“You were recommended to us by Allison Gentry,” Monica Welles said. “She’s been mentoring A.J. for the last few years.”
Allison Gentry was a pop superstar. I’d handled a case for her a few years back. She wasn’t quite on the level of Taylor Swift, but she still packed stadiums regularly.
“So what can I do for A.J. Garcia?” I asked. A.J. Garcia was an up-and-coming star from Chicago, and while I’d never actually listened to any of her songs, I knew she was big on TikTok and Insta. As a P.I. in my mid-40s, I’m up on all the hot social media the kids are using these days.
Monica Welles worked for one of the biggest PR firms in Chicago. We sat in a conference room at the PR firm’s office. A window looked out across the Chicago River at the skyline to the south. “There’s a stalker situation.”
“Only one?”
She smiled briefly. “This one is—different. For reasons I can’t tell you yet, A.J. specifically asked for you, because of Allison.”
Uh-oh. Allison Gentry’s case had involved a shapeshifting killer. “Okay.”
Monica handed me a folder. “We need to locate the man who sent these emails. He goes by the name DominickX.”
I looked at the printed-out emails. I’ve seen lots of vicious, violent, stomach-churning threats in this job, so I braced myself. But these were different, less graphic, but stranger, with a menacing undertone: You made your bargain, now live within it … I won’t listen to your pleading and whining, bitch … Keep your skinny brainless ass far away from me … No one will remember you … I will lose you in the dark.
The address line at the top said they came from DominickX at an email server I didn’t recognize. “These aren’t explicitly death threats,” I said. “But I can see they’d be upsetting.”
“She wants to know who they’re coming from.” Monica took a sip of water.
I looked closer. “Uh, some of these appear to be return messages.”
She frowned, nodding. “A.J. ignored our advice. She tried to talk to this person. You can see it didn’t go well.”
“Yeah.” I folded up the emails and put them in my jacket pocket. “You can’t always get much from an email address. Do you have anything else that might give me a lead?”
She bit a lip. “It’s possibly someone from her life, someone she’s met. Sometimes these people pop up from years ago.”
“Right.” I nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
We discussed the financial details and shook hands. Monica walked me to the elevator, and I went down to find my car in the parking garage.
“Hi honey, I’m home.” Rachel leaned into the office we share when she works from home. “What’s for dinner, darling?”
“Lasagna’s in the oven, snookums. Give it another 20 minutes.”
She grimaced. “Call me ‘Snookums’ again and you’ll be eating it by yourself in the bathtub.”
“Okay, hotbuns.”
Now she glared. “I’ve got a divorce lawyer on speed dial. Don’t make me use it.”
Rachel’s my wife. She’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, and some psychic powers. She’s also got a comeback for almost everything I say. I’ve learned not to push too hard.
“How was work, uh, Rachel?” I asked at dinner 30 minutes later.
She kicked me under the table with a smirk. She’s a therapist at a mental health clinic, so her days can be intense sometimes. “Decent. Had a breakthrough with one patient. I can’t tell you about it, of course. Confidentiality and all that.”
“I tell you everything about my cases.”
“Only the ones you want help with, and then you can claim me as an associate, so there’s no ethical violation. We had a whole class in that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah, that’s—that’s just what I was doing.” Honestly I probably share more than I should about my cases with Rachel, but she can keep a secret. “Ever listen to A.J. Garcia?”
“I hear her on the radio in the car sometimes. Wait, are you working for A.J. Garcia?” Her face lit up the way it does for a new season of Real Housewives of the White Lotus.
“Well, her PR agency. Stalker case. But I probably shouldn’t tell you more than that.” I sipped some beer.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Be like that. Is she in danger?”
“I don’t know. A lot of these cases don’t end up in actual violence, but it’s unnerving for the victim. Even if she is famous.”
“I know. I told you about my stalker.”
“Yeah.” She’d gotten the guy good. “Anyway, I got referred by Allison Gentry. Remember her?”
“I still have my autographed picture. Wait, I worked with you on that case, so I’m kind of an associate on this case. Right?” She smiled and leaned across the table at me.
I grinned. “Do you want to be?”
“I like this one song of hers, ‘Piece of Heaven.’ Yeah, tell me.”
I told her about my meeting with Monica Welles. Rachel asked, “Is she hot?” like she always does whenever I meet another woman without her around. “The email address was shut down. I tried to send a fake spam to the account and it bounced right back. Lawyers could probably get more from the company but I guess they don’t want to go that route.” I sipped my beer. “Anyway, I started looking into her past contacts with fans. Celebrity stalkers usually want to be noticed, they want attention.”
“She’s got to have a million fans. A few hundred thousand, anyway.”
“Including the two of us. There are at least 200 fan sites, not counting the porn fakes—”
“Yuck.”
“Yeah. I’m still working through them. Just to be thorough. I can’t look at every single fan, but I can look for variations on Dominick and other markers. That’s it so far.”
“What if Dominick isn’t anything like his real name? Or her real name, whatever.”
I shrugged. “Variations, like I said. At some point I’ll have to go back to the client and ask if there’s anything more. There’s stuff they aren’t telling me yet.”
“Same thing happens in my job.” She finished up her lasagna. “There’s more, right?”
“Enough for tomorrow. Lunch maybe after that.”
“Good.” She took her plate to the dishwasher. “Hurry up. I want to finish cleaning up and watch Lust Archipelago. It’s the season finale.”
That show usually made Rachel a little playful after a few episodes. I finished my plate and helped her clean.
Two days later I was in a meeting with A.J. Garcia.
I wasn’t alone. Rachel was there. She had a free afternoon, thanks to a patient who had rescheduled and a staff meeting that got cancelled. Or that she skipped. I know better than to ask certain kinds of questions.
Monica Welles was there. So was Josh Heider, a lawyer in his 30s with prematurely gray hair, and Phillip Chapin, CEO of Chapin Jacobs Management, A.J.’s management agency. Chapin was in his 60s, with a broad chest and thick shoulders, in a tailored suit. No necktie, but he kept his collar buttoned.
This conference room didn’t have a view, just posters of some of the artists the firm represented, including A.J. I actually recognized a few of them. Coffee, water, and hot water for tea sat on a table in the corner.
A.J. was short and slender in a T-shirt and cargo pants. Her scalp was shaved almost bare, and she had a ring in one nostril. She wore dark glasses with purple lenses, and her eyes were half-closed, as if she were stoned or just sleepy after a long night. A can of Monster energy drink sat on the table in front of her. She didn’t look up when Monica introduced Rachel and me, but she managed to murmur a faint “Yeah, hi.”
“Okay.” Chapin put his arms on the table. “What do you have, Mr. Jurgen?”
I opened a folder. “DominickX appears to be a man named Dominick Slipko. Several years ago he was part of an early fan group for A.J. when she started getting attention at the local clubs. I have a picture—” I pulled out a photo I’d printed. It came from a fan website, and showed a younger A.J., with longer hair, standing next to a man with a thin beard in a T-shirt with her picture on it. “That’s from 2019, at a club called Amber, on Halsted.”
Chapin glanced at the photo, then passed it to A.J. She forced her eyes open and gazed down at it for a moment. “I remember that show. I think he was a partner in the place, but I don’t remember the picture.” She pushed the picture away.
“I don’t have a current address or location for him.” I held out another sheet of paper. “These are some places he’s lived, but there’s nothing in the past two or three years. One address belongs to his mother, so he might have moved there. What do you know about him?” I asked A.J. Chapin frowned, as if I was breaking some rule about talking to the talent directly.
She blinked, rubbing her scalp. “He was a little older than me. I don’t know. He—he knew a lot about me when I met him.”
“What did he know?” I asked. “What did you talk about?”
A.J. ‘s shook her head tiredly. “Just—stuff. He talked about my grandma. She gave me my first guitar, but that was in all the stories about me. Stuff about my songs that I never told anybody. He wasn’t creepy. I mean, more than anyone.”
“Do you want me to locate him?” I asked.
Chapin started to answer: “I think we can handle that from—”
“Yes.” A.J.’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I want—I don’t know if I want to talk to him. Yet. But I want to know where he is.”
Chapin, startled, looked at the lawyer. Heider seemed puzzled. Monica raised her eyebrows.
“Okay,” I said, speaking to A.J. “I’ll do what I can. The same rates will apply.”
Chapin didn’t argue. My hourly rate wouldn’t put much of a dent into the firm’s quarterly report.
“We’ll want this all to be kept confidential, of course,” Heider said. His tone warned of dire consequences if any of this leaked on social media.
“Naturally,” I promised.
Chapin gave me a stern look. “It’s for A.J.’s protection. Her welfare is very important to everyone.”
Her welfare. “Of course.”
Heider nodded, still skeptical of my discretion. Then he and Chapin stood up and left, leaving us with Monica and A.J.
“Are you all right, A.J.?” Monica asked softly.
She didn’t respond right away. Her head drooped, as if she were falling asleep. After a moment she nodded. “I’m fine.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Rachel said. “I’m not exactly a superfan, but I like your songs. The ones I’ve heard.”
For the first time A.J. looked up, meeting Rachel’s eyes. “Th-thanks.” For a moment I thought she might let Rachel shake her hand—I was hoping for that, actually—but instead she just looked at Monica and then down at the carpet again. “Let’s go.”
We left. Monica walked with A.J. behind us, talking quietly. I saw A.J. stumble once. Monica caught her, and they headed for Monica’s office as we found the elevators.
“Something’s off about her.” Rachel frowned.
“A.J.? What?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d say she’s depressed—she looks like she has some of the symptoms, and that would be understandable. But there was something else.”
“Demon? Possession?” I glanced around. No one was close enough to overhear me and question our sanity.
Again she shook her head. “I’d recognize a demon even without contact.” She’d encountered more than a few demons since she started helping me with my cases. “It was like something—missing. But I don’t know what.”
The elevator doors opened. “Maybe it was something to do with Dominick.”
“Maybe.” She pressed the button for the ground floor.
“I miss working with you,” I said as we descended.
She poked me with her elbow. “Me too. But I like my job.”
“At least you’re available for consultations. And other things.” I winked.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get any ideas. I still have paperwork, always. And you have to get cracking on finding Dominick.”
“Yes, boss.” I folded my arms and waited for the ground floor to arrive.
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