Someone Is Watching (8 page)

It takes several seconds before I’m able to explain my sudden aversion to mouthwash.

“Oh, shit,” Claire exclaims as Jade returns to the kitchen. “I’m so sorry, Bailey. I had no idea.”

“I threw it down the garbage chute,” Jade is telling her mother as I excuse myself to double-lock the door. Not that the locks will do much good, I know, thinking of how easily Jade was able to manipulate them.

“I’ll call someone in the morning about having those replaced with something sturdier,” Claire says when I return.

“What was it like, being raped?” Jade asks.

“Jade,” her mother says. “Honest to God …”

“It was awful,” I answer.

“What did it feel like?” she presses.

“Oh, for God’s sake …”

“It’s all right,” I tell Claire. “It felt as if someone was scraping at my insides with a razor blade.”

“Ouch,” Jade whispers.

“Happy now?” her mother asks.

“It’s just that on TV, it always looks, you know …”

“No,” Claire says. “We don’t know.”

Jade shrugs. “Kind of … exciting.”

“You think rape is exciting?” Now Claire looks horrified.

“I just said that’s how it looks. Sometimes. Women fantasize about rape all the time. I heard on Dr. Phil or, you know, one of those shows, they were having this discussion about fantasies, and they said that rape fantasies are really common among women.”

“There’s a big difference between fantasy and reality,” her mother says sharply. “In fantasies, no one actually gets hurt.” She opens the fridge and starts putting things away. “I think you should apologize to Bailey.”

“What for?”

“It’s all right,” I say.

“You’re the one who should apologize,” Jade says to her mother. “You’re the one who’s trying to steal all her money.”

Claire takes a deep breath. “Okay. I think you’ve said quite enough for one night.”

“Can I go watch TV?”

“No,” Claire says, then changes her mind: “Yes. Go. By all means, go watch TV.”

Jade takes off down the hall. Seconds later, we hear the television blaring.

“I’m really sorry,” Claire begins.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I didn’t come here to upset you.”

“Why
are
you here?” I ask.

She closes the refrigerator door, leans back against the counter. “Gene told me about what happened. I felt terrible. We both did. Look. I know you and I have never had much of a relationship. And I know we’re suing you. But …” She sighs, looks me right in the eye. “But we’re still family. We’re still sisters. In spite of everything. And I’m a nurse. I guess I thought I might be able to help.” She glances down the hall toward my bedroom, the noise from the television bouncing off the walls toward us. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell her.

“Even though I’m trying to steal all your money?” Another glance toward my bedroom.

“I know that’s not what you’re trying to do.”

“Gene is just so adamant about the lawsuit. So are the others. They’re very angry.”

“And you’re not?”

“Sometimes,” she admits. “I mean, it hurts to be left out of your own father’s will, but hell, we were pretty much left out of his life, so I guess we should be used to it by now. At least he provided for Jade and her education. Not that she’s headed for Harvard.”

“She may surprise you.”

“You want to know what her biggest ambition is at the moment?”

I nod, realizing I am actually enjoying this conversation, that
it’s the first conversation I’ve had in weeks that isn’t all about me, about being raped.

“She wants to get pregnant so she can get on one of those reality shows she’s always watching, like
Teen Mom
or
16 and Pregnant.
One of those.”

I laugh in spite of the serious look on Claire’s face. Or maybe because of it.

“You think I’m joking? Ask her. She’ll tell you.”

“I think she’s trying to provoke you.”

“Oh, we’re way past being provocative. I actually caught her with some guy last week. I came home from my shift at the hospital at about two
A
.
M
. and there they were, rolling around my living room floor, pretty much naked. I flip on the light and you know what happens? I’m the one who gets yelled at!
What are you doing home so early? You’re supposed to be working till three. Are you trying to ruin my social life?
That’s the kind of crap I have to put up with. Is she embarrassed? Not a bit. Is he? Not that I could tell. The idiot pulls on his jeans, then leans back against the sofa and reaches for his cigarettes. I tell him to take his filthy habit and get out of my house; Jade threatens to go with him; I tell her that her uncle Gene will have her back in Juvenile Hall so fast it’ll make her head spin. And that goes double for Sir Galahad, who’s already got one foot out the door. That ends that discussion. I give her the speech about the dangers of unprotected sex, which is when she informs me that she wants to get pregnant so she can be on some stupid reality show. And she’s serious,” Claire adds before I can say otherwise.

So I say nothing.

“Oh, and of course, she calls me a hypocrite, reminds me that I was pregnant when I married her father.” Claire resumes putting the rest of the groceries in the fridge.

“What does he think of all this?” I ask. I know that Claire has been divorced a long time, but that’s pretty much all I know.

Claire throws a head of lettuce into the bin, as if it is a football she’s spiking after scoring a touchdown. “Eliot? How would I
know? Haven’t seen the prick in years. Daddy was certainly right about that one.” She shakes her head, laughs her surprisingly girlish laugh. “Maybe we
should
have our own reality show.”

I watch my half-sister as she begins shoving items into the pantry next to the fridge, admiring her proficiency. I used to be like that. I used to be all kinds of proficient.

“Believe it or not,” Claire is saying, “Jade was a very sweet girl until her fourteenth birthday. Then she just kind of … turned.”

“Happens to the best of us,” I say.

“Really? I’m betting you didn’t give your mother such a hard time.”

“I’m sure I had my moments.”

Claire stops what she is doing. “It must have been very hard for you when she died.”

I quickly turn away so that she can’t see the fresh tears that spring to my eyes. Almost three years, and I still feel the loss of my mother as acutely as if it were yesterday. “I had anxiety attacks pretty much every day for a year after she died,” I confess. It’s the first time I’ve ever told that to anyone. I’m not sure why I’m telling her.

“Did you see anyone about it?”

“You mean like a psychiatrist?”

“Or a therapist. Someone to talk to.”

“I talked to Heath.” Although my brother was in worse shape than I was.

She looks skeptical. Clearly, my brother’s reputation has preceded him. “Was he any help?”

“We’re very close,” I say, although I know it doesn’t answer her question. “Are you close to Gene?”

“I guess. I know he can be a little self-righteous and a bit of a prig. He thinks he’s always right. And, unfortunately, he
is
right most of the time. But he’s also honest and moral and all those things I’m not used to in a man, so …” Her voice drifts off, the sentence lingering in the air, like smoke from a cigarette.

“What about the others?”

“You mean our esteemed half-brothers, Thomas, Richard, and
Harrison?” She endows each name with appropriate dramatic flourish.

I smile. “It’s been years since I’ve seen them.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen very much of them either. Until recently. This lawsuit,” Claire says, then breaks off abruptly. “Sorry. And sorry about the lawsuit,” she adds. “If it were up to me …”

“I understand.” Do I?

“What was your mother like?” she asks, seeking safer ground.

“She was pretty special.”

“Our father was certainly besotted with her.”

I smile again.
Besotted
seems such an old-fashioned word for her to use. But it’s also the most accurate. “I guess he was.”

“You were lucky.”

The word is as strange now as when the police used it after my rape. My mother died when I was twenty-six years old. How can that be considered lucky?

It was my mother who suggested I become a private investigator. She probably wasn’t serious when she said it, but I glommed onto the idea like chewing gum to the sole of a shoe. I quickly discovered I could get my license online, which allowed me the opportunity to stay home with her during those last precious months of her life. I already had years of college behind me, years spent trying to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. For the previous three years, I’d been majoring in criminology. Becoming a private investigator was a natural fit, a no-brainer.

Footsteps in the hall return me to the here and now. “Haven’t you started making dinner?” Jade whines from the doorway. “I’m starving. You said we were just going to eat and go home.”

“Why don’t you set the table?”

Jade chews angrily on her gum. A huge pink bubble blossoms between her lips, growing until it blocks out the entire bottom half of her face. She clomps toward the kitchen drawers and begins opening and closing them until she finds the one with the cutlery. “So, do the police have any suspects?” she asks, popping the bubble with her teeth, her hands dripping with forks and knives.

I picture using one of the knives to stab my attacker, my right
hand balling into a tight fist as I feel the knife rip through his chest to pierce his heart.

“Earth to Bailey. Hello? Is anybody home?” Jade’s voice snaps me out of my reverie.

“Sorry. What did you say?”

“I asked if the police have any suspects.”

“No. None that I’m aware of.”

“So, what—they think it was, like, a random attack?”

“What else would it be?”

“Maybe you were targeted,” Jade says with a shrug.

“Jade, really.” Claire lays a gentle hand on my arm. “We’ll get those locks changed first thing in the morning.”

“Can I speak to Detective Marx, please?” I press the phone to my ear and lean back against my pillow. The bedroom is in darkness, although it’s already inching toward ten
A
.
M
. I’ve thought of opening the blackout blinds, of letting the relentless sun inside, but have decided against it. I’m not ready to acknowledge the start of yet another endless day, although day and night have become almost interchangeable to me. One provides no more comfort than the other.

“One minute, please,” the male officer informs me. I hear an unpleasant undertone to his voice, as if I have interrupted him at something important, or at least something more important than me.
Does he recognize my voice?
I wonder as he puts me on hold, the cheery sound of Latin music instantly rushing to fill the void. I picture the officer leaning across his desk and shouting toward Detective Marx, “Hey, it’s that Carpenter girl again. Third time in the last hour. You still want me to tell her you’re busy?”

I understand. I really do. The sad fact is I’m yesterday’s news. I have been replaced by other, newer, fresher, more interesting crimes: a woman strangled by her boyfriend after a heated argument
over who deserves to be America’s Next Top Model; a severed hand discovered in a swamp by the side of I-95; a shooting in a 7-Eleven that left one person dead and another clinging to life. I can’t compete. I have been relegated to the proverbial back burner where I simmer on a barely perceptible flame, my essence slowly distilling into the air, like steam, until soon there will be nothing left.

“Maybe you were targeted,” I hear my niece say.

Is it possible?

What if Jade is right? Although with the elimination of Roland Peterson and Todd Elder as suspects, who would target me? What motive would he have?

What am I doing?
I wonder, pulling the phone away from my ear, rudely interrupting Gloria Estefan in the middle of her song. What is it I hope to accomplish by hearing the police confirm, yet again, that they have no new leads? I press the phone’s
off
button, return it to its charger. There is nothing Detective Marx can tell me that I don’t already know.

I push myself out of bed, stumble toward the bathroom on legs no longer used to traveling more than a few feet at a time, remove my pajamas in the dark, and get into the shower. When I am sufficiently scalded, I turn off the hot water and wrap a clean towel around my torso, saying a silent thank-you to Claire for doing at least three loads of wash before she finally left last night at just before midnight. I walk to the bedroom window, press the button on the wall that operates the blackout blinds, and watch them automatically rise toward the ceiling. A world of glass houses greets me, sunlight skating across their icy smooth surfaces.

I see them immediately, although they don’t see me: the construction workers in the burgeoning building across from me, prancing around in their blue, white, and yellow hardhats. Their presence always startles me, although they are here every morning and have been for more than a year, starting their hammering at exactly eight o’clock each morning, piling one floor on top of another as easily as if they were children playing with plastic blocks. I observe them for a few minutes before reaching for my binoculars
and pulling the workers closer, bringing them into sharper focus. I see one man wipe the sweat from his forehead with a white rag he pulls from the back pocket of his low-slung jeans; I see another man walk past him with a thick piece of wood slung across the tops of his broad shoulders, bare biceps carelessly on display. I see another emerging from a bright red Port-A-Potty that is situated at the far end of the open steel and concrete space. The men—I quickly count half a dozen—are between the ages of twenty and forty and of average height and weight. Two are white, three Hispanic, one the color of a latte.

Any one of them could be the man who raped me.

He could have been watching me, just as I’m watching him now. He could have spotted me one morning outside the front entrance of my building waiting for one of the valets to bring up my car from the underground garage. He could have kept track of my movements, followed my Porsche as I went about my daily routine. He could have been trailing me on the night I went in search of Roland Peterson, spying on me as I spied on Peterson’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment, biding his time, waiting for just the right moment to strike.