The Watcher

by Jennifer Pashley

  He rubs his eye. “I’ll take a Pepsi if you have it,” he says.

  She opens a small fridge next to the desk and pulls out a cold bottle.

  “I keep my own stash,” she says. “They occasionally save my life.”

  Like today, she thinks. She has had a steady intake of Pepsi and Excedrin. Earlier, she ate a bag of potato chips from the vending machine, which she never does. But she’s been fighting sweaty nausea all day.

  Shannon drinks, and his foot bounces.

  “How long have you lived here?” Kateri asks him.

  “My whole life,” he says, with the tragic flair of a teenager.

  “Always in the house on Hidden Drive?” she asks.

  “No,” he says. “We used to live in a farmhouse on Cemetery Road.”

  She knows the road. Her apartment is on Cemetery Road, a road that does indeed end in a large nineteenth-century graveyard. The same goes for Mill Road, which leads to the empty hulk of the former paper mill, and Mount Snow Road, which leads to Mount Snow.

  She has the information about the fire from his father’s file. The house was a total loss, the perimeter doused with accelerant, the framework old, dry wood. It went up fast and hot, and it was a miracle anyone got out. But she asks, “When did you move?”

  “When I was three,” Shannon says. “After it burned down.”

  “That’s quite traumatic,” Kateri says. “Do you remember it?”

  “You know all this, right?” he says. “You can see it in the file.”

  “I know what’s in the file,” she says. “Since then, it’s been just you and your mother.” She looks down at the folder. “Pearl Jenkins, in the house on Hidden Drive.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “That house originally belonged to your grandparents?” Kateri asks.

  “Yes.”

  “I grew up with my grandparents,” Kateri says.

  “Lucky you,” Shannon answers. “Does your mother still live there?” he asks.

  “No,” she says. “My mother is dead. She died when I was sixteen,” she says.

  “How?” he asks, without offering condolences. She doesn’t expect it. In fact, she’s more comfortable forgoing it.

  “She died of a drug overdose,” Kateri says.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  She thanks him and looks back at the file. “When your grandfather died, your mother inherited the house, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the ownership of the house has recently been transferred to you,” she says.

  He fights rolling his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “I’m trying to catch up on bills.”

  She switches gears. “Your dad is Park Jenkins,” she says.

  “Yep.”

  “Your mother’s maiden name is also Jenkins.”

  “They’re second cousins,” Shannon says.

  “Are there other Jenkins around here?”

  “No,” he says. “In Vermont. Both my mom and dad have a bunch of brothers and half brothers. They’re all pieces of shit,” Shannon says.

  “How so?”

  “Poor,” he says. “Stupid. Incarcerated. Dopeheads.”

  “You’re not stupid,” she says.

  “Thanks,” he says, with a sarcastic lilt.

  “When’s the last time you saw Park Jenkins?”

  “Two years ago,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “I visited him in prison.”

  “Had you visited him before?”

  “No,” he says. “That’s the only time. I couldn’t remember him at all,” Shannon explains. “I just … wanted to see what he was like.”

  “And what was he like?” she asks.

  “A disappointment,” Shannon says. “He barely talked to me or looked at me.”

  Kateri nods. “Has your mother been to see him at all?”

  “No,” he says.

  “Never,” Kateri says.

  “No.”

  “So there is no chance Park Jenkins is your sister’s father,” she says.

  She watches his entire body jump, and then he closes his eyes and his face grows ashen.

  “I’m sorry?” he asks when he opens his eyes.

  “Your sister,” Kateri says. “Sparrow Annie. Birdie.”

  “I don’t—” he says, and then stops. He takes a minute to breathe, slowing himself down. He starts to cough, and when he goes to take a drink, Kateri sees what he has been guarding with his hood: a large bluish bruise around his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

  “We can come back to that,” Kateri says. “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your mother?”

  He chews his lip, looking down into his lap. He sits slumped into the chair, spine curved. “No,” he says. Then, “My father.”

  “Does your father know about your sister?” Kateri asks.

  “No,” Shannon says.

  She watches his lips purse, his jaw tight.

  “Why did your mother run surveillance cameras outside the house?” Kateri asks.

  “She was afraid,” Shannon says.

  “Of?”

  “I can’t answer these questions,” he says. “I don’t know.”

  “You lived there. Was she afraid of people finding out about Birdie?”

  He puts both his hands to his forehead and rubs vigorously.

  “Let me say this,” Kateri says. “You are not necessarily in trouble. But I need all the information I can get from you to secure your safety.”

  He breathes raggedly through open lips.

  “Your mother is dead and your sister is missing, and you reported neither of those things.”

  “I didn’t know she was dead,” he says. “I haven’t been there.”

  “How long had you gone without seeing her or talking to her?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “A few days? A week maybe. I got the power back on, and then it was okay. It was fine there.”

  She allows him to sit in silence, uncomfortable, waiting for him to say more. He bounces his knee, he drinks the Pepsi, he fidgets with something in his pocket. Kateri has moved from Pepsi to water and drinks from a large liter bottle. She’s about due for more Excedrin.

  “Where is she?” Shannon says then.

  “I might ask you,” Kateri says.

  “I don’t have her,” he says.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I don’t know why that matters,” he says.

  Kateri shrugs, cool. “In case I have a warrant to search for a missing child or a murder weapon,” she says.

  “Am I a suspect?” he asks, shrill.

  She waits, quiet, while he shifts in the chair, sitting up straighter and then rocking back and forth.

  “You are not not a suspect,” she says. “Of course, we start with those closest to the victim.”

  “Why?” he cries.

  “If there are people who have reasons to want to hurt or eliminate your mother,” Kateri says, “wouldn’t you be among them?”

  “Why?” he says again.

  She takes another drink and rests a minute. “Because she forced you to keep her secret,” Kateri says. “Because you wanted the girl for yourself.”

  “Oh my God,” Shannon mutters.

  She notices that what he toys with in his pocket is a lighter, that he flicks it just short of lighting it, the spark bright inside the fabric. He has no record for fire starting. But she wonders if it has been a habit for him, something that has brought him perverse, dangerous pleasure, a release.

  She asks if he’d like a smoke break.

  He pats his shirt pocket underneath the hoodie. “Can I?” he asks.

  “You are not being held,” Kateri says. “Of course.”

  She walks him down the hall to a side door where he can smoke in the parking lot. She notices, standing next to him, how slender he is, how narrow across the back, with willowy arms and legs that he has hidden inside clothing.

&nbs
p; “Were you going out of town?” she asks him.

  “No,” he says. “Why?”

  “The firewood,” Kateri says. “I thought maybe you were going camping.”

  Shannon’s lip curls in a bitter smile, showing his teeth. “I’ve pretty much been camping,” he says, “in my own house. Camping is not vacation to me.”

  “I thought you weren’t staying at the house,” Kateri says.

  “I was,” he snaps. “And it was without electricity or water.”

  “They were both on when I was there,” she says.

  “I fixed it,” he says.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “With friends,” he says. He opens the heavy door and lets in a blinding block of light. He steps into the parking lot with the cigarette already on his lip.

  “I’m going to need to know,” she says. She’s afraid of losing him.

  * * *

  She overhears only part of his phone call. “I don’t know,” he says, more than once. And then, “I will.” She waits on the other side of the door, grateful for a dim place, her foot holding the door propped so it won’t lock him out. Hurt sees her like that and gives her a look.

  “Smoke break,” she says.

  “For you?” he asks, shocked, as if she’s smoking inside out a cracked door.

  “No,” she says, annoyed. “For Jenkins.”

  “He’s out in the parking lot?” Hurt asks. When Kateri nods, he adds, “Hope he doesn’t run.” He looks down at Kateri’s shoes.

  Shannon doesn’t. He comes back in, cowed and nervous, and Kateri starts right in on him, without giving him too much time to think.

  “Who is your sister’s father?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “No idea,” Kateri says. “Your mother wasn’t dating, didn’t have people around?”

  “No,” he says, rolling his eyes. “She barely leaves the house.”

  “Someone in town?” Kateri asks.

  His face goes blank, his mouth a straight line. “Do you know any black men in Spring Falls?” he asks.

  But Kateri shrugs, nonchalant. “I don’t know that she’s black,” she says, cautious, but it’s clear from Birdie’s hair and even the tint of her light skin that she is likely mixed race.

  Shannon laughs. “Have you looked at her?” he says. “Have you looked at me and my mom?”

  “But you don’t know who,” Kateri says.

  “No,” he says.

  “When did your mother put up the cameras?” Kateri asks.

  “After Birdie was born,” he says.

  “How long after?”

  “The spring,” he says.

  “Is it possible that she’s afraid of your sister’s father?”

  “It’s possible,” he says. “But he’s not the one who tried to kill her.”

  “Are you afraid of your dad?” Kateri asks.

  “No,” he says.

  Kateri tips her head. “He tried to kill you too.”

  “It’s not the same,” he says.

  “How so?”

  “I wasn’t the target,” he says. “I was just there.”

  “Do you know that for sure?” Kateri asks. “You said you don’t remember.”

  His face closes, gray.

  Hurt knocks and comes in before Kateri says it’s okay. He carries a file folder and a legal pad.

  “Shannon Jenkins,” she says, “This is my partner, Detective Joel Hurt.”

  Shannon nods.

  Hurt pulls a paper out of the file folder with a phone number printed on it and nothing else.

  “Do you know this number?” Hurt asks.

  Shannon’s cheeks pale. “No,” he says.

  “Not at all?”

  He won’t take the paper from Hurt. “No,” he says, and he adjusts the hood around his neck. “Whose is it?” he asks.

  “It’s the number that called nine-one-one,” Hurt says, “the day the crime scene was first investigated.” Hurt waits. His tactic is more minimalist that Kateri’s, which is why they take turns. She builds a narrative. He cuts through it. “It’s an untraceable track phone,” Hurt tells him. “And it’s been disconnected.”

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Kateri asks.

  “You just saw me use it,” Shannon says.

  “What kind is it?” Hurt asks.

  “An untraceable track phone,” Shannon says, edgy. He pulls it from his pocket. “We don’t have a landline at the house,” he says, “and my mother doesn’t trust cell phones. This is all I have,” he says. “It’s forty bucks a month.”

  He holds it out, an old-style Samsung with a slide-out keyboard.

  “How long have you had it?” Kateri asks.

  Shannon shrugs. “A year?” he says. “I had a different one before, but I broke it.” His foot bounces, and he slouches in the chair.

  “How’d you break it?” Hurt asks.

  “In a murderous rage,” Shannon says, his face unbreakable. He stares at Hurt.

  “Is this funny to you?” Hurt asks.

  “Not at all,” Shannon says.

  “Look,” Hurt says like he’s leveling with him. “Don’t take this the wrong way.” Shannon huffs. “But you look clean,” Hurt says. “You look pretty well cared for and put-together. Not like someone who was living without water or electricity.”

  Shannon’s face is clean-shaven; his hair is clean, shiny, and well cut. His clothes are fresh and neat. He smells like laundry and men’s deodorant and, now, like a lingering cigarette.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Kateri asks.

  “Ha,” he says with one sharp laugh. “No.”

  She doesn’t know what to make of his reaction, but she needs to find out who has taken him in, or at the very least, who he has been seen with recently.

  Hurt leans against the wall. “Do you know Craig O’Neil?” he asks.

  “No,” Shannon says.

  “You didn’t go to high school together?” Kateri asks.

  “I mean, sure,” Shannon says, “but he was older. Chris O’Neil was in my grade.”

  “You said you didn’t know the O’Neils,” Hurt says.

  “I didn’t,” Shannon says. “Just because we went to school together doesn’t mean I know them.”

  “Someone bound Craig O’Neil and put him in the trunk of his own car,” Hurt says. “The same day that your sister was taken from the hospital.”

  “When was my sister in the hospital?” Shannon asks.

  Kateri holds up her hand to Hurt.

  “Why was she in the hospital?”

  Then she holds up her hand to Shannon. “Excuse us a moment,” she says, and nods at Hurt to the hall outside the room.

  Outside, she leans her head against the tile wall, the cool ceramic on her skin.

  “He’s admitted the sister,” Hurt says.

  “Yes,” she says. “But we haven’t gotten very far.”

  “How much of it do you think is an act?” Hurt asks.

  “I can’t tell,” Kateri says, turning her face sideways.

  Hurt smirks. “How do you feel?” he says. “Miss You Don’t Outweigh Me?”

  “Shut up,” she says, and breathes slowly, warding off panic.

  “Rattle him,” Hurt says. “He’ll spill. And let me know if you want help.”

  They go back in, and Hurt takes the sheet with the phone number from the desk and slides it back into the folder. “Whose dog?” he asks.

  “Whose dog what?” Shannon repeats.

  “Whose dog have you been riding around with?” Hurt asks.

  Shannon looks uncomfortable with the prospect of being watched. “My dog,” he says. “Why?”

  “Did you have a dog before?” Hurt asks.

  “I just got him,” he says.

  “Where?”

  “From a friend,” Shannon says.

  “Which friend?” Hurt says.

  Shannon stumbles. “A kid I know in Mount Snow,” he says.

  �
��What’s the kid’s name?” Hurt says.

  “Jake,” Shannon says.

  “Jake what?”

  “Tucker,” Shannon says. His whole demeanor has changed since Hurt came in. He cracks all his knuckles and stretches his neck.

  Hurt writes it down. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll be back,” he says to Kateri.

  She hears Shannon breathe out slowly, blowing through pursed lips, and he leans over like he’s winded from running.

  “Am I in trouble for having a dog?” he asks once Hurt is gone.

  Kateri shakes her head slightly. “Just dotting the is,” she tells him, but she watches him closely. She guesses he’s told her only a small fraction of what he does know. And what he knows probably includes who killed his mother, if he didn’t do it himself. With Hurt gone, his shoulders unhunch from his ears and he looks at Kateri like a frightened animal.

  “Did you see her in the hospital?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Kateri says.

  His eyes dart, searching, nervous.

  “Did you hurt her?” Kateri asks.

  His face drops, not fearful, not sly, not a bit sarcastic. “I would never,” he says.

  “She was fine,” Kateri says. “She was physically unharmed.”

  His hands drop to his sides. He looks exhausted, from work, from the interrogation, from keeping a secret for so long.

  “You’re not being held,” she reminds him.

  “I’m not,” he repeats.

  “No. You’re free to go. While we appreciate your cooperation,” she says, “you’re not under arrest.”

  “Yet,” Shannon says.

  Kateri tilts her head and lets him finish.

  “You’re just waiting for me to say the wrong thing,” he says.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell the truth,” Kateri says.

  * * *

  Hurt leans his head in after she lets Shannon go. “Kid gone?” he asks.

  She nods.

  “Come look at this,” he says, and disappears from her doorway, down to his own office.

  He has a new plant. Weird, because his office has always looked like he is either just moving in or about to move out. Nothing on the walls but a paper calendar, no framed pictures on his desk or his shelves.

  “It’s nice,” Kateri says.

  “Not the plant,” Hurt says. He points to his monitor.

  He has a file open on a recent parolee, Michael Bartholomew Jane, released from Clinton Correctional in May. His parole officer is listed as Robert Ferris, in the Mount Snow office, and his address is given as Mill Road in Spring Falls.