Someone Is Watching (29 page)

“Fine,” I say, although it isn’t. I started trembling approximately ten minutes into the ride, the tremors getting worse the closer we got, and now my hands are shaking so badly I all but throw the money for my fare at the driver’s head, then push open the rear passenger door with such force, it actually feels as if it might snap off. I jump from the cab before I can tell the driver I’ve changed my mind, that I was mistaken, that this isn’t where I wanted to go, that it is, in fact, the last place on earth I want to be.

The taxi pulls away from the curb, leaving me standing in an unexpected circle of sun, as if a spotlight has just found me.
Ladies and gentlemen,
an invisible voice declares,
look who we have here!
Why, it’s none other than Bailey Carpenter, returning to the place where it all began—or should we say, the place where it all fell apart? What are you doing here, Bailey? Tell your adoring public what you think you can accomplish.

Tell me you love me.

I take a couple of tentative steps before my knees give way and I’m forced to stop before I fall to the sidewalk. I breathe deeply half a dozen times, releasing each breath slowly, trying to quell my growing panic. I’m taking control.

I’m not crazy.

“Excuse me. Can I help you?” The woman’s voice is small and friendly, as is the woman herself. She is maybe five feet tall and at least eighty years old, her face a tanned canvas of lines and creases. Another throwback, I find myself thinking. To the days before plastic surgery turned women’s faces into ghostly, expressionless masks. She is wearing a floral print blouse and a pair of pink-and-white-checkered capris that shouldn’t go together but do, and I watch her as she approaches, pulling her small dog on a neon green leash behind her. The dog, a pudgy little Yorkshire terrier, has a matching green bow in its thick, silky hair, and when the woman stops, perhaps a foot in front of me, the dog curls up at her sandaled feet, its breath emerging in a series of short, uneven pants, its little tongue hanging over the side of its tiny mouth as he stares up at me, questioningly, as if he knows I don’t belong here. “You look lost,” the woman says.

I decide this is as good a word to describe me as any. “No,” I say anyway. “I’m okay, thank you.”

“It’s sure a hot one,” the woman says. “Ninety-two, according to the morning paper.” She pushes some damp, thinning gray hairs away from her face. “Same as me. Ninety-two last week.”

How is it that some women get to be ninety-two while others die at fifty-five? “Congratulations,” I offer, trying not to begrudge this woman her longevity. “You look amazing.”

She acknowledges my compliment with a girlish giggle and a shy wave of her noticeably arthritic fingers. “I try to get out for a little walk several times a day, although this humidity is just murder
on my hair. But Poopsie here needs his bathroom breaks. Don’t you, Poopsie?”

Poopsie looks up at his mistress with large, baleful brown eyes, as if trying to assess how long they are going to linger and whether or not he should bother getting up.

“Do you live around here?”

“The pink building right behind you.” She points with her chin at a square, five-story building with white shutters. “My daughter’s been trying to convince me to move into one of those assisted living communities, says it’ll make my life easier. I think what she really means is that it’ll make
her
life easier. And I kind of like my life the way it is. Of course, I’ve had to give up golf,” she adds wistfully.

I think of Travis. He taught me to play, and I was actually getting pretty good at it, which didn’t surprise him, that I’d cottoned on to the game so quickly. “Is there anything you can’t do?” he’d asked, a slight edge to his admiration. I picture him standing in the doorway of my father’s en suite bathroom, his feet bare, a guilty look on his handsome face.

Was he feeling guilty because he was embarrassed, possibly even ashamed? Or was it something else? Something more.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask the old woman.

“Of course.”

“I understand a young woman was raped recently on this street.…”

“Really?” Watery hazel eyes grow wide with alarm. “Where did you hear that?”

I shrug, as if I can’t quite remember. “It happened about a month ago.…”

“I had no idea.” She clutches the collar of her floral print blouse with her free hand, bringing the two sides together at the base of her wrinkled neck.

“You haven’t heard anything about it?”

“No. You’re sure it was this street?”

“Positive. The police never talked to you?”

“No. Not a word. Oh, dear. This is normally such a safe area. You’re sure it was
North
east 152, and not
South
east?”

I point to the clump of bushes at the end of the road, feeling my hand shake and immediately lowering it to my side. “I think it happened over there.”

“My goodness. I can hardly believe it. That’s just so awful. Poor thing. Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully.

“Did you hear that, Poopsie?” the woman mutters as she turns away. “A woman was raped on our street. It might be time for us to move after all.” She looks back at me. “Would you mind waiting,” she asks, “until I’m safely inside?”

“Of course.” I watch as she walks up the path to the front entrance of her building and pushes open the lobby door, then stops and waves me away. I head off down the street, my breathing becoming more labored, less steady, with each step. I try to convince myself that this is a result of the oppressive humidity, but I know that’s not true.

I am nearing the spot where I parked my car that night. A white Honda Civic is parked there now, and I stop in front of it, trying not to see myself splayed out carelessly at the foot of its passenger door, my arm raised up behind my head to grip the door handle, my body all but vibrating with pain. I try not to hear the car’s alarm bells lulling me into unconsciousness.

According to the police, an elderly resident from a nearby condo heard the alarm and looked out to see me lying there, then phoned 9-1-1. No, he hadn’t seen what happened, he told the officers who questioned him. Nor had he witnessed either the attack or anyone suspicious fleeing the scene. He’d simply heard a car alarm going off and looked out his window to see a woman lying on the side of the road.

I wonder which resident it was as I continue down the sidewalk, stopping beside the elongated circle of shrubbery near the far corner, directly across the road from the four-story, lemon-yellow building I’d been watching the night of my attack. It had
been so easy to slip into the middle of the bushes, to crouch among their flowers and disappear into the night.

Except I didn’t disappear.

Someone had seen me. Someone was watching.

Someone is always watching.

I crouch down. Or do my legs collapse? Supporting myself on unsteady ankles, I swivel toward the building across the street, raising imaginary binoculars toward the third-floor corner apartment, the exact position I was in when I heard the sound of twigs breaking and felt the air part behind me, like curtains.

Instinctively I spin around, my body bracing for a fresh barrage of fists, my arms lifting to protect my head. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out, although several sobs escape when I realize no one is there. My eyes search the top floors of the buildings behind me. It’s entirely possible that someone could have seen me, that someone might have witnessed the entire attack. Or worse: The man who raped me could actually live in one of these units. Have the police really questioned everyone?

I determine that the two apartments on the top floor of the cream-colored building directly to my right would have the clearest, most unimpeded view of the area. I jump to my feet, deciding to start with the people who occupy those units.

“Hey, there!” a young man exclaims from the sidewalk, less than two feet away from the shrubs in which I’m standing, as startled by my sudden appearance as I am by his.

I gasp, the gasp as loud as any scream.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wasn’t expecting to see anyone.”

“Me neither,” I say.

The man is about thirty, tall and slender, with light brown hair and dimples, exactly the sort of man I would have found attractive just a month ago. A half-empty bottle of water dangles from the fingers of his right hand. He is wearing the traditional jogger’s uniform of T-shirt, knee-length nylon shorts, and sneakers. I search their sides for the familiar Nike swoosh. Mercifully, there isn’t one.

Of course, this means nothing. Whoever raped me likely owns more than one pair of sneakers. I cast a wary glance around the empty street, reaching into my purse for my gun before I remember that I no longer have one. Nor do I have any pepper spray or mace. Not even any perfume I can spray in the man’s eyes, should he get too close. Nor have I gotten around to replacing my cell phone. There’s no one I can call, nothing I can do.

“Lose something?” the man asks, his voice relaxed and friendly, sounding nothing at all like the man who raped me.

“An earring,” I say, the first thing that comes to mind. Hopefully he won’t notice I’m not wearing any.

“You need some help looking?”

“No. That’s fine. I found it.” I indicate my handbag, as if the wayward earring is now safely inside it.

“That was lucky. How’d it get all the way in those bushes?”

Why are we having this conversation? Where did he come from? How long has he been here? Is it possible he’s been spying on me ever since I stepped out of the taxi? Was he watching me the night of my attack? Is he the man who raped me?

He has a nice face. He doesn’t look or sound like a rapist. He jogs, for God’s sake. But whoever said joggers can’t be rapists and rapists can’t be soft-spoken and nice-looking? “My dog ran in here the other night,” I lie. “The earring probably fell off when I was trying to drag him out.”

“Talk about your needle in the haystack.”

“Yeah.” Why is he still here?

“What kind of dog do you have?”

“What?”

“Wait. Let me guess. Something exotic, I bet. Portuguese Water Dog?”

“Doberman,” I say, as if the word itself will be enough to inspire fear.

“Really? I never would have pegged you as a Doberman lover.”

Again I wonder why we’re having this conversation, why I find myself willingly prolonging it. I am standing in the exact spot where I was attacked, talking to man I don’t know, a stranger who
fits the general description of the man who beat and raped me. Why? “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’d like to.”

“What?”

“You have time for a cup of coffee?”

What?

“There’s a Starbucks not too far from here.…”

Is he hitting on me? Or is he one of those sick bastards who get a perverted kick out of first stalking the women they rape and then befriending them in the aftermath of the attack, ingratiating themselves into their victims’ lives, becoming their confidants, their boyfriends, sometimes even their husbands, relishing their hold over these unsuspecting women, victimizing them over and over again?

“Are you hitting on me?”

“Well … yes. It would seem that’s exactly what I’m doing. Normally, that’s not my thing, picking up strange women standing around in bushes, but I don’t know … the way you just popped up like that … it seems kind of like serendipity. You know, like in the movies. What they call ‘meeting cute.’ The name’s Colin, by the way. Colin Lesser. And you are?”

“Bailey. Bailey Carpenter.” What’s the matter with me? What on earth possessed me to give him my name? “I don’t want coffee,” I add quickly.

“Well, you don’t have to have coffee. You could have a smoothie or a muffin.…”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Okay. I get it. No worries. Sorry to have bothered you.”

As he turns to leave, I notice a woman wheeling a baby carriage up the street toward us and feel emboldened. “Wait.”

Not all men are rapists. Some men are good.

He turns back.

“Do you live around here?” I ask.

He checks his watch. “About a forty-minute run that way.” He points south, then looks back at me, as if waiting for me to make the next move.

“You’ve been running for forty minutes in this heat?”

“You grow up in Miami, you kind of get used to it.” He takes a long swig of his water. “You’re very observant.”

“So they tell me.”

“Who’s they?”

“You run every day?” I ask, ignoring his question.

“Pretty much. Can I ask
you
something now?”

I nod, hear a baby’s cries as the woman with the carriage draws closer.

“Are you ever going to come out of those bushes?”

I try not to smile. “What do you do?” I ask, again ignoring his question and staying resolutely in place, “that allows you to go jogging on hot Wednesday afternoons?”

“Chiropractor,” he answers, too easily for it to be a lie. “I take Wednesday afternoons off. What about you? Gardener? Landscape architect?” The twinkle is back in his blue eyes.

“Temporarily unemployed.”

“From doing what?”

“I worked for a bunch of lawyers.”

“Tough crowd. Tougher times. You get laid off?”

“You could say that.”

“What would
you
say?”

“I prefer to think of it as a temporary sabbatical.”

He smiles. A nice smile. “Good way of looking at things,” he says. “A glass-half-full kind of approach to life. I like that.” I watch the dimples in his cheeks deepen.

“Glad you approve.”

“So, you come here often, Bailey Carpenter?” he asks, and I try not to cringe at the effortless familiarity of my name on his lips.

Not all men are rapists. Some men are good.

“No. This really isn’t my neighborhood.” Does he already know where I live?

“You just come here to walk your dog,” he states.

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“Your Doberman.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s your dog’s name?”

I hesitate, trying to come up with an appropriately sinister name for a Doberman. All I can think about is the old woman and her Yorkshire terrier I saw earlier. “Poopsie,” I say.