I Told My Therapist About My Stalker, but He Already Knew novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Newest Note
Eli reads his stalker's newest note aloud in his psychiatrist's office, and the doctor writes it down; that night the doctor pins the session recording to a wall of Eli's photographs.
"You looked tired on Tuesday," Eli read aloud. "Sleep with the window shut."
Dr. Vandermeer wrote it down.
He wrote it word for word, in a small slow hand, and he did not look up until he had finished the full stop.
"Is that the whole note?" he asked.
"That's the whole note. It was under my door this morning."
The office was glass on two sides, nineteen floors above Lake Union, and the rain ran down the panes in long grey threads.
Eli sat on the edge of the leather chair with the paper folded small in his fist.
Two years ago he had interviewed this man for his podcast, in a hotel conference room with bad coffee.
Dr. Vandermeer had worn the same charcoal suit then, with the same white shirt open one button lower than anyone else wore it.
He had explained in a quiet voice how a man could kill three women and leave every porch light on.
Eli had thought about that voice for two years.
"May I?" Dr. Vandermeer held out his hand.
Eli put the note into it.
Their fingers touched, and the doctor's were warm and dry and slow to leave.
"The handwriting is upright and unhurried," Dr. Vandermeer said. "Whoever wrote this has practiced."
"There have been thirty notes," Eli said. "Thirty-one photographs. Nine gifts."
"Tell me about the gifts."
"A black umbrella in April, and it rained the next morning. A thermos of ginger tea when I had a cold nobody knew about. Wool socks."
"And the latch?"
Eli stopped.
"I didn't say anything about a latch."
"You said nine gifts, and you listed three." Dr. Vandermeer turned the pen over once. "I assumed the rest were more of the same."
"A window latch," Eli said slowly. "In a paper bag, on my doormat, for the window by my bed."
"How did you feel when you opened the bag?"
"Like I was being measured for something."
"That's a precise answer."
"I host a true crime show. Precise is my entire personality."
"Is it?" said Dr. Vandermeer, and his mouth moved very slightly at one corner.
Eli looked at the mouth for a second longer than he meant to.
Then he looked at the rain.
"The last photograph was of me asleep," he said. "It was taken through the glass above my bed, from the fire escape."
"What was the light like?"
Eli stared at him.
"That's your question?"
"It tells me how close he stood to the pane."
"Streetlight, from the alley. It made my face look orange." Eli's voice came out harder than he wanted. "I went to the police in June, the way I tell my listeners to. A patrol officer said fans are harmless and gave me a card."
"I am sorry," Dr. Vandermeer said. "That should not have happened to you."
He said it so gently that Eli's throat ached.
"Is there somewhere else you can sleep tonight? A friend's couch?"
"No."
"May I ask why not?"
"Because it's my apartment." Eli sat up straight. "Because he's had six months of me running around being scared, and he's enjoyed every day of it."
"Eli."
"I'm leaving the window open tonight. An inch. I'll put a camera on the sill and a bat by the bed, and if he wants to climb up and look at me, I want to see his face."
Dr. Vandermeer set down his pen.
He set it down exactly parallel to the edge of the pad.
"Don't," he said.
"Give me a clinical reason."
"Because it is what he wants."
"That's the whole point. If I'm what he wants, I can use that."
For a moment the doctor said nothing.
The pale grey eyes held Eli's, and they did not blink, and a muscle in his jaw flexed once and let go.
"Shut the window, Eli."
"That's what the note says."
"It's what any doctor would say."
"Funny," said Eli. "He says it better."
He stood, and Dr. Vandermeer stood with him, and they were closer than the room required.
The doctor was a head taller, and he smelled of rain and cedar.
He opened the door and held it, and Eli had to pass within an inch of his chest to leave.
"Thursday," Dr. Vandermeer said. "Same time."
Eli walked to the elevator with the odd feeling of having been seen out by someone who did not want him to go.
He did not look back.
If he had, he would have seen the doctor stand in the open door until the elevator closed.
Then Dr. Vandermeer went back to his desk, opened the little clock on the shelf, and took out the memory card of the session recorder.
He drove home to Queen Anne in the rain and did not turn on a single light.
At the back of the house was a room with no furniture in it, and every wall was covered, edge to edge, with photographs.
Eli on the ferry with his hood up.
Eli at the pharmacy counter, buying cold medicine.
Eli running the lake path at dusk, with his headphones on, laughing at something nobody else heard.
Six months of him, one hundred and ninety-one pictures, and every one dated in pencil.
Simon took a thumbtack from his pocket.
He pinned the card from today's session next to the newest photograph, the one of Eli asleep with his mouth a little open.
Then he stood in the dark and watched the wall until it was time to go and close Eli's window himself.
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