“Why are you so sure?” I catch Macey leaning in a little when she asks the question, giving me reason to break the stare off I unintentionally started with Special Agent Landry. I can still feel him watching the side of my face as I hesitate to answer her question. I understand most people won’t believe me or even understand my rationale, but those people didn’t share the same kind of bond with anyone like the one I shared with Hayzel.
“I just know.” I don’t offer any extra insight, but I doubt that will satisfy her. Everyone wants me to explain, but it’s like describing a color that doesn’t exist or a song you’ve never heard. It’s almost impossible, then add everyone’s automatic skepticism, and it really is exhausting.
“There have been some reports that allude to you having a special connection with Hayzel, a twin bond. Is that what you mean when you say you just know?”
“Yeah.” I nod with my answer, feeling defensive for being questioned about what she could never understand. “I also believe the evidence supports my theory.”
“What evidence are you referring to?” Special Agent Landry’s much deeper voice cuts through the space, causing Macey and me to look in his direction.
My convulsive swallow keeps me from answering, or maybe it’s my body’s way of stalling. I don’t know if it’s knowing he’s an officer of the law, or just his commanding presence, but I feel compelled to answer him, even though I know I can’t, at least not now when millions of people could hear the things only I and the investigators working my sister’s case are privy to.
“Certain details,” I hedge.
“Are you saying there are things the police are holding back?” Macey prods, yet it’s easy to ignore her.
“Certain details are always kept under wraps,” Landry replies to Macey while maintaining eye contact with me. I give him a small nod to confirm. His eyes look darker in this light, and the fine lines surrounding them tell me he’s a few years older than me, maybe around thirty or even a little older. I shouldn’t notice how well he fills out his dark suit jacket, but I do. I force myself to look away from him again.
“I think Hayzel was being stalked.”
“Stalked, and you’re convinced it was a stranger doing this?” Macey’s voice is pitched low, as if I just divulged a secret, but I already said as much in the pre-interview notes, so her reaction is probably for the show’s benefit. “Can you give us and the listeners any insight into why or clues that led you to believe that so we know what to look for?”
I’ve thought about how to answer this or a similar question for a while. I want to find out who did this and warn others, but I don’t want people to make the wrong assumption about Hayzel, which is what I think the police did. “A few weeks before… beforeit happened, she mentioned some things that occurred at home—little things that could be easily overlooked, like her shampoo being half empty when she just bought it a day or two earlier, or things being moved and out of place.”
“Didn’t you guys live with roommates?”
“Yes, which is exactly why I told her it was probably one of the other girls using her stuff the first couple of times.”
“But you changed your mind?” Macey’s eyebrows rise high on her forehead as she asks the question.
“At the time, no. I told her to lock her bedroom door when she wasn’t home and to stop smoking so much.” My tone is harsher than I intended, but I can’t help being mad at myself. I’ve thought about how different things could have been if I hadn’t dismissed her worries, but the truth is, I was kind of pissed at Hayzel. I moved to be closer to her because that was what we both wanted, but she changed in the few months we’d been apart. She started smoking pretty much daily, whereas before it was only occasionally or socially like at a party or something. She was also failing a couple of her classes. When I talked to her about it, she promised things would get better now that she wasn’t so lonely, but it didn’t. If anything, things got worse. Hayzel became distant and withdrawn. She wasn’t going to her classes, and she was spending most of her time locked in her room, especially after I told her she was just paranoid about all the shit happening from smoking so much.
“Did anything else happen to lead you to believe there was more to it than a roommate borrowing her things?”
“Once I found her journals and read how many strange things were happening, I knew there was more to it. Plus, you know what they say about hindsight being 20/20. After she was gone, I looked at everything differently.”
I don’t mention how a few weeks after she died, I started to notice little things myself, like a cardigan I knew I’d put awayafter only wearing it for an hour or so being left out on the end of my bed and some of my perfume going missing. I tried to tell myself I was overthinking, or that it was Hayzel giving me a sign she was still with me, but I’m not even sure I believe that’s possible. We didn’t really grow up in a religious house. Add our parents dying in a car crash when we were seven, then losing our grandparents, I did not exactly have a great relationship, if any at all, with God.
“Did you share her journals with the police?” Macey pulls me from my dark thoughts and a big part of the reason I had to get out of Texas, even if Livy hates me for it. I felt like I was losing my mind there or worried I was about to be next.
“I tried. I even emailed them scans of the pages I thought were important. I was actually surprised I found it in her room after… I thought it would have been something they collected.”
Macey’s eyes shift to Landry, as if she’s expecting him to answer. He doesn’t rise to the bait, and an awkward moment of silence passes. Macey returns her attention back to me. “Would you be willing to share some of those pages with us, so we can make them available to our listeners?”
“I’m sorry?—”
“No.”
The agent and I speak at the same time, him with the automatic denial and me with a halfhearted apology. Our gazes lock again, but only briefly. Since the moment he was introduced to me as a profiler, I knew I wanted to ask him if he would listen to what I had to say, but I had no idea how I was going to go about doing that. In this moment, the how doesn’t matter. I’m going to talk to Special Agent Landry about my sister’s case no matter what, and I have a feeling he’s going to listen.
“It feels too personal right now, and I feel like there could be something there the investigators missed. Maybe later, after…” I leave my hope of her case being solved hanging, because that’sall it is—hope. The police won’t say it, but her case has gone cold. There were times when I would allow the intrusive thoughts to win, and I would think that maybe her killer was after me now, and the only hope of catching him was letting him kill me too, but I don’t want to die, and certainly not the horrific way my sister did.
“Any talk of the journal should be edited out of the show. If Hayzel did have a stalker, you can bet he would keep tabs on the case. Hearing there is written evidence of his signature and the way he operates could be dangerous for everyone involved.” He’s turned to the side, making sure to look directly at Macey, whose face isn’t giving anything away. “I’m going to need you to agree to edit that and any other information I find could jeopardize the case, or I’ll pull the plug on the interview.”
She blinks twice as if his quick demand catches her off guard. “Yeah, yeah. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would harm the investigation.” Her voice comes out too high, too airy, making me feel like she’s just agreeing to agree, or maybe he really did surprise her and this is her genuine reaction.
“Glad to hear it.” He gives her a weak curl of his lips that resembles a smile, but not quite. I’m so focused on the exchange, I actually jump a little when he shifts his attention to me. “I know you want your sister’s case to get the attention it deserves, but be careful. Whether it was a stranger or not, someone murdered her, and anyone willing to do that once is capable of doing it again.” His words come out as a warning, but I can’t help also feeling admonished.
“Okay,” I agree while rethinking everything I have already said.
