“Mom’s right, you know-you look terrible.”
He pulled the keys from his pocket. “Thanks, sis. I appreciate that.”
“Tough semester?”
Brian shrugged. “I’ll survive.” He opened the trunk and started unloading a bag. Sarah forced him to put the bag down and reached for his arm. “If you need to talk to me about anything, you know I’m here, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m serious. Even if it’s something you don’t think you want to tell me.”
“Do I really look that bad?” Brian raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“Mom thinks you’re on drugs.”
It was a lie, but it wasn’t as though he’d head inside and ask his mother. “Well, tell her I’m not. I’m just having a tough time adjusting to school. But I’ll manage.” He cracked a crooked smile. “That’s the answer for you, too, by the way.”
“Me?”
Brian reached for another bag. “Mom wouldn’t think I was using drugs if she caught me smoking pot in the living room. Now, if you’d said that she was worried that my roommates were making things hard for me because I was so much smarter than them, I might have believed you.”
Sarah laughed. “You’re probably right.”
“I’ll be fine, really. How are you doing?”
“Pretty well. School will finish up this Friday for me, and I’m looking forward to a few weeks off.”
Brian handed Sarah a duffel bag full of dirty clothes. “Teachers need a break, too?”
“We need it more than the kids, if you want to know the truth.” After Brian shut the trunk, he reached for his bags. Sarah glanced over his shoulder to make sure her mom hadn’t come out.
“Listen, I know you just got in a little while ago, but can we talk?” “Sure. This can wait.” He set down the bags and leaned against the car. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Miles. We kind of had an argument today, and it’s not something I can talk to Mom about. You know how she is.”
“What about?”
“I think I told you the last time he was here that his wife had died a couple of years ago in a hit-and-run. They never caught the guy who did it, and he really had a hard time with that. And then yesterday, new information surfaced and he arrested someone. But it didn’t stop at just that. Miles went a little too far. He told me last night that he came close to killing the guy.”
Brian looked taken aback, and Sarah quickly shook her head. “Nothing bad happened in the end-well, not really. No one was actually hurt, but…” She crossed her arms, forcing the thought away. “Anyway, he got suspended from the department today for what he did. But that’s not what I’m really worried about. To make a long story short, they had to release the guy, and now I don’t know what to do. Miles isn’t thinking all that clearly, and I’m afraid he might do something that he’ll end up regretting.”
She paused for a moment, then continued. “I mean, this whole thing is complicated by the fact that there’s already a lot of bad blood between Miles and the guy he arrested. Even though Miles was suspended, he’s not going to give up. And this guy… well, he isn’t the kind of guy he should be messing with.”
“But didn’t you just say they had to let the guy go?”
“Yeah, but Miles won’t accept that. You should have heard him today. He wouldn’t even listen to anything I was saying. Part of me thinks I should call his boss and let him know what Miles said, but he’s already on suspension and I don’t want him to get in any more trouble than he’s already in. But if I say nothing…” She trailed off before meeting her brother’s eyes. “What do you think I should do? Wait and see what happens? Or should I call his boss? Or should I stay out of it?”
Brian took a long time before answering. “I guess that comes down to how you feel about him and how far you think he’ll go.”
Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “That’s just it. I love him. I know you didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him, but he’s made me really happy these last couple of months. And now… this whole thing scares me. I don’t want to be the one who gets him fired, but at the same time, I’m really worried about what he’ll do.”
Brian stood without moving for a long moment, thinking. “You can’t let someone innocent go to prison, Sarah,” he said finally, looking down at her.
“That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
“What-you think he’ll go after the guy?”
“If it comes to that?” She remembered how Miles had looked at her, his eyes flashing with frustrated rage. “I think he just might.”
“You can’t let him do that.”
“So you think I should call?”
Brian looked grim.
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
After leaving Sarah’s house, Miles spent the next few hours trying to track down Sims. But like Charlie, he had no luck.
He then thought about visiting the Timson compound again, but he held off. Not because he ran out of time, but because he remembered what had happened earlier that morning in Charlie’s office.
He didn’t have a gun with him anymore.
There was, though, another one at his house.
Later that afternoon, Charlie received two telephone calls. One was from Sims’s mother, who asked Charlie why everyone was suddenly interested in her son. When asked what she meant, Sims’s mother answered, “Miles Ryan came by today asking the same questions you did.”
Charlie frowned as he hung up the phone, angry that Miles had ignored everything they’d talked about this morning.
The second call was from Sarah Andrews.
After she said good-bye, Charlie swiveled his chair toward the window and stared over the parking lot, twirling a pencil.
A minute later, with the pencil broken in half, he turned toward the door and tossed the remains in the garbage.
“Madge?” he bellowed.
She appeared in the doorway.
“Get me Harris. Now.”
She didn’t have to be asked twice. A minute later, Harris was standing in front of the desk.
“I need you to go out to the Timson place. Stay out of sight, but keep an eye on whoever goes in and out of there. If anything looks out of the ordinary-and I meananything -I want you to call. Not just me-I want you to put it out on the radio. I don’t want any trouble out there tonight. None at all, you got me?” Harris swallowed and nodded. He didn’t need to ask whom he was watching for. After he left, Charlie reached for the phone to call Brenda. He knew then that he, too, was going to be out late.
Nor could he escape the feeling that the whole thing was on the verge of spinning out of control.
Chapter 28
After a year, my nocturnal visits to their home ceased as suddenly as they’d started. So did my visits to the school to see Jonah, and the site of the accident. The only place I continued to visit with regularity after that was Missy’s grave, and it became part of my weekly schedule, mentally penciled into its Thursday slot. I never missed a day. Rain or shine, I went to the cemetery and traced the path to her grave. I never looked to see if anyone was watching anymore. And always, I brought flowers.
The end of the other visits came as a surprise. Though you might think that the year would have diminished the intensity of my obsession, that wasn’t the case at all. But just as I’d been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying on them.
The day it happened was a day I’ll never forget.
It was the first anniversary of Missy’s death. By then, after a year of creeping through the darkness, I was almost invisible as I moved. I knew every twist and turn I had to make, and the time it took to reach their home had dropped by half. I’d become a professional voyeur: In addition to peering through their windows, I had been bringing binoculars with me for months. There were times, you see, when others were around, either on the roads or in their yards, and I hadn’t been able to get close to the windows. Other times, Miles closed the living room drapes, but because the itch was not satisfied by failure, I had to do something. The binoculars solved my problem. Off to the side of their property, close to the river, there is an ancient, giant oak. The branches are low and thick, some run parallel to the ground, and that was where I sometimes made my camp. I found that if I perched high enough, I could see right through the kitchen window, my view unobstructed. I watched for hours, until Jonah went to bed, and afterward, I watched Miles as he sat in the kitchen. Over the year, he, like me, had changed.