Silent Neighbor

by Blake Pierce

  “Yeah. The alarm kicks on when the door is opened with force. Opening with a key automatically disengages the alarm. When the door is opened from the inside, it is also disengaged. The only time the alarm would kick on other than someone essentially picking the lock or kicking the door open is if the door is left standing open for more than twenty seconds.”

  “In the few weeks they’ve been there, were there any instances of the alarm going off?”

  “He said there were two notes on their account. Both came from the first week they were living there. Intel gives courtesy calls when the alarms are triggered. On both of the calls, Mark Fairchild said they’d neglected to fully close the door while bringing in boxes and furniture as they were moving in.”

  “What about windows? Does the alarm work for windows as well?”

  “According to what I was just told, any time a window is opened from the outside, the system has to be deactivated. They gave an example of spring cleaning—making sure the windows and frames are all cleaned. If someone planned to do that sort of cleaning, they should kill the alarm first.”

  “But you’re saying there were no suspicious alarm triggers over the last week or so, right?”

  “Not a single one.”

  “So in other words,” Chloe said, “whoever killed Jessie Fairchild did not break in. They were allowed to come inside.”

  “Seems that way.”

  The car went quiet as they both pondered this. Chloe knew where they needed to start looking next. So far, all they truly knew about Jessie Fairchild was that ever since she and Mark had moved to Falls Church, she had been looking into how to get involved in local groups and organizations. New to town, neither she nor Mark had any real friends—and that meant most of the people they spoke to would be unreliable.

  But she also thought about a question that had come up earlier. Had the Fairchilds perhaps left their home in Boston because they had been running from something? If the investigation ended up taking them into the lives of the Fairchilds all the way back in Boston, this seemingly simple murder case could become a lot more convoluted.

  “No friends, no local family,” Rhodes said out loud as they neared DC. “A sister in Boston, both parents deceased. If this thing takes us into Boston…”

  Chloe grinned, pleased with how the two of them were starting to think along the same lines, at the same speed. “Well, wasn’t there a note somewhere in the file about a relative of Mark’s? Someone who lives right outside of Falls Church?”

  “Yeah, his uncle. But from what I gather, he’s on some kind of trip. A vacation, I think.”

  She answered it with the sort of nonchalance that made Chloe think Rhodes felt the same way about that potential lead as she did—that it wouldn’t come to much anyway.

  Closing in on home, Chloe slowly allowed herself to slip into more personal thoughts. She strongly considered calling Danielle to apologize for her behavior yesterday. But those kinds of conversations with Danielle typically turned into a rather long discussion, and she did not have the stamina for that.

  They returned to bureau headquarters, swapped out the bureau car with their own, and parted ways. Chloe once more thought about Danielle before she left; she even considered driving out to Danielle’s new place—an apartment she had rented just twenty minutes away after moving so her ex-boyfriend had no idea where she was living.

  In the end, she decided against it. She knew she and Danielle would be okay—that sometimes, it just took some extra time for both of them to cool down. Still…she had an hour before she needed to ramp down for the night. And with things at a standstill on the Fairchild case until morning, there was one other thing she could do that came to mind. The thought seemed to flip her insides, making her feel slightly sick, but the impulse was there and she acted on it almost immediately.

  She pulled out into the street and pointed her car toward her father’s apartment.

  ***

  She had no intention of actually seeing him, let alone speaking to him. But she needed to prove to herself that she was capable of even driving past his place. It would have to happen at some point if she wanted to check up on him so she may as well get over her nerves as soon as possible.

  His apartment was less than half an hour from bureau headquarters, and less than twenty minutes away from her apartment coming in from another direction. It was 10:08 when she cruised into the parking lot. His place wasn’t so much an apartment as a townhouse…the kind of home that was directly attached to another, and then another, in an apartment complex style. She knew the car he drove—a used Ford Focus—and it was parked directly in front of his place. A light was on, visible through the main window.

  She paused without parking, peering at that light and wondering what he was doing. Was he just watching TV? Reading, perhaps? She wondered if, when he cut that light out and got ready for bed, visions from his past flooded his mind…his daughters, his dead wife. She wondered if the torture and torment he had put them all through kept him awake some nights.

  She certainly hoped so.

  Anger started to rise up in her. It rushed through her, hot like injected venom, until she realized that her hands were gripping the steering wheel tight enough to show the whites of her knuckles.

  Maybe I should just go in right now, she thought. Knock on his door and lay it all out. Let him know I know what he did…that I read Mom’s diary…

  It was compelling enough to make her heart feel like it might burst out of her chest. A pleasant little rush of adrenaline plowed through her bloodstream as she considered it.

  But of course, she could not go there. Not yet…

  Chloe found the closest empty parking spot and used it to turn around. She headed for home, not realizing until she came to the first stoplight that she still had the steering wheel in a death grip.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It had been quite eye-opening for Danielle to realize that once her last relationship had ended, she found herself unemployed again. The bartending gig and the too-good-to-be-true dreams of running her own bar had been enough to float her through life for a few months but here she was again, without a man and without any sort of meaningful job.

  She’d always done a good job of masking her contempt for shit jobs, but this one was particularly difficult. She was bartending at a strip club—only the management was adamant about not calling it a “strip club.” They preferred either just “club” or “gentlemen’s lounge.” As far as Danielle was concerned, it didn’t matter what you called it. The fact of the matter was, there was currently a woman on stage, rhythmically shaking her ass in a man’s face to the beat of some shitty Bruno Mars song.

  She finished making the mojito a customer had just ordered (seriously, who orders a mojito at a strip club?) and handed it to him. He was about fifty and when he took the drink, he made no effort to hide the fact that he was checking out her boobs. He smiled at her and sipped from his drink, his eyes never leaving her chest.

  “You should be up on the stage, you know?” he said. Finally, he looked to her eyes, maybe so she could see the seriousness in his drunken gaze.

  “Wow. I haven’t heard that one before. What a unique pick-up line.”

  Confused, the guy eventually sneered at her and then moved away from the bar and took a seat closer to the stage.

  Yes, she’d had more than a dozen guys clearly baffled that she was behind the bar and not on the stage. Her manager was one of them. And while Danielle had endured enough demeaning jobs in the past, she drew the line at taking her clothes off for drunk men so they could slip fives and tens down her thong.

  She knew this was just a temporary job. It had to be. She wasn’t sure what she would do to get out of this, though. Maybe she’d finally finish college. She had another year and a half left…and even though she’d be almost thirty by the time she graduated, it would at least be something.

  Not that the perks of this job were anything to sneeze at. She’d had the job for a month, wor
king four nights out of the week. On her second week, she’d garnered more than seven hundred dollars in tips alone. But it was the atmosphere and the feel of the place. Even when the goth girls came out and danced to music Danielle actually enjoyed, she felt the need to get out as quickly as she could.

  Besides…sometimes when the dancers came to the bar or when she happened to run into them backstage, Danielle was always surprised to see that they didn’t look miserable. And when she saw them folding those fifties and hundreds up as if they were just handling napkins, the thought of getting up on stage wasn’t all that terrible.

  That, more than anything, was why she wanted out of this place as quickly as possible.

  She looked up and down the bar and noticed the crowd was thinning out. There were five people at the bar, three of whom—a male and two females—looked to be huddled very tightly, perhaps making plans to close out their Sunday night. Danielle checked her watch and was surprised to see that it was 11:50. Another hour and she could go home…she could go home and sleep until noon—something she had missed over the course of the last year or so as she had tried to become a more responsible adult. A responsible adult who had been far too dependent on a man, but a responsible adult nonetheless.

  She started wiping down the drip trays under the taps and checking the liquor bottles to get an updated inventory sheet for her manager. She was in the middle of the tequila row when she heard her name called out from behind her.

  “Hey, Danielle.”

  It was a male voice. She tried to place it. Only a few guys that frequented this place had bothered to remember her name. She frowned, not in the mood for lighthearted flirting, even if it did mean a pretty nice tip.

  She turned around, putting on her best agreeable face. But her expression froze when she saw the man sitting at the bar.

  It was her father. He not only looked out of place sitting right there in front of her—but the sight of him in a strip club was surreal. To his credit, though, he did look incredibly uncomfortable.

  The word dad formed on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it down. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of calling him that to his face. Instead, the most obvious question came out of her mouth first.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I came by to see you,” he said. He leaned forward, as if trying to distance himself as far as possible from the two topless women on the stage twenty-five feet behind him.

  “Let me try another question,” Danielle said. “How did you know I worked here?”

  He frowned and nodded to the liquor bottles behind her. “Can I get a whiskey first?”

  Acting as quickly as she could, Danielle grabbed a glass and filled it halfway with the cheapest whiskey the place had. She all but slammed it down in front of him. The entire process took less than ten seconds.

  “There. Whiskey. Now…speak.”

  “I’m not proud of it,” he said, “but I followed you.”

  “From where? How do you even know where I live?”

  He drained the whiskey in one full chug, grimacing as it went down. He slid the glass to her and gave her a nod to fill it up. Danielle took the glass and slid it to the side.

  “Answer the question,” she snapped.

  “I don’t know where you live. I was driving by Chloe’s place last week. Went up and knocked on her door because she won’t answer my calls or texts. As I came out of the building and got in my car, I saw you. You were heading into the building and I—”

  He stopped here, glancing over his shoulder as a new song came on. Behind him, the same two girls started dancing and gyrating against one another to a newer deplorable excuse for a rock song.

  “Can we talk somewhere else?” he asked.

  “No. I’m working.”

  “Five minutes, Danielle. That’s all I want.”

  She nearly refused him, but then realized that he had answers she wanted. How did he know she worked here? What else did he know about her? And why the hell was he here in the first place?”

  “Hold on,” she said.

  She went to the door at the left edge of the bar and opened it. To the right, the dancer who had just come off of the stage was walking up a flight of stairs to the changing room. To the left, a small hallway led to three other rooms—an employee bathroom, an office, and a small break room for the girls.

  Her manager was standing in the doorway to his office, speaking with another dancer and the backup DJ. He saw Danielle poking her head out the door, dropped what he was discussing, and came walking to her. It wasn’t that she was all that important—she was simply the only bartender on duty; she had been since nine o’clock that night, as Sundays tended to be relatively slow.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “No. Look…can you man the bar for like ten minutes? My fucking father decided to show up. And we don’t have a great—”

  “Say no more,” he said with a smile. “I understand parent issues more than I care to admit.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She doubted the bit about parents was true. He was always nice to her, probably because he was always trying to recruit her as a dancer.

  He came out and stood behind the bar, allowing Danielle to lift the little employee door on the side. She didn’t even look at her father as she passed by him. She simply said, “Come on already,” and headed for the exit. She nodded to the security guard at the back entrance and he stepped aside to let them pass through.

  The exit door led them outside to the back of the building where employees parked and came out to smoke. It was also the area where handsy patrons got tossed after security hauled them off.

  “So you were stalking Chloe and what now?” Danielle asked, not seeing the point in wasting any time.

  “I wasn’t stalking. I was concerned.”

  “You saw me go in and then what?”

  “I waited. I had no idea where you lived. Honestly, when I came to DC, I had no idea you were even living here.”

  “I wasn’t then.” She nearly added that she was now but didn’t see the point in sharing that bit of information with him.

  “Anyway, I waited. I didn’t think it would be smart to try speaking to both of you at the same time.”

  “Smart decision.”

  “So I waited. You came out about half an hour later and I followed you. You came directly here. I almost followed you in but realized that might be weird. I thought maybe you were…well, dancing and—anyway, I got the nerve up to sort of look and was relieved when I found that you were just behind the bar.”

  “And you waited a week to surprise me?”

  “I figured I’d come in when it was slow.”

  “What for? What could you possibly have to tell me? Or are you going to ask me for money the same way you asked Chloe?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just…well, I worry about you. I worry about both of you.”

  “We’ve done fine without you for the last twenty years or so.”

  “I can see that. But…I need you to tell me what I can do to fix things. I thought Chloe and I were fine and now all of a sudden, she’s gone dark on me. And then there’s you. You and I have never really been close…”

  “And do you know why?” she barked. God, she wanted him to say no. She wanted to throw it all in his face. All the things she had witnessed him do to their mother. Even the way she had never felt safe around him as a result—and how he had used that to essentially rule over her as a sick kind of authority figure.

  “Yes, I know. And I’m sorry, Danielle. I truly am. I just want things better. I missed your childhood…both of you. I just want. A family again. And I need you and your sister to tell me it’s not too late.”

  She believed him; as much as it pissed her off to admit it, she believed the bastard. Really, what reason did he have to seek them out…especially after Chloe blew the lid off of his affair with Ruthanne Carwile? Maybe he was being sincere.

  For a moment, Danielle thought
about what life would be like with some semblance of family. Chloe and her distant father, all coming around her again. She had never truly known what family was like. What might it be like to step into the future with the support of a family around her?

  “I just don’t know,” she said. “There’s been a lot of hurt. Chloe…she always fought for you. She refused to see the side of you that I always saw…the side that you really never ever tried to hide from me.”

  “I know, I—”

  “But that’s changed now. After she saw the diary, things changed for Chloe.”

  By the time she finished the sentence, Danielle knew that she may have screwed up. He had no idea they had seen the diary. As far as he knew, she and Chloe were both ignorant to just how bad things had gotten—to just how scared their mother had truly been in the days before she had been killed.

  She saw a flicker of surprise in his face, but only for a moment. But it was all it took to see that he had not been expecting this.

  “What diary?” he asked. His voice was low, almost in a hiss.

  “We found one of Mom’s diaries.”

  “And what makes you think either of you should have it? Or read it?”

  “What is it, Dad? Afraid we might find something we shouldn’t?”

  An expression crossed his face then, one that made her think that, just for a moment, he might hit her. But it flittered away quickly and she could tell that he was trying to pass it off—to pretend he wasn’t bothered by it.

  But he did his best to pass it off. He looked away from her for a moment, nodding. “You understand…I had to try.”

  “I don’t understand. But then again, I didn’t make choices that caused me to be taken away from my family for nearly two decades.”

  “This was a mistake,” he said. “But…have you been here all night?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “I thought…well, I thought I saw you riding by my place tonight.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  He thought about this for a moment before shrugging. “I saw someone ride by. Caught the briefest glimpse of their face as they turned around in one of the streetlights. I could have sworn it was you.”