by Sam Hawken
The database crunched for a little over thirty seconds. It returned a series of hits. Ignacio disregarded everything except the top result. He clicked it open. Notes and forms spilled onto his screen, internally searchable and with the handwritten originals scanned in.
Faith Glazer was twenty-nine years old, and she worked as a forensic accountant. Ignacio did not know what a forensic accountant was. She was for hire, skipping from temporary employer to temporary employer with regularity. The file listed four different work addresses over the previous year. All were banks or financial firms.
She recounted six instances of close encounters with her stalker. Twice she had seen him near her work, and three times in places of business or on the street near her apartment. Another time he’d been outside the fence around the lot where she parked. In none of the incidents had he spoken to her, or made any physical contact.
The reporting officer also made note of two times when Faith thought the stalker had been inside her apartment, though an examination of the premises showed no signs of forced entry. She said she was pretty sure he peeked through her windows at night, but had no times or dates to share.
There was more. Ignacio read it all. He picked up the phone and dialed internally. The line rang twice before a woman answered. “Detective Herrera. Special Victims. How can I help?”
“Detective, this is Ignacio Montellano over in Homicide. How are you doing tonight?”
“Clearing my desk before I head home.”
“Yeah, same here. Listen, do you have a minute? I’m looking at a case forwarded to Special Victims not too long ago. It doesn’t look like anyone was assigned to it, so I don’t know who to talk to.”
“What’s the case number?”
Ignacio read the number off the screen. “The complainant’s name is Faith Deena Glazer. I have an address if you need it.”
“No, I have it. It looks like the case dropped in our laps about six weeks ago. It’s on the board for someone to follow up on, but we haven’t gotten around to it. Wait a minute: Is this a homicide case now?”
“Nothing like that, thank God. No, it came up because the MO of the reported stalker meshed with a potential suspect in another case, so I thought I’d chase down the details.”
Herrera made a humming sound. “I’m not seeing anything unusual here. Though the behavior seems to be escalating, which is typical for this kind of thing. This suspect you’re looking at, you’re thinking he’s good for a body?”
“Tough to say. I’ll know more soon. But you’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? This is a legitimate complaint.”
“If it’s not, then Ms. Glazer knows all the right buttons to push. I’d need to sit down with this file and really read it over, plus do interviews with the victim, but judging strictly from what I see here…yeah, it’s legit. I’m going to move this up, because if he’s doing some of the things she says he’s doing, it’s only a matter of time.”
“He could hurt her,” Ignacio said.
“At least. That’s the thing with these stalkers: a little is never enough. He’ll start with the harmless stuff—creepy stuff, but harmless—but he’ll turn it up a few notches at a time until the next thing you know he’s raped or killed the woman he’s stalking.”
Ignacio scowled at the file on his screen. “Tell you what: if you do look into this, keep me posted, okay? I don’t want it turning into something one of ours has to handle. You know what I mean?”
“I do. Thanks for calling, Detective.”
Ignacio hung up. He looked at the screen. He called up Faith Glazer’s driver’s license. She had a dejected expression in the photo, hair in disarray. “Sounds like you have a real problem on your hands, Ms. Glazer,” he said aloud.
He called Camaro.
Chapter Eleven
CAMARO HEARD THE sound of Faith’s car in the street. During the time she’d been living here, she’d learned the familiar noises, the voices and the cars and trucks. She knew when the Domino’s Pizza driver was on her street because the engine on his dying car had a distinctive buzz that would only get worse if he didn’t start maintaining his ride better. Camaro had the faces of everyone on the block tucked away, some with names and some without. She rarely spoke to her neighbors, but she knew them. For the better part of a year she’d avoided any contact with anyone on her street at all. Except for once, and a man ended up in the hospital. He belonged there.
She stopped in the living room to peek out through the blinds. Faith was out of her Mazda and struggling with an athletic bag. She wore yoga pants and sneakers and a T-shirt over an athletic bra, but none of it looked right on her. The band holding her hair barely kept the curls under control.
Camaro went to the front door, opened it, and pushed the screen door wide. “You’re late,” she said.
Faith hurried up the short walk, three cement squares sunk unevenly in the dirt and surrounded by listless grass. “I am so sorry. There was a power outage last night while I was sleeping and my alarm got switched off. I got here as fast as I could.”
They moved inside, where it was cooler. Camaro let the screen door slap into place, closed the inner door against the day. It was dim with the blinds shut and the drapes mostly drawn. Camaro smelled the faint aroma of hair product in Faith’s wake. “Next time you need to be here when I tell you,” she told Faith. “I have a lot of business in the summer and not a whole lot of downtime. If you want to learn from me, get here. Set two alarms if you have to.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t even tell you that I got lost driving over here, too. I don’t know this area at all. It’s kind of…working-class. No offense.”
“Bring your stuff out back.”
They went outside. Camaro saw Faith looking around the patio at the equipment. A bench for weight lifting, a heavy bag the size of a man, a solid wooden crate, a battered wooden dummy called a muk yan jong, racks of kettlebells and iron plates and a mat patched with duct tape spread over one-quarter of the space. Overhead, tucked into the supports for the patio’s roof, was a length of pipe wrapped in dirty cotton. A chin-up bar.
“Holy shit,” Faith said. “You are hard-core.”
“Put your bag down anywhere. Take your shoes and socks off.”
Faith obeyed. Camaro stretched until her forehead touched her knees. Her legs were encased in black Lycra to midcalf, and she wore no shirt over a dark athletic bra with the lines of a tank top. When she straightened again, she gathered her hair and tied it back with a pink elastic band.
Camaro stepped onto the mat. Faith followed her. They stood face-to-face. “I’m going to tell you something right now,” Camaro said. “And you need to hear me, all right?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t do this for fun. I don’t do it to get a beach body. You understand? The things I do here, the things I’m going to teach you, are about saving your life. Over at Miguel’s, they’ll take it easy on you as long as you’re paying the fee, and they know most of the people who come through the door are never going to throw a real punch in their lives. It’s a game to those people. It’s not a game to me.”
Faith shook her head. “It is absolutely not a game to me. I’m sorry I was late. I won’t be late again.”
Camaro held her gaze. “This isn’t about being late. This is about doing what you have to do to stay alive. I don’t know how good a teacher I am. I’ve only done it once before and it went wrong. But I’m still going to try because whoever that guy is out there who’s following you, he has to go down. All the way down. You have to put him there. I won’t be able to help you, and no one else will, either. Not the cops, not your neighbors. It’s going to be you…and him.”
“I understand.”
It was hot and the air lay thick against them. Camaro ran Faith through a series of warm-ups and stretches until Faith was drenched with perspiration and her face was flushed. They paused long enough for a drink of water before the rest: squats and lunges and kicks and push-ups, all done side by side. Camar
o pushed herself until her body burned. When Faith fell behind, Camaro slowed only long enough to bring her back in tandem.
Faith screamed. Faith wept. Camaro wrapped Faith’s hands in elastic cotton and turned her loose against the heavy bag. She saw the muscles in Faith’s legs tremble. Hair plastered to her skin. Camaro urged her on until Faith staggered and collapsed onto the mat.
“Get up.”
Faith held up a hand. Her lungs bellowed. “I’m dying. I can’t get up.”
“It doesn’t get any easier than this. Get up.”
“I need five minutes.”
“You want five minutes, or do you want to hurt this asshole when he comes for you?”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Get. Up.”
Camaro caught Faith by the wrist and hauled her to her feet. Faith swayed. Fresh tears streamed down her face. “This is too much. I’m out of shape.”
“You are out of shape, but we’re gonna fix that. You and me.”
She grabbed a leather jump rope from where it lay coiled by the weights. She put it in Faith’s hand. “A hundred skips. You can take thirty seconds after every twenty.”
Faith looked as though she would say more, but she closed her mouth. She nodded. “All right.”
Chapter Twelve
HE HADN’T KNOWN where Faith was going. When he saw her in her workout clothes, he assumed she was headed to the fighting gym in South Beach where she’d begun taking classes. He’d gotten used to the commute, and the view on the gym’s breezy street. But Faith made different turns and soon they were in a thicket of old housing and narrow throughways where the city’s working poor struggled to hang on to the bottom rung of what used to be called the middle class. He did not like the neighborhood, nor did he care much for the people he saw. It reminded him of places he’d put behind him.
After a few strange detours he attributed to confusing GPS directions, they eventually found their way into the heart of Allapattah, and there Faith parked in front of a modest-looking house on a street thick with trees. He parked well back to stay out of Faith’s sight, but not so far back that he couldn’t see her all the way to the front door.
The woman in the house wasn’t familiar to him. He looked at her through a small pair of binoculars. She was a bit taller than Faith and heavier with muscle. Toned arms and defined shoulders, body flat and tight where Faith’s was soft. She didn’t smile, not even when she greeted Faith at the door.
They went inside. He thought about moving closer, but he couldn’t be sure if Faith would emerge suddenly and find him in the open. Instead he watched the dark, still windows and the red pickup truck in the driveway and imagined what he might see if he came near.
It occurred to him that this new woman was a lesbian. From the way she looked and the way she carried herself, it seemed obvious. Faith was not a lesbian, but he sometimes thought it would be exciting if she was attracted to both men and women. Some nights he fantasized about two women, but both of them looked like Faith and he couldn’t tell them apart. They made love to each other as well as to him and became one body.
An hour passed, then another, with no sign of Faith. It was too warm in the car, even when he rolled down the windows halfway. He busied himself writing down all the information he could ascertain, like the street number for the house and a few letters and numbers off the truck’s license plate. The same idea kept coming back to prod him again and again, until at last the images unspooled inside his mind.
He had never seen Faith completely naked, but he had some idea of what was beneath her clothes. With the new woman he could conjure other details. Those details meshed with the daydream of Faith’s body, and he saw the two of them together in bed as clearly as if he were watching them in the same room. A hot room, as overwhelmed with humidity and temperature as his car, and one that made their bodies wet.
In his mind he heard their sounds. Of course he’d seen the movies. Everyone had. He knew they were all fake, but sometimes he thought he heard the genuine passion hidden away inside them. He heard it now, echoing in the chamber of his skull as the sheets tangled around them and they moved together.
He pulled the pair of Faith’s underpants from his pocket and covered his mouth and nose with the material. His body was abuzz with the vision. He breathed raggedly, drawing the last bit of scent from the underwear, concentration fragmenting into a million shards, each one reflecting the bedroom scene over and over until there was nothing else but Faith and the woman, Faith and the woman.
His chest hitched. His body spasmed. He felt heat and an insistent pulse. He snatched the underpants away from his mouth and gasped for unfiltered air. He clutched the steering wheel with both hands until he saw and heard and felt again.
Something moved in the corner of his vision. He saw a girl of eight or nine on a bicycle in the street in the shade of a full green tree. She stared at him, and her mouth hung open. He saw distress and confusion flicker behind her eyes. She turned her head and shouted, “Mama! Mama!”
He straightened up in his seat and twisted the key in the ignition. With the girl still watching him, he slammed the lever into drive and stomped the accelerator. His car leaped from its spot by the curb, wheels chirping. He accelerated down the street toward the woman’s house. Despite himself he looked, but there was no sign of her or Faith. There was a bronze-and-black Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the carport.
Now he was beyond the house and moving toward the end of the block. In the rearview mirror he saw the girl joined by a woman in a blue housedress. The girl pointed down the street after his car, but he knew he was far enough away that they’d never be able to get the license plate. He reached the corner and hurtled around it, slowing only enough to keep the car from slewing completely out of control. He hyperventilated again, but it was different now. It was not the excitement he wanted, but the exhilaration of a moment passed successfully and no one the wiser.
He drove for fifteen minutes in no particular direction. The air conditioner chilled the air and the sweat wicked away from his skin. His spirits lifted still more. He turned on the radio to listen to snatches of music between commercials and DJ chatter. He almost sang along.
Chapter Thirteen
CAMARO HEARD THE shower running while she set the kitchen table for two. She had a pair of pork chops, absorbing the flavors of a dry rub, waiting by the stove on a sheet of waxed paper. Instead of glasses, she put out cold bottles of Gatorade straight from the refrigerator. She boiled water to steam vegetables.
After a while Faith emerged. She’d changed from sweat-soaked workout clothing into jeans and a loose blouse. Without speaking to Camaro, she took one of the bottles of Gatorade and cracked the seal. She drank until the bottle was half empty. “Oh, thank God,” she said.
“There’s more.”
Faith collapsed into a chair. “I swear I thought I was going to die. I’m going to hurt so bad tomorrow. I hurt now.”
Camaro nodded. The water wasn’t rolling yet. “Watch this pot.”
She left Faith in the kitchen and took a turn underneath the shower spray. Her body ached, but Faith had it worse. Camaro dressed for home in a pair of pants with holes worn in them and a plain white T-shirt. By the time she returned to the kitchen, the water was ready for the vegetables.
Faith watched her while she worked. The pork chops had to go on at the right time. First a sear, and then a finish under the broiler. “Do I always get dinner after you torture me?”
“Today you do.”
Faith drained the last of her bottle. “I’m out.”
“Take mine.”
Camaro stayed at the stove. A minute too long and the pork would dry out. “You didn’t quit,” she said without looking away.
“Haven’t you heard of starting off slowly?”
“No time. From what I heard, a guy like the one who’s been bothering you, he’s going to keep stepping it up until he does something he can’t take back. You want to be ready when it happens.”
“You know a lot about this kind of thing?”
“No. But I know people who do.”
Camaro put the pork in the oven. She set a timer. The vegetables were ready to come out of the steamer. She’d keep them in a bowl under a hot, moist towel. She knew Faith was watching.
“If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to meet three or four times a week,” Camaro said. “The schedule’s going to depend on my business. I keep odd hours sometimes.”
“What is it you do again?”
Camaro soaked a towel under the hot tap. She shook the steamer out and transferred the vegetables to a bowl. She put the towel over the bowl. “I skipper a fishing boat.”
“I would not have figured that out.”
“What do you see me doing?”
“I don’t know. Not a cop. A soldier, maybe?”
Camaro glanced at Faith.
“Were you a soldier?”
“Once.”
“Do you have all kinds of medals and stuff?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m an accountant. No medals.”
Camaro came to the table with the bowl still covered. She set the bowl between their plates. “Everybody does something. I don’t know anything about being an accountant. I use my computer to do my taxes.”
Faith made a face. “You need a person to do your taxes. Especially if you’re a small-business owner. The potential tax liabilities those software programs can miss are huge. Don’t believe the hype.”
“Okay,” Camaro said.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No. But I told you, I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”
“You know a hundred ways to kick somebody’s ass, though, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe nothing. I saw the scars on your knuckles. You have them on your elbows, too. And then there’s the one over your eye. It’s pretty new. I think it is, anyway.”