The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (47 page)

“What the hell’s going on?” I asked.

“Tropical storm. They say the coast is really going to catch hell.”

“I’m talking about the Popovs.”

“Oh,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve already tried talking them out of it. They apparently spent the whole night packing up. Vlad wouldn’t say anything else except that they’re going to stay with relatives in Jersey.” He sighed and sipped his coffee. “I can only guess that the recent unpleasantness must remind them of God only knows how many KGB horrors.”

We both watched as the truck drove off. I thought about the ragged note. “Which one was it?” I asked.

“Which one was what?”

“The one that disappeared. Was it Rocko or Fee-Fee?”

“I couldn’t say. Foo-Foo, I think.”

“This is crazy. Somebody’s got to call the cops.”

“And tell them what? Who’s to say the animal didn’t just run off?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe the cryptic note in the mailbox?”

He huffed and shook his head. “We are just talking about a dog, you know.”

“That’s right. Just a dog. So do you think maybe she’s got it out of her system yet, professor? Or will it take one more incident? Like maybe one of us spitted and basted over a giant grill in her basement?”

“Look, I’ve already called my former student. I’ve told him my concerns and feelings, which mirror yours.”

“You sure about that? Maybe you’d be surprised how I feel.”

He gingerly removed the lid from his coffee and poured the contents into the brush beside my porch steps. I still had not taken a drink from the cup he had handed me. “So hard to anticipate this kind of thing,” he said with resignation. “But I suppose we should have. There are people all over the country right now living the nightmare she’s living.” He looked up at me, his eyes as gray and remorseless as the thickening clouds stretched out above the trees. “The terrible reach of this sickening war on so-called terror is quite evident, don’t you think?”

“I saw a few things over there that would make your pipe explode. You don’t see me running around slashing tires and offing the neighborhood pooches.”

He turned away. “Hmmm,” was all he said.

I retreated back into the house and stared at him through the screen door. The wind had picked up a bit, and the shock of white hair on either side of his head put me in mind of a contemplative Albert Einstein, dreaming about the potential of a split atom. “When this half-assed psycho relocation program of yours gets out,” I said, “you might find yourself answering a whole lot of questions.”

“Perhaps that’s the least of our worries.”

“What do you mean?”

His features drooped, and now he reminded me of a depressed Albert Einstein after having watched the first atom bomb explode. “My former student tells me that she’s developed a bit of an unhealthy interest. In you.”

“Me?”

“Hmmm. You really upset her the other day.”

“You mean the other day when she assaulted me?
That
other day?”

“I told you not to take an aggressive stance.”

“That’s a load of—. What else did your friend say?”

“Not much. Except . . .”

“Except?”

“Except that you might want to purchase a gun. I told him you were prior military, so you probably already had one. That is correct, right? You do own a gun?”

“Sonofabitch,” I said, meaning
he
was a sonofabitch.

But Harold didn’t hear me. He simply sighed again and made a sweeping gesture at the darkening horizon and stirring trees. “I just hope this isn’t as bad as last year’s big one. We were without power for a week, remember? It was like being stranded on a deserted island.”

I locked every door and window of the house, even the narrow casements in the cellar that were surely impossible for any adult to crawl through. When I was finished, I retraced my steps and checked each lock again. The act of barricading myself in was therapeutic. I found a quiet relief surging over me. The feeling continued as I gathered candles, batteries, and a flashlight from the kitchen drawers and cupboards. I kept telling myself it was all for the coming storm and potential power outage and not for the purpose of defending against a home invasion by a psychotic neighbor who was now fixated on me as—what? The cause of her husband’s demise? A participant in what Harold called a cruel and senseless war? The collapse of the real estate market? Shit, who knew? But there was no denying my purpose when I retrieved a .22-caliber Marlin 39A rifle from beneath my bed, removed the bolt, cleaned the chamber, and methodically loaded it.

I had not recovered my cell phone, so I kept the landline within easy reach, positioned on the kitchen table amid a scatter of batteries and extra ammo. Harold would have a clinical name for my preparations. And I suppose he would be right. I surveyed my spartan dwelling and wondered why I was satisfied—if I was in fact satisfied. I had lived my entire life alone, in the bachelor dorms for over twenty years in the military and now in an empty house. Never married, never in love. No family, or even close friends for that matter. Even the friends I had made in the air force were mostly relationships of convenience, none of them standing out enough to mark and identify as special, as worthy of the name
brotherhood.
The one tangible remnant of my time in service was a shadowbox of “gimme” medals that I kept on the wall in the foyer. I contemplated it now as if it represented a stolen identity.

And then it struck me: all I had—all I ever really had—were neighbors. All of them utterly forgettable. Save one.

The realization bestowed a sudden and empowering effect on me. In a bitter huff, I stormed through the house and unlocked every door and window. Of course I kept the gun loaded.

No sooner had I unlatched the last window than it began to rain, huge drops going
phut, phut, phut
on the rooftop. I sat at the kitchen table and listened to the shower begin to increase, the wind whistling now, shaking the doors and window frames.

The phone rang. I barely heard it over the hiss of wind. The caller ID showed Harold’s name and cell phone number. Somewhat reluctantly I answered, but the line was dead.

From the kitchen window I could just see his house through the bent and swaying trees in my front lawn. The rain was now hammering down at a sharp angle, creating a blurred effect through the glass. I redialed his number but got a busy signal.
The lines must be down
, I thought.

Thunder cracked overhead, followed by a flash of lightning that revealed a hazy figure racing across the rim of the cul-de-sac. I grabbed clumsily at the barrel of the gun. Almost immediately, as if in diabolical collaboration with my unease, the power went out.

I snatched up the flashlight, threw on my slicker, and stepped out onto the porch. The screen door slapped savagely shut behind me, and the gutters gurgled and strained in the torrent. From the porch I could see the whole of Harold’s house. His front door was wide open.

“Terrific,” I muttered, and the fear in my voice startled me. Harold would probably have a name for that too. I hefted the rifle and adjusted my hold on the flashlight. The note declaring the death of dogs flashed into my thoughts.

After a slight bounce, I pushed off, clambered down the steps, and dashed down my driveway and through the rain. By the time I reached his house, I was completely soaked. I yelled Harold’s name through the open doorway, then stepped inside. Hearing nothing, I closed the door behind me with some effort. Rainwater had pooled around my sodden shoes, and I called out again. A muffled ticking of a clock and the scent of pipe smoke were the only signs of life.

Then I saw it. Lying atop a foyer table was a frayed dog collar decorated with glassy studs, some of them broken. A small metal tag identified the collar as belonging to Fee-Fee Popov.

I held my breath and listened again. Nothing but the spasm of the storm. I left the scene as I found it, although I did make sure the front door was shut tight. By now the wind and rain were beyond raging. I could barely see as I struggled back toward my house. Once inside, I sucked and gulped at the air as if I had been underwater, which I suppose I had been. Once again I listened for any sound beneath the raging din.

And I knew—I don’t know how, but the knowledge was absolute—that she was there.

I flipped on the flashlight, and it glimmered across the shadowbox and bookcases, television, couch, and my favorite club chair. I moved the circle of light onto the floor leading into the living room, looking for wet tracks. I swept the light through the kitchen door, and my eye caught something on the table there. It was my cell phone, placed neatly where it had not been just a few moments earlier.

As I approached it, the phone began to vibrate, its display glowing a white-blue color. The number was Harold’s cell. I didn’t pick up. Instead I turned back toward the entrance to the kitchen and peeked around the corner into the living room. I imagined her using Harold’s phone to call me from behind my club chair. Waiting for me to pick up, only to fall on me in a fury of assorted blunt weapons.

Ten seconds ticked by. Twenty seconds. Then the phone burped twice, signifying the arrival of a text message. Keeping one eye and the flashlight beam on the open kitchen doorway, I picked up the phone and read,
I’m down in Silver Lake with my mother. Just checking to see if all is well. Hope you’ve battened down the hatches.

I licked my lips and considered typing a response. But the creak of wicker sounded behind me. I spun around. She was sitting in a small chair tucked beside the refrigerator, staring at me.

“What are you doing here?” I said in a shudder, struggling to level the rifle at her with one hand while trying to hold the cell phone and flashlight with the other. The flashlight’s beam shined unsteadily in her eyes. She never flinched. My heart beat upward into my throat, but I concentrated on forcing the fear from my voice. “I said, what are you doing in my house?”

“Do you like it?” she said, her voice soft and almost childlike. Her red hair was untethered and smeared wet and flat around her pale face. Water dripped from her nose and chin.

“What?”

“This. Living alone.”

“I’ve got a gun.”

“That’s funny.”

“Not really, no,” I said.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You mean,
again
, don’t you? You’re not going to hurt me
again.
”

“The dog was already dead when I found it. Your friend, the professor, backed over it the other day. He threw it into the trunk and drove off, but he forgot the little collar and tag.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“So why the note? Because maybe it’s funny?”

“It was a warning. I didn’t want that poor couple to lose another dog.”

“Okay,” I said, somehow convincing myself to feel convinced. “So how did the collar end up in his house?”

“I put it there. I want him to know that I know. That I have power over his cowardice. That there are consequences for daring to forget.”

The rifle in my hand felt as heavy as a dumbbell. Yet I still didn’t move for fear she would see me shaking. I said, “I’m going to call the police, and you’re going to be arrested.”

Her response was softer still, almost maddening and out of breath. “When my husband said goodbye to me, I knew he was going to die. I don’t know how, but I knew. And yet”—her features twisted up in pain—“and yet I also expected him to come back home. Safe and the same as when he left. And then we would laugh together at my silly premonition.”

“I can’t do anything about that,” I said. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

“Do you know what they put in his coffin? Do you know what they put there instead of his body?”

“Look—”

“You saw body bags in Iraq. You saw those that were full and those that only held pieces. You must know.”

I started to respond but stopped. I stopped because suddenly I believed her. Every word. Especially about what happened to the dog. But even more important than that, I suddenly felt her grief, arrayed around her, an instinctive defense mechanism that emitted its own warning signal. The sense of it was almost pious in its depth, like a religious ceremony, all of which made her pitiful, deflated appearance seem all the more heroic.

The woman straightened her back and stood up.

“Stop,” I said.

“Stop what?”

The cell phone finally slipped from my grip and clacked onto the linoleum floor of the kitchen. I settled the stock of the rifle across my forearm and steadied the light on her face. My fear was gone. Even the strain of holding the gun level had dissipated to numbness. I said, “I really don’t think I can help you.”

“I don’t either.” She edged closer.

Smoothly, I flicked the safety off, hoping the sound would deter her. “I’ll shoot,” I told her.

“I know,” she said. She walked forward but quickly veered to my left, toward the open kitchen doorway. I stepped aside, my finger loose against the trigger. Then she was past me and in the foyer. Without pausing, she opened the front door. The force of the wind threw it back against the wall, shaking the house. She had to lean forward to push herself out of the screen and into the wind.

As I watched her stumble out and down the porch steps, I felt it. Relief, certainly, but also something else. Something meaningful and harsh, like a wave of fever. It was something—or rather a mix of something, gunked together in a stew of senses—that I had not experienced before and would probably never experience again. It was the taste of sorrow, the wreckage of war, the feeble cries of the dead and dying, the silence of children—all of it culminating in a barren loneliness that we had fought for and so dearly deserved.

I ran forward, shouldering my way through the screen and onto the porch. I stopped there and called out to her. “Don’t! Wait!” I yelled. But she might as well have been walking into a roaring waterfall. In an instant she was gone, lost in the mighty pull of the storm, her dim impression sealed over.

I wanted to pursue her, to embrace her, to comfort her and share my feeling with her. I wanted to do all of that. I really did. But I could not move.