The Watcher

by Jennifer Pashley

  Don’t think, I thought, but what I meant to tell myself was not to want anything so hard.

  Bear put his hands on my neck and told me to relax. He kissed the skin underneath my ear, down to my collarbone.

  I thought I wasn’t even there, that it couldn’t be real, that I was imagining everything and I’d wake up in my twin bed with the power out, with Birdie singing while she sat on the toilet. Or maybe I was the one outside the window, watching a kid who looked like me, with this beautiful man, the hair on his belly just the way I’d hotly imagined.

  But he snapped me to, grabbing my hand. “Do you want this?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He burrowed his face in my neck. “Then stop fighting,” he said.

  SIXTEEN: KATERI

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 23

  There are benefits to a small town. Having the bank know you by name when you walk in. Recognizing a lost dog and then knowing where his owner lives. Having one law office.

  Kateri goes to the front desk at Bond, Sullivan, and King and speaks to the receptionist. The office is a large, converted farmhouse, the desk in a spacious front hall with an oak staircase leading up to offices. There’s a conference room that looks like a formal dining room, and at the back of the house, a kitchen.

  The receptionist is a young woman, dark haired and pretty, just out of college or still in. Kateri shows her badge and tells her she needs information on a recently handled property issue.

  The girl takes out a pad and starts jotting things down.

  “The Jenkins property,” Kateri says, “was recently transferred to Shannon Jenkins.”

  “Uh-huh,” the girl says. “I saw that.”

  “Can you tell me which lawyer handled that?”

  “Mr. Sullivan,” she says.

  “Is Mr. Sullivan in?” Kateri asks. The downfalls of a small town sometimes include a slow pace, long lunches, people getting back to you when they feel like it. “It’s urgent,” Kateri says, and the girl straightens her back, picks up the phone.

  Dan Sullivan meets her in the conference room. It’s annoyingly country in there: plaid wallpaper, dried flowers. It smells like apple-cinnamon candles.

  “You’re aware,” Kateri says, “that we’re investigating the death of a deputy, Craig O’Neil, as well as the recent disappearance of Pearl Jenkins.” She doesn’t sit. She doesn’t want to give the impression of ample time, of a leisurely pace. She’s afraid someone else will end up dead. And that it might be the girl.

  “Of course,” Dan says.

  “Shannon Jenkins had the Jenkins property transferred to his name recently.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he come in here alone? Did he arrange that with you? Pay for it himself?”

  “Um,” Dan says, stalling. He laces his fingers together.

  Kateri holds her palms up, asking. “I need to know who that person was. Shannon Jenkins is a suspect,” she says. “I need to reach his associates, to verify his activity and motives.”

  Dan Sullivan works his jaw, and his eyes drift from Kateri’s to the table.

  “Do you have a warrant?” Dan asks.

  “It’s in the works,” Kateri says.

  Dan nods, curt. “Keep me posted,” he says, and then checks his cell phone. “I have a ten o’clock,” he says to Kateri. “You’ll excuse me.” He jogs off up the stairs.

  She stands still in the conference room, a little stunned but thinking. She waits until she hears the floor creak above her, the close of a door upstairs. Then she goes back to the desk.

  “I forgot to ask Dan,” she says to the receptionist, “who handled the expense for the property transfer.”

  The girl opens a folder and looks at a yellow receipt, handwritten in what looks like the girl’s handwriting, round and small. “Um, it was paid cash,” she says. Underneath the receipt, there’s a pink Post-it with the name Bear Miller in a different hand, capital block letters.

  Bear Miller is not a name Kateri has heard in town. She nods to the girl as if it’s exactly what she expected to hear. “Thanks so much,” she says on her way out.

  Outside the station, handmade JUSTICE FOR CRAIG signs have gone up on the lawn, ribbons have gone around trees. No one thinks about justice for Pearl.

  She finds a landline for Bear Miller and no legal records, not even a speeding ticket. She uncovers useless information, that he went to UVM, that his tax status is married.

  She begins to leave a message: Detective Fisher, investigating Craig O’Neil, Pearl Jenkins, and so on, and he picks up, hushed, halfway through her message, and she hears the machine beep.

  “What can I do for you?” Bear asks.

  “I need to ask you some questions,” she says.

  “I’ll meet you,” he says.

  “At the station?” she asks.

  He chuckles, low and familiar. “How about coffee?” he says.

  “Fine,” she says.

  “I’m free at five thirty,” he says.

  “Sounds like a date,” Kateri says.

  * * *

  At 5:25, as the sun is slipping behind the tallest brick building in the center of town, Kateri waits in front of the closed Center Street Café, not understanding why coffee shops in small town don’t stay open into the evening. Where are you supposed to get coffee after five o’clock? she thinks. Maybe in the basement of the Presbyterian Church at the AA meeting. It’s the worst coffee in the world.

  The sky has deepened to a rosy gray. The spate of cars usually parked in the tiny downtown are thinning out. Bear comes around the corner, tall, lithe. He wears a European-style leather motorcycle jacket and slim jeans with purposeful tears. A slouched knit hat. Kateri thinks his clothes look about fifteen years too young for him.

  “Kateri Fisher,” she says, and holds out her hand.

  “A pleasure,” he answers. “Bear Miller.” His hands are soft and cold. Strong, but bony. He points at the café. “Well, this won’t work,” he says. He steps back, half turned toward her, and cocks his head. “What’s your preference, Detective Fisher?” he says. “Cheap beer? Or cheap beer?”

  “The quietest, please.”

  She doesn’t want to follow him, because he seems to want exactly that, to be followed, to charm the snakes right out of the woods. But she does, her work shoes padding softly on the pavement. She wears her lanyard badge and has her gun on her hip.

  Of course, he walks into the Sweetwater Lounge. The other two bars are dives, younger joints with beer in plastic cups, simple mixers, bar nuts.

  She blows out a slow breath, and her head makes a familiar whomp.

  When the bartender comes, Kateri recognizes him, and Bear motions to her.

  “I’m on duty,” she says to Bear, and then asks for a club soda with lime.

  “What would you get if you were off?” Bear asks.

  The bartender is a man over fifty with neat gray hair, wearing a slim black button shirt. He smiles at Kateri. She considers telling Bear that she’s sober. But it’s a lie.

  “An old-fashioned,” she says, humoring him.

  “Bourbon?” he asks.

  She smiles. “Well, what I really like is Angel’s Envy, but that’s hard to find.”

  The bartender shakes his head. “I don’t have that,” he says.

  It had a different smoothness that she liked. And a bottle draped with the outline of wings.

  “Basil Hayden’s,” Kateri says, and the bartender nods.

  “I’ll have what the lady would have had,” Bear says.

  She watches the bartender make it, muddling the orange and pouring the whiskey into the heavy-bottomed glass. It makes her mouth water, the crushed citrus, the color, the pop of cherries.

  Bear takes his time. He sips his drink and offers nothing she doesn’t seem to ask for twice. She asks him what he does for a living.

  “Real estate,” he says.

  She’s never seen his name on a sign. Spring Falls has the same family names on everything. You’re
either a Sullivan, a Berringer, or a Kurtz.

  “Residential development,” he says.

  She thinks about the string of new houses going up. There’s nothing to offer here except the landscape, and even that is harsh, cold, unforgiving, and beautiful. You have to go to the next town for a college. There is just the one small Catholic hospital. Not everyone stays year-round.

  “Are you new to town?” she asks.

  He nods.

  “You didn’t grow up here.”

  “No ma’am,” he says.

  Kateri puts her notebook on the bar but doesn’t open it, doesn’t reference what’s inside. She may have come armed with crime scene photos that show the awkward bend in Craig O’Neil’s neck or his blue, water-bloated hands. Or the burned bits of Pearl Jenkins’s bones.

  “You have a PO box,” Kateri says.

  “I don’t have a mailbox yet,” Bear says. “My house is brand-new. It’s the only one up there.”

  “In the River View tract?” Kateri asks.

  “That’s the one.”

  “That’s your development,” she says.

  “It’s the company’s,” he says.

  “Your company?”

  “My mother’s,” he says. “Kerpak Industries.”

  That’s when she looks at her notes. Kerpak is developing the land north of the woods, beyond the train tracks and farther, with large family homes, luxury condos, and, between here and Canada, a huge casino resort with a golf course, indoor water park, and trails for hiking and cross-country skiing. The existing property, in the woods, is privately owned. By Shannon Jenkins.

  “You’re not listed as an employee of Kerpak Industries,” she says. When she did a search on him, she found no association with Kerpak. When she looked into the property, the only contact she found was Patsy Kerpak.

  “I’m not,” Bear says.

  “Are you on the payroll?”

  “Technically not,” he says.

  “Are you working on this residential project?” she asks, indicated the map she has of the park, the land Shannon now owns. “Or the casino?”

  He gets to the bottom of his old-fashioned, and the bartender strolls down their way. He tops off Kateri’s glass of club soda from the gun, then places a fresh lime on the rim.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  He points at Bear’s empty glass.

  “Please,” Bear says. He doesn’t answer her question about the projects.

  “How do you know Shannon Jenkins?” she asks. She’s acting on a hunch, only the Post-it note in the property file at Sullivan’s office. She knows Miller is connected; she just isn’t sure how. And she’s curious to see if he denies it.

  “He does some work for me,” Bear says.

  “For Kerpak?”

  “No, for me personally,” Bear says. He sips his new drink.

  “What kind of work?” she asks, and he holds her eye contact a little longer than she finds comfortable.

  “Extra hands,” he says.

  “How did you find him?”

  “At the diner.”

  “I mean, how did you know he was looking for work?”

  “I didn’t,” Bear says, and laughs a little. “But what nineteen-year-old dishwasher isn’t looking for better-paying work?”

  Kateri sips and swallows hard, the bubbles caustic in her throat. From the side, Bear’s face has something elfin about it, the slant of his eyes toward his temples, the shape of his ears.

  “Mr. Miller,” she says, and he laughs.

  “Please,” he says. “Call me Bear.”

  “Shannon’s a suspect in his mother’s murder, as well as the murder of Craig O’Neil.”

  Bear seems neither alarmed by this nor particularly moved at all.

  “Do you want my opinion?” he says.

  “I think you’re probably going to give it to me either way,” Kateri says. She thinks he’s going to throw him under the bus. Give her reasons why Shannon would have killed his own mother.

  “He didn’t do it,” Bear says.

  She watches his face closely for any flicker of warmth, some recognition, a soft spot. She sees none. Instead, he seems particularly homed in on her—his gaze when she talks, the way he moves his tongue. If this weren’t an official interview, she’d have thought he was after something else. And she would have taken him up on it.

  “Why did you pay his legal fees?” Kateri asks then.

  “I didn’t,” Bear says, putting his drink down and making a steeple of his fingers.

  “Really,” Kateri says. “Who did?”

  “What makes you think he didn’t pay them himself?” Bear asks.

  Kateri shrugs a shoulder, soft, cool. “That’s more money than that kid has,” she offers. “You have a vested interest in him.”

  “He’s a kid in trouble,” Bear says.

  “So what?” Kateri asks.

  “I was a kid in trouble,” he says, and smiles at her. “A long time ago.”

  She’s found nothing that indicates trouble. Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t paid his way out of it.

  “I don’t know,” Kateri says. “If anyone had a reason to harm Pearl Jenkins, he did. Have you ever heard him talk about his mother?”

  “No,” Bear says. “I’ve barely heard him speak.”

  “No … siblings, or any other family members?” Bear shakes his head. “Do you know where he’s staying?” she asks.

  “No,” he says.

  “But he works for you,” she says. “You don’t know where he lives?”

  “I reach him by phone,” Bear says.

  “Is he a good worker?” Kateri asks.

  “Very.” Bear leans his arms on the bar. “How’d you end up here?” he asks.

  “I could ask you the same,” she says.

  “You got a place in town?”

  “Outside,” she says. She watches his eyes, soft at the corners, crow’s feet from smoking, but mostly just the whiskey blurring all his edges.

  She hadn’t wanted to live in town, where she saw everyone every day. Joel Hurt. The captain. The lady secretaries. The younger officers. She needed a retreat. A backyard. To be close to the river, the trees. Where she could lie in bed at night and hear the train, the rush of water. Where it was dark.

  At her grandmother’s house in Syracuse, even in the city, there were trees. The backyard under a dense canopy. There were birds and squirrels, deer, creeping in from the outskirts, ravaging everyone’s flowers.

  “How old are you?” Bear asks, and it catches her off guard.

  “How old are you?” she shoots back, and he laughs, which disarms her a little.

  “Fair,” he says. “Older than you,” he answers.

  “We both have weird names.”

  She hands him a card, even though she knows he already has her number. “I’d like you to come in for an official statement,” she says, and shrugs to soften the sound of it. She knows that coming from a man, that sentence has weight, the kind of request you listen to and comply with. And coming from her, authority sounds like bitchiness.

  “We’ve asked everyone he works with,” she explains, but then she also stands with her hand in her pocket, her weapon slightly exposed. She leaves a five-dollar bill on the bar. She asks one more question.

  “Is Kerpak interested in the house on Hidden Drive?”

  Bear sniffs and looks down at his empty second drink, her card on the bar. He licks his top lip, thinking, and then simply says, “Yes.”

  Kateri raises her eyebrows. “Kid in trouble,” she repeats. It’s clearly more than that.

  And Bear cocks his head. “More trouble than he anticipated, apparently.”

  “Well,” she says, “thanks for your time.”

  “Thank you,” Bear says, and it’s a little too heavy-handed for her to just turn and walk out. A little too sarcastic, a little biting. He feels jilted, she thinks.

  “What’s going to happen to the house?” Kateri asks.

  “My h
ouse?” Bear says. “I’ll sell it,” he says.

  “No, the house on Hidden Drive. The Jenkins house.”

  Bear shrugs. “Cash sale?” he suggests.

  “Keep me posted,” she says.

  * * *

  At home, she opens the sliding door that leads to her small wooden balcony and looks at the sky. There’s not a cloud in sight, and yet there are tiny crystal flurries around her face, catching under the light that comes from the window.

  He didn’t look like anyone else in Spring Falls. Not even like the summer people who came through on their way deeper into the mountains.

  And it unnerved her. He was exactly the kind of distraction she enjoyed. Smart but a little sarcastic, just at the edge of being mean. A little bit pretty. A little bit rough.

  “Fuck,” she says aloud into the night air, and reaches inside for the last of her stashed cigarettes.

  He wasn’t telling her everything.

  Neither was Shannon.

  SEVENTEEN: SHANNON

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17

  I could see it only with two mirrors. A scar that seared from the underside of my arm, over one shoulder blade, up toward my neck, and into the middle of my spine. In the places where I could reach it, the skin felt different, like it couldn’t stretch, like part of me was made of plastic.

  I let Bear touch it. And I shivered.

  “Does it still hurt?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, but it wasn’t quite true. Sometimes it shot with pain, the skin tight and hot. Sometimes it itched. “It’s sensitive,” I said.

  “This is from the fire?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  His finger traced the outline, from my neck and around. “It kind of looks like Canada,” he said.

  “I always kind of wished I had two,” I said, my face sideways on the pillow, watching him.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “So it would look like I had wings,” I said.

  * * *

  There were things I would never tell him. That I’d bought my bike with money I stole from my mother. I had always gotten my own checks and she had always kept them, saving them, she told me, for when I was older, and then I was old enough to care and there wasn’t any money. None. Of course they hadn’t been saved. She’d spent them as soon as she got them.