by Mason Cross
Initially, because of Rebecca’s reticence and the fight she had overheard, Sarah had been concerned. As she got to know Rebecca—at least as far as it was possible to get to know someone who played her cards so close to her chest—she decided she didn’t have to worry about domestic abuse. Unless Rebecca was hiding it very well indeed, that wasn’t what was at the root of her reluctance to open up. No, if Sarah had to guess, she would say that Rebecca was just lonely. Occasionally she would mention a big project that Dominic was working on, and how she couldn’t wait for this one to be out of the way. Maybe, Sarah thought, she was just catching them in the midst of a bad patch. Maybe it really would be okay once the big project was out of the way.
Eventually, they branched out beyond coffee at Sarah’s and started to go into the city for lunch once a week, the occasional trip to the stores. Rebecca never offered to relocate the coffee and talks to her own house, and Sarah never asked.
Sarah never really spoke to the other half of the couple in all those months. She would see Dominic in passing, in the street or on the way out to her car, and they would nod politely to one another, but they never got into what you might term a conversation. If she had to guess, she would say they exchanged no more than a dozen words, until Liz Bowman’s baby shower.
Liz lived in the big house at the end of the street. She and the other Stepfords had invited Sarah, and she begged Rebecca to come along for moral support. She had been hesitant at first, but had eventually given in to Sarah’s pleas. They had expected to form their own little clique, subtly rolling their eyes at one another the whole time, but to their surprise, they had actually had a fun afternoon in Liz’s gargantuan backyard. There was a barbecue, a pool, cold beer for the grownups and enough food and activities and games to keep the half-dozen or so kids occupied. Sarah started to feel a little guilty about her feelings of superiority over her impeccably turned-out neighbors. They were nice people, for the most part. Just ... a little beige. There were worse crimes.
The atmosphere changed when Dominic showed up. Rebecca saw him first, standing by the side gate and surveying the expansive backyard, clearly searching for her. When his eyes alighted on them, he made a beeline for his wife. He didn’t acknowledge Sarah.
Dominic had always seemed serious, preoccupied, every time Sarah had seen him. He looked much more so now. The brow below his sandy-colored hair was knitted into a deep frown, his gray-blue eyes not seeming to register anyone but his wife. He didn’t waste time getting to the point. His voice was quiet, but the tone was abrupt.
“We have to go.”
Rebecca’s demeanor seemed to become more relaxed in inverse proportion to her husband’s. She held up her halffull bottle of Coors, signifying she wasn’t quite ready to go on one second’s notice. “In a minute, darling.”
Sarah didn’t think she was imagining that the “darling” had been infused with a slightly mocking tone. Rebecca bent her head forward a little and looked at her husband over the top of her sunglasses.
“We talked about this.”
Dominic looked like he was fighting back the urge to snap at her, perhaps even to grab her arm and try to drag her out of there. Sarah was on her third beer, which was two more than she was used to in one sitting, so perhaps she had felt a little wicked, a little like provoking him.
“Come on, Dominic, lighten up.” She reached into the cool box and her hand came out with another Coors.
She held it out to him. Dominic looked at the bottle as though it was some sort of primitive sacrificial offering, before dismissing her and turning his attention back to Rebecca. He gently moved her to one side by putting a hand on her shoulder, and moved his lips close to her right ear and started to whisper something. Sarah pretended not to pay attention while straining to hear, but the whisper was lost beneath the sound of the tinny speakers of the boom box on the other side of the pool blasting out a Taylor Swift song.
Instead, she took another drink and watched the couple out of the corner of her eye. She saw Rebecca’s shoulders tense and a serious expression cross her face. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good news. Dominic had pulled back from her ear now, though his hand was still resting proprietorially on Rebecca’s shoulder.
Sarah took a step forward. “Everything okay?”
Rebecca looked around at her, like she had forgotten that Sarah, or anyone else, was there. After a second, she nodded.
The three of them turned at the click of a camera shutter. Their host was standing there. Liz Bowman was a slight, dark-haired woman with piercing green eyes. Liz was at least eight months gone, and every time she looked at her, Sarah wondered how she was able to keep her balance well enough to stand up. The woman looked as though she was about to give birth to a Sherman tank. She was holding the new Nikon DSLR she had been given by the McCains from number 20, the strap around her neck, the camera resting lightly on top of her bump.
“Just thought I would get a snap of our new neighbors. And you, of course, Sarah.”
Sarah glanced at Dominic and saw the same expression she had seen on his face a few minutes before, like he was trying to decide whether to grab the camera and rip out the memory card. But again, he held back.
“Come on,” he said, taking Rebecca’s hand.
This time, she didn’t resist, placing the beer down on the table and shooting an apologetic look at Liz and Sarah.
“I’m sorry, we have to go,” she said. “I just found out my sister’s in hospital.”
Had Rebecca ever mentioned a sister? Sarah didn’t think so, but then again, had Rebecca mentioned any family?
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that,” Liz was saying. “I certainly hope it’s nothing serious.” The tone of her voice suggested that she certainly hoped Rebecca would tell her all the details.
“Thanks,” Rebecca said. She touched Sarah on the arm. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
Sarah opened her mouth to say something, but before she could think of anything, Rebecca and Dominic had turned and were leaving the barbecue. A hush fell over the party as two dozen suburbanites pretended not to watch and speculate about the new couple who were leaving so abruptly.
“I don’t like that guy.” Sarah turned from watching Rebecca and Dominic leave to see Liz Bowman had moved closer to her, still clutching her camera. For the first time, Sarah was entirely in agreement with her.
Sarah expected Rebecca to call or drop in that night, but she never appeared. She didn’t get much of anything done during her editing session. She just kept thinking about how Rebecca’s expression had changed when she heard whatever her husband had whispered. She didn’t buy for a minute that her sister was in hospital. He had said something else that had convinced Rebecca to leave. Something she hadn’t been expecting.
The next morning, Sarah woke just before six a.m.—an hour before her alarm. She couldn’t get back to sleep, and decided to make an early start on her writing. She went through her usual routine: making coffee and toast, then taking it back up to the study. She switched her computer on and pulled the blinds up as she waited for it to come to life.
Rebecca and Dominic’s car was gone.
Her eyes moved from the empty driveway to the house itself. It was in darkness, but the drapes were open.
She took her phone out and sent a text to Rebecca.
Everything okay? x
Despite it all, she managed to get a solid two hours of writing on the new book done before she saw the mailman stroll briskly around the corner. He ignored Rebecca’s house, as he usually did, and put a single letter in Sarah’s mailbox. Deciding she deserved a break, Sarah went downstairs, slipped her shoes on and walked to the bottom of the path to where the mailbox was. The letter the mailman had just placed there was a bank statement, from the savings account which for some reason didn’t yet offer paperless billing, but she was more interested in the fact that it wasn’t the only thing in the box.
There was a sheet of paper, folded in half, that must have been there since
before the mailman came by. Since before six a.m., in fact, since she would have seen somebody else putting something in there.
It was a typed note.
We have to go away for a couple of weeks, sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.
R
Sarah looked up from the note and back at 32. Where the hell had they gone?
She waited a couple of days and sent another text. When that received no reply, she tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. She left a few messages over the next couple of days, saying she hoped Rebecca was all right and it would be great to hear from her, before giving up.
A couple of weeks passed quickly. And then a third, and then a fourth. Liz Bowman gave birth to a nine-pound girl. More time passed. Sarah kept to her routine: writing in the morning, editing in the evening. Every day she looked out at number 32 and wondered where Rebecca had gone, why she hadn’t heard from her.
On the night Sarah was woken at three a.m. by Barney, it had been almost two months since Rebecca had gone. Barney was a black Labrador who belonged to her neighbors on the other side. The urgent barking wasn’t like him. She lay there for a minute and decided to get up and have a look. From her bedroom window, she saw a man outside on the driveway, looking at the house, shrinking back from the barking. He was dressed in dark clothes, a beanie hat on his head. If he was a burglar, Barney was giving him second thoughts. As she watched, another man, also in dark clothes, appeared in her field of vision and pointed in the opposite direction down the street. It was as though he was saying “wrong house.”
The two men disappeared out of view, heading in her direction. She backed away from the window, out onto the landing and through to the front bedroom. She watched the two men walk past her own driveway, one of them glancing at the ground floor of her house, and continue along the sidewalk. She saw they were headed for 32. She stepped out of the bedroom and crossed the landing to the study. The blind was down here, as usual. She crouched and raised the bottom of it with her hand, just enough to see out.
Number 32 was in darkness, as it had been every night for weeks.
She watched as the two men approached the front door, glancing in the windows. One of them stood on the porch and looked out at the street while the other walked around the back. Two minutes later, the one at the front turned around and the door opened from the inside. Whoever these men were, they didn’t have permission to be there. If they knew Rebecca or Dominic, or if they were there on behalf of the landlord, they wouldn’t show up at three a.m. and post a lookout while they went in the back door. Sarah decided her initial suspicion had been on the money.
Reluctant to move from her vantage point, Sarah dropped the blind and ran back across the landing to her bedroom, where she had left her phone on the bedside table. She dialed 911 as she ran back through and lifted the blind again.
The ringtone sounded twice as she looked out at the house. On the second floor, she could see dim light moving around. Somebody was moving from room to room with a flashlight kept low.
“Nine-one-one, how may I direct your call?”
Sarah had almost forgotten she was holding the phone. Quickly, she gathered herself. “Police, please.”
A click, then dead air, then, “Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, how can I help you.”
“I’m calling to report a burglary. 32 West Pine Avenue.”
“Could I have your name please?”
“It’s Sarah Blackwell.”
“Are they on your property right now, ma’am?”
“No, it’s next door. I’m the neighbor.”
“I see. Is there anybody home next door, Ms. Blackwell?”
Sarah didn’t say anything for a minute and the dispatcher had to say her name again to remind her to speak.
“No. Nobody’s home. I don’t know where they’ve gone.”
As she watched, the man out front had stepped out from the cover of the porch. Something in his hand glinted in the moonlight. A gun.
4
The dispatcher confirmed a car was on its way and reminded Sarah to stay put before ending the call. Sarah clutched the phone and watched as the light moved around the ground floor. Her exasperation grew as the minutes passed. Where the hell were they? She took her eyes off the house to compare the time of the call to the clock on her phone. It had been almost ten minutes. She thumbed through the directory and called Rebecca’s cell phone. Perhaps a call this late at night would not be ignored.
She cursed as a recording informed her that this number was out of service. And then she felt a surge of relief as she heard the sound of an engine approaching from the east, out of her field of view. She backed out of the study and hurried through to the front bedroom.
It wasn’t a police car. A black SUV rolled by the front of her house before stopping outside 32. As she watched, the man who had gone inside emerged via the front door and closed it behind him. He was carrying a flat, magazine-sized object. A laptop, perhaps? He exchanged words with the one with the gun as they hurried down the path to the SUV, then shook his head.
“No!” she said aloud as she watched them get into the car—one in the passenger seat, one in the back—and close the doors. The car pulled swiftly away from the curb, and Sarah only just had the presence of mind to look at the license plate. She ran back through to the study and grabbed the notepad and pen from her desk, scrawling the plate number down before it went out of her head.
When she got back to the front bedroom, the patrol car was outside 32, its lights flashing silently away as the two cops got out and started to approach the house, guns drawn.
Ten minutes later, one of them, a bald guy of around fifty, was in her living room. The other one was checking the exterior of the house, looking for evidence of where the two men had gotten in. The cop was taking notes as Sarah spoke.
“They went in, they spent ten minutes looking around, and then they left with something. A laptop maybe. They didn’t have it when they went in. If you had been two minutes earlier ...”
“We got here as quick as we could, ma’am,” the cop said, not looking up from his notes. His tone was bored rather than defensive. He probably had thirty years’ experience of people telling him he hadn’t gotten here soon enough. “Do you know the names of the homeowners?”
“They were renting,” Sarah said. "Are renting, I mean.” She groped through her memory for a name, and remembered seeing it on a utility bill that had been delivered to her house by mistake. As soon as she had it, she realized why it had been so easy to forget.
“Smith. Dominic and Rebecca Smith. They left in a hurry a few weeks ago. Actually, I’ve been—”
“You got the name of the owner?”
Sarah shook her head. He had lived there before her time. “No. I’ve been worried about her. About Rebecca. The thing is ...”
The cop held up his hand impatiently. “We’ll have to contact the owner. Maybe he sent a friend around to get something.”
“At three in the morning? Through the back door?”
The younger cop appeared at the door, scuffing his feet on the doormat before stepping into the hall.
“No sign of forced entry. Everything looks secure, all the doors are locked.”
The pair of them exchanged a glance and the older one looked back at Sarah questioningly. The look was a nonverbal way of asking if she was sure she didn’t dream this whole thing. She wanted to punch him for that look.
“Did you check inside?” Sarah asked, to fill the silence.
“I took a look through the windows. Everything seems fine. No evidence of any disturbance.”
The younger one’s radio buzzed and he turned away from them, giving his badge number and telling whoever was on the other end of the line to go ahead. Sarah heard some codes and static as the older one examined her like a plumber surveying a routine but time-intensive job.
The younger one signed off and looked at Sarah. “No hit on that plate. Are you sure you got it down
right?”
“Yes I’m sure. I wrote it down right away. Maybe it was fake.”
“Maybe. And you’re not sure what type of vehicle it was.”
“No, I told you—it was an SUV, dark-colored.”
The two cops exchanged another glance.
The next morning, Sarah felt a strong sense of déjà vu as she went over the story once again, with a similar reaction. In most ways, Officer Stansfield from Missing Persons was a contrast to the two cops who had come in the night. She was female, a little younger, and wore a smart gray suit with a white blouse. But she had the same tired expression on her face as she listened to Sarah’s story.
“We contacted the owner ...” she consulted her notepad. “A Jeffrey Walters, lives in San Diego. He didn’t know anything about people coming over in the night. He suggested maybe it was somebody the Smiths knew. To be frank, I got the impression Mr. Walters doesn’t pay the property much mind, as long as the rent’s getting paid.”
That was a point. “And is it?”
Officer Stansfield looked down at her notes again. “They paid in advance. One year’s rent, takes them up until January.”
Sarah’s brow furrowed. They had paid a whole year in advance? In that case, why had they disappeared with so long left on the lease?