Someone Is Watching (13 page)

“How about after?”

“I work till four
A
.
M
.”

Can the man really be so obtuse? Can he not see how uncomfortable he is making Kelly, how eager she is to get away from the leer in his eyes?

“You ever get a night off?” he persists.

“Not very often. Let’s get a move on, Sabrina.” Kelly moves toward the door.

“How about we work out together tomorrow? If I know what time you’re going to be here, I could rearrange my schedule so that …”

“I think you should leave her alone now,” I hear myself say.

“I’m sorry,” David says. “What did you say?”

“I said you should leave her alone. She’s clearly not interested.…”

“And this is
clearly
none of your business.”

“Look,” Kelly interrupts. “The truth of the matter is that I have a boyfriend.…”

I almost smile. Experience has taught me that when people say “the truth of the matter,” it usually means they’re about to lie.

“You have a boyfriend?” David asks. “Why didn’t you say so?” He actually manages to look offended. “Of course, we wouldn’t have to tell him.” He runs his tongue lewdly across his upper lip.

“Why don’t you just give it up?” I say, feeling the obscene wetness of his tongue against my skin.

“What the hell is your problem?” David snaps, waving one of the weights in front of him. But it is too heavy and his arm quickly collapses with the effort.

“We’re out of here,” Kelly says as Sabrina steps off the elliptical machine. “Nice meeting you, Bailey.” She mouths a silent “thank you” as she ushers her friend from the room.

No!
I think.
Don’t go.
You can’t leave me alone with this man.

David abandons his weights as soon as the women leave. He walks toward me.

My heartbeat quickens. My palms become cold and clammy. I have to get off this machine, but he is standing behind me, blocking my exit.

“What’s with you?” he asks. “You jealous? Feeling neglected?”

My eyes look toward the surveillance camera in the upper right corner of the room, praying that someone is watching.

“Wait a minute,” he says, staring at my reflection in the mirror. “I know you, don’t I?”

I shake my head.

“Yeah, I do.” He moves to my side, as if to get a better look at my profile.

My eyes scan the front of my treadmill for the off button. I have to get away from here. Maybe I can just jump off. I’m not going that fast. I decide to slow the machine down but press the wrong arrow and increase the speed instead. Three miles an hour quickly becomes 3.2, then 3.5.

“Didn’t we go out a few years back?”

“No.”

3.7 … 3.8 … 3.9 …

David sneers audibly but doesn’t move.

I have to get away from this man. I have to get out of here.

4.0 … 4.1 … 4.2 …

“This building is full of women who think they’re too damn good for the likes of us poor mortals.”

4.5 … 4.6 … 4.8 … I’m running now. Maybe if I run as fast as I can … 5.1 … 5.5 … 5.7 … I hear my breath escaping in a succession of short, painful bursts. My throat is drying up. My
lungs are filling with air, like balloons. Surely any more air and they will burst into thousands of pieces, splattering against the mirror, like blood.

“And I gotta admit, a lot of them
are
pretty spectacular,” David continues, his attention temporarily diverted by his own reflection. “Prettiest girls in the world live in Miami. And they know it. I mean, I’ve been all over: New York, Las Vegas, even L.A. They got nothing on Miami. I’m talking even Brazil. Even the hookers here are better-looking.”

6.0 … 6.2 … 6.5 …

“And they know it, man. They know they’re gorgeous, and they know they have you over a barrel. You know what I mean? They know they have their pick of the litter. So, it’s not enough anymore to have a Mercedes or a Jag. You gotta drive a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. You gotta wear Brioni suits, like fucking James Bond. You gotta have big muscles and a bigger …”

6.8 … 7.1 … 7.3 …

Somebody, help me. Please, help me.

“Hey, you’re going awfully fast there.”

7.5 … 7.8 … 7.9 …

“Maybe you should slow it down.”

I look in the mirror, watch myself watching myself.

“I think your shoelace is coming undone.”

I glance down, see that the laces of my right sneaker have indeed come loose and have started flopping noisily against the moving sidewalk of the treadmill. If I’m not careful, I’ll trip over them. But I can’t stop now. I have to run faster. I have to get away.

8.1 … 8.2 …

Now both shoelaces have come loose. They are snapping against my ankles, coiling over each other, like worms. I look over at David’s feet, unmoving in his black sneakers with the white Nike swoosh.…

“No!” I cry out. “No!”

8.3 … 8.4 …

“What the hell are you doing?”

I can’t escape. I’m running as fast as I can, but still, I can’t get
away. He doesn’t even have to move to catch me. I feel my legs growing weak, giving way. I can’t keep going. My eyes implore the woman watching me from the mirror.
Help me!
She stares back blankly and does nothing.

8.5 … 8.6 …

My legs shoot out from underneath me, and I scuttle backward through the air, screaming as my jaw slams against the sidebar, and I fly off the back of the treadmill into the water cooler behind me. Hand sanitizer and Lysol crash down around me from the shelf over my head. Paper towels flutter into the air, like kites without wind, as I crumple to the floor. The water cooler teeters on its side for several seconds, then miraculously rights itself before falling over.

“What the fuck …?” David is shouting. “Are you all right? What the hell were you doing?” His hands reach out. He touches my arm.

“No,” I scream. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m only trying to …”

“Don’t touch me!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Get away from me.”

“I’m just trying to help you, you crazy bitch.”

“No! No! Get off me. Don’t touch me.”

I’m slapping him now, scratching and biting at his hand.

“What the …”

“Help me! Somebody, help me!”

And suddenly the door to the exercise room flies open and the room is full of men. Finn and Stanley and Wes and the janitor, an elderly man whose name I don’t remember.

David is already on his feet. “I swear. I didn’t do a damn thing to her.”

“What’s going on?” Finn demands, kneeling beside me, although my posture warns him to keep his hands to himself.

“She’s crazy,” David says softly, although still loud enough for me to hear. “She suddenly starts going like a hundred miles an hour on the damn treadmill, and I try to warn her she’s going too
fast. She looks like she’s going to have a heart attack. But she just keeps ramping up the speed and before you know it, she’s flying off the back of the stupid thing and knocking everything over, shit’s flying all over the place—you almost lost that water cooler—and I go to help her, and what does she do? She starts screaming to stay away from her, like I’m attacking her or something. And I swear I never touched the crazy bitch. You can check the surveillance tapes, if you don’t believe me.”

I catch Stanley nod. They saw some of what went on from the lobby, I hear him confide to David. That was the reason they got here so fast.

“Are you all right, Miss Carpenter?” Finn asks.

“Is there anything we can do?” Stanley says.

“Is anything broken?” Wes adds.

I shake my head, my eyes riveted on David’s black sneakers with the white Nike swoosh.

“Do you think you can stand up?” Finn asks, securing my laces with a double knot and helping me to my feet.

Is it possible that David is the man who raped me?

“Is it all right if I go now?” David says, more statement than question.

“You’re sure you didn’t say anything to upset her?” Stanley asks as he walks him to the door. “Anything at all?”

“Are you kidding? No. If anything, it was the other way around. She was ragging on me.”

“Miss Carpenter,” Finn is saying as David exits the premises. “Are you all right? Are you bleeding? You’re sure nothing’s broken?”

I check my forearm. It is scratched, but not bloody. I’ve wrenched my back, twisted my ankle. My head is throbbing. My jaw aches. But, as Kelly might say, I’m used to such things.

“You want us to call an ambulance?” Wes is asking from somewhere above my head.

“No. I’m all right.” I struggle to my feet. It hurts to put weight on my ankle, but it isn’t broken, and I know there’s nothing a doctor can do.

“What happened here, Miss Carpenter?” Finn asks. “I’m gonna have to file a report.”

Could David be the man who raped me?
I wonder again, reminding myself that owning the same kind of running shoes as my attacker doesn’t mean very much. I need to think things through before I start making crazy accusations. I need to shower and get into bed. I need to get away from all these men and back to my apartment as fast as possible. “I was going too fast. I tripped over my shoelaces. It was my fault,” I say. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to sue anyone.”

“It’s you we’re worried about. Is there someone we can call? Your brother, maybe.…”

“No. Yes,” I say, all in the same breath. Although I desperately want to get back to my apartment, I also know, just as desperately, that I don’t want to be alone. I need someone to be with me, someone to take care of me and protect me, if only from my own crazy thoughts. “Please,” I hear myself tell Finn, “call my sister. Call Claire.”

“Okay, Bailey,” Detective Marx is saying. “Let’s go over what happened one more time.”

The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I know this is how Detective Marx works, that she believes repetition often loosens fresh memories. But I’ve already told her at least three times what happened in the exercise room this afternoon.

“It’s the last time. I promise.” Detective Marx smiles as if she knows what I’m thinking and adjusts herself at the foot of my bed. Her partner, Detective Antony Castillo, is standing at the window, staring out at the street below. It’s night, almost eight o’clock, and it’s dark. Detective Castillo is in his late thirties, of medium height and weight, with black curly hair and eyes so incongruously blue I wonder if they’re contacts. I also wonder if Castillo could be the man who raped me. He fits the general description.

“You want some fresh ice?” Claire asks, adjusting the pillow behind my head as I push myself up in bed, steadying the melting icepack I’m pressing against my chin.

“No. I’m okay.”

“Take a deep breath,” Claire instructs, and I do so, feeling the air painfully scratch at my lungs. She covers my free hand with hers, holds on through the remainder of the interview. She is still wearing her pale green nurse’s scrubs, having come right from the hospital after Finn’s phone call. Luckily for me, she found someone willing to take over the balance of her shift.

I clear my throat and start my story at the moment when David enters the gym, but Detective Marx stops me, makes me go back further. “What made you decide to exercise today?” she asks.

This is the first time she has asked this, and the question surprises me, even though I know that unexpected questions are another method she uses to help retrieve memories. I think about my answer for a few seconds, mutter something about it feeling like the right thing to do, a way of taking back control of my life. She doesn’t bother writing this down.

“Tell me about the visit from Travis,” she says, knowing from talking to Finn that he was here today. “I understand you two were arguing.”

“No.”

“According to the concierge …”

“We weren’t arguing,” I insist. “Travis was understandably upset about your coming to see him at work, that you consider him a suspect.…”

“He has no alibi for the night you were attacked,” she tells me.

“Travis didn’t rape me.” I stop, wondering why I’m defending him, why I haven’t told the police all the nasty details of our breakup, how I can be so sure it wasn’t Travis, when I’m sure of so little else.

“Okay. So Travis left, and you decided to take control of your life by going to work out,” Detective Castillo says from his position at the window. “Did David Trotter threaten you in any way?”

“No. He just accused me of being jealous. And then he said something about the women in Miami being the most beautiful in the world. Even the hookers.”

“An odd remark.” Detective Marx scribbles it down in her notebook. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

She smiles. The smile says,
Let us decide what’s important.
“What else did he say?”

I shake my head, as if some other salient facts might be clinging to the inside of my skull. “Nothing I haven’t already told you. Just that I was going awfully fast, that my shoelaces were coming undone.”

“So he tried to warn you,” Detective Castillo states.

Did he?

“Did he sound like the man who attacked you?” This, from Detective Marx.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Did his breath smell of mouthwash?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“But you
did
notice his sneakers.”

“Yes. They were the same ones as the man who attacked me.”

“Do you have any other reason to suspect David Trotter might be that man?”

Claire answers for me. “Well, he lives in the building, so he could easily have followed her. She rejected his advances.…”

“That was two years ago,” Detective Marx interjects.

“Some men can harbor a grudge a very long time.”

I wonder if Claire is thinking about our father or our brothers when she says this, but I decide this is not the right time to ask.

“He fits the general description,” Claire adds weakly. We both know that every second man in America fits my rapist’s description.

“Did he try to touch you?” Detective Castillo asks.

“Only after I fell,” I admit.

“So, it’s pretty much the sneakers.”