by Henry Perez
“Nikki!”
“Aren’t you curious? Mommy gets into Stephen’s emails all the time.”
“I don’t care what your mom does. Decent people don’t snoop around others’ emails. That’s a terrible violation of Erin’s privacy.”
“But Mommy says it’s important to know other people’s secrets, so that you can get to know them better.”
“Well your mother is wrong.”
Nikki put her mug down on the table and pushed it away.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not going to be enough. You’re going to have to apologize to Erin tomorrow.”
The mood had shifted, suddenly and in a direction Chapa did not want it to go. But he knew better than to ignore this, though a big part of him would’ve liked to.
“Oh no, please.” Tears ringed her eyes, as the sides of her mouth tilted downward.
“That’s how it’s got to be, Nik. You and I have a few things to talk about.”
She stood up, shoulders slumped.
“Can we talk in the morning? I just want to go to bed now.”
Chapa sighed as he grabbed the remote and turned the television off.
“That’s fine. Give me a hug and go up to bed.”
He almost felt like apologizing for some reason. She draped her arms around him in something that was not quite a hug.
“You know I love you, no matter what. Even when I’m not happy with something you’ve done.”
“I love you too,” she said, and headed up the stairs.
Chapa picked up the mugs and carried them to the kitchen sink. He decided to give Nikki a few minutes to think about what had happened before going up and calmly talking to her about it. Then he would call Erin, and get her take on this.
He walked back to the living room and turned off the two floor lamps at the far end. He’d gotten in the habit of leaving a lot of lights on because Nikki had a slight fear of the dark. Besides, Chapa wasn’t too fond of dark houses himself.
When he reached for the small lamp at the other end of the room Chapa noticed a strange marking on the wall. It was faint, and could easily have been mistaken for a shadow.
But it didn’t go away when Chapa put his hand up to block the lamp. Instead it grew in intensity and clarity, and appeared to be surrounded by a few friends.
What Chapa saw resembled two neon yellow lines forming an upside down V. For an instant, he wondered why Nikki would’ve drawn on the wall like that, remembering her glow-in-the-dark markers.
Deep down, Chapa knew what this was, but he was having trouble processing the vile thing he was seeing. When he turned and looked back toward the darkened half of the room, Chapa knew there was no time to do anything but grab his daughter and get out of the house.
The walls, the ceiling, and even one of his tables were covered in stick figures. Drawn using Nikki’s glow-in-the-dark markers, the figures beamed back at Chapa, mocking him and all his sense of security.
The three-inch-tall yellow-green stickmen littered almost every inch of the walls. Neatly drawn, and each roughly the same size, they appeared to be dancing all over the room and closing in on him.
Chapa heard the floor creak upstairs, but not in Nikki’s room, or in the hall that led to the bathroom. This sound seemed to come from directly above him—where his bedroom was.
“Nikki, come down here please.”
“Can’t we talk in the morning, Daddy?”
“No. I need you down here now.”
“Daddy, I’m sorry I did that, but why do we—”
Chapa heard the creaking sound again and rushed up the stairs, two at a time. For an instant he thought about running into his bedroom and confronting whomever might be there. But that would leave Nikki unprotected, and her safety was his only concern.
Startled, Nikki bolted upright in bed. Chapa pressed an index finger to her lips and shook his head in as calm and controlled a way as he could.
He took Nikki’s arm and helped her out of bed, then walked into the hall. His bedroom was only fifteen feet away, just beyond the bathroom.
Maybe he could send Nikki outside and over to a neighbor’s house, then confront the intruder on his own. Bad idea. What if no one was in the house, and someone was waiting outside?
Only one choice, he’d have to get Nikki out, then come back.
Chapa pointed at the steps and signaled for Nikki to walk down. He could tell she was a little disoriented by the situation. Of course she was. He was too.
She walked slowly, taking each step carefully, as though she was trying to be quiet. But this was taking too long. And Chapa realized that if someone was upstairs they had already figured out what was happening.
“Hurry up,” Chapa whispered. “And go right out the door.”
Nikki looked back at him, her face awash in confusion.
“And don’t stop for your shoes, or jacket.”
Fear replaced the confusion, but she moved faster down the remaining steps, then straight to the door, just as she’d been told to do. Nikki was about to step outside when she looked back toward the living room and froze.
Her mouth open, she pointed at the figures. Chapa could see the mix of dark emotions in his daughter’s eyes. He knew right then this was a moment she’d carry with her forever.
He picked Nikki up by the waist and carried her out into the October night, taking one last look back at his living room. The sheer number of stickmen threatened to overwhelm him, but he refused to let that happen.
As the screen door closed behind them, Chapa wondered how his daughter had managed to avoid screaming. Something any sane adult would have been justified to do.
Chapter 62
Chapa was rushing Nikki to Mrs. Steinmetz’s house, right next door. The elderly woman usually stayed up late, or at least her television was on deep into the night. Chapa would often notice the flickering blue light as he came home after a midnight deadline.
But then he saw Jim Martin pulling into his driveway across the street, and carried Nikki in that direction.
“Jim, I need your help right now.”
“Why are you carrying a child?” he asked, with no apparent sense of urgency.
“This is my daughter Nikki, and I think someone is in my house.”
“Oh damn. I’m sorry, Alex and Alex’s daughter, didn’t mean to swear. Get inside.”
He ran to the door, opened it and hurried them inside, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind them.
“Call the cops, tell them there’s a break-in going on, give them my address.”
“Why don’t you do that, Alex?”
“Because I’m going back to see who the hell is in my house.”
“No, Daddy don’t go.”
Nikki threw herself at him and wrapped her arms so tightly around his waist that it hurt.
“She’s right, you belong with her,” Jim’s wife Alice said as she draped a blanket around Nikki’s shoulders.
Chapa thought about it for a moment and realized they were right.
“Give me your phone, please,” he said and headed to their front windows to keep a watch on his house.
Chapter 63
Chapa heard the sirens in the distance, cutting through an otherwise tranquil night. Two cruisers showed up a moment later and parked in front of his house. It had taken them eleven minutes to get there. Chapa had kept track of the passing time by watching a grandfather clock that stood near the front windows. Those few quick glances had been the only times he’d broken eye contact with his house.
There had been no movement. No one came skulking through the front door, or across the yard. No suspicious shadows in the windows.
Chapa walked out to meet the four officers who’d emerged from their cars and were now standing in the middle of the street. He pointed to his house, explained what had happened, and after a brief hesitation retreated to the neighbor’s yard when one of the cops told him to.
Two officers headed toward Chapa’s fron
t door while another circled around the back of the house. Ten minutes later, they were all standing in the front yard.
Chapa didn’t wait to be asked to cross the street and join them.
“We don’t see any sign of forced entry, and there’s no one in your house now,” a uniformed policeman named Root was saying. “Did you know you left your back door unlocked?”
“But my back door shouldn’t have been unlocked.” Chapa was trying to remember if he’d taken out the garbage or unlocked that door tonight for any reason.
He could sense these officers had little if any interest in pursuing this. Still, when Chapa remembered the unlock button on the front door, the one he’d pushed the night before so Erin could let herself in, and then forgot to push again, he told them about it. And they stopped searching the grounds.
They walked with Chapa back over to his house and let him point out the drawings, something they had already seen. Chapa noticed how one cop in particular, a skinny bit of nothing, was trying not to laugh. Nobody likes a comedian at a crime scene.
There was nothing missing in the house. No open drawers or empty file cabinets.
“So apparently someone broke in here, except they didn’t have to break anything to get in,” Sergeant Mark Slattery said and turned to his underling, the comedian, who responded with a smirk. “Then, once inside, they decided to get artistic.”
Slattery was a heavyset man with multiple chins that he must’ve shaved on a rotating basis because no blade had touched two of them that day. He had thin red hair, narrow eyes, and more than a hint of B.O.
His fellow officer, the guy with the sense of humor whose nameplate read simply OFFICER BORIS, didn’t seem too interested in being there anymore.
Chapa remembered these two slowly emerging from their vehicle. He remembered sensing right then that this wasn’t going to go well.
Slattery spoke for both of them
“Look, Mr. Chapa, we found nothing unusual besides the graffiti.”
“Graffiti?”
“What else you wanna call it?”
“How about a death threat?”
Another squad arrived, lights flashing, and Slattery told them to drive around the area.
“Look for someone really skinny who glows in the dark,” he said with a thick laugh, then waved them off.
“This is funny to you, Sergeant? I have a ten-year-old daughter who is terrified right now. You think this is funny?”
Slattery waddled up to him until his belly pressed against Chapa’s. Nikki had just wandered outside and was observing all of it. That was one reason, maybe the biggest reason, why Chapa refused to give ground.
“No, it ain’t funny. Not at all. But what the hell you want from me?” Slattery said and took a step forward, adding pressure against Chapa’s body. “Some homeboy of yours got pissed off and inked up your crib. You understand better now?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Homeboys? My house was broken into and you’re trying to muscle me? Really, tough guy?”
Boris walked back from the cruiser and whispered something in Slattery’s ear.
“A newspaper reporter, huh? Well heck, you could’ve ticked off all sorts of people.”
“Could be. Sounds like a possible motive. Doesn’t it?”
“Watch your step, Mr. Chapa. You don’t impress me.”
Chapa was ready to respond by telling him the feeling was mutual, but he was aware of how upset Nikki was after all that had happened. The last thing she needed to see was a shouting match between her father and a three-hundred-pound policeman.
Slattery turned to leave, taking a step forward as he did, assuring that the full girth of his gut shoved up against Chapa and knocked him a little off balance. This seemed to pass for amusement with the sergeant.
“You come down to the station and fill out a report if you want,” Slattery said on the way back to his car. Then he turned back toward Chapa and added, “Or not,” before wedging himself into the passenger’s side.
Chapter 64
Chapa watched Nikki walk up the stairs and into her room as though she’d never been there before. He understood how the child must have felt. The house seemed different now.
He’d turned on every light in the living room before bringing Nikki back over, which made the stickmen fade back into the paint. But he could still feel their presence, lurking just beyond reach and waiting to return with the darkness. Chapa sensed Nikki could feel them, too.
“Did the policemen wash the drawings away, Daddy?”
“No Nik, but I will do that before you come back here. Now you need to get set to go.”
Nikki did as she was told and with her father’s help packed a suitcase with three days’ worth of clothes. Chapa planned to call a house painter in the morning, and wanted to make sure Nikki stayed away until all traces of this night were gone. The physical ones, anyway.
Chapa called Erin back to tell her they were on their way. He had gotten her out of bed with a call a half hour earlier. Though he’d done his best to sound calm, Erin had immediately volunteered to rush over. She sounded calmer now as Chapa assured her all was okay.
“I’ve got everything ready for Nikki, and I’ll stay up with the two of you all night if you need me to,” she said in a voice that was all crisis management.
Chapa thanked her and promised they would be there soon. But he didn’t tell Erin he wasn’t planning on staying.
Nikki was quiet for most of the drive over. Chapa’s efforts at any sort of dialogue were met with “um hmm,” and “I guess so.” He refused to give up trying, feeling the need to get some sense of what his child was thinking, and he was still struggling to have a conversation as he turned into the driveway.
Erin met them at the door. She threw her arms around both Chapa and Nikki, and they returned the embrace.
“You okay?” she asked Chapa in a low voice.
He nodded, and she knelt down and gave Nikki another hug.
“I’m okay too,” Nikki said, then looked up at her father. “Daddy, do we have to tell her now?”
Chapa had forgotten about Nikki’s reading of Erin’s emails and the argument it had caused. Maybe that was another reason why she’d been so quiet on the way over.
Erin looked up at Chapa. “Tell me what?”
He shook his head just a little, and mouthed, Later. That seemed to ease the tension in Nikki’s shoulders, and she grinned at him as they walked inside.
Nikki was hungry, prompting Erin to heat up some oatmeal. Chapa sat next to his child as she lay on the couch, and by the time Erin walked in with a bowl, its steam trailing back toward the kitchen, Nikki had fallen asleep.
“She had a tough day,” Erin said, gently placing the bowl on a side table by the couch.
Chapa nodded, then slipped his arms under Nikki and carried her to the bed in the guest room. Even under these strange and troubling circumstances, this made him feel like a father, and there was a fragment of comfort in that feeling.
After Nikki was tucked in and the night-light had been switched on, Chapa walked out of the guest room, leaving the door open just a crack.
“Take off your coat and stay a while,” Erin said as Chapa walked into the living room. “I know you won’t sleep in my room because you’re concerned about what the kids might think.”
“I’m not staying, not just yet, anyway.”
“What are you talking about, Alex?” Her voice was laced with confusion and frustration.
“I’m going to go to the station, give them a statement, and find out if they know anything more.”
“How much more of a statement can you possibly give them?”
“I have to go down there, Erin. Someone invaded my home and threatened my daughter and me. I need to follow up on this.”
Erin folded her arms and looked away, then turned and started back toward Chapa.
“Right now your daughter needs you to be here,” Erin said, reaching out and putting her hand on his arm.
“And I need you to be here.”
Chapa closed the distance between them and put his arms around her. Erin was reluctant to give in to his embrace.
“I know Nikki needs me, and I’ll be back before she wakes up. But I also know that whoever did this, and killed Clarkson, and who knows how many more, isn’t going away.”
Erin looked into his eyes, searching them, then seemed to give up as though she’d failed to find something that should have been there.
“In the time we’ve been together I have seen you hurt, injured, and been scared that I would never hear your voice again. And I’ve sensed that sometimes you hadn’t told me just how much danger you’d been in. I’ve felt threatened myself, my son too, and I’ve stuck with you, Alex, because you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”
The raw honesty in her words made Chapa look away, though he did not want to. She gently placed a hand on his stubbled chin and pulled his face back to hers.
“Alex, you’re a father, and a man I want to be with and who I want my son to grow up around, and yes, a reporter too. But you don’t have to go into dangerous buildings, or track killers into the woods, or do the things that put you in harm’s way. Do you?”
Chapa reached up and slowly ran two fingers across Erin’s temple, brushing back a few strands of hair and continuing down the side of her face and across her cheek.
“Yes, Erin,” he said in a voice that was just above a whisper. “Sometimes I do. But this has nothing to do with chasing a story.”
She drew in a breath that was much deeper than normal, then turned away without letting it go.
Chapter 65
The scene at the Oakton City Police Headquarters reminded Chapa of a big city emergency room at one in the morning on a Saturday night. Except this wasn’t a Saturday night, and Chapa had been here after hours before, and knew that it was always crazy time between midnight and morning.
He used his knowledge of the place to bypass the front desk and get right to someone who would find Slattery for him. The sergeant waddled through a doorway fifteen minutes later, his sidekick, Boris, in tow.