The Witness Series Bundle

by Rebecca Forster

  Josie broke away from Archer. She pulled her arms into her body, raised her hands and cupped them over her brow to keep the rain out of her eyes. Archer picked up the flashlight and her sweat pants. The pants were ruined. He tossed them aside and watched with her as the lifeguard fought to reach the boy.

  Billy seemed velcroed to the pilings by the force of the water only to be torn away moments later and tossed around by an ocean that had no regard for an oh-so-breakable body. Josie cut her eyes toward the last place she had seen the lifeguard. She caught sight of him just as he went under. A second later he popped back up again. The bright orange rescue can marked his pitiful progress. Josie sidestepped, hoping to get a better view. Archer's free hand went around her shoulder to hold her steady and hold her back. She shook him off. She wouldn't do anything stupid. Archer knew she wouldn't. He was worried she would do something insane.

  Suddenly the guard was thrown up high as he rode a gigantic swell. It was exactly that moment when fate intervened. A competing swell sent Billy within reach. Josie let out a yelp of relief only to swear when the man and the boy disappeared from view.

  "Christ," Archer bellowed.

  He held the flashlight above his head, but when Josie dashed into the surf again Archer tossed it aside and went with her. The water swirled around their feet as they craned their necks to see through the nickelodeon frames of lightning.

  "There! There!"

  Josie threw out her arm, pointing with her whole hand. The boy was struggling. For a minute Josie thought he was fighting to get to the guard, then she realized Billy was fighting to get away from him. She screamed more at Billy than Archer.

  "What are you doing?"

  Billy and the guard went under. When they surfaced the boy had given up. It seemed an eternity until they were close enough for Josie and Archer to help, but the guard was finally there, dragging a battered and bruised Billy Zuni to the shore.

  Josie crumpled to the sand under Billy's dead weight. Cradling the teenager's head in her lap, she watched while the guard did a quick check of his vitals before running to call for an ambulance. Under the light Archer held, Billy's skin was blue-tinged and bloated. Suddenly his body spasmed; he coughed and wretched. Water poured out of his mouth along with whatever had been in his stomach. Josie held tight knowing all too well the pain he was in.

  "It's okay. You're safe now," she said.

  Billy's arms encircled her waist. He pushed his head into her belly. As the rain poured down on the world, and lightning crackled over their heads, Billy Zuni clutched Josie Bates tighter and cried:

  "Mom."

  Stunned, Josie looked up just as lightning illuminated the beach. She saw Archer's grim face and then she saw Hannah standing in the distance. Unable to remain alone in the house or stand by while Billy was in danger, Hannah had followed Josie. But the girl's eyes weren't on Billy Zuni, and she had not heard him cry for his mother. Hannah was looking toward The Strand, peering into the dark, not seeing anything really, but only feeling that there were eyes upon them all.

  CHAPTER 2

  1968

  Yilli walked behind his goats, his head down, his eyes on the road beneath his feet. He had not wanted to come out that day, even to tend to the animals, but his wife said he must. He did not remember his wife telling him what he must and must not do when they were first married; he only remembered her being slight and pretty and liking to be taken to his bed. Now she was mother to a daughter and snapped often at him.

  "Yilli, get up!"

  "Yilli, see to the goats!"

  "Yilli! Yilli!"

  Always she had something for him to do, and always he did not want to do it. He did not want to walk out with his goats alone in the hills. He did it because his wife said he must. Now the sun was setting, and he was almost home. He saw that there was smoke coming out of the chimney of his house. In the yard he saw his little daughter, Teuta, sitting in the dirt and making her little piles of stones. He saw his wife hanging out a rug. He saw the mountains towering around his stone house that was far away from towns and people. Yilli was thinking that he should not walk with his eyes cast down, that life was good, and God had been kind when suddenly he heard a crack.

  It was loud, and it was close, and Yilli's heart thudded in his chest with great fear. His feet were running before he even thought to make them move. His goats scattered as Yilli tripped, righted himself, and nearly tumbled down the rocky slope to his house.

  "Teuta! Teuta!"

  He called to his daughter as he ran. Teuta looked up. The little girl smiled at her father. She raised her hand to greet him. But when her father did not greet her, when he continued to yell, she knew something was wrong and began to cry.

  "Nënë!"

  Yilli's wife came to the door to see what horrible thing was happening. Yilli rushed past her.

  "Close the door. Close the door!"

  She did as her husband said after she gathered up her crying daughter. Then they all stayed in the house as Yilli told the story of tending his goats and hearing a shot and he fearing for his life – no, fearing for the life of his wife and child – and running home to save them.

  Yilli's wife listened to all this as she bounced Teuta on her lap. Yilli told his story many times while he paced in the house and drank some raki. He paced for a very long while more as he looked out the windows. His wife looked, but all she saw were the mountains and the one road that came through them to their house.

  When her husband was calm, and before it became night, Yilli's wife went out to collect the goats. She looked and looked, but she saw no person. She listened and listened, but she heard no gunshots. Still, it could have happened, what Yilli said. There were many soldiers about and many bad people these poor days. It could have been a robber. But what did Yilli have to rob?

  She found the last goat near the road where Yilli said someone shot at him with a rifle. It was there she found a large rock that had tumbled down from the mountain. She looked at it. She put her hand on her hip and looked at it hard. Certainly, the falling of a big stone made a crack did it not? Yilli had been a soldier. He knew the sound of a gun but perhaps he mistook the sound of rock falling. Still, he was her husband and she knew that she must believe him in all things.

  Taking the goats, she put them in their pen and then went to the house where Yilli sat with his raki as Teuta played at his feet. Night came. While she served the soup she had made and the fish she had fried, while Teuta chattered in her baby talk, Yilli's wife looked at him often and wondered if, perhaps, Yilli had been sent home from the border because he was mad.

  2013

  The young man clutched the steering wheel as he waited for the old man to give him a signal. It was getting late. Soon the sun would be up and people would be stirring. That concerned him, but the old man just sat there, staring at the dashboard, wrapped in his huge raincoat, still and silent.

  "Ja-Ja. Let's go." The young man knew he sounded upset and impatient, but he couldn't help himself. If they didn't go soon his legs might not hold him up and he would be shamed. He touched the old man's arm. He softened his tone. "Uncle? Ja-Ja?"

  The old man turned his head, not so much interrupted as returning himself to this time. He looked at the young man.

  "I am sorry. I was thinking." He said this in the old language.

  "Yes." The young man answered in the same way, proud that he had not forgotten how. "We should go inside. I need to be at work soon."

  "Yes. It is important you go tomorrow," the old man said. "Like always."

  "Like always," the younger man muttered.

  He checked the rearview mirrors. Just to make sure he didn't miss any thing, he looked over his shoulder one way and then the other. The neighborhood was generally quiet, but one could never be too careful. Even with the storm, someone might be out. They were out after all.

  Satisfied, he got out of the car, paused to open the trunk and retrieve the bag inside, a
nd then he opened the passenger door. He stepped back to let the uncle out of the car while his eyes darted to the small houses hugging the sides of the wet street. The old man rested his big hand atop the car and the young man realized how shameful it was that he had been proud of a piece of metal. The car was nothing in the grand scheme. The old man had opened his eyes to so many things. He touched his uncle and they walked to the house.

  The door was unlocked and a single light burned as they had expected. They went through the living room, and the kitchen, and to the place where the washer and dryer stood. The young man opened the lid of the washer, stripped, loaded his wet clothes inside, waited for the old man to do the same, and then he turned it on. The sound must have disturbed the young man's wife because she appeared, dressed in her thin robe, arms crossed, looking worried. Her lips parted, but before she could speak she made the mistake of looking at the old man. He did not acknowledge her. She looked at her husband, and a shiver ran down her spine. She glanced at the washer, and then disappeared into the back of the house.

  She was just crawling into bed when she heard another cabinet in the washroom open and close, and she heard something fall. She hoped they weren't making a mess she would have to clean up later. When her husband came into their bedroom and dressed again, she kept her eyes shut even though she wanted ask what he had been doing. When she heard voices, though, her curiosity got the best of her.

  Carefully, she got out of bed again. Hiding in her own house, she spied on her husband and the old man. They had dressed in fresh clothes and now her husband was welcoming other men into her home at an hour when no one should be awake. The last one to come in asked:

  "Well?"

  The old man shook his head and set his mouth. Some of the visitors shook their heads as they settled down to finish this night with coffee, talking quietly of places the young man's wife had never seen, in a language she could not understand. Her mother had been right. It was never good to marry someone from another place. She checked on their son who slept like a baby even though he was a big boy of five. Then she went back to bed wishing her husband was with her and the old man was gone.

  ***

  "Jesus, Archer, what kind of mother is this woman? I could barely tolerate it when she left that kid out on the beach all night when the weather was good. Locking him out tonight was criminal. Billy could have died out there."

  "Maybe that's what he wanted."

  Josie considered her lover, her friend, her honest man for a minute before turning her head, resting her elbow near the window, and covering her mouth with her cupped palm. If Archer was right and Billy wanted to kill himself, then everyone in Hermosa Beach who said they cared about that kid were liars including her. Josie dropped her hand and tried to remember the last conversation she'd had with the boy. Was it a day ago? A week? Longer? As if reading her mind, Archer reached out and squeezed the hand that rested in her lap. She squeezed back.

  "You should have to get a license to be a mother," Josie muttered.

  Archer snorted. There was no arguing that. Both of them had run across a lot of women who never would have qualified. Linda Rayburn threw Hannah under the bus to save herself; she did it with style. Josie's own mother had abandoned her without a word of explanation; she had done it with surgical precision. And there was Archer's long dead wife and her son. Lexi had brutally betrayed every tenet of motherhood. But Billy's mom was something else entirely. If Archer were a betting man, he would lay odds they were about to meet a woman who didn't think about her son one way or the other.

  "There it is." Josie sat up straighter. "One in from the corner."

  Billy's house wasn't in the fanciest neighborhood in Hermosa Beach. It was sandwiched between an equally decrepit house on the right and one under construction on the left. The small patch of lawn in front of Billy's house was dead and dry despite the deluge of the last eighteen hours. Paint peeled off the gutters and around the windows. There was a hole in the downspout by the front door and the rain had poured through it to create a huge puddle on the painted porch. A rusting bicycle shared the space with the skeleton of a dead bush in a broken pot. The upstairs windows were covered with tin foil, and the downstairs window with a flag.

  Archer pulled the Hummer into the driveway and stopped behind an old Toyota. The front end listed to the left where it was missing a wheel. No one had bothered to block the back wheels because the driveway was broken into shards by the roots of a ficus tree. The car wouldn't be rolling anywhere without divine intervention. Archer set the parking brake and cut the lights.

  "You can wait here if you want." Josie reached for the door handle.

  "I'll go with." Archer reached for his. "You might need a witness."

  They opened their respective doors. It was two in the morning. The storm, furious though it had been, was passing on. They walked through a light drizzle that would be gone by ten, and reached the front door at the same time. Since Archer was closer, he rang the bell. One light was on upstairs; downstairs was dark. Josie reached over Archer and rang the bell again.

  Silence.

  She moved him out of the way and laid on it as if she could push it through the stucco. Still no one came. She tried the knob. Locked tight. Josie fell back, looked up, and checked out the permanent security bars on the windows. Billy's mom wouldn't get past them sneaking out a window and if ripping them off was the only way to get in, Josie might do it.

  "Hey! Open up!" Josie shouted but nothing happened. She called again. "Open up, Goddammit!"

  "Good one, Jo. Swearing will get her attention."

  Josie shot Archer a withering look.

  "I'm going around back. Someone's up, and I'm not leaving until I talk to whoever it is. Then I'm going to call the cops and have that woman arrested for neglect. Child endangerment. Attempted murder. If Billy had drowned. . ."

  Josie's litany feathered out to nothingness as she strode toward the back of the house. Whatever was going to happen, Archer would hear about it soon enough. She wasn't gone two minutes when he heard someone moving inside the house. Before Archer could call her back, the door opened.

  "Come on in," Josie said.

  "Don't you think we should wait to be invited?"

  "Believe me, nobody is going to be upset."

  Josie pushed the door open wider. It didn't escape Archer's notice that she used her elbow to do so. She flipped on the light the same way. It was an awkward but understandable gesture considering what he was looking at as soon as the room was illuminated.

  "Guess we know why she didn't answer," he said.

  "Think Billy saw her do this?" Josie asked.

  "That would explain him freaking out," Archer muttered. "He may be luckier to be alive than we know."

  They stood side by side, surveying the scene, each lost in thought as the seconds ticked by. Finally, Archer glanced at Josie.

  "You okay, babe?"

  She nodded. It was the guy on the couch, the one with a bullet through his skull, who didn't look so good.

  CHAPTER 3

  1985

  The legislature was divided. Half of them argued for the status quo: isolationism, socialism, one party – no, one man – rule. The problem was, there was not a man with an iron hand to govern. Enver Hoxha, supreme leader for half a century, was dead. This definitively proved that he, the supreme leader, had been, after all, nothing more than any other man. The other half of the lawmakers found their voices and spoke what people had been afraid to say for decades: under Hoxha's rule the country had suffered.

  Traditions had been destroyed–

  National personality had been obliterated–

  People feared one another–

  The Cult of the Ugly had ruled–

  Calls for freedom were rampant in the halls of government and drowned out those who did not want change. The echo was heard in the capitol and filtered to the towns and then to the villages. The people rose up. Once again they embrace
d their ancient culture with pride and looked to the future with hope.

  People wept and danced with happiness – all except Yilli. Yilli, the good boy, the goat herder, spoke with his wife, told her what he had done, closed his doors and shuttered his house for good.

  2013

  The couch was pushed against the wall in the corner of the living room. To one side was a crate with a lamp on it. In front of the couch was a low coffee table that was nicked and scratched, its finish long since dulled. The dead man's legs were sprawled in front of him: left on the floor, right on top of the table. There was an armchair covered in floral fabric close to the table on one side and a lawn chair on the other.

  Archer picked his way around the furniture and put two fingers to the man's neck. He shook his head even though neither of them needed confirmation that the guy was a goner. The gunshot had entered the left temple neatly and then blown blood and brains over the upholstery and wall when it exited. Josie maneuvered around the opposite end of the sofa, looked behind it, picked up the skirt and looked under it. She stood and slid her gaze over the floor. The gun wasn't in the guy's hand and it hadn't been ejected.

  "No weapon. Not suicide." Josie whispered, but she wasn't telling Archer anything he didn't know.

  If this were a suicide, the man would have stabilized himself with both heels on the coffee table or both feet on the ground. More than likely he would have put the gun in his mouth. The body was contorted in a way that indicated the victim had been reacting to something, and that something was probably a gun being pointed at him.

  "Fed Ex." Josie noted the man's uniform.