See Me(102)

It was the first time that Colin had heard her link Copo’s death to everything else that had occurred, and her obvious fear made something coil inside him.

This was going to stop. Let Margolis do whatever he was going to do, but right now, that wasn’t good enough for Colin. It was time, he thought, for someone to find out just what Lester was up to these days.





After he dropped Maria off at work, Colin popped in his earbuds, put on some music, and perched himself in front of the computer at his desk.

Lester Manning.

Proof or not, having a name helped to focus his thoughts, and he wanted to find out as much as he could about the man.

The only problem was that without easy access to government databases or official records, there wasn’t much he could do. There were no listings in the white pages for anyone named Lester Manning in North Carolina, nor could he find a cell number. There were two Lester Mannings on Facebook; one was listed as living in Aurora, Colorado, and the other in Madison, Wisconsin; the first a teenager, the second a man in his forties. Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat turned up nothing, nor did a general Google search using the name and the city of Charlotte in various permutations.

There were a few sites that held out the promise of more information – phone number, most recent address, and the like – for a fee, and after debating, he typed in his credit card number and gave it a whirl. Thankfully, an address popped up in Charlotte.

There was a little more on Avery Manning, including a phone number in Charlotte listing an Avery Manning, MD, along with the same address he’d found for Lester.

Father and son living together?

Or outdated information?

There were also a few short articles on the father. The most recent one confirmed Maria’s recollection that Manning had had his license suspended for eighteen months, apparently for improper care of a number of patients. The most prominent case involved a young man who’d committed suicide. According to the article, Manning failed to properly diagnose the patient’s attention-deficit disorder and monitor his use of Adderall. Other patients claimed that they simply got worse under his care. If the date of the suspension was accurate, then Avery Manning still wasn’t able to practice.

Interesting.

There was a photograph, too: a man in his midfifties, with thin blond hair and light blue eyes staring out of an angular, almost bony face; to Colin, he could have passed for a washed-out gravedigger. Colin couldn’t imagine sitting across from the guy for an hour, spilling his guts and hoping for empathy.

Another article mentioned Manning’s work with prison inmates. The article quoted Manning as saying that many prisoners were sociopaths and beyond practical rehabilitation. Humane incarceration, he said, was the most pragmatic solution to criminal pathology. Other than commenting that Manning considered himself an expert on criminal behavior, Maria hadn’t mentioned his work in prisons, and he wondered whether she had even known about it.

A little more research eventually brought up the obituary for Eleanor Manning, which said nothing about suicide, but that wasn’t surprising. Most people didn’t want that fact made public. It also noted that she’d been a mother of three, and was survived by her husband and son. Cassie he’d heard about, but there was another sibling?

He reviewed half a dozen articles on Avery Manning before finding the answer; in an interview on the subject of depression, Avery noted that his wife had battled depression ever since their son Alexander Charles Manning had died in an automobile accident when he was six.

Alex. Cassie. Eleanor.

So much tragedy for one family. And Lester blamed Maria for one, maybe even two of the deaths.

Enough to make Lester torment and terrify her?

Yes. The original notes made that plain. As did the pattern.

Chronologically or not, Maria was experiencing the same fears that Cassie had. And like Maria, Colin knew how the rest of Cassie’s story unfolded.

After he got out of prison, Laws met Cassie face-to-face.

Cassie filed a restraining order.

The police couldn’t find Laws.

In the end, Cassie was abducted and murdered.

Was that part of Lester’s plan as well?

It was a massive jump to go from what had happened to Maria so far to the final step. Tormenting was one thing, murder was another, and he didn’t know enough about Lester to try to guess what he might do. That didn’t mean, however, that Maria should take any chances.

He spent another hour without learning anything more. So much for the easy part – information that anyone could find – and he wondered about his next step.

What did he know about Lester? And what could he assume?

Lester had a car. Or had use of a car.

Not a big assumption, of course, but he wondered what kind of information he could find if he had a license plate number. A few keywords into the search engine turned up a couple of companies with access to all kinds of public records, including car registrations and license plate numbers. It was a bit expensive, but it just might be helpful, and he made note of the websites in case the need arose.

Anything else?

Yes, he thought. If he was correct in his assumption, Lester had hidden on the roof across the street when Maria was at work. As for her condo, it would have been easy for Lester to watch her as she came and went, if only because her schedule was predictable. He wouldn’t have had to camp out for hours; he could have observed her from the coffee shop across the street or from a parked car. Following her to the restaurant and the nightclub would have been a piece of cake.