Page 21 of Stay Away from Him

Thank you for finding her! I just tagged her in the photo so hopefully she sees this. Melissa Burke please contact us! You are dating a murderer! Just look at the pinned post for this group. My DMs are always open.

Kelli’s DMs were more than just open , apparently, because just as Melissa read her comment, she got a message from her, popping up in the bottom corner of her screen.

Hey! Maybe you’ve seen the posts on our Justice for Rose group. I’d love to get in touch with you to talk.

Maybe Melissa should have listened to what Kelli had to say, but in the moment, all she could feel was a blind fury.

The women in the Justice for Rose Danver group—they all seemed to be women—might have thought they were helping Melissa, but everything she’d seen on the page so far was an invasion of privacy.

Her privacy. They wanted to convince her that Thomas was a killer, but right then it was Kelli Walker she felt most violated by, Kelli Walker who’d committed what felt like a crime against her.

Wasn’t it against the law to take someone’s picture without their consent, to post it online, to let a group of strangers loose on identifying you?

Maybe not, but it should have been. Breaking and entering was certainly illegal, at least—and as she looked at the messages laid out in front of her, the comments on the photo and the direct message, Melissa was seized by the sudden certainty that Kelli Walker was the one who’d snuck into her apartment, who’d left a hastily scrawled message of warning on her dining room table.

Melissa thought of calling the cops on Kelli—but what good would that do? She only had suspicion, no proof. A cop would shrug, ask her to call back when she had more.

Melissa put her cursor in the reply box.

Please stay away from me.

Kelli’s response came immediately.

Just look at what we have. The evidence we’ve gathered.

Melissa shook her head and let out a disbelieving gasp. The gall of this woman.

There are currently no charges against Thomas for anything. You’re the one who’s breaking the law, by harassing me. Leave me alone or you will be receiving a visit from the police.

The status on the message went to Read . Melissa waited, but no additional message came. Finally, Kelli was getting the hint.

Melissa slapped the laptop closed and started walking around the apartment, feeling the need to move.

But it was a small apartment; there was nowhere to go.

She went to the sliding door and gave it an angry pull, stepped onto the patio, let her feet carry her through the trees to the lake.

Melissa was still furious, feeling the violation of privacy on her body, a kind of film lying atop her skin.

She was hoping the lake would soothe her, the light lap of the waves carrying these feelings away, but it didn’t.

She ground the heels of her hands against her eyes, wishing for this angry energy to crest and break.

Wishing herself to cry, to let it out. But the tears didn’t come, and when she let her hands fall back to her sides, she realized it wasn’t just anger at Kelli she was feeling.

There was curiosity there too, and dread.

Curiosity at the evidence Kelli and the Justice for Rose Danver Facebook group claimed to have. Dread at what it might be. Whether it would change the way she looked at Thomas.

“Goddammit,” she said aloud, resignation in her voice. “Goddamn you.”

She turned and walked back to the house. Back to her laptop.

And back to the Facebook group, where she scrolled to the top of the feed. To the long pinned post drafted by—who else?—Kelli Walker.

Welcome to Justice for Rose Danver. Rose was a close friend of mine, which is why I started this group.

I and most of the group members here firmly believe that Rose’s husband, Thomas Danver, is responsible for her disappearance.

Thomas Danver is a murderer. We call on the county prosecutor to reinstate the charges against him immediately and bring this dangerous criminal to trial.

Before she disappeared, Rose told me she was afraid of her husband.

Thomas tormented her mentally and emotionally.

He undermined her, demeaned her, and gaslit her until she could no longer trust her own mind.

He sowed paranoia, self-hatred, depression, and substance abuse in her—then used these things to portray her as crazy.

He turned her own children against her. And at the end—maybe all along, without my knowing—he was physically violent toward her.

I personally sat next to an emergency room bed with Rose, her face lacerated and bruised from what he did to her.

I called the police and tried to convince her to press charges against him.

But she refused. She was too afraid. Afraid he’d kill her.

I have shared what I know with the police. But still the county prosecutor refuses to bring this case to trial. Why? What does Thomas Danver have on you?

This group has obtained more evidence. The prosecutor’s office has tried to withhold it from us, claiming that the investigation into Rose’s disappearance and presumed murder is still active.

But a source who was involved in the investigation into Thomas Danver has leaked information to us. Here is what we know.

Aside from her murderer, I was the last person to see Rose Danver.

We met for lunch. On that day, she told me that she’d made an important decision, that she was going to leave Thomas, that she was going to the police to take out a restraining order against him.

I told her she was making the right decision.

That was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Thomas Danver went on a trip late that night, driving to a remote cabin that he and Rose owned in northern Minnesota. He claims he went there looking for Rose, to see if that was where she’d gone missing.

We also know that an hour before he took this trip, he purchased three items at a nearby hardware store. A tarp, rope, a shovel. Why, Dr. Danver? (Or should I say Dr. DANGER?) Because he was preparing to bury Rose’s body.

During this trip, Thomas turned off his phone and his car’s GPS. Again, why? So he could not be traced. So the police could not find the place where he buried Rose.

And finally, we know that before he came back to the Twin Cities, Thomas briefly turned his phone back on in the vicinity of his cabin, to email a cleaning service asking for a deep clean of his house, with special focus on the kitchen floor.

He specifically asked for bleach to be used.

Why? Because when Rose told him of her plans to leave him, he killed her in a fit of rage, hastily cleaned up the evidence, and then hoped that a professional cleaning would remove all traces of blood.

After he returned from his trip, he reported Rose missing.

By this time, she had already been dead two days.

And by the time the police began to suspect that Rose was dead and began to investigate Thomas, she was already buried in a field somewhere.

The house had already been professionally cleaned—though they still found traces of Rose’s blood in the kitchen.

It’s hard to get rid of blood completely.

With the blood, Thomas’s hardware store purchases, his delay in reporting Rose missing, and the testimony I provided about Thomas’s abuse, they charged him and were preparing to bring the case to trial. But then they dropped the charges.

WHY?

Nausea grew in Melissa’s stomach as she read Kelli’s post. Lawrence hadn’t shared any of this when he told her about Thomas’s past—didn’t tell her much about the evidence against him except to say that it was weak, circumstantial.

This felt like more than that. Maybe it wasn’t a slam-dunk case, but it still looked bad for Thomas.

Bad for Melissa —the woman who was gullible enough, credulous enough, to go on a date with him. To bring him into her bed.

She took deep breaths and tried to remind herself of what she knew.

Namely, that Thomas wasn’t in jail. He was walking around, a free man.

In spite of the evidence against him, he hadn’t been convicted of a crime.

In fact, as Kelli admitted at the end of her post, the county attorney dropped the charges against him.

She claimed not to know why, but Melissa was sure the prosecutor had good reasons for dropping the case.

Maybe the evidence was weaker than Kelli Walker presented it.

Maybe Thomas had a good explanation for all of it.

Who should Melissa trust—Thomas, the man who’d been so kind to her and her son, who she found so attractive, who a dear friend and her own gut told her was safe and could never do what he was being accused of?

Or Kelli Walker? A woman she didn’t even know?

A meddlesome, nosy woman who spied on her, took her photo, posted it on social media without her knowing?

A woman who might have even broken into her home?

The only person Melissa was pretty certain had committed a crime here was Kelli .

There was also the fact that Rose had had a stalker. That was the information Thomas and his defense attorney had given to the prosecutors to make them drop the case. Thomas’s wife was being threatened by someone, someone who wasn’t Thomas, and instead of taking it seriously, the police ignored it.

Kelli Walker hadn’t mentioned anything about that, Melissa noted. Shouldn’t a group dedicated to justice for a missing and possibly murdered woman have been looking at all the suspects?

Melissa expanded the comments on Kelli’s pinned post, looking for some mention of other suspects.

There was nothing in the comments other than expressions of outrage against Thomas, so she began scrolling through the group feed, looking for other popular posts.

She got about three posts deep before she found it:

What about the stalker theory? Has this group looked into that?

The top comment under the post was Kelli’s, with dozens of likes on it.

The stalker theory is complete and utter bullshit. It’s something Dr. Danger and his high-priced lawyer cooked up out of thin air.

Melissa cocked her head, suspicious. Something wasn’t right in how quickly Kelli dismissed the question. Why was she so fixated on Thomas as the killer, and why wouldn’t she consider any other theories?

Just then, Melissa’s phone buzzed on the counter. She glanced at it to see messages coming in from Thomas.

Hey. Thinking about you today. And about last night.

Melissa felt a flush of warmth spread through her body as she thought of Thomas in her bed, peeling her clothes away from her body, putting his hands on her. In spite of herself, in spite of everything she was learning, she wanted him back, wanted him here—and wanted him now.

I want to see you again.

Melissa sucked in a breath and held it while she typed out a response.

I don’t know. This is going a little fast.

The dots appeared, and the message took a while to come.

I know. And I’m sorry. We can slow it down. As slow as you want. Just meet me. Now that I’ve had you, I can’t go a day without you. I’m addicted, Melissa.

Melissa’s held breath came out as a laugh, light and airy. She’d never had a man come on so strong before—never had a man who’d claimed to be this attracted to her, to want her this badly, to be addicted to her. It was intoxicating.

Maybe she was addicted too.

Meet me at the park, Thomas messaged before Melissa could think of a response. The playground. I promised Bradley, remember?

You did, she responded.

So let’s do it. After I get off work.

Melissa paused before responding, thinking it through.

She needed to be careful, to look at all the angles.

Her body, her gut, were telling her one thing: telling her to trust Thomas, to trust her attraction to him.

Telling her that the way she felt about him couldn’t be a mistake, couldn’t be a lie.

But her mind was telling her something else entirely: that Thomas might be dangerous.

That she should take the evidence against him seriously, even if it was being presented by a woman she didn’t know or trust.

Bringing her son to see a suspected murderer was not something a responsible person—a responsible mother —would do.

Then again, a park was a public place. It would be safe.

Maybe, Melissa reasoned, she could do one more meeting with Thomas. One more opportunity to figure out what she really thought of him.

She tapped out a response.

Okay. Tell me when and where.