brewed cup of Dunkin' sat on my desk beside a stack of invoices I kept meaning to send out. George Saunders, the accountant across the hall, set me up with online accounting, but I hadn't figured out the invoicing yet. Dash was on the couch with his chin on his paws, watching the door the way he does when he's decided somebody interesting is coming, though for all I know that's just what he looks like when he's bored.

A knock on the door came at ten sharp. “Come in,” I said.

The man who stepped through my door was somewhere north of forty, thin and athletic. He wore a windbreaker with a tennis club logo stitched over the left breast. He had the tan of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors and the eyes of a man who hadn't slept well in weeks. Dash lifted his head, gave him a once-over, and put his chin back down. Not a threat, apparently, but not exciting either.

“Mr. Patrick,” he said. “I'm Thomas Hendricks.”

“Drew,” I said, standing to shake his hand. His grip was firm, if not a little assertive. "Take a seat," I said, gesturing to the client chairs in front of my desk.

He sat, glanced at the Red Sox bobbleheads on my desk, then at Dash, then back at me, like none of it quite computed with whatever he'd expected a private investigator's office to look like. People are often disappointed. I've made peace with it.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“No. Thank you.” He laced his fingers together in his lap and unlaced them again. “I'm not sure where to start.”

“The beginning usually works.”

That got a small, humorless smile out of him, gone as quickly as it came. “My daughter is Sophie Hendricks,” he said, like the name should mean something to me, and it did, a little. I don't follow tennis, but even I'd caught the highlights back in January. Seventeen-year-old girl from Massachusetts making a run at the Australian Open in her first Grand Slam as a pro.

“Fourth round in Melbourne,” I said. “Was quite the story around here."

His face did something complicated, pride and fear having a wrestling match and fear looking like it might win. “She's seventeen. Was the number one junior in the country for two years before she turned pro last summer. I coach her. Have since she could hold a racket.”

“Sounds like you've done well by her.”

“I thought so.” He looked down at his hands again. “Someone's been watching her, Mr. Patrick. Following her. I don't know any other way to put it.”

“Drew,” I said again, gently. Some people need the informality offered more than once before they'll take it. “Tell me what's been happening.”

He took a breath like a man about to dive into cold water.

“It started in February. Small things. Notes left on her car at the club where she trains, tucked under the wiper. No name, no return address. Just typed sentences. Things like 'You looked beautiful at practice today'. At first I thought it was some overzealous fan. Kids on tour get that. Autograph hounds, that sort of thing.”

“How many notes?”

“Four that we know of. Maybe more that she didn't tell me about.” He hesitated. “She doesn't tell me everything anymore."

I wrote that down, not because I'd forget it, but because clients like to see you writing things down. It makes them feel like the machinery of justice has engaged. Sometimes it has.

“Go on,” I said.

“Two weeks ago, someone photographed her at practice. Long lens, from across the street beyond the fence line. One of the other coaches spotted him and went out to confront him, but by the time he got there the man was gone. Just tire marks in the gravel lot.”

“Description?”

“Nothing useful. Dark jacket, baseball cap. Could've been anyone.”

“And then?”

Thomas Hendricks's jaw worked for a second before the words came out. “Last Thursday, Sophie was driving home from an evening session, and she says a black sedan followed her the entire way. Stayed three, four car lengths back the whole time, even when she took a wrong turn on purpose to test it."

"Smart girl," I said.

Hendricks gave a slight nod in agreement, then continued, "When she pulled into our driveway, it slowed almost to a stop out front before it drove off.”

“She get the number on the license plate?”

“No. It was dark, and she was pretty rattled at that point. Just wanted to get inside the house. She came inside shaking. My daughter doesn't shake, Mr. Patrick. She played a third-set tiebreak against the fourth seed at the Australian Open with the whole stadium against her and she didn't shake.”

There it was, the thing under the thing, a father who'd watched his kid stare down a packed Rod Laver Stadium crowd without blinking and then come apart in her own driveway. I understood that kind of fear.

“Has she said anything about who it might be? An old boyfriend, a fan she rebuffed, a disgruntled hitting partner?”

“Nothing she'll admit to.” He said it carefully, like a man picking his way across ice, and I filed that away too. Careful answers usually mean there's something underneath them worth digging for. “She just wants it to stop. So do I.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

“We filed a report after the sedan. Boston police took it seriously enough, but there's not much to go on. No plate, no clear photo, no direct threat in the notes. They said they'd keep an eye on the neighborhood.” He said it the way people say things about promises they don't believe. “I don't have confidence that keeping an eye on the neighborhood is going to be enough if this escalates.”

“What do you want from me, specifically?”

“I want you to find out who's doing this,” he said, leaning forward, and for the first time since he'd sat down there was iron in his voice instead of just worry. “I want him identified, and I want him stopped, before this becomes something worse than notes and photographs. My daughter has the biggest tournaments of her career coming up this season. She cannot be looking over her shoulder every time she steps on a court.”

I thought about it a moment, though truthfully I'd made my decision somewhere around the part where a nineteen-year-old came in shaking from her own driveway. Fathers who love their kids and can't fix the thing scaring them are some of the most honest clients I get. There's no angle in it for them. There's just fear, plain and unadorned, sitting across the desk in a windbreaker.

“I'll take the case,” I said. “I'll need to talk to Sophie directly, see the notes if you kept them, and get a look at the club where she trains.”

Relief moved across his face like weather clearing. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean that.”

“Don't thank me yet,” I said. “Let's see what I find first.”

We went over my rate, and he didn't blink at it any more than Elizabeth Barlow had, though something told me the ease came from a different place than old money.

Dash got up, walked over, and gave the cuff of his khakis a courtesy sniff, decided there was nothing edible about Thomas Hendricks, and went back to the couch.

I looked at the check, then at the man who'd written it, and had the small, familiar feeling I get at the start of these things, equal parts curiosity and dread. A stalker was a manageable problem. Notes and a long lens and a sedan that liked to idle in driveways, I could work with that.It was the look on Thomas Hendricks's face when I'd asked if Sophie had said anything about who it might be that stuck with me after he'd gone. The careful way he'd answered; like there was a whole other conversation happening underneath the one we were having.

I've learned not to ignore that feeling. It's rarely wrong, and it often comes with trouble.