The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  “How am I supposed to trust you, Rain?” Greg said, his voice thick.

  “What does that mean?” She pressed at her injury, felt the sting of it. She knew exactly what he meant and he was right.

  “Trust you to take care of yourself—for us.” When he turned back, his face had darkened with worry. “This story. I can’t lose you to this again. We can’t.”

  She walked to him. “You won’t. I promise.”

  But the words sounded hollow, and his frown only deepened. How far could she push him? She’d asked so much of him over the years. Would he at one point just get fed up, give up on her?

  “I have news,” said Rain, trying for a change of subject. “Good news.”

  “I have news, too,” he answered with a resigned sigh. “You go first.”

  “NNR accepted Andrew’s pitch. It’s a go,” she said. “We’re going to do the story for the network.”

  He looked at her, something strange on his face. “That’s—fantastic.”

  “Is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She looked at Lily, who was cruising—coffee table to couch to end table to the other couch.

  “I have to meet with Gillian and Andrew tonight, in the city. I’ll go late, after I put Lily down.”

  He went to sit cross-legged on the floor with Lily. She joined them.

  When had he started looking so tired? The circles under his eyes were purple; he was pale. She reached a hand for his face, touching the hard edge of his jaw. You forgot about your husband sometimes. Between being a new mom, all the angst and existential bullshit, you could neglect the man who was your partner, once upon a time your boyfriend, the guy who made you hot, who rubbed your back and got your coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, for what felt like the hundredth time. For what? For all her failings, for being a shitty wife, for not knowing what she wanted, for being stuck in the past, uncertain about the future. For the fact that his talent and hard work was less appreciated than it should have been.

  He took her hand and kissed her palm, then touched gingerly the bandaged cut on her head. He always forgave her. Maybe that was the heart of true love, forgiveness for all our many flaws and failings.

  “For everything.”

  He kissed her, soft and sweet. “I knew who you were when we got married—everything about you. But it’s different now. There’s Lily. You can be yourself—but take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” she said.

  His frown showed his skepticism. Lily crawled into her lap, and Rain held her tight.

  “What’s your news?” she asked.

  “So, the executive producer job?” he said.

  She’d totally forgotten. The job above him was open; he was a natural for the promotion, experienced, hardworking, beloved by everyone at the station.

  “They gave it to someone else.”

  “What?” Her voice came up too high. “Why?”

  Lily was watching Rain, her face gone still, almost worried.

  “Al said they wanted someone more ‘current,’ not from hard news. Someone with a finger on the pulse of what viewers like these days. Fluffy features and wellness tips, I guess. And someone who they could pay way less than they’d have to pay me. He didn’t say that, of course. But that’s the size of it, isn’t it?”

  “So, who’d they get?”

  “A twentysomething morning show producer from California,” he said with a wave. “He starts next week. My new boss—some kid from Los Angeles.”

  She hugged him tight, still holding Lily. Sometimes things really sucked.

  “Whatever,” he said. “You know, I guess what’s strange is that I don’t even really care. I’m happy. I like what I do. I love you and Lily so much. The job’s already a pressure cooker—deadlines and ratings. Maybe it’s okay, especially now with your thing. Sometimes, you know, things just happen the way they’re meant to happen.”

  She could see it in his eyes, though—the frustration, the disappointment. There was worry, too. When someone new came in, who knew what else might change. She took Greg’s hand, and Lily crawled from her lap to his. Some of the worry dropped away, and he smiled at their girl.

  “Dada!”

  They made dinner together, with Lily in her high chair tossing Cheerios as if she was playing a game, to which only she knew the rules, and was joyfully winning. A chicken stir-fry, a bottle of wine, some David Bowie playing.

  Rain searched out Greg’s new boss on the internet and they agreed that he looked like an ass—tight-lipped with blond curls, thick glasses—oh, come on, he doesn’t really need those. In one picture, he wore a bow tie. He ran a small local morning show outside Los Angeles—the kind with local chefs in to cook healthy meals, and visiting authors on the road, best gifts for your valentine.

  “He won’t make it a week under the pressure of covering the sheep-shearing, and the local toolshed break-ins,” said Rain.

  “Yeah,” Greg agreed. “Hard news is going to crush him.”

  By the time Lily was down, Greg was planted in front of the television—zoning out to some college game. She tried to make herself look put together, professional.

  “Are you taking the car?” he said when she came downstairs. She had her tote, her laptop. She looked the part—lipstick, hair blown out. She felt the part, the way she’d always felt at work—smart, powerful, in control. She didn’t always feel that way at home. Often, she felt incompetent, lost, floundering. Why was work easier than life?

  “Yes,” she said, dangling the keys from her finger.

  “Drive carefully,” he said, getting up, kissing her. He bowed his head, then looked up at her, an eye lock, hands to her cheeks. “And knock ’em dead. I’m proud of you, you know. You’re brave to do this. You’re smart. And you’re a great mom. You got this. All of it.”

  There it was—one of those moments again. She almost put her stuff down, went upstairs and changed into her pajamas. She didn’t have to go, did she? Not really. She could just curl up on the couch beside her husband, and that would be that. They’d head upstairs after a while, probably make love, fall asleep together.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled. “I love you.”

  Then she was outside, down the steps, climbing into the SUV. She checked her phone, made sure that Find My Friends was disabled and pulled out of the driveway.

  She didn’t have a meeting in the city tonight, no appointment with Gillian and Andrew. The words were barely out of her mouth, and she was breaking all her promises to her husband. But there was something she needed to do, and it was past time.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Don’t they haunt you? Those pictures he drew. Believe it or not, I still dream about them. Crayon Rain—your stick hair and bright pink mouth, that blue he used for your eyes, the red he used for your insides. The gore. The childish horror show of it. When I saw them the first time on the dark web, the rage—it woke him right up.

  Is it a violation to hold someone in your mind? What right did he have to imprison your image that way in his fantasies? I just couldn’t let that stand. It was one thing when his body was locked up. But to have him free in the world and imagining you that way? No. No.

  Honestly, I was sure you would call Harper. What would you say? I talked to Hank, you’d confess. I think he might do something.

  What would Harper say? He’d say something like: Don’t worry, we’re on Kreskey every minute. We’ll handle whatever comes up. Live your life, Miss Winter. (He’d call you “miss,” of course.)

  Harper. He’s one of those men. A man who knows what’s right. A man who understands people. A veteran like my grandfather who knows how dark is the world, how base the human heart. He knows what men will do. And what must be done to stop them. Or to right the miserably unbalanced scales of justice. Sometimes. J
ust sometimes.

  “What are you doing here, son?”

  He surprised me that first night. I thought I was sly, that I was hidden. But he was slyer. And he had been hiding first.

  “Detective Harper?”

  In the woods behind the place where Kreskey was working his janitorial night shift, I’d been waiting, watching him arrive. I’d follow his progress through the low concrete buildings as the lights came on and went off. I watched as he shuffled out with the trash, tossed it into the Dumpster. He was slow, a lumbering giant. I noticed that he walked with a limp, that he dragged his right leg a little. Great hanging jowls, tent-sized clothing. His black hair hung in greasy slicks, thick glasses obscuring his eyes.

  I could see that Kreskey was a medicated zombie. If I was totally honest, in the nights I sat watching, some of my rage drained. I wasn’t quite there; he—the other one inside—wasn’t quite ready either. I was bound in a tangle of thoughts and nightmares, the blank spaces where I knew he resided. I knew what I wanted to do, what he wanted to do. But I wasn’t sure how you crossed the distance from intention to action. He came out when I was angry, or afraid. Looking at the husk Kreskey had become, knowing my own strength and physical power, I was neither.

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” I answered Harper.

  “Camping?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nice night for it.”

  “Full moon.”

  “You know they say these woods are haunted.”

  “I believe it.”

  “What’s in the pack?”

  A gun. A big hunting knife. A length of rope. Duct tape. A big plastic tarp. If you download Tor, the engine that gets you to the dark web, you can learn almost anything about anything. How to build a bomb. How to mark someone for assassination. How to commit a murder without leaving a trace of physical evidence. Interestingly, this is also where you can find the sites that sell murderabilia, like the drawings Kreskey made of you. One sold for nearly $5000 the last time I checked. Or so they say. You can’t trust anyone on the dark web. Or anyone, anywhere, for that matter.

  “Camping gear.”

  “You won’t mind if I take a look.”

  A moment passed between us, where I didn’t hand over the bag and he locked me in a knowing gaze that made me slouch my shoulders and want to slink away like a dominated dog.

  “You’re out of your league, son,” he said, gaze sliding away and up to the stars.

  I didn’t answer. As we stood there, the van pulled up and Kreskey lumbered out. A guard opened the door for him, then got back in his truck and drove away.

  “What are you doing here, Detective Harper?”

  “A few of us—retired guys, some still on the job,” he said. “We’re taking turns keeping an eye on our local monster. Can’t have anything like what happened to you kids happen again up here.”

  He wasn’t a big man, especially. As Kreskey had, he’d seemed bigger when I was a kid. But I was taller than he was now, much bigger, obviously in better shape, a trained fighter. But he had an aura that all other men recognized. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill you; and so, he’d always win any fight.

  “Problem is that there aren’t enough of us to be on him all the time. There are gaps. Wednesday nights, no one’s watching. Sunday nights, too.”

  We stood awhile, watching the lights go on and off, watching Kreskey’s bulky shadow. The air was warm, smelled of green and rot. Stars blinked, milky and faded in the full moon.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “I’ll just let you know right now. It’s not what you think. Not during. Not after.”

  I noticed for the first time that he had something over his shoulder, a camping chair, that he unfolded. It was an impossible tiny triangle of cloth hanging between three poles. No way it could hold him, but it did.

  “Too old for standing around all night,” he said, sinking down. “I’ve got this tonight. Why don’t you go back to school? Live the life you have. Study hard. Drink too much. Get a job. Love someone.”

  I left that night. But I went back, as you know.

  Today, Angel’s mother, Jennifer, asked if I would be present for the interview with the police detective investigating the disappearance of Billy Martin. I agreed, of course.

  I’ve also done some of my own research. I asked Detective Harper to run background checks on Tom and Wendy Walters. They wouldn’t have police records most likely, otherwise they wouldn’t be candidates for foster parents. But he dug around some. Tom had a sealed (to everyone except Detective Harper) juvenile record—arson, petty theft, found with a gun in his locker and kicked out of school. Joined the military, dishonorably discharged, worked at a factory in town that manufactured ice trays, of all things.

  Wendy was a high school dropout, worked at a grocery store, no record of any kind. They’d been married ten years. They didn’t exactly fit the foster parent profile of older, childless couples, usually of some means, looking to help kids since they couldn’t have their own. Of course, some folks were just looking for the money that came with caring for the kids. I’ve found this to be a rarity, though. Most people are well-meaning. Life often gets the better of them. The stress and struggle of it all, the voices in their heads—some of them crack under the burden. Life breaks them, and they do wrong.

  “How long were you with the Walters, Angel?”

  They sit at the table, Angel and the young detective—earnest, bald by choice, head shaved.

  Angel looks at Jen, who smiles and nods.

  “A little under a year, I guess,” she says. “We had Christmas there, but no presents.”

  I keep my place by the window so that Angel can look at me. “We?”

  “Me and Valentine. I called him Val.”

  The detective slides a picture over to Angel. “Is this Val?”

  She smiles. “Yes,” she says. “I think so. He was much thinner, different around the eyes somehow. But, yeah, it looks like him.”

  “Was he there when you came?”

  “No. He came after.”

  “Did someone bring him?”

  “No, he was just there one night. He came in with Tom. He had a bag, a beat-up old black rucksack.”

  “How long was he there?”

  “A week, maybe more,” she says. “He was in the bedroom down the hall. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t go to school.”

  “Did he say where he came from?”

  “He said he ran away,” she says. “That his dad hit him. That his mom never did anything about it.”

  “So how long was he there?” the detective asks again, maybe trying to get a more exact timeline, or trying to see if she stays consistent in the details.

  She lifts her bony shoulders. “I don’t know,” she says. “A couple of weeks?”

  “Who left first?”

  “I heard him yelling one night,” she says, not really answering the question. “I stayed in my room, but I watched as Tom dragged him outside. I followed.”

  I have heard some of this already—along with her reports of neglect, how long days in the house, neither Tom or Wendy came home. Angel got herself off to school, cleaned her clothes in a machine even though there was no detergent. She ate the school breakfast and lunch provided, knowing there might not be dinner. But she hasn’t told me the details about the night that Val (Billy?) got dragged from the house.

  “They walked and walked. Finally, they came to this door in the ground, like one of those cellars in The Wizard of Oz. Tom dragged him in there. They didn’t come out. I went back to the house.”

  Oh, I think. I’d been looking for a house, some kind of structure. I could have sworn that’s what she said before. Another hole in her story.

  �
��When did you see him again?”

  “I didn’t,” she says. “I didn’t see him again.”

  She’s gone flat; which is something most people don’t understand and why I think Angel might present as a liar. Trauma victims learn to separate from their emotions, to distance themselves from painful memories, from fear.

  “I heard screaming, though.”

  “Screaming.”

  “In the night,” she says. “At first, I thought it was a bird, or some kind of animal. But then I realized—someone was screaming.”

  I don’t like how blank she seems. She’s slowly folded into herself, her thin arms twisting around legs she’s pulled up to her chest. Jen is frowning with worry, hovering nearby—leaning in, then pulling away as though she’s not sure what to do. She’s a worrier—doesn’t want to overattend, doesn’t want to seem unavailable. All parents should worry so much between the balance of those things.

  “Angel,” I say, and her eyes dart toward me. “It’s okay. You’re here now, with us. The detective is trying to help.”

  She audibly exhales, looks at the picture in front of her.

  “It’s too late,” she says. Her eyes go big, tears fall. Jen swoops in, gathers the girl up in her arms. “It must be too late.”

  “If I’m facing the house,” asks the detective, “which way was the cellar?”

  “You walk behind the house. There’s a path you follow through the woods, there’s a fork in the path. You stay to the right. It’s a long way on foot—maybe fifteen minutes.”

  He slides another picture over toward Angel. Jen and I both lean in to look.

  “Do you know who this is?”

  She leans in. “That’s Valentine.”

  The detective frowns. It’s the image of a different boy—older, bigger, eyes set farther apart. Similar coloring, but with a smattering of freckles.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods. Jen and I exchange a look over Angel’s head.

  Another picture.

  “And this?”

  She nods. “Yes, that’s him.”

  It isn’t the same boy in the first photo. Again, similar coloring, but this boy with a scar on his cheek, a haunted look in his eyes, one I’ve seen too many times—in my patients, in the mirror.