The Watcher Page 5

  The waitress steps out from under the yellow corrugated-plastic awning and lights a cigarette.

  “Is he still here?” Kateri asks, curt.

  “No.”

  “How about the owner?”

  The waitress looks at her for a minute, deciding, then makes a frown and shrugs. “Go ahead,” she says. “He ain’t friendly,” she adds. “Especially toward cops.”

  Inside, the Hub’s owner, Junior Savage, has an open bottle of bleach in his hand that he sloshes along the tile kitchen floor.

  “Sir,” Kateri calls.

  “No,” Junior answers. He picks up a wet mop and moves the bleach around.

  Kateri shows her badge. “Sir, I just need a moment.”

  He seems small from far away, and she thinks it’s a trick of the size of the room, the tile, or the lighting, until he gets closer, and she realizes he’s less than five feet tall.

  “I just need to get the fuck out of here,” he says. He comes up to Kateri’s chest and wears a knit fisherman’s cap and a white chef’s jacket that’s filthy with blood. “What’d you find?” he asks. “Break-in? Dead cat?” He pours out more bleach. “I don’t know what to tell you.” He turns his back again and mops farther away, calling out over his shoulder, “When he’s here, he works clean. I don’t talk to him. I’ve never heard him raise his voice. I don’t know why your department has such a fucking hard-on for him. Because of Park?” he says. “That guy’s a psycho. This kid’s all right.”

  Kateri waits while he ties up the trash bag and pushes the can closer to the door.

  “His mother is dead,” she says.

  Junior lets the bag deflate in the can, his hand still on the knot, and he looks up at the ceiling. Up close, Kateri notices that he has gray-blue eyes, and a roundness to his face she wouldn’t have expected.

  “Son of a bitch,” Junior says. “Drugs?”

  “I need to speak with him,” Kateri says. The bleach smell is overpowering, burning her nose.

  “Do you know where I can find Shannon Jenkins?” Kateri asks.

  He shakes his head and leans on the garbage can. His hands are small and stubby, and he’s missing a finger. “He hasn’t been in,” Junior says.

  “Since when?” Kateri asks.

  “Few weeks.”

  Kateri raises her eyebrows and waits. “Did he quit?” she asks.

  “I offer him hours,” Junior says. “He turns them down. He’s got better-paying work somewhere. I don’t blame him,” he says. Then, “I got somebody else.”

  Kateri pulls out a card that he won’t take from her. He just nods for her to leave it on the counter, near the napkins, where somebody has neatly lined up all the salt and pepper shakers.

  “Why did you say drugs?” Kateri asks Junior.

  He waves his hand. “We all know each other’s habits,” he says.

  “What kind of drugs?” Kateri asks.

  “I don’t know,” Junior says. “Is she on trial? She’s dead.”

  Kateri taps her card on the counter. “I’d appreciate your discretion,” she says. “Information has a way of getting to the wrong people. If you hear something, please call me.”

  He holds her eye contact for a moment and smirks a little when he says, “Yes, ma’am.” Then he scratches the back of his head underneath the cap, and he leaves the garbage can there, a barrier between them, and goes back into the kitchen to finish cleaning.

  Outside, the waitress has gone, and there are no cars in the lot except Kateri’s own Subaru. She sits and waits to pull out, her armpits prickly with heat and embarrassment. She didn’t get anything at all from Junior or the waitress, except that Shannon Jenkins hasn’t even been showing for work. If anything, she’s moved herself further away from the information she needs. She thinks about the signs on the edge of town that read SPRING FALLS GREETS YOU. Not welcomes. Just greets.

  SIX: SHANNON

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

  My mother went about her business as though nothing had changed. I’d never seen someone so capable of shutting down, of taking a pill and going to sleep, of pretending that their house wasn’t about to be auctioned in two months. Where would we go? I suspected she had a plan, would run, as she’d hinted, back to her own mother, or to a cousin in Vermont, someplace where she could change her name, someplace Park couldn’t find her.

  I needed to find out when he was eligible for release.

  I needed to make more money.

  If they ran and I was stuck with a house taken out from underneath me, with a minimum-wage job, I’d have to go someplace else. I needed a place to live, and in order to get that, I needed more money, or someone to live with. My job alone wasn’t going to cut it. I didn’t even have a car I could live in. Unless my mother ran on foot.

  Sometimes I sat in the truck and screamed, alone on a lonely road, where no one could hear me. Sometimes, on days off, I lay in bed while the sun moved over me, from one side of the room to the other. More than once, I stood on the bridge and looked down at the railroad tracks. The train was never coming fast enough.

  I wondered what the inside of Baby Jane’s little mill cabin looked like. I imagined it as otherworldly, old-fashioned, like him. A place maybe with books and candles, with an old-timey bedroom set, delicate teacups. A closet full of pressed white shirts and creased gray pants.

  I couldn’t live in the abandoned car. Not for long. Winter was too harsh. I wouldn’t make it past November, and even that was questionable. If the house was auctioned at the end of November, I’d be up against snow and ice already until at least April.

  I went to work.

  Junior had already given me all the hours he could. Most days it was just him, me, and Terri. If I couldn’t come in or I was sick, he had one other guy who filled in, an old Navy man in his seventies. I had tapped that job for about all it was worth. I needed a skill. Which meant more school, or at least more than a goddamn GED.

  I wiped down all the glass salt and pepper shakers and filled them. I spent half an hour marrying the ketchup bottles so none of them looked even a little bit empty. Terri had counted her drawer and was out back having a cigarette. My face was flushed. I didn’t get paid until tomorrow, and I was ready for a cigarette and a drink myself. Then the bells clanged against the glass door, and a man I had never seen before in the diner, or even in town, came in. He scanned the empty counter, the vacant booths, and me doing closing side work, and asked if we were still open.

  “Um,” I stalled. I had to try not to stare. “I mean, we’re open for another half hour,” I said, and knew that Junior would kill me if I walked back there with another order. He was already slamming pans and scraping down the grill. If he got the bleach out, I was done.

  The man shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just have some coffee.” He had a folder with him that he laid on the counter.

  I wasn’t used to serving, but I grabbed a mug from the shelf below and poured slowly from the fresh full pot Terri had brewed for us as we cleaned. I looked at him as much as I could while he looked through his papers, his eyes down until I put the cup in front of him. He sat at the counter and sipped, and I went back to buffing glasses, even though my hands had a tremor. The man had long, honey-brown hair, curled at the ends, green eyes, and a soft mouth. He wore a flannel shirt that looked like it felt like butter. Fine hands, narrow wrists. When the cup was half empty, I picked up the pot.

  “More?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the stranger said, and smiled. His teeth were exquisite. White and straight. I thought, no one passes through Spring Falls. It’s on the way to nowhere. I almost dropped the full pot getting it back on the burner.

  “Hey, do you have a place I could hang this?” he asked then. He opened the folder and took out a flyer, the kind with phone numbers perforated at the bottom. It read Handyman needed for light carpentry, painting, installation.

  I took it from him and held it, my fingers damp and wrinkling the edges. “Are you hiring some
one?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “Do you need the work?”

  I let out a nervous laugh and looked behind me, through the window into the kitchen, where Junior was letting the oil out of the fryer.

  “There are all these construction workers in town,” I said.

  “That’s not what I want,” the stranger said. There was something feline about his features, the way his eyes crinkled, the sharp points of his canine teeth.

  I kept looking at the flyer. His name wasn’t on it, just a number, repeated at the bottom.

  “Did you just move here?” I asked.

  “I did. I have things that need attention at my house.” He tilted his head, thinking, and started to smile at me. “Is that something you do?”

  “Yeah,” I said, lying. I didn’t have any actual experience.

  He pulled out a stiff, plain-white card with just his name on it and a number different from the one on the flyer.

  “Bear,” he said, and held out his soft, fine-boned hand.

  “Shannon,” I said. My voice was just my breath. I was aware of how rough my hands were from the dish soap and hot water.

  He cocked his head. “We both have weird names,” he said, and then pointed at the card. “That’s my direct line.” He took the flyer from me and crumpled it.

  I started laughing again. “You’re not going to interview anyone else?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “No need,” he said. He arced the wadded-up flyer into the trash can behind the counter. Then he took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket and left it next to his empty cup.

  “Coffee’s only a dollar,” I said.

  “Call me,” he said. And he took his keys out and left.

  I slid his business card—BEAR MILLER—into my back pocket and picked up the cup he’d left behind. I held on to it the way he had, with the handle in my right hand, and leaned it into my lips, lining up the invisible prints. And then Terri came in the back door with a slam, her apron off, and I dropped the mug onto the rubber mat, where it didn’t break but just rolled way under the counter.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” she asked, and laughed. “Clean up,” she shouted, shooing me. “Get out of here.”

  I rushed the door and then walked out slow, looking. Bear Miller was gone. I wished I’d seen what he was driving or how he’d gotten there, if he’d walked, which direction he’d gone, where he had possibly come from.

  * * *

  I rode my bike through the woods, whizzing down the trail past the car, because I needed to get home and charge my phone. When I came out on the other side, my mother’s truck was parked in the lot next to a Volvo that looked like it cost more than my entire life. A woman had two rambunctious pit bulls in the field, one black, the other a silvery blue nose. She wore a white jacket. The dogs barked at each other and wrestled, rolling over the ball. I slowed to a coast and circled around the lot before I crossed over to the entrance where our house was.

  I didn’t know the woman, but I thought she was probably somebody’s wife, someone’s mother, someone I knew from school. She looked at me like she was going to ask me something but stopped herself. So I got off the bike, walked it past her, and opened up the truck, looking inside to see if there was a pack of cigarettes. When she kept looking in my direction, I poked my head up over the door.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her.

  The sun was filtered, hazy, low over the field and the wrestling dogs. She pointed at the entrance to the woods that led to our house.

  “I just—” she started. “There was a little kid earlier,” she said. “And I just worried because it seemed like she was by herself.”

  My heart hammered. “A little kid?” I asked. “How little?” But I knew, I knew it, before she even said it.

  “Maybe five?” she said. She held out her hands in protest, or guilt, or explanation. “I just have never seen her,” she said. “And I know these kids. I teach kindergarten. I’ve seen all the five-year-olds in town. Not her.”

  “Huh,” was all I said.

  “She came right out here and talked to me,” she said. “She asked about my dogs.”

  “She did?” I asked.

  “Yes, she was friendly, and quite bright,” she said. “Talkative.”

  That was Birdie, I thought.

  “And then she took off into the woods,” the woman said, “and I didn’t want to run after her because of the dogs. I didn’t want to scare her. But …” She started laughing. “Now I’m wondering if I saw a ghost.” She laughed harder, and my eyebrows went up in surprise.

  “A ghost,” I said.

  She shrugged and threw up her hands. “Crazy. I know,” she said.

  I looked off into the woods. There was no movement, no sign of them outside, no smoke from the fire.

  “Have you ever seen her?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, and only after thought maybe I should have said yes, that maybe saying yes would have drawn less attention to the little girl who might not even be real. “But I’ll keep my eye out,” I told her. I added, “I’m here all the time.”

  I’d started to walk away when she said, “She told me …” She hesitated, and then went on while I waited.

  “What did she tell you?” I asked. I stopped and went back to her at the back of her Volvo, where she stood with the gate open, trying to herd the dogs back in.

  “I asked her if she was alone, or if she was lost,” she said. “Like, if she was looking for someone.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “She said she was looking for the angel.”

  I blinked, hard, unbelieving.

  “I know,” the woman said. She laughed again and shook her head. “You’re just a kid yourself, and I’m a crazy woman telling you about a little girl looking for an angel, but … you know how sometimes you just can’t tell what’s real?”

  I thought about the beautiful man sitting at the counter, asking me if I did any handy work. I felt for his card in my back pocket to make sure it was still there, to reassure myself that he was real and not something my mind had tricked me into seeing.

  “No,” I said. “I know.”

  * * *

  Inside the house, the kitchen was quiet. No fan, no ticking from the loud clock on the stove. And then I noticed that the TV was off, the screen blank, flat gray and dusty.

  I flipped a switch on the wall. Nothing. No hum from the refrigerator. And it was getting dark inside.

  “Mom?” I called out.

  She was asleep on her bed, her hairline telltale sweaty. Birdie sat beside her, in the crook of my mother’s bent legs, which both my mother and Birdie liked to call The Nest. If she stayed in The Nest, she was safe, but apparently she hadn’t.

  She held two Barbie dolls, one male, dark haired, in a black jacket but no pants.

  “Bird,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “The TV went off,” Birdie said, “but Mom was asleep.”

  “How long has she been asleep?”

  Birdie shook her head. She didn’t know. She had a poor concept of time. Two hours might have felt like days to her. Sometimes it did to me.

  On the floor beside the bed, Birdie had half packed a pink backpack with pairs of underwear, a sweater, and a different doll, and in the front pocket a whole handful of rocks, crystals, and river stones, different colors and shapes. Just like Mom, I thought.

  “Were you going somewhere?” I asked her, kicking at the bag.

  She held up her arms to be picked up, and I indulged her, swinging her onto my hip and smelling her hair. I carried her out to the kitchen to get her a glass of water, but when I turned on the tap, nothing came out.

  “There’s no electricity or water?” I said to Birdie, only half asking. I was trying not to shout. But it wasn’t her fault.

  She shook her head.

  “There’s a big poop in the toilet,” Birdie said. “It won’t flush.”

  I let out a groan.

  I tried to rememb
er the last time I’d paid bills. Usually they came in the mail while I was at work and my mother set them aside, then gave me the cash to take to the Big M so I could pay at the counter. I thought back a week, two weeks. I’d been going to Baby Jane’s after work. More than once, I’d slept in the car, waking stiff and cold in the morning but getting back on my bike and riding back in to work.

  I didn’t even know where my mother kept the cash. I used to. I had dipped into it before, but now she moved it every few weeks. I was ready to tear the house apart looking for it.

  I looked in the cupboard and found one last juice box for Birdie. She wagged her feet back and forth, sitting on the counter.

  “Were you outside today?” I asked her.

  Her eyes darted over to the left, a sure sign she was fibbing.

  “Without Mom?” I added.

  “No,” she said. I watched her cheeks get hot and bright pink.

  “Bird,” I said.

  She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You can’t go out,” I told her.

  She looked at me, point blank, with her big light eyes and her jaw tight.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I didn’t have an answer for her. I stalled, and I heard my mother snoring.

  “It’s like you’re Mom’s favorite doll,” I said. “And she doesn’t want to share you.”

  She got to the bottom of the juice box with a loud, rattling suck.

  “You can go out,” she said to me without looking up.

  I smiled a little. “I’m not her favorite.”

  I thought it would make her laugh, but she started to cry, just a little at first, her lip wobbling and her eyes filling up, but then it roiled into a full-blown sob and she needed to be held, rocked in the living room with her head on my shoulder.

  “Bird,” I whispered.

  My mother slept through all of it.

  When Birdie settled, she lay still on my lap. I raked her hair off her sweaty, damp cheek.

  “It’s not fair,” she said.

  “It’s not,” I answered. I patted her back, no longer the round curve of a baby but still just the width of my hand.