Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

And what else did waiters do? They whisked away credit cards in little leather receipt books, discreetly running the cards behind the bar or in a back room so that the restaurant patrons didn’t have to hear the constant chugging of the computerized credit card machine, vomiting out receipt after receipt, authorizing dollars and adding the amounts to a pile of plastic.

An old client of mine used to substitute one credit card for another, giving him a few days of use before the cardholder realized that the platinum Visa in his wallet didn’t have his name on it. Ruth-Anne’s stalker could have done that, or he could have done something even simpler.

If he was a waiter standing in the back of a restaurant, he could have copied the card number, the expiration date, and the name onto his order pad. Then he could have used those card numbers for phone orders with places like florists. We ran the cards, but we never checked that the person on the phone was the actual owner of the card.

We never checked because who in their right mind would steal a credit card and order flowers with it?

At least, that was the assumption. And like all assumptions, it was wrong.

I had a full presentation for Detectives Whittig and Barret when they returned: a print-up of the video image, right down to the shoes, faxes of invoices — all made out to Ruth-Anne Grant, a list of restaurants nearby that required its staff to wear silk suits, and a suggested theory as to what had actually happened.

I actually had her stalker’s name, but I didn’t tell them because I still knew a few things about the law. Any good defense attorney would make it impossible for the prosecutor to use evidence gathered by a citizen like me.

I had made a print of the best video image and showed it around. It only took me a few days to find Ruth-Anne Grant’s stalker. His name was Glenn Haines, and he worked at an upscale restaurant between my place and Odele’s. It was called Chez Nouveau.

Maybe I kept the name for security. Maybe I did it so that I could make certain that Whittig and Barret got the right guy. Or maybe I did it because I had an inclination to take care of the matter myself.

Even though I never did. That had been Ruth-Anne Grant’s mistake. They indicted her on first-degree murder charges the day before I handed over the stalker information. Whittig and Barret seemed so uninterested in catching the stalker that I thought at first they weren’t going to follow up.

But they did — not to find the stalker — but to solidify their case against Ruth-Anne Grant. While I’d been thinking like a defense attorney who would use the information to get a jury to acquit, Whittig and Barret were building a case.

If they could prove that Ruth-Anne Grant had a stalker, they had motive for first-degree murder.

Of course, Whittig and Barret never told me that. They just thanked me for the information, did the additional research, and arrested Haines. Then the District Attorney’s office, always smarter than I wanted to give them credit for, got an earlier trial date for him.

If he pleaded to the charge or got found guilty, they’d have a paper record for Ruth-Anne Grant’s motive.

I couldn’t argue because I got Haines off the street. The only good thing in all of this was that Haines wouldn’t hassle anyone else. His stalking days would end — at least until he got out of prison.

But it hasn’t ended for me.

I dream about Ruth-Anne Grant sometimes. She never speaks. All she does is slam that box of roses down on my counter and then she looks at me, as if I’m the one who stalked her, hurt her, and ultimately destroyed her life.

When I wake up, I try to tell myself that she made the choice. She was the one who didn’t do her research to see if Dwight Rhodes had sent her all those flowers. Instead, she had taken her gun and waited for him in the hallway, shooting him before he could even get close.

Her choice, not mine.

But those thoughts never comfort me. Because I remember how harassment feels, how it makes you so very helpless, and how stopping it seems impossible.

And I know how terror feels — not for weeks and months and years, like she went through, but just for a brief instant, when those teenagers, waving those semiautomatics, came into my store and shouted, Mister, hey, Mister, open the goddamn cash register.

I haven’t been the same since. I still tense when a kid under twenty comes in, and I look over my shoulder when I lock up at night, and I keep my security tapes long past the dates the security company says it’s necessary.

I know what terror feels like, and it makes me wonder what I would do to those kids if they kept coming into my store, never hurting me, always threatening me.

And if I ran into them on the street — or, God forbid, some idiot told me their names — I couldn’t guarantee, even now, that I wouldn’t seek them out and give them a taste, just a taste, of what they gave me.