Arsonist (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

Monique Gaspirini locked up the H&M store at ten, leaned against the glass, and sighed. It had been a long day. Two girls had cancelled on her and she had to open and close. And on top of that,
the rush in the store hadn’t even given her time to grab lunch. The mall had been so packed that at one point they’d run out of bags and customers had to carry their items out by hand.

“Hey,” Dylan said as he walked up, “those guys left their number for you.”

“Which guys?”

“Those
forty-year-old douchebags with the shiny hair. I think they were Iranian or something.”

“Oh, great. You can just toss it.”

“You’re on a roll, Mon. At least half the guys that came in today wanted to fuck you.”

She patted his cheek. “If you weren’t gay
, you could totally have me.”

“Interesting offer
, sweetheart, but you couldn’t handle this.”

He did the silliest impersonation of a sexy dance that she had ever seen. She burst out laughing and slapped his shoulder.

He said, “Jasper and Matt are still here. We’ll finish up. You go home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, you worked since opening. Go home, bitch, and get some sleep.”

She kissed his cheek and then went in back and got her purse and cell phone and headed out the door, waving goodbye to Jasper and Matt who were goofing around on the escalator. Monique began walking out of the mall, stopping briefly at a kiosk to buy some liquorice, and had to ring the alarm on her car to find it in the lot. It was parked several dozen meters away in employee parking and she groaned at the thought of walking any more in her high heels.

The Toyota Prius looked worn out and she wondered if it was the best idea to always take it up in the canyons. Her younger brother had even tried four-wheeling with it once and it was stuck within a matter of minutes.

There were footsteps behind her as she opened the door and she glanced back.

A couple was making out by their Tahoe. She had her hand down his pants and he was grunting like a pig.

“Ew, gross.
There are kids running around here,” she said, before climbing in to her car.

The air was cool and there wasn’t a single cloud in the darkened night. The sky sparkled with stars and she would glance at it whenever there was a break in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway home.

She eventually got off exit 197 and made her way down past Alejandro’s, a restaurant owned by the father of a friend of hers, and to her house on Maplewood Drive. She lived alone, as her parents preferred to travel and only when they were in town did she have others there. The house was a three-level, six-bedroom, old-west-style home packed with all the furniture her parents had decided not to throw out, even when the pieces had passed their prime. Something was comforting to her about having the same furniture she did when she was growing up and she just didn’t have the heart to get rid of any of it.

She parked and went inside. The ceilings were high and the space open with fine oriental rugs thrown over the old carpet. Monique placed her purse on the coffee table and collapsed on the couch, holding her arm over her forehead for a few minutes. She then took a deep breath and rose to go into the kitchen.

Opening the fridge, she didn’t really see anything she felt like eating so instead just took out a beer and had a long drink out of the bottle before pouring the rest into a glass. As she was about to go back in the living room to return some text messages, she noticed the kitchen door.

It was the backdoor of the house and had two locks on it and a doggie door, though she had gotten rid of the dog long ago. The door was slightly open.

She placed her beer down and walked over. It was definitely open, more than a couple of inches. She thought back to today; had she used this door at all? She was on a date last night and it was possible she left it open then as she had gotten drunk at dinner, but would she have forgotten it today when she left for work?

Monique shut the door and locked it. She glanced out the window to the backyard and didn’t see anything but grass.

As she made her way to the front hallway and the staircase leading to the second level, she decided she would have to be more careful. Though she lived in a safe neighborhood, there had been reports of thefts from a few of her neighbors.

She undressed before she was in the bathroom and hopped into the shower. The water took a moment to warm up and rather than stand outside and wait for it, she stood right under the water
and felt the exhilaration of cold against her skin. She let it run down her back and over her legs as she lathered her hair.

She used bodywash and brushed her teeth before stepping out and wrapping herself in a towel. She walked down the hallway to her bedroom and past a window that looked over the backyard. There, under the light of the back porch, a man stood staring up at her.

She gasped as it caught her off guard. His face was pale and he was bald. A crooked smile came over his lips, and he waved to her.

She ran down the hall to the bedroom and leapt for the phone. As she dialed 911, she went to the staircase and stood on the top step. There were enough stairs that even if he were to sprint for her she could make it into the bedroom and lock the door.

Monique could see the kitchen from here. The backdoor was open again.

“Nine one one operator, how may I assist you?”

“This is Monique Gaspirini,” she said, panic creeping into her voice, “I live at 1413 Maplewood Drive and there’s a man in my house.”

“Where is he now?”

“I think he’s inside the house. I shut the backdoor and it’s open now.”

“Can you get out of the house?”

“No, I’m upstairs. Well, I might be able to climb out of the window in my bedroom.”

“Does your bedroom door lock?”

“Yes.”

“Go in there right now for me, Monique
, and lock the door.”

She did and leaned against it. “Okay.”

“Now I want you to go near the window and plan to climb down, okay? If you hear him come up the stairs you start climbing down but not before. Is it a long drop?”

“Maybe fifteen feet.”

“Okay, well, I’m gonna stay on the phone with you, okay? I’ve summoned the officers and they’re going to be there very shortly.”

“Okay.”

“Are you near the window?”

“Yes.”

There was a sound from downstairs; someone shut the backdoor and was walking across the linoleum in the kitchen. Silence a few moments and she didn’t breathe. The dispatcher kept talking but Monique had lowered the phone, listening intently to what was going on downstairs.

There was an unmistakable sound. It was quiet
, barely audible, but having spent twenty-three years in this house, she knew exactly what it was: someone was climbing the stairs and had made them creak.

“Oh fuck me,” she said
. “He’s in the house. He’s in the house right now and he’s coming up the stairs!”

“Okay, calm down, just do what I said and start climbing down the window.”

Wrapping the towel tight around herself, she opened the window as far as it would go and kicked the screen out. It fell with a ding as it hit the hood of her car in the driveway. She put one foot out and tried to hold the phone with one hand while she balanced with the other but couldn’t do it. She pinned the phone in between her ear and shoulder and used both hands to climb out.

The air was warm but it still gave her goose
bumps as she pulled her other leg out and placed it on the ledge just underneath her window. She could hear noise from the interior of the house; he was almost to the top of the stairwell.

There was a small covering over the driveway and to her right. It was maybe six feet down and she figured it wouldn’t injure her if she landed on it. But if she missed it she would fall to the ground and hit cement.

Off in the distance behind her was another sound: sirens.

They were loud, and startling, and annoying
…and she had never heard anything more comforting in her life.

The knob on the bedroom door turned. It flipped one way and then the other and someone pushed on the door. She screamed. The operator began yelling, asking what was going on, and Monique jumped.

She hit the covering hard and felt her ankle roll. The phone flew out of her hand and to the cement below, shattering into several pieces. She lay there, crying as she rubbed her ankle, looking up to her bedroom window.

But by then the sirens were on her street and the police had arrived
: two cruisers. Two officers got out of the first car. They didn’t see her until she shouted for them and they came over and helped her down.

“He’s inside,” she said.

They ran in the house. She folded her arms and limped over to one of the police cruisers and leaned against it as another cruiser with another officer pulled up. A few of her neighbors had come out onto their porches to see what the commotion was about and she ignored them and kept her eyes glued to the house as one of the officers tried to take information from her. She could see lights going on in various rooms and then in her basement. The lights stayed on. After what seemed like an hour, but was in reality closer to fifteen minutes, the officers came back outside.

“There’s no one in there,
ma’am,” one of them said.

“He was in there,” she said, pointing
. “I saw him. He was in the backyard and he, he waved to me and then I heard footsteps and, and that’s when I called you guys.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t one of your neighbors?”

“I know what my fucking neighbors look like. There was someone in my house.”

“Well, we’ll
do one more walkthrough and then fill out a report. Didn’t look like anything was damaged, and no one was hurt. If you see him again, give us a call.”

“That’s it? Someone broke into my house and that’s all you’re gonna do?”

“I saw the beer out. How much have you had to drink?”

“Like one bottle. I’m not drunk.
I’m telling you someone was in my fucking house.”

The other officer finally chimed in and said, “There’s been some reports
of thefts around here. We was at your neighbor’s house just across the street a couple weeks ago. That might be what it is. Someone’s stealing things that people leave out, stuff outta the garage, things like that. That’s probably what it was.”

“He looked crazy. He didn’t look normal.”

“Since when are criminals normal?”

The other officer said, “We’ll take your info. Do you have anywhere to sleep tonight?”

“Yeah, I can go to my boyfriend’s house.”

“Well why don’t you do that for tonight if you’re too scared to stay here. There wasn’t any damage to the door so I’m guessing it was left open.”

“No, I locked it. I know I did.”

“Make sure to lock all your doors,” he said, ignoring her statement.

The other officer looked over the house. “If he was in there, he ain’t now. We’ll do a quick spin around the neighborhood. Maybe we’ll get lucky. We’ll forward your case to a detective and he’ll probably call you tomorrow to follow up. Pay a visit to the house maybe.”

They took her information
, walked through the house one more time, and promised that a report would be filed. She watched from the porch as they drove away. Turning to her house, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep here tonight. She would go to her boyfriend’s and then he would have to sleep over here with her until her parents got home.

Monique went inside to gather her things. She shut and locked the front door and then checked that all the doors and windows throughout the house had been locked as well. It was only then that she
remembered she was in a towel. She had wondered why one of the officers kept looking at her chest.