Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  The ADA shook her head. “We didn’t learn this until she’d already been booked, and I had already filed the complaint.”

  “Dismissed. Um, next is Auger, Keith.”

  “THANKS FOR THE RIDE, Ms. Franklin.” To hear him, you’d think Keith had just been caught smoking his dad’s cigars in the basement.

  “Well, if you were helping Erika, I couldn’t just leave you there, could I?”

  A pinching squeeze caught Erika by surprise. “You okay?” Those words meant so much more, and she knew it. Keith was really saying, “Snap out of it.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t sleep much, and it’s been a rough week, you know?”

  “Well, we’ll get you home and you guys can zonk out for a while. I’ve got to pack. I’m so glad I was here. When I saw you on the news, I couldn’t believe it!” Helen played her role well—too well. She nearly sounded like a community theater actress. Each word just barely overstated and with dramatic flair.

  “I’m just glad he let me off with the ticket the one officer gave me. It could have been so much worse,” Keith interjected when Erika still refused to speak.

  Each mile, each block, and finally each house felt like a death march. The nervousness seemed to grow exponentially until she thought she’d come out of her skin. Any second, something could go wrong—something would go wrong. She knew it.

  At the sight of the house, Erika’s throat went dry. “The front door—it’s open.” Her voice sounded raspy, and she knew she looked as terrified as she felt.

  “I really wish you’d told me about that latch. I’d have had it fixed. There’ll probably be cats in there now. I hate cats,” Helen hissed.

  “What about the latch?”

  “It’s been slipping open. I’ve been home for three days, and every day I’ve found it open. It’s annoying.” Helen sent an annoyed glance at Erika. “I pay you to notice those things.”

  Keith sent Erika a warning glance, but it did no good. She was useless, and she knew it. He urged her toward the door, trying everything to hide her resistance. How could he be so calm? They were certainly walking into a trap. Where were Karen, Mark, and whoever else she’d hoped would keep her alive?

  The moment they stepped from the entryway into the living room, a man turned, a gun pointing right at her. Helen stepped out of the way and said, “Well done, Gordon,” before she dumped the contents of her purse onto the coffee table. “Make sure you take all of this. You’re going to have to shoot me too. With him here, it’s unlikely I’d be missed. Just be sure to get my side—even if you miss a couple of times.”

  “Her first?”

  “No, him, I think. Don’t want to risk him trying to tackle you, which—” she added after an appraising look at Keith, “it looks like he’s ready to do now.”

  The man, Gordon, turned his gun on Keith. A shot rang out a millisecond before Keith and Erika dropped to the floor.

  Chapter 32

  WITH THE WEIGHT OF Keith on her, Erika was sure he was dead, and she was next. Fear flooded her heart at the idea of the finality of death, leaving her trembling. Screams ripped through the room, making it nearly impossible to know what to expect next, but Keith’s voice, calm and strong, murmured, “Stay down. It’s going to be okay.”

  Fury flooded her. At a time like that, he had the audacity to say everything would be okay. What kind of mindless nonsense was that? “Are you nuts? Are you bleeding all over me?”

  “I’m not the one hit. Looks like FBI, but I could be wrong.”

  “You’re not hit?”

  “Nope. Neither are you. Shot came from the archway to the kitchen and caught Gordon, if that’s his real name, by surprise.”

  “Who is screaming?”

  “It’s a toss-up between the guy and Helen. She seems a bit freaked out. I don’t think this was the plan.”

  “We’re really okay?” Erika knew she sounded ridiculous, but she didn’t care.

  “You can get up now. We’ve got all three of them.”

  “Three?” Erika and Keith spoke in unison.

  “Yep.” The agent gestured to a man in a business suit and fedora. Erika’s first thought was, “really?” but before she could speak, the agent continued, “Not sure what his part is, but I suspect he was here to clean up.”

  “How nice,” Erika groaned sarcastically as she accepted Keith’s help up from the ground. “She wasn’t going to let my parents find my body lying here.”

  “Yeah. That.” Keith exchanged amused glances with the man, leaving Erika even more irritated.

  “What?”

  “He’s here to take care of Gordon, Erika,” Keith explained. “For all we know, she’d have killed him or had him killed once he was out of the country.”

  “How do you know he’d go out of the country?”

  “If you got paid good money to kill someone, would you want to put distance between you and the hit, or would you want to hang around and see if the police suspected you?”

  “I thought—”

  Keith shook his head. “I think you’re overwrought. Why don’t we call your parents? It’s over, Erika. It’s over.”

  “I’ve heard that one before,” she muttered.

  The subsequent snicker was hard to miss.

  Seeing Helen, handcuffed and being led from the house, Erika became enraged. She broke away from Keith’s side and stormed up to the woman shouting, “Why? What did I do? Whatever made you think I was any kind of threat to you? I was just a stupid house sitter. A house sitter! What could I possibly have said or done to upset the delicate balance of international trade?”

  “You gullible—”

  The agent jerked Helen away from Erika as another pulled Erika back into the house. “It’s complicated and you don’t need to know.”

  “I do need to know! This is insane. She almost killed me. Why? I have a right to know why!”

  Arms wrapped around her from behind, dragging her down the hall and into her room. Keith pushed the door shut behind her and held onto her as she screamed and kicked. “Let go of me. I don’t have to put up with this anymore. You know why; tell me.”

  “I can’t. I’m serious when I say it puts you in danger.”

  Her anger dissolved into frustrated tears. “I just don’t understand.”

  “I know.” His arms relaxed. “Are you going to attack me if I let you go?”

  “I might.” His chuckle annoyed her. “What?”

  “I always expect you to deny things like that, and you never do.”

  “If I deny it, does it mean you’ll let go?” Keith dropped his arms and waited, as if for some kind of blow, but she had no intention of making him less inclined to talk. When she was safely on the other side of the room, Erika turned to him and said, “So, am I safe now? No boogey men are coming after me? No assassins? No kidnappers—not even you?”

  Before he could answer, Karen burst through the door, nearly knocking over Keith in her haste. “Are you guys okay? There’s blood everywhere in there, and no one will say anything.”

  “How did you get in here?” Keith’s stunned words told Erika it wasn’t a common thing.

  “Climbed through the other bedroom window after I was denied access.” Karen glanced at Erika. “Sorry, I kind of destroyed a screen.”

  “I imagine Helen has more important things to worry about right now.” The words sounded ridiculous even to her own ears. “What am I saying? I probably have to move, don’t I?”

  “Probably,” Keith and Karen answered in unison.

  “That’s it. No more house sitting for me. It was a sweet deal when I had it, but forget it. It’s not worth it. I’m going to rent me a nice little apartment near the coffee shop—some place that I can walk to...”

  Karen shook her head. “I don’t think you’ve checked the rents around there. Even a studio apartment would take up most of your paycheck.”

  “Well, I’ll find something. I’m not dealing with this anymore.”

  With a wink
at Karen, Keith said, “Well, you could always ask Mark for a job. He pays very well, and you rarely need a home to go to.”

  “That’s just sick, and you know it.”

  The door pushed open before Keith could respond, and the agent in charge entered. “Who—what is she doing here?” Pointing at Karen, the man jerked his thumb. “That’s it—”

  “She’s with us. I told her to come in.”

  “Well, we said to stay out.”

  “It’s not her fault that she thought you’d changed your mind. If you’ve got a problem with it, then charge me. She’s just doing her job.”

  “You people are bizarre. Let’s go. We’ve got a long night ahead of us—all of us.”

  Erika glanced at Keith. “Is he serious?”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “Can I pack a bag?”

  “Lady, this is a crime scene. You can’t touch a thing. Nothing.”

  “My purse?” The shake of three heads prompted a string of expletives that made Keith wince. It felt good—really good—to make him as miserable for once. “Fine.”

  THE MODEST HOUSE IN Marshfield had that charm of decades of family living that newer houses never managed to achieve. The driveway had handprints near the garage door, planter boxes, repaired and with layers of paint, held overgrown flowers, and the welcome mat was frayed at the edges. Karen loved it. The Polowskis lived in exactly the kind of house she’d shared with her parents. There’d be a piece of furniture, probably one that Mrs. Polowski hated, somewhere in that house that the man clung to as if it held everything together. There’d be school pictures on the walls—pictures of a little Erika with overgrown teeth and pigtails. All those things were gone for Karen now. She missed that.

  Tom Polowski opened the door, a curious look on his face. “Is she needed again?”

  Karen held up the bags on her arms. “Mark sent some things for her.”

  “Erika!” The man’s loud voice sent echoes through her ears. “That woman from the FBI is here.”

  She smiled at his misconception but didn’t correct him. What was the point? “I could just give them to you—Hey, Erika!”

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  “It’s unusual, but Mark insisted.” She held out a few bags. “I suggested gift cards, but he said you could return or exchange if you needed to, but this way you didn’t have to go out if you didn’t want to.” She shook her head with an exaggerated wag, “Why do men always think that women respond to stress and stimuli in the same way they do?”

  “Why wouldn’t we think that?” Tom responded. “It’s our only frame of reference. If I feel better after a jog, then when my wife is angry, I naturally suggest a jog to make her feel better.”

  “And what if your wife is angry that her favorite jeans are too small? How is she supposed to feel about your suggestion to jog then?” Karen couldn’t help the temptation for a little gentle ribbing.

  “All the more reason!”

  “My father doesn’t understand anything but pure logic—emotion never enters the equation. He would never imagine that someone would take that as a hint that she needs the exercise to lose the weight that make the jeans too small!”

  “Why would that be bad again? If her jeans are too small, she clearly does need the exercise.”

  Erika opened the door wider. “Come on in. This could take a while.” She led Karen into the living room and pointed to the couch. “Just don’t take Dad’s chair, and you’re good.”

  There it was—a needlepointed monstrosity of a wingback chair that should have seen the dump decades earlier. “That’s a very unusual chair.”

  “Dad, that’s a polite way of saying, uglier than the neighbor’s bull dog.”

  “Then why doesn’t she just say it? No one thinks the chair is nice to look at, do they?”

  Karen felt the heat of embarrassment creep up over her face. She hadn’t meant to be rude. “I—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Karen. Dad has something off in his wiring. The emotional and social cues centers of his brain—whatever they’re called—”

  “It’s the—”

  “We don’t care about the semantics, Dad. Anyway, his got unplugged or were never connected. He just doesn’t ‘do’ emotion, he’s a bit over-analytical, and common courtesy is his idea of lying.” She giggled. “Can I tell her about when you met Mom?”

  “Why not? I don’t care.”

  “Mom! Mooommmm...”

  Mrs. Polowski shuffled down the hallway, waving her hands to dry nail polish and with a towel wrapped like a turban around her head. “Oh, it’s um... Kay—”

  “Karen. Nice to see you again.”

  “Karen’s boss sent a few things over for me, and she met Dad. I was just going to tell her how you met.”

  “Oh, this I’ve got to see. I never get tired of the expressions on your next victim’s face.”

  “Well,” Erika said, tucking her feet under her, “Dad met Mom at a restaurant where Mom was a waitress. He told her she was pretty.”

  The pause told Karen she was expected to say something. “Sounds normal enough.”

  “Well, he came back in every night for a week. On Friday night, he asked her if she wanted to go out for ice cream when she got off work. Since he’d been kind of rude about things all week, Mom was a bit put out with him, so she said, ‘Why’?”

  “I still think that’s a ridiculous question,” Mr. Polowski interjected.

  “Well, Dad just stared at her as if she was the stupidest woman on the planet and said, ‘Because I want to start a sexual relationship with you.’”

  “What!” She couldn’t help it. Karen’s eyes bugged out, and she whipped her head around to see if the elder Polowskis were in on some kind of joke. Although Mrs. Polowski giggled profusely, Mr. Polowski’s face was a study in boredom. “Did she slap you?”

  “Yes. How do people always guess that? I know, you say that it’s a natural response, but I think it’s ridiculous.” The man shook his head.

  “Well, I’ve never heard anything like it. I thought Erika was joking or something.”

  Tom shook his head again. “People are always surprised, but what else would you call it?”

  “A date?” The compulsion to answer overrode the feeling that it was a wasted suggestion.

  “And what is a date?”

  “Dad, you’re not Socrates,” Erika protested. She turned to Karen, shaking her head, and sighed. “Dad, as blunt as it is, does make kind of a good point. That’s all dating really is, right? If you didn’t want it to get to an intimate relationship—”

  “Sexual, Erika.”

  “Oh, Dad, it’s just so crass when you put it that way. Let me tell it.” She shook her head and started again, “Anyway, Dad’s point is that friendships don’t have that goal. Anyone can be friends at any time, but ‘going out’ is kind of supposed to lead to marriage which is really legalized sexual relationships.”

  “And commitment... and love...”

  “Endorphins.” The Polowskis spoke in unison.

  At the sight of Karen’s wrinkled nose, Erika continued. “Dad can’t comprehend love, so to him, it’s all endorphins. I have to remind him that he’s not the normal one—we are.”

  “Sad.”

  “Thank you!” Erika pumped her fist.

  Anxious to get out of the strange household with odder ideas of relationships than she’d ever heard, Karen stood. “Well, I have to say, that’s the most unique ‘how we met’ story I’ve ever heard. I really need to get going, though. Technically, I’m working today, so I have a lot of things to do.” She grabbed a few of the bags. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show you what is in here, so you know what we got and where. Is there—”

  “Come on into my room.” Once the door was shut behind them, Erika smiled. “Don’t worry. One of the good things about not having proper emotions is that you don’t get offended. Dad doesn’t understand a lot of the time, but he doesn’t get worked up
about things. I remember I always wanted to tell him about things when I knew they weren’t going to like what I had to confess.”

  “No yelling, eh?”

  “You got it.”

  Karen pulled several receipts from her purse. “I didn’t get gift receipts, so you could return them yourself if you wanted. They were paid for with cash, so you’re good. I could have told you that out there, but this...” Karen dug a small blue plastic bag from inside a Macy’s bag. “Keith sent this. I didn’t think your father would understand.”

  She watched as Erika pulled out the small leather covered Bible and frowned at it. “He—”

  Erika shook her head. “He’s not going to do it, is he?”

  “What?”

  “Well, he promised me a good dinner. I know it probably made him uncomfortable, but I thought he’d keep his word. He seemed like the kind of guy who would.”

  “Why would it make him uncomfortable?” Karen’s left eyebrow rose.

  “Because he’s attracted to me and doesn’t know what to do about that.” A snort escaped. “After all, I’m not cute, blonde, and religious.”

  “Look what the last one by that description did to him. He’s broadening his tastes perhaps.”

  “But he sent this and didn’t come himself. He’s chickening out. I thought he was better than that. The Keith I thought I knew would at least call.”

  “The Keith I know,” Karen agreed, “will... and he’ll ask you out for that dinner like he promised.” As she opened the door, Karen gave a meaningful look at the Bible. “Read it—or at least thumb through it. I’m guessing there’s a note or something in there—well, if I know Keith there is.”

  Erika stared at the door as it closed behind Karen. She’d probably never see Karen again. Then again, she’d thought the same thing the previous day when she’d ridden home from the FBI building with her parents. Flipping through the thin pages of the book, she found one small sheet of paper. Karen was right. There was a note, but it didn’t say anything about their dinner. Despite her pretense of not caring, she did. She’d finally met someone who was who he pretended to be and then he’d failed her.