Josie stared at him. “You fired her?”
He winced. “Yes. I had to. Believe me, it was a very tough decision. She’d been on my staff for over ten years, starting out as a secretary and working her way up to office manager. She was always very good, but the last couple of months she was here, she made a lot of mistakes. Too many to ignore.”
“What kinds of mistakes?” asked Josie.
“Scheduling, to start with. There were days we didn’t have staff at the front desk at all because she forgot to do the schedule or didn’t fill time slots. Or everyone was in on the same day. Then she made errors in payroll that took days to iron out and almost made our accountant’s head explode. I could have forgiven any one of those things once or even twice, but they kept happening. She just wasn’t herself. She’d lost weight and she was very jumpy. Withdrawn. Usually she was very sunny, coming to work in a good mood, smiling, making everyone else laugh. She used to try to keep things loose around here. It can be very hectic, very stressful. Maxi had instituted Fun Time Fridays. Every week was a different theme and then she’d make some kind of food or baked good to go with it. Staff could dress up sometimes. Everyone looked forward to it. It really boosted morale. She stopped doing that altogether.”
“Did you speak to her about the change in her behavior?” asked Josie.
“Yes, of course. A few times. I had hoped that it would either get her back on track or that I could help her in some way. I thought perhaps she had developed a substance abuse problem but of course she denied that.”
“Did she give you a reason as to why she was acting weird and screwing up so much?” Turner said.
Dr. Jones laced his fingers together and rested his joined hands on the desk. He sighed heavily. “She said that she was scared. She thought that she had a stalker.”
“A stalker,” Turner repeated slowly.
Dr. Jones motioned toward his office door. “Apparently she told a couple of members of the staff the same thing.”
“Did she have any idea who might be stalking her?” asked Josie.
“According to her, no. All I know is that she seemed as though she was afraid for her life, and yet she refused to go to the police.”
“Why not?” asked Josie.
“She said the police wouldn’t be able to help her.”
There were some cases in which police couldn’t help very much but those usually involved cyberstalking. Denton PD had a long-standing stalking case where the victim repeatedly received frequent messages and emails which they collected each time. It had been years, and they’d never been able to track the stalker through anything he left. Electronic evidence was more difficult to follow than it seemed. For all Denton PD knew, the stalker could live halfway across the world.
“Did Maxine ever have any personal visitors at work?” Josie said. “Friends? Someone she met for lunch? Anything like that?”
“Not that I’m aware of but you’re welcome to ask the staff.”
“There was nothing on her phone,” Turner said, voicing Josie’s next thought, almost to himself. That wasn’t something Dr. Jones needed to know.
“I’m not surprised,” said the doctor. “Oh, I just hate to say this. I hated even thinking it. Firing Maxi was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in decades of running this practice, but I don’t think she had a stalker.”
“What makes you say that?” Josie said.
“The lack of evidence, for one thing,” he said. “Her not wanting to do anything about it. That wasn’t Maxi. She was a problem solver. Very proactive. That’s why I promoted her to office manager at a very young age. She had become so jumpy. Paranoid. The way she was acting seemed more indicative of illicit drug use—amphetamines, most likely.”
“You think she was on something,” said Turner.
“Sadly, yes. She denied it but I doubt she would have told me the truth anyway.”
Toxicology on Maxine’s body would take many more weeks to come back, but no illegal substances had been found among her things when the ERT processed the tent. Her body hadn’t shown any visible evidence of drug use. There had been no indication of it on her phone—no calls or messages that could be connected to any known drug dealers or even anyone who might have access to drugs. That didn’t mean Maxine hadn’t been using something. It was possible she’d stopped after being fired.
“There is no possibility, in your mind, that she was telling the truth about being stalked?” asked Josie.
“I didn’t say that. Drugs just seemed more likely.”
Josie wondered if the reality had been a bit of both. Perhaps Maxine had developed a habit and been unable to pay for it. Maybe the person stalking her was her supplier. Although the scene at the glamping tent wasn’t what she’d expect if the murders had been motivated by unpaid debts to a dealer.
“If she was being stalked, can you think of anyone who might have been following her?” Turner asked. “An old coworker, maybe. A patient who fixated on her? Anyone?”
“No,” the doctor began but stopped himself, as if considering how much to say. “Well, maybe…this is going to sound crazy.”
“Lay it on us,” Turner told him.
