Because I'm Watching (6 page)

Madeline Hewitson had even screwed up his roof. He'd bet Wodzicki's wallet would shriek when it heard about that.

The old Jacob would have felt guilty for making Maddie handle Wodzicki alone. But she'd brought it on herself, and besides, he didn't have room for one more scrap of guilt. His soul was already booked up. When he thought of what had been done to him, and what he had done …

The pain came, blasting him with agony, taking him to the edge of self-loathing and …

A car turned onto Dogwood Blossom Street. Headlights flashed into his living room. The driver slammed on the brakes; Jacob couldn't see who was inside, but he knew whoever it was, was staring at the open-face house and probably at him.

The car parked along the curb. A man about Jacob's age got out and walked determinedly across the yard.

Yay. Jacob was about to meet another new friend.

The guy stopped by the concrete steps that now went to a porch that didn't exist. “I'm your next-door neighbor, Dayton Floren.” He paused and waited for Jacob to introduce himself.

Jacob didn't tell him to fuck off.

“You must be Jacob Denisov.” Floren's voice carried in the quiet of the night. “What happened to your house?”

“Your neighbor invited herself in. With her car.”

Dayton Floren turned and looked right at Madeline Hewitson's house. So he knew who Jacob was talking about. “That woman is a walking wrecking ball. Ever since she moved in we've had double police presence, county and city. That's good, I guess.” He paused, waiting for Jacob to respond. When Jacob didn't, Dayton asked, “How long before insurance moves in to fix it?”

Jacob shrugged.

“Exactly. With insurance companies, who can say? Home ownership is a pain. You should do what I do: rent. Then you don't have to worry about the ugly details.”

Jacob dredged up some vestige of grim humor. “Who's going to buy this place?”

“Very true. Very true.” Dayton nodded, then brightened. “I would! I could add your lot to mine and have a nice yard.”

“I thought you rented.”

“If I could buy them both, it might be worth it. If I did that, you wouldn't have to bother with rebuilding.” Dayton kicked at a pile of lumber. “It's going to be a painful process. You'll have to move out.”

Like hell.
“No.”

“But—” An ungodly shriek of terror cut him off. He whirled to face Maddie's house.

There, silhouetted against the white accordion shade, Maddie stood swinging a baseball bat at nothing and screaming, a high, shrill, primal sound that recalled torture and terror and death. Her shadow whirled and swung, caught the blind, and ripped it halfway off the window. Then they could see her, dodging, dancing, her face a contorted parody of fright. She stumbled, swung, blasted her desk lamp across the room.

Glass shattered.

The screaming stopped.

She stood, holding the bat, chest heaving, her head turning from side to side as she sought her invisible attacker.

“Wow,” Dayton said in awe. “Just wow. She's really nuts.”

As opposed to Jacob, who sat here in the same wrinkled pants and grubby shirt he'd worn earlier, his hair and beard a hive for any vermin that chose to nest there. Apparently being quietly nuts was more respectable than being outgoingly nuts. Or maybe it was just the difference between being a nutty male or a nutty female. As his sisters always informed him, gender bias was a bitch.

“At least this time she's not shooting at anything. Hey, if you sell me your house, you won't have to worry about
her
anymore.”

“I don't worry about her now.”

Hostility might have leaked through Jacob's tone, for Dayton backed up. “If you change your mind about the sale, let me know.”

Jacob stared at him. Just stared.

Dayton lifted a hand. “Good to meet you!” He headed toward his car, drove forward a few feet to park in front of his house, and headed inside.

Maddie's frenzy had made a few lights switch on in the neighborhood, but nobody came out to see what was wrong.

Not real caring folks here. Or they'd been suckered by her a little too often.

Or maybe they really did believe she was a killer, and they were afraid.

 

She's afraid of her own shadow now. You should have seen her fighting w/ nothing. LMAO

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jacob sat in the recliner until the sun came up.

He observed Maddie drag her sleeping bag and baseball bat out of the house and scurry toward the overgrown rose garden in the corner by her front fence. There she got on her hands and knees, shoved the sleeping bag and the bat between the bushes, and, after a few muttered exclamations—mostly
ouch!—
she settled down out of sight.

Not long before dawn, the elderly lady next door to Maddie let her dog out. It was one of those fat, nasty, miniature dogs that snarled at the molecules in the air. When the old lady shut the door on it, the little beast stalked stiff-legged across her lawn, fought its way through the picket fence to the well-manicured yard on the corner, and did its business. Then it wiggled back through the pickets and stood sniffing the air. Its head turned; the dog focused its beady eyes on Maddie's refuge. It prowled toward her fence, pushed through, and went right for the rosebushes.

Jacob braced for another round of screaming.

He got a series of sharp, hostile barks that died away under a barrage of conciliatory murmurs.

Apparently Maddie was trying to befriend the hostile little fiend.

The old lady stepped out on the porch and called, “Spike! Come inside, sweetums, I've made your breakfast!”

The dog, presumably Spike, trotted out of the rosebushes, through the fence, and up to its owner, who held onto the porch railing, laboriously leaned down, picked up the dog, and carried it inside.

More light brightened the sky.

The house on the corner, the one with the Dogwood Blossom Historical Neighborhood sign, lit up. The shades on the kitchen windows were raised, and he caught a glimpse of a dimple-cheeked darling of a woman with dyed ash-blond hair, a wholesome demeanor, and a cheerful pink bathrobe. In the background, he could see a small dining area with flowered teapots wallpaper.

She looked out, admired her yard, nodded with pleasure, and turned away.

Obviously she hadn't yet spotted the dog poop.

Across the street and toward the west, lights came on, a woman's voice called, children answered, a man grumped. The father came out first, dressed for work, two grade-school-age kids trailing him. They got in the car parked in the driveway, waved at the mother, and drove off. Next the mother came out, dressed for work, carrying a toddler. She tucked the kid into the car seat and left.

They looked normal. So the street wasn't full of only retirees and crazy people.

The tiny house on the other side of Maddie—it looked identical to his, except recently painted—remained silent and dark. Whoever it was either wasn't awake yet or wasn't home.

Jacob stood. The sun was up. The light hurt his eyes. He had to get out of here before someone saw him. In the bedroom, darkness—and pain—awaited.

*   *   *

Someone knocked.

Jacob's eyes slammed open.

Where was he? What was he seeing? Had he been asleep?

No. No sleep. The nightmares came when he slept … only they weren't nightmares. They were the truth.

Someone knocked. Again. On his door. His bedroom door. In Virtue Falls. In his wrecked house.

“Goddamn it.” He spaced the word carefully, making each syllable count. Bracing his back against the wall, he inched up off the floor and out of the corner where he had crouched for the past however many hours. “Goddamn it,” he said again. How goddamn many people did he have to talk to in one twenty-four-hour period?

He jerked open the door and caught some guy in jeans and a work shirt with his fist upraised, about to knock again. “What?” Jacob snapped.

The guy dropped his hand and backed away. “Hey, Mr. Denisov, I'm Berk Moore. I'm the contractor Mr. Wodzicki sent to bid on your repairs.”

“Fine. Do it.” Jacob turned away.

Moore said, “I have to ask you some questions.”

Jacob paused. “Why?”

“Because I need to know what you want me to do … beyond the obvious, I mean.”

“Fix. The. House.”

“It's not possible to fix it exactly like it was.” Moore spoke quickly, trying to keep Jacob with him. “Most of the building materials used in this house—in any house built in the twenties—are no longer available. So we'll have to use substitutes. Plus modern building codes are different. Plus you might want upgrades.”

“No.”

“Plus, you know”—Berk waved a hand vaguely at the floor—“this linoleum hasn't been used since the sixties and you'll have to pick out new floor coverings to, um—” Jacob may have been glaring, because Berk backed up a little farther. “Really, I have to consult with you about at least some of the items.”

“Use your judgment.” Jacob started to close the door.

Moore stuck his foot in there.

Damned good thing Berk had work boots on or Jacob would have crushed him like a bug.

“I wouldn't bother you if I didn't have to, and I get it. I'm a veteran, too. Two tours in Afghanistan. Got a belly wound that got me discharged.” Berk Moore tugged his shirt out of his belt and displayed the puckered pink scar. “The insurance won't pay unless I get work orders signed by you. Please, have a heart.”

Don't appeal to me as a fellow soldier. Just … don't.
“Come back at night when it's not so bright.”

The guy glanced behind him at the sunlit street. “I'm here now. How 'bout I give you my sunglasses?”

Right. Sunglasses would protect Jacob's eyes from the vicious light … and give him something to hide behind. “Yeah.”

Moore took off his aviators and handed them over.

Jacob put them on and stepped into his kitchen. “Looks worse in the daylight.”

“Maddie might have done you a favor. Blow some of the old-house-stink away.” When Moore realized what he'd said, he looked alarmed. “Not that I'm saying your house stinks. No more than most old houses on the coast.”

Jacob never washed his clothes. He didn't shower. If something smelled around here, it was him.

Moore talked faster. “The house was due for a remodel, anyway, and this will improve your chances of resale.”

“I'm not going to sell it.” But his mother would, and she would be glad to off-load it quickly. One less thing for Jacob to feel guilty about.

“Right. Don't blame you. Good location. Okay, for starters, we got to talk electrical. The wiring in the house is ancient. It all has to be changed out.”

Jacob grunted. He'd figured that, by the way the responding firefighters had got the power off so fast.

“We'll do that first, but meantime, you've got no power. The cops told me you want to stay here. Mr. Wodzicki said he'd spring for the cost of a hotel room.”

Jacob could hardly speak for loathing. “That
prick.
”

“Okay, so you're going to stay here.” Moore made a note on his clipboard. “I'll throw every electrician I can find at the project. Now, about the structure in the house and porch. The whole thing was built to last, obviously, or—”

A shriek from across the street stopped Moore in his tracks.

Jacob sighed.
Not again.

The two men walked cautiously toward the front of the house.

But it wasn't Maddie. This time, the dimple-cheeked darling from the house on the corner stood on her lawn examining the sole of her shoe. She gave another sharp, angry shriek, then whirled and stormed over to her old lady neighbor's. She rang the doorbell, then knocked for good measure.

Inside the house, the little dog started yapping.

While Dimples was waiting, she wiped her shoe on the concrete porch and muttered furiously.

“That's Mrs. Butenschoen. I remodeled her kitchen.” Moore's tone told Jacob everything he needed to know about Mrs. Butenschoen.

The old lady answered her front door and looked through the screen.

Mrs. Butenschoen started scolding, pointing at her yard, her shoe, the dog.

The old lady was clearly apologetic.

The scolding continued.

The old lady wrung her hands.

Mrs. Butenschoen jerked open the screen door.

Spike darted out, barking wildly, intent on protecting his mistress.

Mrs. Butenschoen stumbled backward, off the front porch, and down the stairs.

Moore cackled. “That's it, Spike. Take her down.”

The old lady called Spike until he returned to her.

When the old lady held the snarling little beast in her arms, Mrs. Butenschoen announced loudly, “I shall call animal control!” She turned, bosom heaving, and spotted the two men watching.

“Uh-oh.” Moore eased back.

Mrs. Butenschoen tossed her head and continued toward her own house.

When her own screen door slammed behind her, Moore breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one. She's been hunting you ever since you moved in.”

Jacob knew what to blame. “Goddamn war hero crap.”

“It's not that. I mean, it is, but mostly it's Mrs. Butenschoen. She knows everything that goes on in this neighborhood, and she likes to lay down the law according to Butenschoen. No escaping her. She has
standards,
you know.”

“I don't give a fuck about her standards.”

“That won't stop her. You watch. Animal control will be out here issuing a citation to old Mrs. Nyback. Mrs. Nyback will call me, crying, to do something about her fence. I'll send some guys in to rig up netting between the pickets, and Mrs. Butenschoen will bitch because the netting spoils the pristine appearance of ‘our treasured historic neighborhood.'” Moore used his fingers for air quotes.