by Joy Fielding
“No. None that I’m aware of.”
“So, what—they think it was, like, a random attack?”
“What else would it be?”
“Maybe you were targeted,” Jade says with a shrug.
“Jade, really.” Claire lays a gentle hand on my arm. “We’ll get those locks changed first thing in the morning.”
— SIX —
“Can I speak to Detective Marx, please?” I press the phone to my ear and lean back against my pillow. The bedroom is in darkness, although it’s already inching toward ten A.M. I’ve thought of opening the blackout blinds, of letting the relentless sun inside, but have decided against it. I’m not ready to acknowledge the start of yet another endless day, although day and night have become almost interchangeable to me. One provides no more comfort than the other.
“One minute, please,” the male officer informs me. I hear an unpleasant undertone to his voice, as if I have interrupted him at something important, or at least something more important than me. Does he recognize my voice? I wonder as he puts me on hold, the cheery sound of Latin music instantly rushing to fill the void. I picture the officer leaning across his desk and shouting toward Detective Marx, “Hey, it’s that Carpenter girl again. Third time in the last hour. You still want me to tell her you’re busy?”
I understand. I really do. The sad fact is I’m yesterday’s news. I have been replaced by other, newer, fresher, more interesting crimes: a woman strangled by her boyfriend after a heated argument over who deserves to be America’s Next Top Model; a severed hand discovered in a swamp by the side of I-95; a shooting in a 7-Eleven that left one person dead and another clinging to life. I can’t compete. I have been relegated to the proverbial back burner where I simmer on a barely perceptible flame, my essence slowly distilling into the air, like steam, until soon there will be nothing left.
“Maybe you were targeted,” I hear my niece say.
Is it possible?
What if Jade is right? Although with the elimination of Roland Peterson and Todd Elder as suspects, who would target me? What motive would he have?
What am I doing? I wonder, pulling the phone away from my ear, rudely interrupting Gloria Estefan in the middle of her song. What is it I hope to accomplish by hearing the police confirm, yet again, that they have no new leads? I press the phone’s off button, return it to its charger. There is nothing Detective Marx can tell me that I don’t already know.
I push myself out of bed, stumble toward the bathroom on legs no longer used to traveling more than a few feet at a time, remove my pajamas in the dark, and get into the shower. When I am sufficiently scalded, I turn off the hot water and wrap a clean towel around my torso, saying a silent thank-you to Claire for doing at least three loads of wash before she finally left last night at just before midnight. I walk to the bedroom window, press the button on the wall that operates the blackout blinds, and watch them automatically rise toward the ceiling. A world of glass houses greets me, sunlight skating across their icy smooth surfaces.
I see them immediately, although they don’t see me: the construction workers in the burgeoning building across from me, prancing around in their blue, white, and yellow hardhats. Their presence always startles me, although they are here every morning and have been for more than a year, starting their hammering at exactly eight o’clock each morning, piling one floor on top of another as easily as if they were children playing with plastic blocks. I observe them for a few minutes before reaching for my binoculars and pulling the workers closer, bringing them into sharper focus. I see one man wipe the sweat from his forehead with a white rag he pulls from the back pocket of his low-slung jeans; I see another man walk past him with a thick piece of wood slung across the tops of his broad shoulders, bare biceps carelessly on display. I see another emerging from a bright red Port-A-Potty that is situated at the far end of the open steel and concrete space. The men—I quickly count half a dozen—are between the ages of twenty and forty and of average height and weight. Two are white, three Hispanic, one the color of a latte.
Any one of them could be the man who raped me.
He could have been watching me, just as I’m watching him now. He could have spotted me one morning outside the front entrance of my building waiting for one of the valets to bring up my car from the underground garage. He could have kept track of my movements, followed my Porsche as I went about my daily routine. He could have been trailing me on the night I went in search of Roland Peterson, spying on me as I spied on Peterson’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment, biding his time, waiting for just the right moment to strike.
Is it possible?
The phone rings, and I jump. Probably Claire calling to see how I’m doing, I think as I lift the phone to my ear. But it isn’t Claire, and I’m disappointed, which I find both curious and disconcerting.
“Bailey,” Detective Marx says, her voice at once soothing and businesslike. “I’m sorry. I understand you called before. We must have been cut off.” She doesn’t ask how I am or if everything is all right. She already knows the answer to both these questions.
“I thought of something,” I tell her, picturing the soft gray eyes I remember from the night I was raped.
“You remember something?” I picture her signaling to her partner as she reaches across her cluttered desk for her pad and pen.
“He used mouthwash.”
“What?”
“The man who raped me. His breath smelled of mouthwash.”
“His breath smelled of mouthwash,” she repeats, her voice void of inflection.
“Mint-flavored. Spearmint,” I qualify.
“Spearmint.”
I’m starting to feel foolish. How useful can this be? Millions of people use mouthwash. “I just thought of it yesterday when I was unpacking some groceries.” I shudder at the memory. “It’s like what you said, about details suddenly coming back to me.…” Is that what she said?
“That’s really good, Bailey. Keep trying to remember. Maybe something else will come to you.”
Something that might actually help the police with their investigation.
“Is there anything else?” she asks.
“No. Just that …”
“Just that what?”
“Have there been any other rapes in the area where I was attacked?”
“Other rapes in the area,” Detective Marx repeats, something I’m realizing she does with annoying regularity. “No, there have been no other rapes in that area.”
“None at all?”
“There haven’t been any assaults of any kind reported in that neighborhood in the last six months.”
“What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “What do you think it means?”
The words are already on the tip of my tongue, but it takes several seconds for me to gather enough strength to spit them out. “That maybe my attack wasn’t random, that I might have been targeted.”
“By whom?” Detective Marx asks.
“I don’t know.” I glance back toward the construction site outside my window, observe two workers maneuvering a long steel beam.
“Bailey,” Detective Marx presses, “can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you?”
How many times have I asked myself that question? There are plenty of people who aren’t happy with me, including several disgruntled members of my own family, but surely no one I know hates me enough to have done something like this. Of course they could have hired someone else to do it, I think, a gasp escaping my lungs.
“What is it?” the detective asks.
“Nothing.”
A pause while we both wait for the other to speak. Finally, Detective Marx gives in, breaks the silent deadlock. “Okay, Bailey. This is what I want you to do. Are you listening?”
I nod.
“Bailey? Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“I want you to make a list of everyone you know, past or pre
sent, personal or professional, who might have a grudge against you. Can you do that?”
Again, I nod. I vaguely remember covering this ground before.
“We asked you about any enemies you might have made as a result of the work you do,” Detective Marx continues. “Have you thought of anyone?”
“Not really,” I say quickly. “You’ve already ruled out Todd Elder.”
“No one from your past? Maybe a disgruntled ex-boyfriend?”
I haven’t told her about my nasty breakup with Travis. “I’m sure I would have recognized an ex-boyfriend, even with a pillowcase over my head,” I say, hearing more than a trace of agitation creep into my voice. This conversation is pointless. I’m sorry I brought the whole thing up.
“Look, Bailey,” she says. “The likelihood is that you weren’t assaulted by anyone you know. Or, at least, know well. It’s far more likely that this was a stranger-on-stranger attack. Maybe someone saw you that night, waited for an opportune moment, then struck. Or maybe he’d been stalking you for days, even weeks. He could be someone you know casually or someone you passed on the street, maybe said hello to in passing, or didn’t say hello to and he took it as a personal affront. There are enough weirdos in this city for anything to be possible, which is what makes finding this guy so damn difficult, why anything you can think of, anyone you can think of, anything at all, would be helpful.”
Again, I glance toward the construction site across the way. “There are all these construction workers.” I tell her about the men I see every day outside my window, voice the possibility that one of them might have noticed me as well.
“Construction workers,” she repeats. “Do you have any reason to suspect that one of them might be the man who attacked you?”
“Not really.”
“Has any of them said anything to you or made unwanted advances …?”
“No.”
A sigh of defeat. “Well, we can’t very well start investigating every construction worker in the area based on a sexist stereotype.”
“No, of course not.” She’s losing patience with me. “But you can get a list of employees from the builder,” I continue, regardless, “run their names through your computers, see if anyone has a criminal record, maybe even a prior conviction for sexual assault.”
“It’s a long shot,” Detective Marx concedes after a long pause. “But what the hell? We’re looking for that needle in the haystack.”
Or a splinter of broken glass, I think, as the sun reflects off a nearby window, sending a jagged shard of light directly into my eye.
“Which doesn’t mean we won’t find the man who did this, Bailey.”
“I know.” The odds are that they will never find the man responsible unless he strikes again.
Is that what I have to hope for? That the man who raped me will consign yet another woman to this living hell? Is that the person I have become, that I look to another’s misfortune for my own salvation?
“I’ll get on this right away,” Detective Marx says. Then, before she hangs up: “Get me that list.”
I toss the phone onto the bed, find myself gravitating back toward the window. The cool breath of the air conditioner blows across my bare shoulders, and I realize I am wrapped only in a towel. Has anyone seen me? I wonder, knowing the angle of the sun makes this impossible, but dropping to my knees and crawling toward the closet just in case. Is it possible one of the workers from the building across the way saw me one morning as I paraded around my apartment half-dressed? Or maybe a resident in one of the other buildings? Maybe I’m not the only one in the neighborhood with a pair of binoculars.
The ringing of my phone sends me sprawling on all fours. I lie there, my face pressed into the plush beige broadloom, my heart thumping erratically. It takes several seconds for me to regain my equilibrium and reach for the phone, several more seconds to remember that it is not on its charger but somewhere on the bed where I tossed it earlier. I manage to locate it in the middle of its fourth ring, just before voice mail is programmed to answer it. “Hello?” I whisper, leaning my back against the side of the bed for support, hoping for the sound of Claire’s protective voice.
“Miss Carpenter, it’s Stanley from the concierge desk,” the voice announces instead.
I try to picture Stanley, but I can’t. There are at least half a dozen young men who work the concierge desk and double as valets, all equally presentable, all equally forgettable.
“The locksmith is here to change your locks.”
“Can you give me five minutes?”
“Sure thing.”
“And can you send someone up with him?”
“I’ll see who’s available.”
“Thank you.” I throw on a pair of loose-fitting khaki cotton pants and a shapeless white shirt and pull my wet hair into a ponytail at the base of my neck.
Exactly five minutes later, there is a loud knock on my door. I peer through the peephole, see two men standing on the other side, their faces distorted by their proximity and my tiny viewing space. I pull open the door, stand back to let the men inside. “Hi,” I hear myself say in a voice I barely recognize as mine. “Come in.”
“Hello. I am Manuel,” the older of the two men says, his words buried inside a thick Cuban accent, his right hand clutching his toolbox. He is maybe forty years old, of medium height and build, with shoulder-length black hair and warm, dark eyes.
The second man is tall and slender, with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his wide nose, and chin-length, dark blond hair. The promise of a mustache plays with his upper lip. He wears the familiar valet’s uniform and his nametag identifies him as Wes. He looks all of twenty. I don’t remember seeing him before.
“Are you new here?” I ask.
“Started about a month ago,” he answers. “Great building.”
His breath smells of mouthwash. I gasp and take a step back.
Wes stares at me, his light brown eyes gazing at me with a familiarity that is as unexpected as it is disconcerting. “Is something wrong?”
I shake my head, remind myself that millions of people use mouthwash and that this boy’s mouthwash smells nothing like the one my rapist used, being more peppermint than spearmint.
Does he know what happened to me? Do any of the valets? They must suspect something, what with the obvious disruption of my normal routine and all the visits from the police. Do they whisper about it among themselves? Do they snicker behind my back? Are they titillated? Excited? Repulsed? Do they think I asked for it?
Manuel begins taking apart the existing lock. “Piece of junk,” he says with a sneer, tossing it aside. “I give you something much better.” He holds up another lock. “Much more substantial. You see?”
I nod. “My niece was able to open that one in about two seconds.”
“She won’t be able to open this one. I guarantee.”
I watch Manuel’s hands as they work to install my new lock. Such thick fingers, I think, feeling them press against my windpipe.
“You okay?” Wes asks suddenly.
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You shuddered. My mother used to say that when you shudder, it means someone is walking over your grave.”
“We will be all finished here in just a few more minutes,” Manuel says.
“Good.”
“Your niece will not be able to open this lock. This is guaranteed.”
Ten minutes later, Manuel drops two new shiny keys into the palm of my hand. My fingers close around them. They feel warm, melting like wax into my flesh, branding me.
“How much do I owe you?” I ask.
“Is all taken care of. Your sister …”
“Claire?”
“Nice lady. She take care of everything.”
Manuel leaves but Wes lingers for several seconds longer. “Well, bye for now,” he says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I realize that he is waiting for a tip, but I have no idea where my purse is, so I don’t mo
ve, and he gives up after several seconds, joining Manuel at the elevator. “Enjoy your new locks,” he is saying as I shut the door.
— SEVEN —
I start watching the man almost by accident.
Claire sees him first. She is standing at my bedroom window, wearing dark gray pants and an unflattering white jersey that betrays a fold of flesh around her middle, her fine, chin-length blond hair in need of a good stylist. She is staring through my binoculars into the lit apartments of the building directly behind mine, her gaze swooping rhythmically through the air like a hawk, up and down, back and forth, side to side, as if carried by the wind, looking for somewhere safe to land. “My God, would you just get a load of this,” she remarks, more to herself than to either Jade or me.
My niece and I are lying on top of my bed watching TV, much like I used to do with my mother. Jade is wearing a loose-fitting, pearl-pink T-shirt over a pair of black leotards, her stylish ankle boots with their needle-thin, five-inch heels on the floor beside her. She is chewing gum, playing absently with her hair, and laughing. We have just witnessed a man being sliced in half by his power mower and a woman drowning in a tar pit, numbers 547 and 212, respectively, in the random and seemingly never-ending countdown of 1000 Ways to Die. If they ever reach the magic number, I suspect they already have a sequel waiting in the wings. 1000 More Ways to Die, I postulate, glancing over to where Claire is looking and marveling that there are still people in the world who feel safe enough to keep their curtains open and their lights on after sunset. Don’t they know someone is probably watching?
“What do you see?” I ask, hearing an echo of my mother. Jade is already off the bed and at the window, wresting the binoculars from her mother’s hands.
“Holy fuck,” she exclaims.
“Jade, language,” Claire cautions without much conviction.
“You have to see this.” Jade’s hand waves, beckons me from the bed.
I shake my head. “Tell me.”
“It’s this guy in his apartment … let me see … three floors from the top, four windows from the left,” Jade counts, then literally hoots with glee. “Oh, this is priceless. You have to see him, Bailey. He thinks he’s real hot shit.”