Ahanti’s apartment was exactly how I remembered it, albeit with a bit more clutter. Her drawing table still sat next to the window that let in the best natural light, her Faber Castell polychromos colored pencils and hand guard splayed out across it like she’d been in the middle of a project when she had to leave for work. Stacks of boxes, all labeled, lined the walls, and piles of papers grew like mold over her end tables.
Theoretically, her apartment might have been big enough for her and Geoff to share, but it would have required a massive purge first. Or renting a storage unit. Geoff had suggested the latter to her when they first got serious, but Ahanti had insisted that she needed to be able to access her sketches and other keepsakes without traveling across town.
She still didn’t have a TV or a radio, but her laptop sat open on her coffee table, and her state-of-the-art printer—the kind that could print images on photo paper just as well as any photo place—still didn’t have a speck of dust on it even though I could have written my name in the layer on her bookshelf.
I deadbolted the door behind us and closed the lid of her laptop. She’d left her phone in the console of her car, so if her stalker had hacked either, we should still be safe from his prying ears.
Ahanti flopped down on the couch. “So where do we start?”
I joined her. Even though we weren’t investigating a murder—thankfully—investigating this shouldn’t be that much different. “Have you noticed anyone acting strangely?”
The expression on Ahanti’s face clearly said do I look stupid? “I would have told you about that already.” She ruffled her long hair and sighed. “Sorry. I don’t even know what would make someone do this. How am I supposed to know what behavior to watch for?”
As I well knew, anyone’s behavior could look strange or guilty if you were watching closely enough.
Ahanti slumped back against the couch cushions. “When I was reading online at work, there were like five or six different kinds of stalkers. I don’t even know how to start narrowing it down to which kind mine might be, let alone who.”
Her voice was taking on her taxes are due tomorrow and I haven’t even started them yet tone.
Odd as it was, this was my element in the same way that she created art on human flesh. I could guide her through this.
I opened the browser on my phone and held it out to her. “Show me the page you were looking at with the descriptions.”
She tapped on my phone’s screen and handed it back to me.
I swiveled so that she couldn’t peek at the screen. “I’m going to read these. Don’t overthink it. Just tell me if anyone immediately leaps to your mind when I describe how this might have started.”
The website gave each type of stalker a label, but I didn’t want Ahanti getting caught up on those. I wanted her to think about the way she might have first come into contact with her stalker and who might be showing any behaviors similar to the ones listed.
I skipped the one where the stalker was basically a predator who was profiling their victim in order to sexually assault them. While Ahanti’s stalker could technically be that, it didn’t seem to fit with what she’d told me. Plus, I didn’t need to scare her any more than she already was by even putting the thought in her mind.
I read her the description of the next type.
She was shaking her head almost before I finished. “That sounds more like someone who’s really awkward and doesn’t realize that you can’t keep following someone around until they agree to date you.”
She was right. She’d have noticed someone who was that socially inept trying to make contact with her. The description also implied that they usually lost interest quickly, and Ahanti said her stalker had been making indirect contact for years, even though she hadn’t recognized it as stalking at the time.
I moved on to the next one, a stalker who begins after the breakdown of a close relationship with their victim.
Ahanti’s hands clenched on her knees. “That one reminds me of Cary. Cary Gilbert. The guy I apprenticed with.”
By the time I met Ahanti, she already owned Skin Canvas. She’d mentioned that she broke with the man who apprenticed her because she found out he was stealing her designs. She’d never offered more information, and I hadn’t pressed because the situation was clearly something she’d wanted to leave behind her. I’d assumed it was because she didn’t want to slander him—even though it wouldn’t have been slander because it was the truth.
Now, if we were going to either confirm he was her stalker or cross him off the list, we’d have to dig into their relationship.
Considering how circumspect she’d been about it in the past, she’d probably be more comfortable telling me the story without anyone else around. I checked my phone. No text yet. Mark should be another twenty or thirty minutes at least, which gave us plenty of time.
“What makes you think it might be Cary?”
Ahanti shoved to her feet and went over to her drawing table. She picked up a green pencil crayon and ran it through her fingers as if the touch of it soothed her. “Cary didn’t want to take me on as an apprentice even though he’d done all my tats and he’d seen my artwork. He knew I had great design ideas. But he was already apprenticing Terrance, and he said he didn’t need another one.”
I stayed quiet. Any questions I needed to ask, I could ask later. Right now, she just needed to get the story out.
“He’d asked me out a couple of times, and so I said, jokingly, that for every hour he taught me, I’d go out with him the same amount. After a month, I stopped keeping count of the hours, and it was really good for a while. We even talked about moving in together.”
I hadn’t known their relationship was personal as well as professional.
Ahanti set the pencil crayon back on her drawing desk in the exact spot she’d picked it up from. The rest of her apartment might be a mess, but her “studio corner” was precise, just like her studio.
“Things went bad when clients started to come in requesting me instead of him. Even some of his longtime customers. Some of the things he said…” She pressed her fists into the desktop. “Like that I’d prostituted myself to get the job and that the only reason they were picking me over him was that I was probably screwing them, too.”
She turned her back to the window and the sun backlit her dark hair, making her look a lot like she must have back then, young and vulnerable.
“I stayed with him anyway because I loved him, and I thought if I left, somehow it would prove him right. Then one of my regulars told me that he was copying my designs and passing them off as his own. That’s when I packed up. Once I opened Skin Canvas, most of my clients followed, and even Terrance asked to come on board.”
I read the description on the website again. Based on Ahanti’s story, Cary could fit the profile. But only if he’d kept in touch. The trigger event for stalkers was always a fresh meeting or a fresh rejection, not something that happened to them years ago that they didn’t react to at the time.
“He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy to let your defection go easily.”
Ahanti crossed her arms under her chest, a subconscious self-protective gesture. “He begged me to come back and swore he hadn’t been filching my work. He even offered to make me a partner in the business. By then I’d realized I was happier without him.”
That was still years ago. “Did he let it drop after that?”
“Mostly. Every once in a while, usually when business is slow for him, he’ll come by Skin Canvas and suggest we amalgamate, but he hasn’t suggested we personally get back together for years.” She flashed me her old brash smile. “Not since Terrance and Eddie threw him out last time he started hitting on me. And I mean threw literally.”
That could explain why he’d resorted to sending gifts and love notes instead. He sounded egocentric enough that he probably assumed Ahanti would know they were from him even though he’d left them unsigned.
There was one upside to all of this. “If he’s your stalker, I don’t think he’ll actually follow through on his threat against Geoff.”
