Sarah Armstrong - 02 - Blood Lines (4 page)

G
etting Maggie on the school bus that morning wasn’t easy. She doted over Emma Lou, talking to the horse, rubbing her neck, helping Frieda put drops in the pinto’s eyes and arguing that a few days off school wouldn’t matter.

“Mom, my grades are good. My teachers won’t care,” she pleaded. “Just today, so I can talk to Doc when he comes this afternoon. Please?”

I assured her that Mom and I would memorize every word Doc had to say, but it wasn’t until Bobby showed up and cajoled her with promises of his and Mom’s uninterrupted care for the horse that she climbed onto the bus. I guess sometimes a new voice helps. Maggie’s probably pretty used to Mom’s and mine.

That settled, I left the ranch in my burgundy Tahoe right after rush hour, when the freeways in Houston no longer resemble slow-moving parking lots. The entire staff swarmed me when I walked in, clapping and hugging. The captain’s secretary, Sheila, a plump woman wearing a beige dress covered with red orchids, brought donuts, remembering that I like chocolate frosting and jimmies.
Munching on my second disc of fried cake, except for worrying about Emma Lou, I felt like all was pretty right with the world.

My office was as I’d left it, papers piled in neat stacks on the desk, photos of Bill, Maggie, and Mom on the shelves, along with my most recent
Criminal Laws of Texas
volume and manuals on skull reconstruction, crime-scene investigation, and forensic techniques. I soaked in the place for a minute, glad to be back. Then I stowed my brown leather purse and my rig, the black, tooled-leather double belt with silver buckles that holsters my Colt .45, in the bottom right drawer. Settled in, I opened the file on teenage idol Cassidy Collins.

It started with a photo of Collins, a head shot I think they call them, the kind performers use for publicity. Collins was a pretty girl, long blond hair, a turned-up nose, and green eyes set wide apart. Second was a report from a guy named Rick Barron, the head of the kid’s private security force. It was odd to think a sixteen-year-old needed bodyguards, but one look at Barron’s report and there was no doubt that Collins did. Celebs, it seemed, attracted a lot of attention, not all good.

Barron started out by recounting instances with stalkers in Collins’s past, men and women who fixated on the teenager. Two years earlier a Des Moines pharmacist sent a then-fourteen-year-old Collins love letters and Ecstasy pills along with directions to his house. At one point, a thirty-six-year-old woman harassed Collins for nearly a year, wanting to adopt her, insisting Collins was a love child she’d put up for adoption at birth. Then there were the young girls who swarmed her at concerts, wanting to be her BFF, best friend forever, and the men, some well into their fifties, who claimed to be in love with her.

“In all these cases and others, suspects ceased their behavior when afforded a personal visit by local law enforcement officers. With some, we went a step further, serving restraining orders. In
the end, all gave up, or at least appeared to,” the report read. “In no case was it necessary to further involve law enforcement.”

While reluctant to broaden the scope of the current investigation, Barron said he had no choice since he didn’t have the authority for subpoenas he needed to obtain the records necessary to confirm the identity of the stalker. “This person has been highly resourceful,” Barron wrote. “At each juncture, he’s known what actions we’re taking to block him. We’ve been unable to trace his e-mails and text messages. All attempts to positively identify the stalker have failed.”

Barron’s prime suspect was a student at Rice University’s prestigious Shepherd School of Music, a young pianist named Justin Peterson. A brilliant musician and composer, Peterson started college at sixteen and, although he’d just turned twenty-one, was finishing up his doctorate. According to Barron’s report, Peterson, who had a genius-level intellect, wrote Collins letters. They started out pedestrian enough, but quickly turned threatening. The letters ended after Peterson was briefly hospitalized and visited by a campus police officer. But Barron was convinced that the kid had simply switched to an anonymous, electronic route, threatening texts and e-mails sent under an alias, Argus.

“Mr. Peterson has an extensive background in computers, using them to compose his music. So he has the technical knowledge to electronically stalk Miss Collins,” Barron wrote. “We have no concrete evidence, but Peterson is the only suspect we’ve found who makes sense.”

Finished with Barron’s report, I read Peterson’s first letter to Collins. It was short, to the point, and, to say the least, cordial:

“Dear Miss Collins,” he began. “I have watched you on television, and I’ve become something of a fan. While I am five years older, we have much in common. I, too, am devoted to my music, and I am an aficionado of dance, something at which you are quite
talented. It has occurred to me that perhaps I could help a young woman like yourself become more knowledgeable about her chosen field, to share my comprehension of music with you. While as a pianist my venues are classical, not rock or pop as your compositions are, I share your love of melody and tone, your obsession with getting the song right. I would very much like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss how I might help you in your musical career.”

Weeks later when Collins hadn’t personally replied, her publicity agency sending only a stock photo and a canned thank you letter, Peterson’s correspondence became more insistent, going on for nearly a dozen pages: “I explained in my previous letter how valuable my counsel is for you, how I can help you become a better composer. Cassidy, I know that our paths are destined to cross. I see in you what no one else does. I know that I am the only one who truly understands you. I’m the only one who knows who you are and what you need. We have a common bond that transcends our mutual love of music. But how am I to explain all of this to you, to introduce myself and tell you what I can do for you, unless you meet with me?”

There were a few more letters, before Peterson’s final one. That correspondence was a full twenty-six pages. The first fifteen, as with his earlier letters, were typed, but the remainder was hand-written, single-spaced, with additions scratched into the margins. In the last half-dozen or so pages, Peterson held his pen so tight, pushed so hard, that he dug into the paper. It was obvious that his initial interest in Ms. Collins had digressed into an angry obsession.

“Listen you little bitch,” it began. “I’ve written and written, but you’ve ignored every letter. What am I supposed to think? What do I have to say before you understand that I must meet you? If you think your refusal to answer my letters will keep me away, you are wrong. I know we are meant to be together. A young girl like you
needs someone to guide her. Think of me as your teacher. I know what you need. I know what you want, and it’s what only I can give you. I am the only one who understands you.”

By the end of that final letter, Peterson’s handwriting was nearly unintelligible, little more than a scrawl. His words were a string of expletives, attacking Collins, threatening her. “I am not responsible for what I will do to you if you ignore my letters. I am not accountable. The blame is all yours,” he ended. “You will meet with me. You will see me, or the repercussions will be tragic.”

The day that last letter hit Barron’s desk, he contacted Jim Herald, a Rice University police officer. Sergeant Herald pulled up Peterson’s school records and discovered that he’d been seen frequently in the university clinic, but the available records, due to privacy constraints, didn’t indicate why. Herald then learned that Peterson’s supervising professor had repeatedly contacted authorities, alarmed by her student’s odd behavior, including angry outbursts. When Herald tried to contact Peterson, he found out that the grad student had checked himself into a private psychiatric facility.

Three weeks later, Herald heard Peterson was discharged and on campus.

When Herald went to the Shepherd School and knocked on a practice room door, the student amiably invited the officer in. Throughout their conversation, Peterson appeared forthcoming, explaining that a hospital psychiatrist had diagnosed his condition and prescribed meds. “Mr. Peterson was rational and cooperative. He was well-groomed and calm,” Herald wrote. “He assured me that his obsession with Cassidy Collins has ended now that he is properly medicated, and that she would have no further correspondence from him. He asked me to explain the situation to Mr. Barron and Ms. Collins and to apologize for the concern his actions caused.”

When Herald contacted Peterson’s professor, she reported that her gifted student had returned to his prior commitment to his
studies and his music. At the end of his report, Officer Herald predicted Ms. Collins no longer had anything to fear from Justin Peterson.

Then, one week later, in mid-November, the stalker made his initial approach to Collins in the form of a text message she received while in a restaurant with a friend: “I look @ U & I C blood. Enjoying lunch? Argus.”

“That must have ruined her appetite,” I whispered, although there was no one to hear.

Curious about the stalker’s name, I keyed “Argus” into the Internet on my office computer and came up with Wikipedia: “From Greek mythology . . . a giant with a hundred eyes” that never slept. According to legend, Hera, jealous of the relationship between Zeus and a young princess named Io, sent Argus to watch the girl. Later, the goddess placed the slain giant’s eyes into the tail feathers of the peacock.

What part of this ancient lore convinced the stalker to take Argus as his name was unknown, but another term popped up on the screen: Argus-eyed, defined as hawk-eyed, always vigilant. Certainly that fit Collins’s stalker, who seemed to know her every move.

“I C U w/o ?, now & always,” Argus text messaged a few days later. Then, that night, “Do U C me? No? U will.”

As Cassidy Collins became more anxious about the text messages, e-mails arrived from
Argus-eyed
@ . . . ,
WatchingU
@ . . . , and
NeverEscape
@. . . . All were short and to the point. “You belong to me. I will claim what is mine,” read one.

Some implied that the stalker was near, in the shadows, watching, like the one that read: “The drapes in your bedroom were open last night. I could have reached out and grabbed you.”

“Who is that U had lunch w/?” Argus text messaged, after Collins left a posh L.A. restaurant where she’d hobnobbed with her agent. “Y R U w/him?”

Then, that night, the stalker e-mailed: “Y R U sleeping w/ your drapes shut? Scared? Of me?”

“When she saw that message, Ms. Collins was terrified. She did have her drapes shut the night that text message came in, which is unusual for her,” Barron noted. “She is convinced that the man was indeed watching her. The grounds to her estate are surrounded by a high brick wall and gated, patrolled by guards who saw no one, and we thoroughly searched, but we found nothing unusual.”

Finally the e-mail that haunted Collins, the one that came back to her when she woke up panicking in the middle of the night, showed up on a brand new e-mail account Barron had set up for her only hours earlier: “You are dead. Argus.”

“Two nights later, Ms. Collins performed at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Right before she went onstage, she received another text message, this one saying that Argus would be in the audience, waiting for her,” Barron wrote. “Luckily, we’d hired extra men to patrol the theater. Nothing happened, but Argus must have been there. The next day he e-mailed Ms. Collins again, and he knew that during the prior evening’s concert she’d missed her cue for her opening number.

“Ms. Collins has appearances in Texas approaching, and we request that the rangers do a risk assessment on this Argus, to give their opinion on the level of danger, and an evaluation of Peterson, to determine if he is a suspect,” Barron concluded on the last page of the file. “We also need subpoenas for records from all the Internet providers this stalker has used. We want this man or woman identified, charged, and arrested.”

Straightforward request, I thought. Too bad it’s not that simple.

Flipping again to the front, I found Rick Barron’s phone number on his letterhead. “Mr. Barron, I’m Lieutenant Sarah Armstrong, with the Texas Rangers,” I said when he answered his cell
phone. In the background, I heard what sounded like young girls screaming, a car door slam, and then the roar of an engine. “I’ve been asked to review the file you’ve pulled together on Mr. Peterson and the stalker Argus.”

“It’s about time,” Barron said, irritated. “I’ve been waiting for some action from you rangers for days. Cassidy’s Dallas gig is this weekend and she’s scheduled to open the Houston rodeo two nights later. We need to handle this situation quick, stop this jerk, before she gets on the plane for Texas.”

I’d forgotten that the captain said Collins would be opening the rodeo in a week. There isn’t a bigger event in the city. It literally takes over Houston in early March, weeks of Stetsons, spurs, steer wrestling, and barrel racing. Reliant Stadium, the city’s massive football arena, transforms into the world’s biggest rodeo stage and, at the end of each competition a country and western, pop, rock, or Tejano star puts on a show. Most of the year, Houston looks about as Western as L.A. But come rodeo time, folks polish their boots, get their cowboy hats steamed, and the whole city gets rodeo fever.

Considering his version of the events, however, I wasn’t sure how Barron figured Texas was the issue. “I understand Ms. Cassidy’s concern,” I said. “Yet, obviously this man, whoever he is, he’s mobile.”

“Mobile?”

“The text messages indicate that Argus knew what Cassidy did in L.A. and what happened at the Colosseum in Las Vegas,” I said. “Maybe in L.A. the texts were lucky guesses, based on the time of day? Early afternoon means lunchtime. But in Las Vegas, I gather you believe Argus
had
to have been in the audience?”

“You bet he was. That SOB
must
have been there. No other way he would have known she missed her cue,” Barron said. “We’re not saying he can’t travel, but, assuming it is Peterson, we’ll be coming to his home turf. Isn’t that more risky?”