Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel

Prologue

She was going to make a lot of noise. He could tell by the way she moved, the attitude,
the way she spoke to her friends, the way she carried herself. The ringleader. He
could always spot them. Some guys, they liked the mousy ones, the ones with their
little heads down. Not this guy. He liked them smart. He liked the struggle. And the
fear. Not just theirs.
His
. The pounding drumbeat in his ears, the way time stretched like a piece of elastic,
pulled until it snapped into a few astonishing seconds of utter terrifying pandemonium—fighting,
biting, screaming, his skin under their sparkly nails. He liked that too. It was a
way inside them.

He pulled out a brown bag and took a bite of the bologna-and-mustard sandwich he hadn’t
gotten around to at lunch, washed it down with a freezing-cold Coke, the kind in the
green-glass bottles from the old machine in front of Smith’s Hardware.

He leaned back into the bench—
bird-watching
, he liked to call it. And the little chicks were out today. Same time. Same route.
Same chatter shooting up over the breeze as they crossed the park. Nothing he could
make out, just the high-pitched peaks of female voices stabbing giddily at an otherwise
serene day.

They would split off in twos soon, head for their own neighborhoods and families and
homework and dinners. But she’d walk alone
through a strip of woods and down a gravel lane to the ranch house with the white
fences—a latchkey kid on a quiet stretch of road.

He finished his sandwich, dusted off his hands, and dropped the bag in the trash bin.
He didn’t hurry. There was plenty of time. Today it was about the dream—how it would
go, what he’d say to her, the way her smile beaconed,
Take me, take me
.

1

I squinted through about a million tiny crystal-like dings as the late-day sun landed
on my windshield. I’d been sitting here for an hour. Waiting. I do that a lot. I had
an address and a hunch. That was about it. That’s about it most of the time.

My name is Keye Street. I am a detective, private, a bail recovery agent, a process
server, and a former criminal investigative analyst for the FBI. And when I say
former
, I mean fired. Capital
F
. The Bureau likes their profilers sober.

I dropped the doughnut in my hand into the green-and-white Krispy Kreme box on the
passenger’s seat and peered through the smoggy dusk of another hot August night. The
house, like the others on the street, had been stamped out sometime in the 1960s with
a builder’s cookie-cutter eye, a starter home—one-story brick, two bedrooms, one bath,
a thirty-six-inch picture window to the right of the front door, bedrooms on the left
end, a quarter acre of grass with poured concrete driveways. The trees that must have
been saplings when the neighborhood sprang to life now shaded the street and rooftops
against the unyielding southern sun. But they didn’t do anything to take the steam
out of the air. Like most neighborhoods this time of year, the whir of condensing
units fighting to push cool air through the ductwork was the background music.

I let the sun sink lower, slipped out, closed my car door quietly, and headed down
the sidewalk. Four doors down, I veered left and worked my way along a driveway lined
with droopy hydrangeas. They looked like they could use a drink. I know the feeling.

A light clicked on inside the house, and I saw him through the picture window. He
was sitting in his living room, a Styrofoam box in his left hand, a remote control
in the right, facing a television that was too big for the room. I edged closer to
the house, saw him push back in his La-Z-Boy. On the big TV, the Braves were playing
the Dodgers at Turner Field. There was a ’69 Dodge Charger in the driveway, orange
and black. The muffler needed a little work. He’d rumbled past me a few times this
week. Hot vehicle, though, if you have an eye for muscle cars. I do. I’d grown up
with them and the guys who drove them hard on Friday nights in Georgia.

I moved around to one of the bedroom windows. The house looked empty except for Jeremy
Coleman. I was hoping his bail-jumping brother would be here. Ronald Coleman was charged
with shooting a man while stealing his car in the parking lot of a Krystal hamburger
joint. He then held up the drive-thru for five cheese Krystals and an order of fries
while the car’s owner staggered through the lot begging for help. Great guy, that
Ronald Coleman. Coleman’s court date must have slipped his mind. A little thing like
aggravated assault with the intent to kill, armed robbery, and carjacking can do that.
I’d been watching Jeremy on and off for the last week, hoping Ronald would show up.
The family history told me the brothers were close. It was Jeremy Coleman who had
pulled together ten percent of the $140K the state required for the bail money. Not
easy for a working-class guy with a two-stall garage and a Monday-through-Friday classic
auto restoration business. I was betting if anyone knew where Coleman was, it was
his little brother Jeremy. About a week ago I would have bet the burger-eating creep
would have shown up by now. So much for hunches.

I passed overgrown shrubs to a weedy backyard with grass tall enough to have gone
to seed, the perfect environment for the mosquitoes to come out to play. Nice and
dark and moist. I held on to a brick ledge and tiptoed to see inside the back bedroom.
Jeremy slept in the
front, I knew. If he had a guest, this would serve as the guest room. The bedroom
door was open, and just enough light seeped in to let me know the room was empty.
The bed was made. Everything looked exactly like it had the other five times I’d peeked
inside. My hands and neck were stinging. Mosquitoes like dark clothes and dark hair
too. I had both.

I headed back down the side of the house. The front door opened as I turned the corner.
I stopped cold. Movement is what pops out at you at night. The eye catches it when
it misses everything else. I stood dead-still in the shadows. Jeremy was on the front
porch locking up with a fat, jingly key ring. He was still wearing his work clothes,
navy-blue pants and shirt, mechanic-style with a name patch over the left breast pocket.
I watched him get in his car. As soon as the engine started, I hightailed it through
the yard and up the sidewalk to mine, a dingy Plymouth Neon with a dent in the hood—you
don’t want to spy on a guy who restores vehicles for a living in something flashy.
So my white-on-white 1969 Impala convertible was at home in the parking garage. Missing
me, I thought warmly. I’d had the car since high school. And my mother says I can’t
commit.

Jeremy was braking at the stop sign at the end of the block when I pulled out. I switched
the headlights off until he turned. And then I kept my distance. An old orange-and-black
Charger allows you that luxury. The taillights are distinctive—two long red bars.
Also, this guy was about as unpredictable as the Golf Channel. Mostly he watched television
in a recliner with a take-out carton in his lap he’d brought home after work. But
tonight it looked like my diligence was going to pay off. He drove right past the
liquor store on the corner, the bar up the street, and the grocery store—the only
places he’d been all week other than work and his own living room.