The Watcher

by Jennifer Pashley

  When he moved out, she helped him. They picked out his new place together, and she brought over boxes in her car.

  “I’ll see you in ten years,” Andrew said.

  “For what?” Kateri asked. She lived less than a mile away.

  “Everything will be different then,” Andrew said.

  * * *

  Afterward, she didn’t date. She didn’t then, and she still doesn’t want a boyfriend, although she misses the feel of another body, the weight of someone, the thrill in a deep kiss. She craved the exhaustion of sex, some use for her body that wasn’t work related. She sometimes didn’t even tell them her name. Or she said her name was Kate, or Katie, depending on the guy. She didn’t want to be traceable. She wanted sex as a physical transaction between bodies. When it was over, it was over, and it wasn’t bogged down by love and drinking and crying and trying to make a life together. She thought she loved Andrew. She did love him. But when she moved to Spring Falls, she came without any attachments, certainly not a boyfriend, not even a cat. Her last living relative had died. She felt unmoored and unattached and empty, like a good strong wind might blow her away. She took a sunny upper apartment in a farmhouse outside of town, with bright oak floors and white walls. She brought things that reminded her of her grandmother’s home: a dream catcher, river stones, candles.

  When she was a rookie cop, the older men would hit on her. They liked her thick hair, her skin, the way her uniform stretched over her body. She had a burn on the inside of her wrist from when she was fifteen. Her mother’s boyfriend had caught her coming in after two in the morning and pressed the hot crown of his lighter into her flesh. He was younger than her mother. He wasn’t even thirty. “Next time,” he said, “your neck.” She’d been out with Andrew.

  * * *

  Halloween falls on a Tuesday. She stays late in an office filled with pumpkins and skeletons and then stops at home to change before she drives out to Mount Snow for a slow walk through an empty Walmart. She’s eager to be off duty. To be in regular, comfortable clothes, to shop anonymously. In the store, the costumes are picked over, half on the floor, ghoulish heads and witch hats strewn in the aisle. She buys one bag of candy, for herself, and some new candles, including a seven-day Lady of Guadalupe. No kids will come to her house. She leaves her porch light off. Cemetery Road is forty-five miles per hour, and people tend to go much faster. The kids in Spring Falls trick-or-treat in town.

  She comes home after nine, when most of the town’s kids have gone in for the night, chilled to the bone and sugared up. There are trails of toilet paper in the trees, silly string on the stop signs, but the town is quiet. On Cemetery Road, one small car is parked off to the side, broken down, she guesses, or maybe it’s a couple. She catches it in her headlights when she pulls into her own driveway.

  She hasn’t gotten used to the country dark. She catches herself squinting when she drives at night, or wide-eyed, searching for the shape of the road in front of her. The fields on either side could be anything—ocean, sky. She comes up the stairs in the dark, feeling her way, wishing she’d left the light on. Over the railing, she sees the field next door, hears the whisper of cornstalks farther away, the rush of the river. And a voice.

  “Detective.”

  Her heart spasms hard in her chest, leaving her breathless. It’s Bear Miller, in the shadow beside her door. He has a bottle of Angel’s Envy rye. When she sees him, he moves over, his arm across the threshold of her door.

  She lays her hand over her heart, willing it to slow, and drops the bag to the porch floor. “How did you find out where I live?” she says. She tries to stay smooth. Tries to hide the panic in her voice.

  “In this town?” Bear says. “You just have to ask the right people.” He tips his head to the side, blinks slow. “I brought you something,” he says, and holds up the bottle. “Some of it’s already gone.”

  He holds the bottle to his lips, drinks, and then tips it toward her.

  “No,” she says.

  “What did you think of Brewer?” he asks.

  Beyond the porch, the wind whistles through the cornfield. Far off, she sees the orange light of a bonfire.

  She exhales slow, her breath a long visible line in the cold air. Her entire body is taut, on guard. “How long have you been out here?” she asks.

  Bear shrugs.

  “What did you think?” he asks again.

  “I thought he was slick,” she answers. “But quite possibly what Shannon needs.”

  “What Shannon needs is a miracle worker,” Bear says. “A guardian angel.” He laughs, his mouth wet and open. “An act of God.”

  “Then why’d you hire him?” she asks.

  Bear shrugs. “He’s the best there is,” he says.

  “What do you care?”

  A gust comes off the field and whips her hair over her face. Bear takes the opportunity to brush it away from her eyes, off her lips. He holds a hunk of hair in his hand, over her shoulder, and moves so that his body is in front of the door, more in the light. He’s wearing a knit hat and a leather jacket, the same as last time she saw him. A flannel shirt. An erection is visible through his jeans.

  Her phone is buried in her bag. Her keys are in her hand. She can’t call anyone for backup, and she’s unarmed.

  “You need to leave,” she warns.

  He plants his feet and braces himself against the door.

  “Or?” he says. He swipes out at her waist, and she jumps away before he can reach her. She’s not sure what he was grabbing for. The pocket of her jeans? The belt loop? Something to hook her and bring her closer. When he misses, he leans forward and laughs, takes another drink.

  He nods at the door behind him. “Go in,” he says. He moves his hand down the front of his jeans, stroking.

  “Not until you leave,” she says. She watches his eyes dart.

  “The keyhole’s right there,” he says, and traces his finger over it. “Go ahead.”

  She looks down the stairs. She could just leave. Get back in her car, drive to the station, make Hurt come back with her. Except that she’s incensed at having Miller at her own house, blocking her door. She was off guard. She wants into her own home.

  Instead, she tries to leave, her purse on her shoulder, the Walmart bag on the floor, but when she turns just a fraction, he hooks his finger into the back pocket of her jeans and pulls her in, switching their spots, Kateri with her back against the door and Bear in front of her. He holds her hand that has her keys, by the wrist, hard. When she wiggles her fingers, he presses on her tendons and her arm shoots with pain, but she won’t let go.

  He pushes his knee between her legs and has her pinned against the door. She can feel him against her leg. She turns her face away, her eyes on the pines across the street, her hand going numb, his whiskey breath near her ear.

  “You’re strong,” he says. She feels his tongue along the folds of her ear. Her stomach tightens, her spine stiff.

  “Fuck off,” she says, flinching away.

  “Don’t be coy,” he says.

  She gathers strength like a coiled spring, appearing to soften beneath him so that he presses harder against her. He pushes his lips into her collarbone and inspects the scar under her chin.

  “What’s this?” he asks, and runs his cold finger along it so that she shivers.

  “What didn’t kill me,” she says.

  He sniffs into her hair. “Did it make you stronger?” he asks.

  “Try me,” she says.

  Then, “I can smell that you want it.”

  She lurches and pushes him back. It might be just enough to let her duck and run, she thinks, just enough to break the spell and give her a chance to get away. But when he steps back to regain his balance, his foot lands on the candle, the cylinder rolling, shooting his leg out in front of him, throwing him off, sending him in a tumble down an entire flight of porch stairs.

  She unlocks the door, slips inside alone, and turns the bolt.

  She c
overs her mouth, trying not to scream in anger, to release some of what has built up in her racing heart, and she hears him in the driveway, yelling, “Fuck. Fuck you, Fisher,” he yells. She barely breathes, trying to listen for the sound of his feet in the gravel. She doesn’t know if he’s hurt. He yells it again, and then after a moment she hears the roar of the engine of the small car that was parked alongside the road. His. She didn’t realize. She thought he drove something more substantial.

  She peers through the side of the curtains, watches the lights as he turns the car around and then speeds down Cemetery Road, leaving a patch of rubber on the pavement. And then she unlocks the door just enough to reach outside for the bottle of whiskey. She sees the bag. The spilled candy crushed underfoot when he fell. The Lady of Guadalupe on her side like a rolling pin.

  * * *

  She takes a long drink from the bottle, and as soon as the warmth hits her throat, down, into her belly, her face floods with tears. Everything that has been held so tight, so hard, rushes out of her, and she doubles over onto the living room floor. She drinks again.

  Her phone buzzes deep inside her bag, and she assumes it’s him, it’s Bear Miller, taunting her now via text. She digs it out and sees instead a text from Hurt. You still in the office Fisher?

  “Ugh, fuck you,” she says at the phone. What she wants is a girlfriend, another woman whose house she can go to and stay up all night in, cry in if she feels like it, yell if that’s better. She has never been good at keeping women as friends. They compete. She’s threatening, or she’s threatened, and a man gets in the way. She closes her eyes and thinks there’s nothing more she wants than to see her grandmother one more time, to sit across from her at the kitchen table, for her to say complete bullshit to her like everything’s going to be fine, just so Kateri can hear her voice.

  She lets herself sob for a minute. Then she gets up and checks outside to make sure he’s really gone, and by then, her phone is buzzing again.

  It’s Hurt, and he’s calling.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Anyone come to your door?” Hurt says, and for a moment she stiffens with panic, thinking that Hurt was in on it somehow. That he set her up for a test she didn’t see coming. That somehow, in addition to her accident and her drinking, he found out about the men she’d slept with in Syracuse, that he was trying to tempt her to ruin everything.

  “What?” she snaps.

  “Kids,” he says. “Trick-or-treaters.”

  “What?” she says again. “No.”

  “You sound weird,” Hurt says. “Where are you?”

  “Home,” she says.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pauses. “Are you drinking?” he asks.

  “Yeah, Hurt.” She rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see it. “I’m fucking wasted,” she says. “I have to go.”

  “Fisher,” he says, sharp.

  She inhales a raggedy sob.

  “Do you need me to come by?” he asks.

  She feels the yelp come out of her like it’s a stone, projecting from her mouth. Her legs collapse on the floor, and she sits, unable to answer him.

  “I’ll be right there,” he says.

  * * *

  She opens the door again, because she wants to hear him coming, wants to see that it’s his car and not be surprised by a knock on the door after ten o’clock at night, in late October, when the whole town is reveling in dead things and darkness.

  “Aren’t you cold?” he says when he comes up. She’s on the couch with her arms crossed and her knees up to her chest.

  “I don’t need you to save me,” she says.

  He frowns and shakes his head. “Wasn’t my plan,” he says. He looks at the bottle, the amount that is gone, or rather the amount that is left. “Company?” he says.

  “I actually don’t want to talk about it,” Kateri says. “You should go home.”

  He shakes his head again. “It’s late,” he says, but she can’t tell if he’s agreeing to leave.

  “Were you ever married?” she asks.

  “Was your ex here?” he asks her.

  “No, no,” she says.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  Hurt sits in the chair opposite the couch and settles a minute before he answers her. “She died,” he says.

  “Oh fuck,” Kateri says. “Really? Because now is not a good time to fuck with me.”

  “Fifteen years ago,” he says.

  “How?” she asks, and then she says, “Sorry.”

  “She had breast cancer,” Hurt says.

  “Joel,” she says, and tilts her head to the side. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “It’s still hard,” he says.

  She remembers his son, now a grown man, but he must have been just a little boy when his mother died. Hurt must have raised him alone. She doesn’t feel drunk anymore. She doesn’t feel anything but empty and clawed at. “How old are you?” she asks Hurt.

  “Forty-five,” he says.

  “She was so young.”

  He nods and then stands up. “You want some tea?” he asks.

  And she sees him all at once, what it is that blows through him, the hollowness about his soul. She nods her head, because she’s afraid if she speaks she’ll cry, and she hears him go into the kitchen, fill the kettle, look in the cupboards for things that will soothe her instead of make her into his prey. He brings her a steaming mug of orange spice tea, and he’s put honey it in because he’s seen her do that at work, and he stays in the chair across from her, doesn’t sit next to her or try to get close to her at all.

  “I’ll stay out here,” he says, “if you want to go to bed.”

  “I won’t sleep,” she says.

  He shrugs. “I’ll stay out here anyway,” he says.

  But sometime after two, her body gives in and she curls onto her side on the couch, exhausted, cried out, and Hurt stays there in the living room, awake all night, sitting in the chair, and then sitting on the floor with his back against the couch while she sleeps. He watches the TV with the volume on about three, and she can’t comprehend how he can even hear.

  When she wakes up at seven, the Today show has started.

  “Have you been there all night?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” he says. He gets up, stiff, and twists his back.

  “You didn’t have to,” she says.

  “Yeah, I did,” he says. “Coffee?”

  TWENTY-THREE: SHANNON

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15

  People walk dogs off leash in the woods all the time. You aren’t supposed to. And mostly it’s fine, but sometimes a runner will complain, or a hiker will call a dog vicious. I was afraid of having Buddy loose. His look scared people—his big square pit head, his strong jaw. Even though I knew him to be nothing but gentle, he had a prey drive that made me nervous. He’d lunge unexpectedly. I’d seen him kill a squirrel in the yard, his head whipping back and forth, the squirrel screaming.

  When it was dead, he dropped it, and then rolled it over with his nose, trying to coax it into playing with him.

  I didn’t want Bear there. I could do it alone. It was better alone. Gathering my things, explaining things to Birdie in a way she would understand. She always understood more than I gave her credit for.

  But I couldn’t get away from him. His hand, even, steering my neck as we walked. I was afraid my mother would notice.

  Inside the woods, Buddy bounded off, straight toward the house, and I was afraid that he’d overpower Birdie if she was out. Not that he’d hurt her. But he’d knock her down for sure. He might frighten her.

  But the dog stopped on the porch, hovering near the door and barking. He leaned forward, front paws outstretched, not in play, and barked over and over, sharp, staccato warnings.

  “Buddy,” I said. I was glad then that I’d taken the gun and hidden it. The last thing I needed was to have my mother shoot the dog right
in front of me. Or Bear. Because maybe this time she’d hit her intruder dead on and kill him.

  “Buddy,” Bear scolded the dog, calling him back, but he wouldn’t budge, not even then, and he was usually scared of Bear. He just stood in the doorway, braced and barking.

  The door was wide open, the screen bent backward, flat against the clapboard, and I could see the shadow of a bird inside, banging against the window, trying to find its way out.

  “There’s a bird,” I said to Bear, and pointed at the dark form fluttering on the other side of the glass.

  “Buddy,” Bear called again. He got close enough to pat the dog on his side, a thick, closed thud.

  “I can get it,” I said. I’d done it before. The last time I’d tried guiding the bird out with a book, waving at it, but it just confused the bird, so I got close enough to cup its tiny, beating body. It was a catbird. A small, round, gray bird with a nearly transparent beak and tiny, sharp claws.

  Bear pointed at Buddy and told him to wait. Buddy bared his teeth as he barked, snapping. I’d never seen him like that. Bear crossed the threshold into the house and stepped inside, looking for the bird, back and forth from room to room, but then stepped out.

  I thought maybe it was a bat, but it was midafternoon.

  “No,” Bear said, and took my shoulders, hard. “Don’t,” he said.

  Buddy kept on barking. I heard the clamp of his jaws each time. The bird battered itself against the glass.

  “I can get it,” I said again. I’d liked the feel of the bird in my hand for those few seconds, before it realized it was free. Before it took off.

  Bear put his hands on the sides of my face. “Shannon,” he said, stern. “What happened?”

  My stomach turned. “What?” I asked. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I tried again to get past him and into the house.

  Bear started to walk me backward up the gravel path. “Buddy,” he called, sharp. “Come.”