The Pretty Woman Who Lived Next Door

by Preston Pairo

  Switching his attention back to his phone, he read Jennifer’s texts about Posha, who Miles assumed was one of the brown-skinned girls who lived on his street. His new neighborhood—the whole area—was very different from where he’d lived in Florida, where most everyone had been white, then Hispanic or African-American. Here, there were so many different ethnicities—and languages and accents and cooking smells.

  Jennifer texted that Posha’s father told the other neighbors they should be ashamed for thinking Miles had anything to do with what happened to Ian. And that he’d told the police if they’d talked to him first he could have told them it was the little boy’s father they should be looking for, not Miles.

  Miles didn’t know what to say about that, what good it might be for one parent on his street to stand up for him—a man Miles had never met but who’d formed opinions based on—what?—whatever he’d been told by someone else, or maybe read about him.

  Jennifer texted: I bet your parents are pissed.

  My dad’s calmed down. My mom doesn’t know. Probably how we’ll keep it.

  UR not going to tell her?

  Not if we hope she’s coming back.

  It’s that bad?

  I don’t know. And he didn’t.

  Do U talk to her?

  The air coming in Miles’ window was turning cooler and carried unfamiliar scents that were organic and smoky. He’d slept with his windows open since he was a little kid, preferring natural air even in Florida’s horrifically humid summers.

  He texted: My mom’s not much for talking about some things.

  OMG! My mother is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah about every little thing!

  LOL.

  U know Posha’s video of those cops throwing you down has 10,000 hits. She included a Reddit link. Someone’s looped in dialogue from that old movie where the guy yells Attica-Attica at the cops. Referring to Al Pacino’s scene in Dog Day Afternoon.

  Miles didn’t want any more attention. He’d had enough of that in Florida. But it was like his father had said so many times—and not just over the past two years—how there was so much about life you couldn’t control, no matter how hard you tried. People died. Fathers stole their kids. And the woman who lived next door sobbed.

  Throughout the night, Miles could hear Cara Blakely crying through her closed windows.

  6.

  Saturday morning, policewoman Debra Vance arrived early to the Germantown diner where Assistant County Attorney Arnold Baylor texted her to meet him. She waited outside in mild sunshine, leaning against the driver’s door of her Honda Fit, having no intentions of going inside for breakfast and turning this into a date.

  She had the unsettled feeling that unless she sent strong enough signals it was just a matter of time before Elfin Arnold made a pass—although some guys wouldn’t pick up signals delivered by a hammer to the head, and she suspected he might be one of them.

  Arnold hadn’t given any indication what he wanted, why this had to be on her day off and couldn’t wait until Monday, which was also irritating. Guys like this, Vance sighed, the world was full of them—at least her world seemed to be. Maybe if she was taller or even normal height, guys wouldn’t find her cute when she was in a foul mood or bearing a scornful expression, the way she was now.

  And, of course, she’d arrived ten minutes early, and Arnold was now fifteen minutes late. Which ticked her off even more and had her on the verge of leaving, but she was officially on overtime which payroll might not give her credit for if she didn’t stay to endure whatever this “meeting” was about. So she continued to wait as happy families came and went from the busy diner and drivers practiced their motorized lunacy on the highway—people who, once she was off school duty and back on patrol, she’d be pulling over for running red lights, ignoring stop signs, and bashing into one another coming out of parking lots. Some of whom would actually chuckle—not the least nervous—and make comments like, “You’re a little one, aren’t you?” As if nothing she could do—no ticket she could write—would be that harmful because of her size.

  Five minutes later, Elfin Arnold finally wheeled into the crowded parking lot driving a six-year-old dark-grey Jaguar XF sedan. Pulling up alongside her, he powered down his window. “I’ll meet you inside.”

  Arms crossed, Vance said, “I’m good here.”

  “Hey, come on. I’m paying—and I’m starved.” Arnold grinned. His trendy watch was ridiculously oversized and the polo-mallet horse rider on the breast of his golf shirt was so big it could be seen from fifty yards away.

  Vance said, “I already ate. What’s up?”

  The county lawyer tried not to react to being turned down. “You heard about yesterday?”

  Interpreting this as a prompt for a response —that he expected her to jump through hoops, run through a litany of items in hopes of covering what he was talking about—Vance merely replied, “Uh-huh.”

  “Your boys screwed that up, didn’t they?”

  My boys? Vance thought, as if she was in charge of the entire police department, not a rung on its ladder, guessing that Arnold was referring to the Amber Alert that caused Miles Peterson to be suspected of abducting the little boy who lived next door.

  “Could be good for us,” Arnold claimed.

  Vance suppressed a sigh, knowing that he was waiting for her to ask how this could be good. When she didn’t respond, his smile turned a bit snarly.

  Since Arnold liked to have his way, and Vance figured she didn’t need him complaining to her lieutenant about her being uncooperative—and hating how Arnold had that over her—she succumbed and asked, “How is this good for us?” As if confirming he was smarter and wiser, and she needed him to explain whatever angle he thought he’d figured out—Machiavelli in his Polo shirt.

  “Because…” Arnold spoke as if able to see the future. “…the kid’s becoming a full-blown viral hero… Which is going to make him even more confident and cocky than he already is. He’ll start blabbing about what he got away with in Florida, and you need to make sure you hear whatever he says about that.”

  Vance didn’t know how Elfin Arnold had formed the opinion that Miles Peterson was confident and cocky. Miles seemed self-assured, but lots of kids wore that veneer, and with Miles it certainly wasn’t to the point of cockiness. What she saw in Miles was something she’d sensed from observing him at school but hadn’t been able to define until watching that video post: how despite being roughed-up by her county brethren—and there was no way to sugarcoat what they’d done—Miles had maintained a surprising composure. Pinned to the ground and being screamed at, he’d kept that same sense of calm she’d observed in classrooms and while moving about in the school halls. There wasn’t anything cocky about it. What Debra Vance saw in Miles Peterson was fearlessness.

  #

  “This should do the trick.” George Peterson, Miles’ father, held a small container of plumber’s goop at a distance that made the label’s tiny print most legible to his own slight farsightedness.

  Miles and his dad were in a home improvement box store 15 minutes from their house, having left an hour after the phone started to ring while they were having breakfast—reporters wanting comments from Miles about what happened yesterday, and also about Florida.

  A collateral echo of Miles’ rough-handed apprehension as a suspect in young Ian Blakely’s disappearance was that the local media had gotten up to speed on his history. Miles and his parents had considered that possibility when thinking about moving, and had probably been too optimistic to believe that Miles’ past would remain within the oddly-shaped geographic boundaries of their home state.

  After the third phone call, George’s hands had begun to shake and Miles suggested they go out for a while, figuring it was just a matter of time before reporters showed up at their door. It was also Miles’ idea to fix the leaky trap under the kitchen sink, even though it was only dripping a few dozen drops a day and the house was a rental they weren’t responsible to repair. B
ut since Miles’ arrest, George was best kept involved even with the smallest of projects.

  Back in Florida, Miles had spent countless hours helping his father around their modest three-bedroom bungalow, where there had never been a honey-do shortage. Once his mother thought something needed to be changed, she obsessed over it until the repair happened. And George was of the opinion that home ownership was a constant battle against decay and malfunction that you could never win. The best you could hope for was a truce. Despite those odds, George had waged a domestic war that had been both successful and in earnest.

  Today though, once they decided about the type and brand of plumber’s goop to spread around the threaded ends of the drain pipe, the store’s long aisles—which once held the lure of many possible future projects and improvements—seemed a foreign place to which they no longer belonged.

  After two decades as a proud home owner, 44-year-old George Peterson was a renter. A tenant. A paying guest in a property that was someone else’s duty—and also a problem if looking for a silver lining—to maintain. What had once been such a rewarding aspect of George’s own life was no more. And Miles felt badly about that, because, in the end, it was his fault—the result of his actions.

  With nothing else to look at or buy, they checked out. Even though it wasn’t yet noon, the hot dog vendor with the cart in front of the store was open for business. Miles and his father each got a hot dog and a can of root beer, and ate seated at a picnic bench that was on sale for half-off at the end of the season.

  They watched other people pushing shopping and flatbed carts of lumber, drywall, cabinets, lighting fixtures, paint, saws, and other tools and materials for chores that would occupy their weekend and, to a certain extent, define their lives.

  From there, Miles and his dad took a drive. With the windows down of the Ford sedan that was George’s work car, they spent twenty minutes in busy traffic before finding a road that led north out of crowded suburbia. It led to a rural area of rolling hills and large homes set far apart on massive lawns or farm land.

  George held the steering wheel with both hands, driving by acres of soy beans drying yellow-brown in undulating fields. His eyes on the open road, he said, “I talked to mom last night...” And that was all he said—all he needed to say.

  Miles understood. He replied, “It’s okay.”

  Lips pressed firmly together, George Peterson nodded tightly. And kept driving.

  Over the past two years, Miles’ father had become a very anxious man—although he’d never been one to let things go. As long as Miles could remember, his father would get out of bed in the middle of the night and walk around the house trying to determine the source of a sound that could have just as readily been from a dream or a large moth hitting the window screen as a hint of some impending mechanical failure. Miles’ maternal grandmother had often mocked George’s “nervous nature,” referring to him as someone “without a very sturdy continence.” Miles’ grandmother had been a judgmental pain in the ass.

  George was a great believer in averages, and applied them in his personal and professional life, reasoning that if he could keep everything right down the middle, the odds would somehow work in his favor. Given three choices—Good, Better, Best—George invariably opted for Better, thinking that choice likely to be the most affordable and dependable. That Good was just a different term for fair and would be of markedly lesser quality, manufactured with cost savings in mind. And Best was probably the same as Better, just in fancier wrapping and at an inflated price. While there was some basic logic to that practice in selecting appliances, it did not work well as the universal solution to life’s many options, and over time caused George to seem as if perpetually walking along a balance beam.

  An insurance adjuster for over twenty years, he was used to being disliked by many people despite diligent efforts to keep his work product “right down the middle,” seeking a fair balance between claimants who expected to be paid too much and his company which wanted to pay as little as possible.

  This steady pressure of day-to-day stress had further frayed George’s exposed nerves even before the night Miles killed that man. After Miles was charged with murder and thrown into the legal thrasher, George’s symptoms became obvious as small pox. And yet throughout that horrible ordeal—all the trips to visit Miles in prison and attending court proceedings—George never hid his face no matter how anxious or depressed he felt, no matter how close the news photographers pressed. He’d held his gaze as high and resolute as he could, projecting his belief—and it was his belief—that Miles was innocent. Unlike Miles’ mother, who turned away or dipped her face as if trying to pull her expression below the collar of her blouse, and who eventually stopped going to court hearings altogether, because her son was a killer.

  #

  Policewoman Debra Vance stayed home Saturday night, eating one of those overpriced frozen “ethnic” entrees from Whole Foods that, in the store, had made the idea of supper alone seem extra special.

  After dinner, with Artists Like Peter White on Pandora providing mellow background music, Vance sat sideways on the sofa with her feet up, reviewing textbook prep for the Sergeants’ Exam even though she was a couple years from realistically having a shot at that promotion. She was also waiting for phone calls, having posted online for a roommate, narrowing the call time for anyone interested to tonight between six and nine, having had success with that strategy before. Anyone who responded during that time frame would be calling on date night, but obviously not out on a date, although one potential roommate before the last one actually came with her boyfriend, who she took into the spare bedroom. They’d made some noise and asked Vance if she could hear them. When she’d said yes, they left.

  She could afford to live on her own in the modest garden apartment—and sometimes between roommates delayed looking for a replacement—but she liked the presence of another person, the sense of vicarious involvement with someone else’s life. Not to be best friends, but to have someone to talk to who wasn’t in law enforcement or the court system, but lived a more normal life.

  Vance didn’t consider the police department to be a normal life. She liked her job and found it rewarding—apart from all the old-boy stuff that went on regardless of how many diversity workshops the county mandated. The simple fact was people never called 911 to nominate fellow citizens for sainthood. They called to report misbehavior at the opposite end of the spectrum, and expected the police to rush to the scene and react to potentially life-threatening situations with calm deliberation and superhero battle skills. A car pulled over for speeding might be a husband rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital, or three meth runners with Glocks—the latest weapon of choice made popular on TV.

  Vance overheard conversations where nice-enough, smart-enough, middle-class-enough people wondered what kind of person would want to be a cop. And the answer she heard too often was: I don’t know, some power-hungry yahoo who likes to boss people around, I guess. Frankly, she did work with cops like that. But she also worked with officers who wanted the communities in which they lived to be safe, and honestly felt like they could make a difference. She felt that way herself and wanted people—especially kids—to see law enforcement was not just for men. That women could bring an effective approach. She also liked the challenge—which was never in short supply.

  At 8:15, Vance’s phone rang. Caller ID showed an unnamed wireless caller from an area code she didn’t recognize—which meant it was probably another sales call despite her being registered on the Federal Do-Not-Call List (another congressional act without teeth). Vance answered anyway.

  The caller didn’t say his name, just demanded with impatience, “What can I do for you?”

  “Excuse me?” The way Vance snapped in reply made her realize Pandora had not yet mellowed her mood from her meeting with Elfin Arnold.

  “You called me,” the man snapped.

  Vance realized he was the Florida reporter she’d been trying to r
each from the Treasure Coast Post whose byline had appeared above the most articles about Miles Peterson. A man who, according to both his former editor and replacement, was not a fan of the police and known to drink to suicidal extremes. And had they mentioned that he wasn’t a great fan of the police? And he drank?

  “Yes, hello…” Vance changed her tone, becoming friendly. “Mister…” She hurried to the dining room table she used as a work desk when not sharing the place with a roommate.

  Before she could find the notes that included the reporter’s name, he said, “Kent Olin.” His gruff voice made Vance picture him in a bar, relishing his self-appointed role as guard of old school journalism: the smokers, drinkers, and womanizers who idolized Ernest Hemingway and bemoaned the digital invasion of their formerly ink-and-paper trade.

  “Thanks for calling.” She tried to sound sincere and professional.

  “What can I do for you?” Olin demanded, still irritable, perhaps because he liked to seem important, as if that next breaking story would be the really big one—something far more than any ill-conceived celebrity sound bite could deliver.

  “I’m calling about Miles Peterson,” Vance said.

  “Yeah—you said so in your message. What about him?”

  “He’s here now,” she said, “in Maryland.”

  “Uh-huh.” Olin seemed to know that already.

  “And there’s concern he might be dangerous.”

  Olin produced a laugh from deep in his throat, as if finding that genuinely funny. “Miles Peterson,” he said, “is only a danger to anyone stupid enough to jump him.”

  7.

  According to Kent Olin, Miles had been working at a marina restaurant in Stuart, Florida for over a year as a dishwasher and—in a pinch—prep cook, getting in as many nights as he could, usually the four-to-closing shift. That meant he typically got cut—restaurant-speak for when the manager on duty decided he could leave—around 12:30 a.m.