Bleed

Chapter 12: Just so you know

Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

The police arrived quickly. Ana started with the latest episode and traced her history with Christian all the way back to her stumbling into his office for the first time. While she was talking and listening to herself telling two uniformed police officers about her – so far – fairly disastrous love life, it occurred to her how inevitable everything seemed. The beginning of their relationship had been screwed up and the ending was bound to be too. How could she have missed this? Had she been so blinded by his beauty and the sexual attraction? Maybe if I'd had something to compare the relationship to, Ana mused. She snapped back to attention when the elder of the police officers asked her a question.

'On our way here, we checked with dispatch to see if there had been any other recent B&Es in the neighbourhood, but nothing came up. There was no mention of a previous break-in involving your apartment. You did not report the hair braiding incident?'

Ana shook her head. She was sure that her failure to report the crime – a matter she'd lied about earlier that week – would garner a reaction from Kate, but her best friend remained stoical and silent. The police officer nodded and jotted something down in his little notebook. Elliot showed him the photos he'd taken of Sawyer following Ana.

'Why'd you think he came back?' the younger officer inquired of Ana. She shrugged.

'I mean, he must have known you'd change the locks, right?' he reasoned. He sounded intrigued, bordering on excitement, but trying to tone it down for her sake.

'I cannot even begin to imagine how his mind works,' Ana said. The young cop looked her over as if he inspecting her for hidden compartments. She thought she understood. That was kind of how she'd felt before all of this. As if you needed to be special to deserve this amount of fixation. As if normal people didn't have stalkers. As if the victim somehow should have been to blame. Otherwise things like this just randomly happened to ordinary people and how could that be?

'What will you do now?' Ana asked.

'Not much, I'm afraid. There's not much we can do,' the older cop answered. He indicated the blood on the window.

'We'll process that. We'll also take the vehicle and verify that it's registered to him. Might get a temporary restraining order out of that, if you're lucky.'

The cop appeared unhappy with his choice of words and amended them to, 'if you want.'

'Why wouldn't I want that?' Ana inquired, genuinely curious. Eagerly, the young cop raised his hand. The older cop smiled slightly – which caused the young cop to sheepishly drop his hand – before turning to Ana again.

'To be honest, a restraining order could achieve the opposite of its intended effect,' he explained. Those are a lot of fancy words for what essentially means 'it might backfire', Ana thought.

'That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?' Elliot interjected.

'Yep,' the police office admitted. He sounded weary. Like he had little faith in "the system." Ana processed this. Naively, she'd hoped that – with the blood and the car – they'd have enough to arrest Christian. What did any of it prove, though? That he had smashed a window of the apartment where his ex was staying? That a car belonging to Christian had been near the apartment where his ex was staying? She couldn't even prove that he had broken in before.

'What can I do?' she inquired, allowing the reality of the situation to seep into her bones.

'Report further incidents to us,' the older cop urged. And there it was again. Like Jason, this man was almost perversely convinced that Christian would continue to wage his campaign of intimidation and harassment.

'Cut all ties with him,' the cop went on, as if he was ticking off items of a how-to-deal-with-stalkers checklist. 'You've been clear. You've told him that you want him to leave you alone. There's nothing more to say.'

Kate – having kept quiet for so long that Ana had almost forgotten that she was there – chimed in then, in fine sarcastic form.

'So, just ignore him? Like a schoolyard bully?'

Ana would have been embarrassed, but she mostly agreed. What was the police doing, giving her advice on how to handle a lunatic? The older cop sighed.

'Your anger is entirely warranted, ma'am. It is ridiculous that I am telling your friend to please take care of herself instead of actually doing something. Unfortunately, there is a limit to what we can do. And, yes, in a way, generally our advice is to ignore stalkers to some extent. Contact is what they crave.'

The young cop piped up.

'You know that show business saying? There's no such thing as bad publicity. Well, that's how stalkers think too. To them there's no such thing as negative contact. Any form of communication will probably be perceived as encouragement and might provoke him to approach you.'

'You have to understand that you can't reason with stalkers,' the older cop elaborated. 'They hear what they want to hear. He might interpret your responses in such a way that they fit with the narrative he has created. If that's true, it doesn't matter what you say or do: it will only confirm and reinforce his beliefs. Contact accomplishes nothing. It might even fan the flames, so to speak.'

He stopped talking for a second, before resuming; reluctantly, it seemed.

'Then again, he may be able to make your silence fit his delusion too. That's the problem with these kind of situations: there is no right response. Any reaction from you might trigger him, but your lack of reaction might also do that.'

'The truth, and this is not something you'll like to hear, is that the more his behaviour escalates, the easier it will be to lock him up,' the young cop added. That earned him a reproachful glance from his elder.

'Don't scare the girl.'

'I'm sorry.'

Ana waved that away. She'd rather have the truth, however frightening, than a comforting lie.

'This might get worse?' she asked, directing her question at the older cop. He nodded, slowly.

'I think that there's definitely a chance that Christian's behaviour might escalate, yes. It doesn't always happen, but it does happen. Therefore, I also advise you to inform others of what you're going through. Family, friends, co-workers etc. Otherwise they might inadvertently aid Christian. Improve your personal protection. Keep safe. And, finally, compile evidence. Save emails and calls from him. Compile a journal of events. Build a case. My colleague is right: the depressing reality is that it is notoriously difficult to convict someone just for stalking. However, that doesn't mean that we're not going to try.'

The five of them drank tea. Ana really could have gone for some coffee, some serious caffeine, but she knew that this wasn't a good idea. She felt exhausted and wired at the same time.

'I'll drive you to work,' Elliot offered after the police had left. Ana had a brief, but terrifying vision of another death-defying ride and shivered.

'I'll ask Jason. Taylor. Jason,' she stuttered, feeling her cheeks grow hot under Kate's amused gaze. Ana had already dialled his number before she realised that it was still in the middle of the night. He was remarkably cool about it. He didn't seem to mind that she'd woken him up and that she was basically asking him to be her chauffeur/bodyguard without any mention of pay. The only thing he wasn't cool about was what Christian had done.

'You'll be my own personal Kevin Costner?' Ana joked. He chuckled while she blushed at what she'd implied.

'I'll do my best. Try to get some sleep,' Jason recommended. They agreed upon a time he'd pick her up and ended the call. Ana talked with Elliot and Kate for a couple of minutes about what she'd say at work and how she was not looking forward to calling her parents. They taped some cardboard over the broken window. They said goodnight and retired to their respective bedrooms.

Ana stared at the ceiling. She should have asked what the police meant by 'escalate.' Somehow she didn't think they had meant more flowers, phone calls or even break-ins. She turned onto her left side and closed her eyes. Her mind conjured up newspaper stories about stalkers. She immediately opened her eyes again and turned onto her other side.

'Just let me get through this week,' she whispered.

It was very early Thursday morning. She would see Christian twice before the week was over and their second meeting would end in blood.