Passerby: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  I rub at my eyes and wish the coffeepot had a turbo speed button. I slept so little that it feels like I hardly slept at all. I’m in the kitchen waiting on the coffee to brew when the doorbell rings at the back door. Usually the bell is reserved for deliveries, but it’s barely daylight out, and I’m not expecting anything this early, so this is surprising.

  For a second, I consider waking Johnny, but when I part the curtains, I see Roy’s cruiser outside and through the peephole, his face stares back at me.

  I open the door slowly and not even all the way. At least not until his expression says he’s coming in. “What is it?”

  “Can I come in?” His eyes shift. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.”

  “What do you mean bad news?” My voice comes out high-pitched and shrill. I try to play it off like I’m calm, but it’s very apparent I am not.

  Roy eyes me up and down. “You might want to put some clothes on for this.”

  “I have clothes on.”

  “No, I mean like real clothes. There’s about to be a lot going on here.”

  “Just tell me. What is it?”

  “We found Danny Vera down at the beach.”

  “Okay?”

  “Someone jogging found him. He’s dead, Ruth.”

  “Dead?” I shake my head from side to side, like I can shake off what he has just said. “I don’t understand.”

  I say the words. But I do understand, and everything is coming slowly even though all the information is being delivered at once.

  “His parents?” Roy asks, glancing up at the ceiling. “They’re here, right?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Upstairs.”

  He nods knowingly. “You’d better go wake them.”

  I feel sick. At any minute I’m going to be sick. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, Ruth. Unfortunately, you do.”

  “Can I have coffee first?” I ask the question as though I am not a free woman in my own home. The words coming out of my mouth do not sound like my own. I do not feel like coffee, but I also do not feel like waking anyone and telling them their son is dead.

  “Make it quick.”

  I grab a mug—my favorite mug—from the cabinet and fill it with coffee I do not intend on drinking. I just need a moment.

  “Ruth,” he says, sternly. “This place is about to be swarmed by people. I’m going to need you to get a move on.”

  I take one sip of the black coffee, knowing it’s pointless. Even if I managed to force it down, it wouldn’t stay that way. “Okay,” I tell him, willing my pulse to settle down. “Let me get dressed.”

  Roy waits while I throw on a pair of jeans and pull a sweater over my pajama top. When I come back into the kitchen, he’s standing in front of the window, looking out. He turns to me and suddenly he’s not the kid I sat next to in kindergarten, or the boy I kissed in the third grade. He’s all business. “Bring them into the living area and have them sit down.”

  Danny Vera’s mother’s wails can be heard from several blocks away. When Roy tells the couple their son has been found dead, she first turns to her husband. Her mouth is poised to speak, although words do not come.

  She sinks from the couch to her knees. Her expression morphs from shock to despair, and then she screams. It’s guttural and horrific, the kind of sound you know you’re never going to forget. I hadn’t woken her daughter or her son-in-law, or any of the other members of the family. I realize now this was a mistake. There’s no way they’re sleeping through this, and it’s not a very pleasant way for them to find out.

  Mr. Vera holds his wife, and as he rocks stoically back and forth, Roy rattles off a series of questions. “Did Danny have any medical issues?”

  Mr. Vera shakes his head.

  “Did he mention he was going down to the beach? Was he a runner?”

  No. And not really.

  “How much had he had to drink? Did he have a history of drug use?”

  It’s around this time his sister appears, sleepy-eyed and disheveled. She requested a 7:00 a.m. wake-up call so as not to miss their honeymoon flight. This is not the wake-up call she expected, and I feel terrible for her. Memories of her wedding will always be marked by tragedy.

  I can’t imagine losing one of my brothers.

  Speaking of, Johnny is the first to come to my aid. He’s in his fire department gear. He looks exhausted, but his presence brings a certain sense of calm. I haven’t given any thought about what is to come next, not until Ashley enters the room, with Davis just a few steps behind her. They look at me, their faces full of questions. They don’t know what’s going on, other than it isn’t good and that’s when Mrs. Vera changes, like in the movie The Exorcist. She goes from a grieving mother to looking like that little girl with her head spinning round and round in an instant. It shocks everyone when she points at Davis, even Roy, and nothing surprises him. She extends her arm all the way out.

  “You!” she shouts, as spittle flies from her lips and snot bubbles from her nose. “This is all your fault!”

  Ashley looks stricken, and Davis’s expression is marred in surprise. “You humiliated my son!”

  Her husband tries to calm her. He smooths her hair, whispering vacant words into her ear, but it doesn’t work. She is hell-bent on getting out what she has to say. “You assaulted Danny,” she says, with a level of venom I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. “And now he’s dead.”

  “What?” Davis asks, looking at me.

  I nod confirmation. He has just heard her correctly.

  Ashley gasps and then covers her mouth with her hand.

  Mrs. Vera sobs. When Davis moves to leave the room, she lunges at him. Roy catches her by the forearm as though he saw her next move before she did. He stays behind with the family as the three of us make a speedy exit. We congregate in the kitchen, and after we’ve caught our collective breaths, I ask what the hell just happened, even though it’s pretty clear.

  “I don’t know,” Davis answers solemnly. He takes a seat at the table, the same one he sat in as a little boy. He leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. He looks from me to Ashley as though he wants to say something, but isn’t sure what. Finally, he places his face in his hands and he looks like he did as a child, only larger. Ashley stands over him with a worried look on her face. She rubs circles on his back as she stares off into space. “This isn’t your fault, Davey.”

  “His mother’s just upset,” I say. “Understandably so. People always look for someone to blame in times of tragedy. It’s just the way it goes.”

  I pour four cups of coffee that none of us touch. None of us except Ashley.

  Standing on my tiptoes, I look out the window toward Daddy’s old workshop, which Johnny has claimed and transformed into his living quarters. The light is on.

  Sometimes I pull up Magnolia House on Google Maps Street View. The image was taken in 2012. There’s a light on in the workshop. It is still Daddy’s favorite place to be. He is still alive. I am still visiting every few months, making the trip home from college. Mama’s car is still in the drive, but Davis will pick me up at the bus station, and when we arrive, she will be standing in the doorway, waving, looking older and thinner than the last time I saw her. We will watch old movies, and sit in the garden, and there will have been no scary diagnosis, no utterance of the c-word, and Daddy’s heart would still be ticking just fine. And I won’t know how perfect it is, or that I will learn that sometimes it’s best not to know. I keep several screenshots in various places of that image of the workshop with the light on because it won’t last forever. One day the Google car will drive back down this street and his workshop will not be his workshop anymore, and though there may be a light on, it won’t be him.

  “What do you think, Johnny?” He’s scrolling on his phone and although he hears me, he doesn’t immediately respond. “Huh?” He doesn’t even look up. “I don’t know. Give me a sec.”

  Davis shakes his head. “This is not good,” he says, with a heavy sigh. He
looks panicked, like he wants to get up and run. “I—”

  “We don’t know how Danny Vera died. People die every day. It could have been anything.”

  “It doesn’t seem like they think it was natural causes,” Ashley says. “Based on what I overheard.”

  My head snaps from the window to her. “And what was that?”

  “You know—” She nods toward Davis with wide eyes and a concerned expression on her face. She places her index finger to her lips, like a warning. “Just gossip.”

  Outside, the caterers have begun to arrive. I don’t know whether to send them away or not. I don’t know what the family wants me to do. Surely, no one will feel like eating. But eventually, they’ll have to.

  “Someone has to know something,” Davis remarks.

  “It’ll take at least six weeks for toxicology to come back,” I say, and the conversation continues, even though we only talk in circles. The three of us speak in unison, talking over each other, our voices growing louder and louder in the fight to be heard. Then Johnny holds his hand up, and we all suddenly fall silent. “Ruth, you need to call Mike.”

  Ashley looks at me. “Who’s Mike?”

  “Our family attorney,” Davis replies flatly.

  I know he is right, but I want to see where his head is at. “He didn’t die on our property.”

  “He was a guest.” Johnny glances toward Davis. “And his mother keeps bringing up what happened last night. The situation between him and Davis.”

  I nod at his phone. “Did you get called to the scene?”

  “Yes. Initially.”

  What he means is he got the initial call but when he got there, it was clear there was nothing he could do. Still, I can tell Johnny knows more than he’s saying. He’s processing. And Johnny always goes quiet when he’s in process mode. Not that I blame him. I know he sees a lot. That and anything to do with law enforcement, and, well, they all talk. “What are they saying?”

  “No obvious signs of trauma.”

  I close my eyes and I exhale. “At least there’s that.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ruth

  The Vera family packed up and quickly vacated the premises. This was both good news and bad. Good, because it’s awful dealing with a bereaved family. Bad, because it shows they’re, at least to some degree, placing blame on my family for their son’s death.

  After their departure, I spend a good part of the day helping Julia clean and overturn the rooms for the guests who are set to check in this afternoon. Roy’s partner removed Danny Vera’s belongings from his room. She spent a good hour in there, doing I’m not sure what. Obviously she was searching for something, a suicide note possibly, or some other clue as to what might have happened. Otherwise healthy twenty- somethings rarely drop dead without warning. All I know is we are fully booked tonight, which means the opportunity to sit around and ponder the situation is short-lived. There are things that have to be done, and it’s just me and Julia to handle them.

  Johnny’s busy with the fire department.

  Davis is busy with Ashley.

  Ashley’s busy with… well, that’s a good question.

  I’m busy trying to keep us in business.

  I haul the trash from the kitchen out to the large bins we store behind the workshop, and as I head back to the house to finish folding the last of the linens, I’m making a mental list of what’s left to do. As I round the corner to the front of the house, I stop in my tracks. I am not expecting to see the squad car in the drive or Roy standing next to Davis’s truck inspecting the tires. “Can I help you?”

  “Ah, Ruth,” he says, bending upward from the waist. “I was hoping you might be around.”

  When am I not? The words almost roll right off my tongue. I bite them back because it’s none of his business. This, and he keeps asking me for a date.

  “We’re booked,” I say. “Tonight. And there’s still lots to do yet…” I am hoping that he’ll take the hint. I don’t have time to hang around making small talk.

  Roy places his hands on his hips. “Aren’t you always?”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you usually booked solid?”

  “This time of year, yes. But with everything this morning—well, I got a late start on turning the rooms over. And now you’re back.” My response comes out harshly, but I can’t help it. I’m annoyed that I have to repeat myself, plus there’s the overwhelm. All it takes is one or two negative reviews and business can dry up like that. I’ve seen it happen. Hospitality is a precarious industry, and attention to detail is important. There’s no half-assing cleanliness. Still, he doesn’t take the hint.

  He passive aggressively refuses to get to the point and let me get on with my day. Of course he does. In this town, he has nothing better to do, and his uniform makes people feel obligated to entertain his whims.

  This is why I change course. I subtly remind him that there are things to do other than to hang around my place, groveling for a date he’ll never get. I am not, nor have I ever been, attracted to Roy. “How’s Gabby Jenkins?”

  Roy knows exactly why I’m asking about Gabby. He’s a cop through and through, which means he’s aware I’m fishing for info on her father. Not that I care what Roy thinks. I’m not trying to hide it. I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone. “She’s…um…you know… She’s recovering.”

  “That’s good.”

  He looks me dead in the eye. “He cheated on you, Ruth. Ages ago. And here you are, still moping around, pining over him.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m working.”

  “Do you think Ryan Jenkins is concerned about you? Has he ever once called? Has he ever once shown interest? In all these years?”

  I don’t answer his line of questioning. I know good and well when to keep my mouth shut, but yes, Ryan Jenkins did call me once. The night before he got married. Sure, he was drunk. But he called. He said a lot of things that showed concern. But mostly, he wanted to know if I could forgive him.

  Supposedly, what happened was a one-time thing. A one-time thing that resulted in a pregnancy. I’ll never know whether or not that’s true, I only know it doesn’t really matter. What happened happened, whether he messed up one time or twenty.

  He ended up with a wife and a daughter.

  Either way, I could have forgiven him. Or at least I think I could’ve. Maybe I should have told him as much. But I was bitter, and more than that, I was embarrassed. Heck, some would argue I’m still bitter. We were supposed to go to college together, to come back to Jester Falls afterward, get married and raise a family. Ryan hit the fast forward button on life, and he did it with someone else. But even that’s not why I lied.

  I lied because I thought he’d keep trying. I didn’t know that if I told him I couldn’t—in any way, shape, or form—get past what he’d done, that he’d go ahead with the wedding. I was young and immature. It was a long time ago, back when I thought that if you loved something, that if you loved someone, you fought for them. Maybe there’s a part of me that still thinks that, and maybe that is the part of me that is asking Roy how Ryan is, without actually asking. Maybe, I’ve come to realize, it’s better to have a thing than not.

  “Anyway,” Roy tells me with a disappointed sigh. “I’m here about what happened at the Holts’ place the night before last.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Come on, Ruthie. Don’t play dumb with me.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “You’re a lot of things, but we both know you’re not that.”

  “Don’t call me Ruthie. We’re not kids anymore.”

  “No, we aren’t.”

  We stand there for a bit, like we’re having a moment of silence for our youth. Finally, he glances around the property. “Say, is Davis around?”

  “No, he went into town.”

  Roy looks at me funny. “Hmmm.”

  He shields his eyes from the sun and then motions with his thumb toward the driveway. “Isn’t that
his truck?”

  “He took one of the others.”

  A sly grin edges across his features, and then he cocks his head. I know this look well. He’s about to test his authority. “You wouldn’t be lying to a police officer, would you, Ruth?”

  I shrug. “I’m not under oath. And I’m not lying.”

  “I heard that Holt boy was in pretty bad shape the other night.”

  “Yeah, well, so was Gabby Jenkins.”

  He juts out his bottom lip to indicate a fair point has been made. “You wouldn’t have thought he’d get up and go fishing this morning, but he did.”

  “So obviously he wasn’t in that bad a shape. And what’s that got to do with Davis?”

  “Nothing, I hope.”

  “Well, then why are you here?”

  “Bobby Holt was found dead this afternoon, Ruth. And his family doesn’t think it was an accident.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Ruth

  Cole comes straight over when I call. I’m sitting on the porch where Julia has brought out tea and her famous pimento cheese dip. She’s beside herself over what happened with the Vera family, and she tries to remedy her anxiety by making sure everyone is taken care of and then some. It’s the sweetest kind of overkill the way she hovers. It reminds me of my mother. I don’t fault her for it. Julia is the best thing that’s ever happened to this family. She loves us like we are blood, through thick and thin. She takes it personally when something goes wrong with a guest; she lives to make them happy, so the death of one is weighing heavily on her heart.

  Cole stops as he always does and dusts his boots on a mat at the bottom step. When he looks up, he says, “I take it you heard about Bobby Holt.”

  “At this point, everyone has.”

  As he climbs the steps, I take the opportunity to admire him. The broad shoulders, the thickness of his arms, his easy smile. He walks over and stands next to me, resting his back against the pillar. “Is that why you called?”