The Watcher Read online

  I asked him everything. What his real name was. Where he was from. Where he had worked. If he’d been married.

  “That is my real name,” he said. I didn’t believe him.

  He was from Georgia.

  He worked on cars.

  He’d never been married.

  I went to the car that first time, then waited a few days to go back. And then the days got closer together until I met him almost every day. I knew it was weird. But some days, having somewhere else to be between work and home felt like a balm.

  I told him all the books I’d read and loved and why. I liked the sound of his voice. It was deep and reedy, and there was something old-fashioned about the way he said certain words. I couldn’t tell if he had an accent. I liked the smell of his clothes, his cigarettes, the way his hands moved and his mouth when he talked. He was smart like no one else I’d ever known, and something underneath the surface said to me that he was deeply broken, in ways I couldn’t imagine.

  He told me he’d retired early. If I saw him in town, he’d nod in recognition, but he never stopped to talk to me.

  Summer is a brief hot second up north. After Labor Day, the nights got cold. Not long after, the grass was dusted with frost in the morning.

  My mother let me drive her truck only if it was raining. Otherwise, I took my bike. She didn’t want to be detectable at all, and having the truck parked at the diner was predictable and traceable. I’d throw a flannel shirt on over my work shirt, ride my bike down Mill Street to the shortcut, and duck in, my wheels hitting the trail with a puff of dirt.

  I’d sat in the car by myself that first night, and some nights after. But mostly, he knew when to expect me, or he saw me go by his kitchen window. He seemed to like to give me time to smoke a cigarette and have a drink before he walked out through the backyard and into the woods after me.

  * * *

  I leaned on a pine tree on my way into the car, and my hand was sticky with sap. I sat rubbing it, smoking, waiting. I felt too restless to read, and it was dim in the forest.

  When he came, Baby Jane saw me rubbing my hand, and reached for it.

  “You need alcohol,” he said. “That’s the only thing that’ll get it out.” That was the night I asked him his real name.

  He raised his eyes and gave me a look that said I’d never know. I thought he looked different each time I saw him, and I blamed the failing light of fall, the heavy tree shadow, the early dark.

  “Baby Jane is my real name,” he said, and smiled. I thought his eyes were a blue I’d never seen.

  I tried to touch his cheekbone, and he flinched.

  I thought I would break the seats inside that old car if I could just put my hands on the sides of his face and look at him.

  “Can we go inside?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  “Do you live with someone?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I felt small.

  But then he asked, “Do you?”

  I hesitated. No one ever asked me. My mouth went dry. “Just my mom,” I said, and he nodded.

  “I have to go,” he said after that, his eyes flat. But he waited. He sat there waiting for me to say the last thing. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want it to be over yet.

  “How did you know who I was?” I asked.

  “I pay attention.”

  He got out. He disappeared between the pine trees, and his shoes didn’t make a sound. I could have followed him, but I sat still, breathing hard, my heart knocking in my chest, thinking I’d ruined something, that I’d broken the spell. And then I didn’t see him again for three days.

  * * *

  At home, I woke up to a stranger in the yard. My mother and the baby slept hard, in her closed room with the red curtains drawn. They might have been up half the night. I never knew. My mother had never been an early riser.

  I heard the truck, and I heard hammering, and I saw him on the TV surveillance, a big guy, putting a sign in the yard. Sometimes men came through for maintenance, to take care of a downed tree or clear other storm damage on the trails. But this was right in our yard.

  I went to the porch, barefoot, cold, and lit a cigarette. “Can I help you?” I called to him.

  He was over fifty, with a moustache. His truck had a logo on the side I couldn’t quite read from there. He stepped forward and handed me a flyer .

  Tax Auctions.

  The sign in the yard read PUBLIC AUCTION, NOVEMBER 29, 9AM.

  “What the fuck is this?” I barked at him.

  “Tax auctions,” he said, and shrugged. “You must owe something.”

  I looked at the flyer. Ours wasn’t the only address listed.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I yelped.

  “I don’t know, son,” he said. “Call the number. I’m just putting up the signs.”

  When he pulled out, I took the ugly black-and-yellow sign from the dirt and tucked it behind the house.

  My mother had heard me, and she was up inside, making coffee, and Birdie all at once had like eleven Barbie dolls out on the floor, in various states of undress. She had one Ken doll that she called the angel. She would sometimes fly him around the room.

  “Who was here?” my mother asked.

  “The county?” I said.

  She paled so hard she looked green. She clicked the stove on and set the percolator to boil.

  I hated conversations about money. I just wanted to make enough to cover everything and never have to talk about it.

  “Do we owe money?” I said.

  “Oh fuck,” she said, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  I stepped past Birdie into the kitchen so she wouldn’t hear. My mother rooted around in drawers, in the cupboard, looking for old mail. I paid the bills usually. But everything I paid was utilities. There was no mortgage. My grandparents had owned the house outright.

  “Fuck,” she said again, digging into the junk drawer that overflowed with matchbooks and balls of string, markers, marbles, seashells and rocks. “Here,” she said, pulling out a rat-edged white paper that had the sides ripped off. Behind it were similar notices that hadn’t even been opened, letters from the county, letters from real estate companies, hand-addressed to Mrs. Pearl Jenkins.

  The notice listed our address, my mother’s name, and the auction date, and stated fifty-seven thousand dollars in back taxes.

  I didn’t know anyone who made fifty-seven thousand dollars a year, let alone owed it all at once.

  I watched my mother reach in the side cupboard for a pill and take it without water.

  “Have you ever paid the taxes?” I asked.

  She only sort of twitched her head.

  “I mean, since Grandma left?” Never mind, I said, and left the paper on the counter and walked away from her. Birdie was singing in the living room, above her the giant screen of security cameras from outside: trees, the path to the parking lot, the side yard, and a hiker going by with a dog.

  “Shan,” my mother called from the kitchen doorway. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “No, we won’t,” I answered. “I might, but you won’t.” And I understood all at once what she meant by running, that she’d be gone, with her precious Bird, and I’d be left to figure all this shit out on my own, homeless if I couldn’t do it. I watched Birdie trip across the living room floor on her toes, the angel doll flying high and then swooping in to pick up one of the scattered girls and carry her off.

  FIVE: KATERI

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17

  Kateri has to wait until the next day to see the girl. In the morning, she sends Hurt back into the woods with a search team that includes dogs, and Kateri sits by the girl’s bedside, her little body dwarfed in the big bed. In the dull blue hospital light, her hair appears like rusted metal.

  Kateri picks up her chart. They have left her name as Jane Doe, date of birth unknown. Estimated age five years. Height 38 inches, weight 38 pounds. No known allergies. BP 90/60. Pulse 115.

&n
bsp; Little rabbit, Kateri thinks.

  She’s on a slow drip that Kateri assumes still contains a sedative. An orderly comes in at seven thirty, and Kateri drops the chart back on the foot of the bed. He has the little girl’s breakfast. He opens the curtains, turns on the overhead light, all of it, an assault of brightness and smell.

  “Breakfast, sweet pea,” he says. He raises up the head of the bed. Her little shoulders swim in the pediatric gown she wears. Birdie’s eyes open and lock on Kateri.

  “Who are you?” she asks, all at once alert.

  “I’m Detective Fisher,” she says, “but you can call me Kateri if you like.”

  Birdie looks at the tray in front of her. They have brought her dry toast and a juice box, a Styrofoam bowl with Cheerios and a carton of milk. She looks away, disinterested, and the orderly puts the straw in the juice box for her. She takes a very tentative sip.

  “Good girl,” the orderly says, and looks to Kateri, who nods. There has been an officer outside her door all night.

  “I was hoping we could talk,” Kateri says. “Yesterday, you told me your name is Birdie.”

  She nods.

  “Is that short for something?”

  “You mean my real name?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Sparrow Annie,” she says.

  “Sparrow Annie what?”

  “Jenkins,” she answers. Then, “Do you know what your name means?”

  “Kateri is a form of Katherine,” she says. “Which means pure.”

  “Annie means grace,” the girl says. “And pearls are precious and sometimes people rip them out of the shells.” She takes a noisy draw on the juice box. “Shannon means river,” she says.

  “How do you know all this?” Kateri asks.

  “My mama teaches me,” she says.

  “Is Pearl your mama?” Kateri asks.

  She nods.

  “Who lives at your house with you?” Kateri asks.

  “My mom,” she says. “And Shannon.”

  “Shannon is your brother?” she asks.

  “Yeah, but he’s big, like Mom.”

  “What do you remember about yesterday,” Kateri asks, “when I met you at your house?”

  Birdie shakes her head.

  “Anything?” Kateri prompts.

  She just shakes again.

  “When I met you,” Kateri says, “you were in the closet. Is that someplace you normally play?”

  “No,” Birdie says, with a tinge of sassy disbelief. “Unless there’s a thunderstorm. Sometimes if there’s a thunderstorm, we go in there with a lantern and we wait.”

  “You and your mom,” Kateri says.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Why were you in there yesterday? Was there a storm?”

  “No,” she says.

  Birdie picks at the dry Cheerios one by one. Her eyes look far away.

  “Who were you waiting for?”

  Birdie startles; her head twitches almost unnoticeably.

  “You said you were waiting for someone,” Kateri prompts her.

  But Birdie answers with something else. “My mom cut her hair,” she says.

  “Did she?” Kateri goes along with it, thinking that if nothing else, keeping her talking about anything, about normal everyday activities, will reveal something important.

  “Yeah, she cut it all off.”

  “Short?” Kateri asks.

  “Bald,” Birdie says. “She was going to do mine, but I cried. And then I had to hide.”

  “Why was she going to cut all your hair off, Birdie?” Kateri asks. Her arms break out in goose bumps.

  “So they can’t find us,” she says.

  “Who?”

  “Anyone,” Birdie says.

  “Who would be looking for you or your mama?”

  “Anyone,” Birdie says again.

  “Is there someone who was mad at your mom? Or maybe fighting with your mom?”

  Birdie’s mouth makes a flat line.

  Kateri switches gears. “Birdie, did you draw the picture inside the closet?”

  “Yes,” she says. Her face colors with shame. She knows not to draw on the walls.

  “Can you tell me who the picture is of? Is he someone you know? Or that your mom knows?”

  Birdie shakes her head.

  “No?” Kateri asks.

  “No,” Birdie says.

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s the angel,” she says.

  * * *

  Hurt calls her as she’s walking to her car. The day is gray. It rained overnight, and the pavement shines with puddles.

  “Any news?” she asks.

  “Potential murder weapon,” Hurt says. “An ax.”

  “Where?” she asks, and starts her car.

  “A ways into the woods. It’s burned,” he says.

  “Can you get anything off of it? Prints or blood?”

  “The handle is almost completely charred, the ax-head itself covered in soot and dirt and some corrosion. But it’s suspicious enough,” Hurt says, “and it’s close enough. And could be what caused that much blood. There’s no indication in any of the spatter of gunshot residue. It looks like blunt force.”

  Kateri nods but doesn’t answer.

  “You there?” Hurt asks.

  “Yeah.” She sits with her car running, warming, the lights off, the radio turned down.

  “How’s the kid?”

  She’s a little rag doll, Kateri thinks, and imagines picking her up, running her fingers through all that hair.

  “She says Pearl Jenkins shaved her head before she had to hide in the closet.”

  “Any idea why?” Hurt says.

  “So people couldn’t find them. She planned to do the girl too.”

  “Did she say who was looking for them?”

  “No. She’s five.”

  “Kids know more than you think they do,” he says. “Did you ask about the son? Shannon?”

  “No,” Kateri says.

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t seem afraid of him. He’s not a source of tension for her at all,” she says. “But she keeps talking about an angel. Do you think we’ll find a body?” she asks.

  “At least we have a weapon. A commonplace item you’d find in a house in the woods. Where an adult male might have killed his own mother. I need you to try again, Fisher.”

  “I’m coming in,” she says. She needs to think, needs to see it mapped out in front of her, not just hear words over the phone. She always works better with a visual.

  * * *

  They set up a situation room with a map of the woods and photos from the house, including the pool of blood and the spatter found on the cabinets and ceiling. Kateri finds Joel Hurt in there, mimicking the swing of an ax, looking in front of and behind him and up at the ceiling, and making notes with small yellow Post-its on the photos.

  “They were victims of a crime before,” Hurt says without saying hello.

  “When?” Kateri asks.

  Hurt takes a black-and-white picture of Pearl from years ago and tacks it up.

  “Sixteen years ago,” he says. “Her husband—Shannon’s father, Park Jenkins—burned the house down with them in it.”

  “Where’s Park?” Kateri asks.

  “Clinton.” He puts Park’s mug shot next to Pearl. His brow is heavy, his eyes deep set, and his mouth a hard line.

  “And Shannon’s record?” Kateri asks.

  “Doesn’t have one,” Hurt says. “The only picture I have is from his ninth-grade yearbook.” He sticks it to the board next to Pearl’s. He’s a pretty boy with a heart-shaped face, blond hair in his eyes, shy looking. He’s not smiling. He looks mildly alarmed. “This was five years ago,” Hurt says. “Didn’t graduate. Works at the diner in town.”

  A male tech leans into the room. “Detective Hurt,” he says. “No footage on the TV.”

  “None?” Hurt says.

  “It’s rigged like a baby monitor, sir. Nothing is r
ecorded. You can only watch.”

  “Fuck,” Hurt says. Then, “Well, they’re all pointed outside the house anyway. Nothing was watching what was going on inside.” He puts his hands on his hips and turns to Kateri. “The Hub Diner closes at three,” he says. “Shannon Jenkins at least needs to be questioned.”

  Kateri looks at her watch. It’s just past two. “I’ll go,” she says.

  “He’s clearly not making anything of himself,” Hurt says. “Something tells me apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  * * *

  They part ways. Hurt goes back into the woods to join the team, who continue to comb through the rocks and trees, and Kateri drives into town to see if she can catch Shannon Jenkins at work. At the very least, she needs to break the news to him. She may need him to identify a body. She might have to arrest him.

  The Hub sits right in the middle of town, where Center Street curves south toward the river and becomes Route 23. Just past that, the land is cordoned off for new luxury condos and giant houses that seem geared toward someone else entirely. Professionals looking for a winter retreat, a lodge, a mountain getaway from the slush of the city. Out-of-towners who think of the snow as picturesque.

  The diner is empty, getting ready to close. She leaves her car haphazardly taking up space in the lot and hurries in to see if Shannon is still there.

  A waitress meets her in the doorway, carrying an apron and wearing a pink camouflage fleece jacket.

  “Oh, Officer,” she says, noticing Kateri’s badge, her belt. “We’re closed already.”

  “I’m not here to eat,” Kateri says. “I need to ask a few questions. Is Shannon Jenkins still here?”

  The waitress shakes her head and comes on more direct than Kateri expected. “Look,” she says. “Whatever it is, he didn’t do it, okay? What are you, new? Did they send you down here to badger the poor kid?”

  “Pardon me?” Kateri says. She takes a step back from the woman and rests her hand on her belt, exposing her weapon.

  “They’re always out here looking for Shannon,” she says. The waitress isn’t much older than Kateri but looks it. She’s big around the middle, mature in her mannerisms. Kateri would guess she’s about forty, with grown kids.