Chapter Twelve

You park outside the home of Walter Stone.

It is two in the morning. The house is dark other than the dim glow from a computer monitor coming from the downstairs den. Walter is fifty-seven years old. His house is a three-bedroom Cape Cod of aluminum siding and faded brick on Grunauer Place in Fair Lawn. He has two sons, both in their twenties. One just had a baby, his first grandson. Walter is at his keyboard. He got laid off last April. The Foodtown supermarket he had worked at for thirty years shut their doors, and they won't find new work for an older white guy, no matter how good he is. That's what he tells people. It's the truth, in his mind. His wife is named Doris. She plays pickleball three times a week and does her best to find ways to keep out of the house most days. Right now, she is upstairs sleeping. After dinner, that's where Doris always goes. Upstairs. Walter stays downstairs. They're both good with that.

You sit outside in the Ford Fusion. You wear gloves and a ski mask. You have a gun on your lap.

Walter, you assume, is still giddily typing away.

He thinks he is safe behind internet anonymity.

Walter started off on social media like most people his age—poking fun at it, wary of the time suck, thinking it's something lazy kids do. He hates the new generations—Generation X or Y or Z or Alphas or whatever—thinking they're all soft and spoiled and that they'd rather suck off the tit of his taxes than do a day's honest work. Walter's youngest son Kevin is a bit like that. Into computers and video games and whatnot. A total waste of time, if you ask Walt. Still, at some point, Kevin signed his dad up with a Twitter account first. Not sure why anymore. Guess so Walt could see what the fuss was about. Maybe use it as a free news feed or something. Walter would be damned before he gave any money to the local paper or watched the lies on lamestream TV. Once he started checking out the site, well, maybe it was because Kevin created his account or maybe there was some weird algorithm, but Walter's Twitter feed filled up with tweet after tweet of the dumbest, most vile, na?ve load of bullcrap you could ever imagine. How did people get so dumb? None of these idiots posting all day have a clue how the real world works. The only thing they were more full of than shit? Themselves. Man, they all thought they were the cat's ass, didn't they? Endlessly pontificating and condescending and yeah, Walter knew what those words meant. And don't even get him started on the thumb-up-the-ass, brain-dead women. Jesus H. Get a boyfriend or something. All whining anytime a guy said boo to them or bumped into their elbow. Man, that got Walter's goat. Everything a guy does nowadays pisses them off. Heck, just talking to them was an "act of violence." Oh, and not talking to them—ignoring them? That was disrespectful and sexist. When Walter was young, a girl liked to get a wink and a nod. It was flattering. Try that now and she'll blow a rape whistle in your face. I mean, get a grip, sweetheart. You're not all that.

That's kind of what happened at Foodtown too.

Once that foreign chick Katiana started working the deli counter—Katiana who on her very first day smiled at Walter and touched his arm, clearly flirting with him even though he sported a wedding band clear as day—ever since she complained to HR, it was over for him. That's how it is. No one cares about the other side. A woman complains about you, you're cooked. And all Walt did was try to be nice. Katiana was a recent divorcée (smart guy her ex, escaping that bear trap of a bitch) and so Walt figured he'd make her feel better about herself, compliment her figure and whatnot. She wore tight clothes for a reason, no? Suddenly his transfer to the store in Pompton Lakes, poof, gone. Oh, they didn't fire him. They let him stay until the store closed. Three weeks' severance after thirty years. A week's pay per decade. Bastards. And now, months later, here on this goddamn computer, all these smug online bitches just like Katiana are spouting off these brain-dead rules about how men should act in defiance of all natural laws, as though the world just started yesterday. Jesus H. One bitch who calls herself "Fit Amy" if you can believe that, she keeps going on and on about how she's scared to get into an elevator alone with a man—that, get this, the man should wait and take the next elevator if he sees a woman is alone in one. Seriously? And so Walt wants to lay a little knowledge on her. Not a big deal, right? He sets up a second account because if you just tell the truth in this world, they come after you. That's how it is now. Fuck freedom of speech. You want to go online and tell this man-hating elevator rider, "You're so ugly you'd be grateful if a man raped you on an elevator," well, the truth hurts now, doesn't it, sweetheart?

So Walt, a smart guy, a quick learner, made up a fake account with the name Rotten Swale. Not because he was afraid to speak his mind. Not Walt. He wants everything out in the open, believes in the free flow of ideas, so that stupid feminazis get drowned in an avalanche of logic. But that's not how it works anymore. Not in today's sissified world. These chicks are zealots. If they find out who he is—"dox" is what they call it—they'll write to Stop-N-Shop or that new Green Grocery opening up in Ridgewood and threaten to boycott or sue or whatever if Walter gets a job there. That, my fellow Americans, is how nuts these people are. So yeah, he sets up the anonymous account on a whim. Like he won't really use it. That's what Walter thinks until the desire—no, the need—to set these bitches straight is too strong to resist. So that's what he does. Or should he say, Rotten Swale does. They get an earful of the truth from Rotten Swale. They may not listen. But they'll hear. And that one chick who calls herself Fit Amy, that my-shit-don't-stink profile with her fucking bio talking about BLM and rainbow flags, this chick with these giant knockers and the shirt buttoned low, always bending forward into the camera during her rants, inviting men to stare down her blouse, and so Rotten Swale tells her in subsequent comments that a) "No one would watch if you didn't have a big rack" and then b) "You're a dumb lying whore who sucks cocks at the truck stop" and then c) "Your seven-year-old daughter deserves to get ass raped," which, well, Walter doesn't really believe, but you need to say something that will get their attention, and boy, does this chick need a good solid fucking from someone like Walter, from a real man who will pin her down and show her what's what.

This goes on for a year.

Walt posts more and more. Worse and worse. Rotten Swale gets blocked after a while, but—no problem—Walter just takes on another identity. Late Towners. And then other. Seattle Worn. On and on. He remains anonymous.

That's what he thinks.

But you, sitting outside his house in the dark with the gun—you found Rotten Swale.

It took time to track down his real identity, but not as much as people might think. The Rotten Swale account could still be accessed. You check through all the posts. Not much there to give you a clue—Walter has learned to be careful—but one time he posts a photo taken through his front windshield driving past a sex shop he claimed was "ruining our neighborhood." Dumb. A quick google told you the shop was on Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey. Okay, so now you know approximately where he lives.

Next step: Go to the bottom of his followers list. That's where the first profiles someone follows are to be found. You can learn a lot there because they are often people you know in real life. Walter had followed these people because when he set up the account, he fooled himself into believing he wasn't a crackpot, that this account would be legit in its own way.

This was a fairly common practice with budding stalkers.

When you look at Rotten Swale's first followers—when you cross-check these profiles against Rotten Swale's activity—well, this is when you hit bingo. Rotten Swale hit the "like" button on several Instagram posts by women he follows. Two posts are for women named Kathy Corbera and Jess Taylor, both of whom live in the Paramus, NJ, area—one in River Vale, one in Midland Park. You do a bit more digging and find a connection. The women follow one another plus a page called "Glen Rock High School 1980s alumni." Okay, cool. You go to that page. Now you search for the men who follow both that alumni page and Kathy Corbera and Jess Taylor.

You find three men who fit that criterion.

Closer.

So now you're down to three men. One, Peter Thomas, lives in New York City. One, Walter Stone, lives in Fair Lawn, close to Paramus. One, Brian Martin, still lives in Glen Rock, also close to Paramus.

Now you take a step back.

Why did this guy choose the name Rotten Swale?

It's never totally random. There is always a reason. And the reason here was easy once you had it down to three people. Rotten Swale, Late Towners, Seattle Worn.

They were all anagrams for Walter Stone.

How clever.

Game, set, match.

The problem for you then is a simple one. Walter Stone, the stalker you want to kill, lives in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Amy Howell, the stalkee you'd like to frame, lives in Salem, Oregon.

How can you pin Stone's murder on her?

Here you get lucky. Amy Howell has a brother named Edward Pascoe who resides in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey—a twenty-minute car ride from where you are now parked.

You like this. The one-step-removed killer. Something a little different. Something that requires new skills.

Edward Pascoe has a pretty sophisticated alarm system at his house. You debate waiting to find a way to break in to gather DNA and use his car—your semi–modus operandi—but you come up with something that will work just as well. He drives a 2020 white Ford Fusion. It's a very common make, so you rent one under a fake ID. Pascoe parks in his driveway, which does not have the same security as the house. An hour ago, you sneaked up that driveway and switched his license plates with the ones on your rental. When this is over, you'll drive back to the house and switch them back. No one will be the wiser. Your white Ford Fusion with Pascoe's plates will have been spotted and recorded by several street cams during the drive.

Pretty clever, no?

You also have printouts of your legwork in figuring out that Rotten Swale, the troll threatening Pascoe's sister with violence, is Walter Stone. They'll find that paperwork hidden behind Pascoe's garage. And finally, the closer: Before switching the license plates back, you'll drive the Ford Fusion to the Woodcliff Lake reservoir, making sure the license plate is picked up on CCTV, park the car, and toss the murder weapon into the water.

That should be more than enough for the police, but despite what you see on television, the police are not omniscient. So if all of this isn't enough for law enforcement to home in on Edward Pascoe as the culprit, if a few days pass and nothing happens, you'll make sure the police get an anonymous tip, a little nudge. In truth, you almost hope for that. You get to be involved again.

And you love that.

You leave the car door unlocked. You go to the window. You see Walter Stone in front of his computer. The lights are off, but the blue from the monitor illuminates his face into a ghoul mask. You push the barrel against the window opening. He is smiling, looking like some grotesque monster as he types away. You knock on the window. He looks up.

That's when he dies.

For Walter Stone, the horror is over.

For Edward Pascoe, it's just begun.