The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

by Lisa Scottoline

  When I tried to squirm away, he squeezed my hand, hard—he was looming over me, and his smile didn’t seem so friendly now.

  “You’re not even trying, for God’s sake. Why do you just give up?”

  Hearing Desmond’s voice, my mother appeared in the doorway.

  Quickly then Desmond stammered an apology, took back the gleaming little violin from me, and left.

  Mom and I stared after him, shaken.

  “That voice I heard, Lizbeth—I’d swear it wasn’t Desmond.”

  Following this, something seemed to have altered between Desmond and me.

  He didn’t call. He began to appear in places I would not expect. He’d never made any effort to see me before school, only after school, once or twice a week at the most, but now I began to see him watching me from across the street when I entered school at about 8 A.M. If I waved shyly to him, he didn’t wave back but turned away as if he hadn’t seen me.

  “Is that your boyfriend over there? What’s he doing there?” my girlfriends would ask.

  “We had a disagreement. He wants to make up. I think.”

  I tried to speak casually. I hoped the tremor in my voice wasn’t detectable.

  This was the sort of thing a girl would say, wasn’t it? A girl in my circumstances, with a boyfriend?

  I realized that I had no idea what it meant to have a boyfriend.

  Still more, had a disagreement.

  And after school, Desmond began to appear closer to the building. He didn’t seem to mind, as he’d initially minded, mingling with high school students as they moved past him in an erratic stream—Desmond a fixed point, like a rock. Waiting for me, then staring at me, not smiling, with a curt little wave of his hand as I approached—as if I might not have recognized him otherwise.

  I’d gotten into the habit of hurrying from school, on those days I didn’t have a meeting or field hockey. It seemed urgent to get outside soon after the final bell. I didn’t always want to be explaining Desmond to my friends. I didn’t want always to be telling them that I had to hurry, my boyfriend wanted to see me alone.

  Where Desmond hadn’t shown any interest in watching me play field hockey, now he might turn up at a game, or even at practice, not sitting in the bleachers with our (usually few) spectators; he preferred to remain aloof, standing at the edge of the playing field, where he could stroll off unobserved at any time—except of course Desmond was observed, especially by me.

  “When are you going to introduce Desmond to us, Lizbeth?”

  “Is he kind of . . . the jealous type?”

  “He looks like a preppy! He looks rich.”

  “He looks a little older, like . . . a college guy, at least?”

  It was thrilling to me that my friends and teammates knew that the tall lanky boy who kept his distance was my boyfriend—but not so thrilling that they must have been talking behind my back, speculating and even worrying about me.

  There’s some secret about him, Lizbeth won’t tell.

  Maybe Lizbeth doesn’t know!

  You think he’s abusing her? You know—it could be mental, too.

  Lizbeth is kind of changed lately.

  Does anybody know him? His family?

  They’re new to Strykersville, Lizbeth said.

  She’s crazy about him, that’s obvious.

  Or just kind of crazy.

  You think he feels the same about her?

  “I’m thinking maybe I will defer again—and wait for you. I have plenty of independent research I can do before going to college. And if you couldn’t get into Amherst, or couldn’t afford it, my dad could help out. What d’you think?”

  For the first time, I lied to Desmond.

  Then, for the second time, I lied to Desmond.

  He hadn’t been waiting for me at school but he’d come over to our house at about 6 P.M., rapped on the back door, which led out onto the redwood deck, as he usually did, and when I came to the door I told him that I couldn’t see him right then: “My mom needs me for something. I have to help her with something.”

  “Can’t it wait? Or can’t I wait? How long will this ‘something’ require?”

  I was so anxious, I hadn’t even invited Desmond inside. Nor did I want to go outside onto the deck, which would make it more difficult for me to ease away from Desmond and back into the house.

  A thin cold rain was falling. A smell of wet rotting leaves.

  Desmond had bicycled over. He was wearing a shiny yellow rain slicker and a conical rain hat, which made him look both comical and threatening, like an alien life form in a sci-fi horror movie.

  “I said I can’t, Desmond. This isn’t a good time . . . Daddy will be home soon, we’re having dinner early tonight. There’s some family crisis kind of thing going on I can’t tell you about—my elderly grandmother, in a nursing home . . .”

  This was enough to discourage Desmond, who had no more questions for me but backed off with a hurt smirk of a smile.

  “Goodnight then, Lizbeth! Have a happy ‘family crisis.’”

  This sarcastic remark lingered in my memory like a taste of something rotten in my mouth.

  I thought, He hates me now. I have lost him now.

  I thought, Thank God! He will find someone else.

  It happened then; Desmond Parrish drifted to the edge of my life.

  He ceased coming to the house. He ceased waiting for me after school. His telephone calls, which had been infrequent, now ceased.

  I felt his fury, at a distance.

  He’d been insulted by my resistance to him. So subtle, another boy would scarcely have noticed. But of course Desmond Parrish wasn’t another boy.

  I regretted turning him away. I thought it might be the worst mistake of my life. When I received my amphibian paper back, in earth science, seeing a red A+ prominent on the first page, my first wish was to tell Desmond, who’d helped me with the paper.

  So long ago, that seemed now! But it had been less than a month.

  Desmond had read a draft of the paper for me and made just a few suggestions. He’d encouraged me to explore the theme of amphibian in a way not exclusively literal. “‘Ontology recapitulates philology.’ If you don’t know what that means, I can explain.”

  Now all that was changed.

  Now I couldn’t predict when I might see Desmond. He had removed himself from my life, decisively—but he was still there, observing.

  In the corner of my eye I would see him. And in my uneasy dreams I would see him.

  Walking with friends. Driving with my mother in her car.

  One afternoon at the mall, with Kristine.

  And another time with Kristine, driving to a drugstore a half-mile from our house, in a shopping center, and there I saw, about thirty feet away, Desmond Parrish observing us: in his shiny yellow cyclist’s helmet and a nylon parka and arms folded tight across his chest, and when I stopped to stare, the figure turned quickly away and vanished from my sight.

  Seeing the look on my face, Kristine said, “Are you all right, Lizzie? You look kind of sick.”

  I was so stricken by the sight of Desmond, I had to sit down for a few minutes.

  Kristine asked, concerned, if I wanted to go home; but I said no, I did not want to go home. I did not!

  “You’ve seemed kind of quiet lately.”

  I told her I was all right. But I had things to think about that couldn’t be shared.

  “About Des? Something about Des?”

  Kristine knew that Desmond wasn’t dropping by the house any longer. Nor did I speak of Desmond to her now, or to my mother.

  “What’s happened to him? Did you two break up?”

  In Kristine’s voice there was the equivalent of a smirk.

  Break up. Your weird boyfriend.

  My sister’s condescending attitude made me want to slap her. For what did Kristine know?

  It was so, Desmond frightened me now. Since he’d squeezed my hand so hard, gripping the violin bow, and since I’d sens
ed in him a willfulness that had no tenderness for me but only a wish to subjugate, I did not want to be in his presence: I began to tremble thinking of him.

  Yet, perversely, I cherished the memory of my boyfriend. The memory of Desmond Parrish was more thrilling to me than Desmond himself had been in recent weeks.

  “You didn’t . . . make any mistakes with him, did you? Lizbeth?”

  Kristine spoke hesitantly, embarrassed. We were not sisters who confided in each other about intimate things, and we were not about to start now.

  Gritting my teeth, I told her no.

  “He didn’t coerce you into—or force you into—anything you didn’t want to do, did he?”

  Muttering no, I walked away from Kristine.

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shove her from me or, ridiculously, push into her arms so she could comfort me as she’d done when I’d been a little girl.

  “Maybe you thought you loved—love—him. But you didn’t—you don’t . . .”

  When we left the drugstore to cross the parking lot to my mother’s station wagon, which Kristine was driving, in the corner of my eye I saw a tall lean figure wearing a yellow helmet, in the rear exit of another store. It was the very figure I dreaded seeing, and dreaded not seeing.

  I collapsed into the station wagon, my knees weak. I didn’t turn to stare at the figure on the pavement; I didn’t say a word to Kristine, who reached out wordlessly to squeeze my hand.

  Wistfully my mother said, “Lizbeth, what has happened to Desmond? Has he disappeared? He seemed so—devoted . . .”

  I knew that Mom was thinking, So devoted to both of us.

  YOU CAN’T JUST SHUT ME OUT OF YOUR LIFE LIZBETH

  YOU KNOW THAT WE ARE SOUL MATES FROM THAT OTHER LIFETIME

  This message was left for me, in felt-tip black ink on a scroll of gilt paper, inside a plain white envelope thrust into my high school locker.

  I opened the gilt paper and read these words, stunned. I could not believe that Desmond had actually come into the school building, where he didn’t belong; that he’d risked being detected in order to observe me, at least once, who knows how many times, at my locker.

  Then, to slip the envelope into my locker, he must have come after school, when the corridor was deserted.

  My hand trembled, holding the gilt scroll that looked like some kind of festive announcement.

  Many times I would reread it. Many times in the secrecy of my room.

  The message held a threat, I thought—or hinted at a threat.

  I must tell my parents, I thought.

  But they might try to contact Desmond’s parents or, worse yet, the Strykersville police . . . I did not want this.

  Yet it wasn’t clear how Desmond expected me to contact him. He had never given me his telephone number or his address. It was as if we were gazing at each other across a deep ravine and had no way now of communicating except in broad, crude gestures, like individuals who did not share a language.

  “Please! Just leave me alone.”

  He did call. I think it had to be him.

  Late at night, and just a single ring, or two—if someone picked up the phone, silence.

  A taunting sort of silence into which words flutter and fall: “Hello? Hello? Who is this . . .”

  He bicycled past our house, I think.

  I think it was Desmond Parrish. I couldn’t be sure.

  A car pulled into our driveway, headlights blinding against our windows. There was a rude blast of music. Then the car pulled away again.

  Then Rollo disappeared.

  One night he failed to appear at the back door when we called him, where usually Rollo was pawing the door to be allowed back inside.

  (Our acre-sized back lawn was fenced in, so that Rollo could spend as much time outdoors as he wanted. Usually he just slept on the deck.)

  We scoured the neighborhood, calling “Rollo! Rollo!”

  We rang doorbells. We photocopied fliers to staple to trees, fences. We checked local animal shelters. Kristine came home from Wells to help us search. We were distraught, heartbroken.

  I thought, Desmond would not do this. He would not be so cruel, he liked Rollo.

  I thought, Maybe he is keeping Rollo. Until I see him again.

  Now Desmond was the stalker—this was Kristine’s term.

  Suddenly it happened, he was always there. And others saw him, too.

  Where previously, before Desmond, I’d often been alone, and comforted myself with self-pity, that I was alone, now I could not ever be alone; I could not ever assume that I was alone. For I knew that Desmond Parrish was thinking about me obsessively, even when he wasn’t actually watching me.

  . . . Can’t just shut me out. Soul mates from that other . . .

  Hockey season was ending. This was a relief. For Desmond had begun showing up at practice, which was Thursdays after school. A lone lanky figure now behind the chain-link fence at the very rear of the playing field, arms uplifted and fingers caught in the links so that a quick glance made you think that whoever this was, he’d been crucified against the fence.

  My teammates nudged me in the ribs, whispered to me.

  “Hey, Lizbeth, is that your boyfriend?”

  Or, “Looks like Lizbeth’s boyfriend is stalking her.”

  Our coach called me into her office and spoke with me frankly. She said that my boyfriend was causing distraction and disruption. “You aren’t playing very well, which is why I haven’t sent you in much lately. And your distraction is bringing your teammates down.”

  Weakly I said, “He isn’t my boyfriend. We broke up, I guess . . . I don’t know why he’s doing this.”

  “How close were you two? Were you . . . intimate?”

  The question was like a slap in the face. To answer no seemed pathetic. To answer yes would have been more pathetic.

  I told Ms. DeLuca no. Not intimate.

  “You’re sure?” Ms. DeLuca regarded me suspiciously.

  Yes, I was sure. But I spoke slowly, uncertainly. For just to speak of Desmond with a stranger was a betrayal of our true intimacy, which was like nothing else in my life until that time.

  “Lizbeth? Are you listening?”

  “Y-yes . . .”

  “There has certainly been a change in you. Your eyes look haunted. Did this boy abuse you in any way? Did he take advantage of you?”

  I shook my head wordlessly. How I hated this woman who wanted only to protect me!

  “Well, do your parents know about him? They’ve met him—have they?”

  I murmured yes ambiguously. For after all, Mom knew Desmond well—or would have claimed that she did.

  I’d never told my father. I was terrified of what my father might say and do, for I believed that in his alarm at what was happening, my father would blame me.

  Finally I left Ms. DeLuca’s office. I wasn’t sure if our awkward conversation had ended; I just left.

  In a plain manila envelope addressed to “LIZBETH” at my street address, he sent me photographs of myself taken with a zoom lens. These were not Polaroids but small matte photos: there I was, oblivious of the camera eye, climbing out of my mother’s car, walking with friends on the sidewalk near school, playing field hockey. The most disturbing photo was of me inside our house, after dark in our lighted kitchen, talking with a blurred figure who must have been my mother.

  On the back of this photo was written in block letters:

  SO NEAR ANY TIME ALWAYS

  I did not show anyone. I was terrified how my family would react.

  You did this! You invited this person into our lives.

  How could you have been so careless? So blind, ignorant?

  Terrible to see myself, a figure in another’s imagination, of no more substance than a paper doll.

  A figure at the mercy of the invisible/invincible photographer.

  I stood at the window, staring out into the darkness of our backyard. At the farther end of our property were trees, a thick stand of trees, impe
netrable in darkness as a wall.

  I thought that Desmond must hide inside these trees, with his remarkable zoom lens.

  He was a hunter. I was in his crosshairs.

  I wanted to scream out the back door I hate you! I wish you were dead! Give Rollo back to us! Leave us alone.

  Desperately I wanted to wake up and it would be six—seven?—weeks ago.

  Before the library. Before I’d bicycled into town on a Saturday afternoon to take notes on the evolution of amphibians in a way to make of myself a good dutiful student.

  And I would wake up to the relief that no one was following me—no one loved me.

  Then one day when I was leaving school late, after a meeting, at dusk, there stood Desmond Parrish waiting for me.

  “Hey, Lizbeth! Remember me?”

  Desmond was smiling at me, in reproach. The muscles of his face were clenched, he was so angry with me.

  “Haven’t forgotten me, have you? Your friend Des.”

  I stammered that I didn’t want to see him. I would have turned to run back into the school building, but I didn’t want to insult him.

  I didn’t want to anger him further.

  I could not move: my legs were weak, paralyzed.

  “Know what I think, Lizbeth? I think you’ve been avoiding me. We’ve had a misunderstanding. I want to honor that—I mean, your wish to avoid me. I am all for the rights of women—a female is not chattel. But since your behavior is based upon a misunderstanding, the logical solution would be to clear it up. We need to talk. And I have a car, I can drive you home.”

  “You have a car? You have a license to drive?”

  “I have a car. My father’s car. I’d only need a license to drive if I intended to have an accident or to violate a traffic law, which I don’t intend.”