Sarah Armstrong - 02 - Blood Lines Read Online Free PDF

you, how I can help you become a better composer. Cassidy, I know that our paths are destined to cross. I see in you what no one else does. I know that I am the only one who truly understands you. I’m the only one who knows who you are and what you need. We have a common bond that transcends our mutual love of music. But how am I to explain all of this to you, to introduce myself and tell you what I can do for you, unless you meet with me?”
    There were a few more letters, before Peterson’s final one. That correspondence was a full twenty-six pages. The first fifteen, as with his earlier letters, were typed, but the remainder was hand-written, single-spaced, with additions scratched into the margins. In the last half-dozen or so pages, Peterson held his pen so tight, pushed so hard, that he dug into the paper. It was obvious that his initial interest in Ms. Collins had digressed into an angry obsession.
    “Listen you little bitch,” it began. “I’ve written and written, but you’ve ignored every letter. What am I supposed to think? What do I have to say before you understand that I must meet you? If you think your refusal to answer my letters will keep me away, you are wrong. I know we are meant to be together. A young girl like youneeds someone to guide her. Think of me as your teacher. I know what you need. I know what you want, and it’s what only I can give you. I am the only one who understands you.”
    By the end of that final letter, Peterson’s handwriting was nearly unintelligible, little more than a scrawl. His words were a string of expletives, attacking Collins, threatening her. “I am not responsible for what I will do to you if you ignore my letters. I am not accountable. The blame is all yours,” he ended. “You will meet with me. You will see me, or the repercussions will be tragic.”
    The day that last letter hit Barron’s desk, he contacted Jim Herald, a Rice University police officer. Sergeant Herald pulled up Peterson’s school records and discovered that he’d been seen frequently in the university clinic, but the available records, due to privacy constraints, didn’t indicate why. Herald then learned that Peterson’s supervising professor had repeatedly contacted authorities, alarmed by her student’s odd behavior, including angry outbursts. When Herald tried to contact Peterson, he found out that the grad student had checked himself into a private psychiatric facility.
    Three weeks later, Herald heard Peterson was discharged and on campus.
    When Herald went to the Shepherd School and knocked on a practice room door, the student amiably invited the officer in. Throughout their conversation, Peterson appeared forthcoming, explaining that a hospital psychiatrist had diagnosed his condition and prescribed meds. “Mr. Peterson was rational and cooperative. He was well-groomed and calm,” Herald wrote. “He assured me that his obsession with Cassidy Collins has ended now that he is properly medicated, and that she would have no further correspondence from him. He asked me to explain the situation to Mr. Barron and Ms. Collins and to apologize for the concern his actions caused.”
    When Herald contacted Peterson’s professor, she reported that her gifted student had returned to his prior commitment to hisstudies and his music. At the end of his report, Officer Herald predicted Ms. Collins no longer had anything to fear from Justin Peterson.
    Then, one week later, in mid-November, the stalker made his initial approach to Collins in the form of a text message she received while in a restaurant with a friend: “I look @ U & I C blood. Enjoying lunch? Argus.”
    “That must have ruined her appetite,” I whispered, although there was no one to hear.
    Curious about the stalker’s name, I keyed “Argus” into the Internet on my office computer and came up with Wikipedia: “From Greek mythology . . . a giant with a hundred eyes” that never slept. According to legend, Hera, jealous