Absolutely Unforgivable(52)
“Can I have my phone please?” I begged, my voice still weak and shaky.
Mindy looked to Billy and he shook his head no but as if to purposely defy him she walked over to the other side of the bed, jerked it off of the table and said, “Here Stacy,” as she put it on my lap. Mindy walked back to the other side of the bed, where she was standing before, and bent over. “What are you trying to find? Is there something I can help you with?”
I didn’t answer. I clicked the brown little Find Friends button on my phone. I selected Jeromy’s name and waited for the purple flashing dot to show me where he was. I truly expected it to light up over Pinehurst, Texas on the map. But it didn’t.
What I did see was something that would change everything in my life. Jeromy wasn’t in Texas at all. He was in Nevada, more specifically Las Vegas.
“I’m so sorry, Stacy. I wanted to tell you,” Mindy said. But I didn’t respond. Instead I just laid back down on my pillow and closed my eyes. I think it was just too much for my brain to process. I just suddenly felt so tired and all I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep.
I don’t know how long I was out that time but when I woke up Jeromy was rushing into my room. Mindy and Bree were gone. This time it was only Billy there with me, and now Jeromy. “What the f*ck happened, man?” Jeromy demanded to know. “You said you would take care of her!”
Billy told Jeromy the story about the guy trying to take pictures of my panties and me jumping off of the stage and how we fell back and I hit my head. But before Jeromy could ask any more questions Mindy and Bree came in the room and two policemen were with them. One was an older gentleman who had a bit of a gut. The other was a young, handsome man. He looked far too young to be a cop and his good looks seemed to have sent Bree into a giggling fit.
The older officer asked, “Ma’am, you feel up to speaking with us?”
Both Jeromy and Billy twisted to see if I was even awake and I was. Billy helped me sit up so that I could speak to them.
“Have you ever seen the man in question before tonight?”
I thought about it for a moment and shook my head no. That was a mistake. It hurt to shake my head like that. I tried to think about the man they were talking about but nothing was coming to me. To be honest, I don’t think I could even tell them what he looked like if I had to. I really only seen him for a second before Billy was on top of him, beating the hell out of him.
“How often would you say you changed clothes last night?”
I tilted my head to the side trying to think about the question. “Huh? Never. I wore the same outfit the entire night.”
“That’s a problem then. Because I have a collection of photos of you from his camera in quite a few different outfits. That means he’s been following you around for some time now. Why don’t you take a look at some of these photos and see if you can recognize any of the dates.”
I flipped through the creep’s phone and found picture after picture of me. There were shots from the first night I was onstage with Billy, pictures of me from the bar downtown, even pictures of me from the night at the strip club. Nobody knew we were going there -- that meant he had to have followed us from the house. My body began to shake in fear and tears started to form in my eyes as I flipped to photo after photo of me. This guy had been following me around for a while now.
Bree, who was always trying to be the optimist, jumped up and down while saying “Oh ... My ... God! You have your first stalker. I told you that you looked too hot for words and were going to steal all of the men’s attention!”
“Ma’am, having a stalker is nothing to be joyous about. Often they go from voyeur to something far more serious like sexual assault, kidnapping and in some cases murder. Those are not situations to celebrate.”
Bree bowed her little blonde head to the ground and squeaked out, “I’m sorry. I was just ...”
The cop continued with his questions, ignoring her apologies. “You will notice that with the progression of the photos he has become more aggressive in his pursuit of you and that’s a problem. A big problem. His stalking behavior seems to have escalated from simple adoration to sexual predator.”
I looked to Jeromy and Billy, scared, not sure what to do or say or even think at that moment.
“We have him in custody now and he’ll be in jail for a bit thanks to some outstanding warrants from past trespassing offenses, but he won’t be behind bars forever. And there could be others out there like him. You ladies are going to need to learn to pay attention to your surroundings and take your safety far more seriously.”