“Wait.”
Josie lifted a brow but didn’t sit back down.
“Please,” he said.
Very, very un-Turner-like.
She sat back down, pressed record on her app. Repeated their names, location, date and time. Then nodded for Turner to go on.
“I think this is likely some sicko who works somewhere in the same couple of blocks where Dani’s PT place is and got fixated on Maxine and then my wife, but if you want names of people I pissed off…I don’t know anyone I’ve pissed off badly enough to warrant abducting my family.”
“Not one person?”
Spot used his octopus to nudge Turner’s hands for more pets. “The only person I pissed off enough that he never really went away is this guy from the Arnold Ferguson case.”
“The escort killer?”
Josie had read enough news articles to know the basics about the most high-profile case of Turner’s career.
“The guy I’m thinking of wasn’t anyone related to Ferguson,” Turner said. “Not a witness or anything like that. He was one of the clients of the escort service.”
Luxe Escort Service had operated in Alden and its surrounding area for over a decade. They billed themselves as the purveyor of dates for men in the upper echelons of society who needed a plus one to accompany them to black-tie events. The owner had repeatedly denied that any prostitution went on. “If the girls choose to engage in a physical relationship with their dates, that is their decision and it happens on their own time,”she had said during countless interviews which translated into: “I’m running a fancy prostitution ring under the guise of a legal business.”
“Who is the client?” Josie asked.
“Dustin Emmer. He’d be in his late forties now. He’s a professor at a college outside the city. Really into literature. Not much in the way of social skills. A lot creepy. Then again, most of those guys are. Anyway, he was obsessed with one of the escorts, Zara. Spent thousands of dollars to book dates with her almost weekly so she could act out some weird-ass fantasy he had.”
Josie grimaced. She didn’t want to know, but if she was going to interview Emmer she needed all the information Turner could give her. “What was the fantasy?”
“Some kind of weird, sexy librarian thing. Emmer would book Zara and his instructions were for her to bring a stack of books to the hotel room fifteen minutes before him. He wanted her to wear her hair up a certain way, put on some lingerie, wear these thick glasses, and sit at the table reading. When he showed up, she was to completely ignore him.”
“Wait. What?”
“Yeah,” Turner sighed. “Then he’d look through the stack of books, watch her, and jerk off from across the room. Once he was finished, she was supposed to tell him to get out. That was it.”
“No physical contact?”
“Nope.”
“Wow.”
“It was easy money, right? The guy never even touched her, but it creeped Zara out every time. Well, I think it was him that creeped her out. More than her average client. Anyway, when I busted Ferguson for the murders, the company went down in flames. Turns out that Dustin had followed Zara a time or two after one of their ‘dates’ so he knew where she lived. Afterthe trial, he approached her about resuming those ‘dates.’ He offered her double what the escort service paid. She was a single mom with a toddler, so it was tough to turn him down but?—”
“But someone like that is infinitely more terrifying than a man who wants a simple transaction of sex for money,” Josie supplied.
Turner nodded. “Exactly. You don’t know what you’re getting. How deep the delusion goes. If one day it’s going to escalate into something else. What he’s capable of doing. He’d already crossed a ton of lines by following her from the hotels when he was booking her through the escort service, and then he showed up at her house to proposition her? Not cool.”
“I’m sure he took no for an answer,” Josie said sarcastically.
“Not even when she contacted the police. It played out exactly like you think it did. He kept showing up, trying to talk to her, even after she got us involved. Unfortunately, his behavior didn’t meet the criteria for a restraining order, not even after she called us a half-dozen times. He became more and more persistent. Almost every time they left the house, he’d be there. After everything Zara and her little girl had gone through, it was too much. They needed a fresh start.”
“He blames you for the escort service closing and her not wanting to participate in his creepy little role play anymore?”
Turner dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No, it wasn’t any of that. I helped her relocate. Hooked her up with some organizations that work with women who are leaving bad situations. I made sure she found a new job, a legit one, and a place to live—a safe place—for her and her kid. Found an attorney doing pro bono work who helped her change her name. He got the judge to waive the public notice so Emmer couldn’t track her down so easily.”
Josie scrutinized him. What he’d done wasn’t just un-Turner-like, it was above and beyond what anyone in hissituation would do. In their line of work, they came into contact with hundreds of people in far worse situations than Zara. No matter how badly you wanted to help them, no matter how hard your heart broke for them, you simply couldn’t be everything to everyone. Sure, you could direct them to organizations that offered services they needed. Josie frequently did. Then again, there were the occasional victims or loved ones of victims that became more. Josie still kept in touch with a girl she’d met on the case that had ruined her and Noah’s wedding and resulted in her grandmother’s murder. They were friends.
From between his hands, he added, “That’s, um, what I talked to your sister about when we’d meet in New York. She had all kinds of contacts from stories she’d done over the years.”
