I’ve heard noises, subtle ones, a stick cracking, the whisper of dead leaves disturbed, and I’ve come to dread taking Sock out after dark and he seems to dread it too. He hates wintertime and bad weather, and I’ve rationalized that it’s probably my unsettledness he’s reacting to, and my heart sinks as he sniffs the wind just now, searching it. He stiffens, suddenly bounding back to my post at the door, his tail curled between his legs as he tries to push past me inside the house just like he’s done repeatedly of late.
“Go potty,” I tell him firmly. “Everything’s fine. I’m right here.” I search for the source of whatever spooked him on the off chance it’s something other than me. “What is it? A raccoon, an owl, a squirrel somewhere?”
I listen carefully, hearing nothing but the loud splashing rain as I look around from my safe base. Light seeps through the open doorway, dimly illuminating a matted carpet of soggy brown grass and leaves and the shape of the circular low stone wall around the magnolia tree in the center of the yard. Above me, the French stained-glass window is brilliant against the back of the house, the jewel-like hues drawing attention to when I’m home or headed out with my dog.
I may as well be making an announcement to anyone with bad intentions, and it would make sense to leave the light off over the stairs. But I refuse. The vibrant colors and mythical animals give me comfort and pleasure. I won’t be ruled by irrational fear. I won’t allow evil people, even the thought of them, to rob me of more than they already have.
“What is it? Oh for heaven’s sake, come on.” I move away from the doorway, and Sock follows me into the yard, his muzzle touching the back of my knee. “Go on.” I sound calm and unconcerned but that’s not what I feel.
My conscious mind says all is fine but another part of my brain says something is off. I feel it strongly, what I’ve felt before. Blasts of wind-driven rain thrash the heavy branches and rubbery leaves of the magnolia tree and my pulse picks up. The storm howls around the roof and agitates the shrubbery and I physically react to something I can’t identify.
A stone or a brick chinks on the other side of the back wall and my scalp prickles and my legs feel heavy, but those days of being too terrified to move or breathe were left behind in my childhood. I’ve been through too much and it has hardened some primal part of me that no longer panics. I peel open the fanny pack and slide out the gun as I pull up my hood and escort Sock to the stone bench around the magnolia tree. Nearby is shrubbery.
“Go on. I’m right here,” I tell him, and he ducks behind a thick cover of boxwoods, his ears back, his eyes on me.
Heavy cold raindrops tap the waterproof fabric covering my head as I stand perfectly still and scan. I watch the wall. I listen and wait. It occurs to me with dismay that I haven’t chambered a round and it will be difficult to pull back the slide. The pistol is wet. It was stupid not to cock it before I came outside. Sock suddenly bolts to the open door and I follow him, not turning my back to the wall that separates the yard from the property behind it.
I feel it like a magnetic force, a malevolent presence lurking in the dark behind the wall, close enough that I can almost smell it, an acrid edge, a dirty electrical odor like something old shorting out. What people smell when they’re about to have a seizure but I’m imagining it. There’s no odor, only the muskiness of wet dead leaves and the ozone of rain. Water splashes steadily and the chilled wind blows humidly and whatever moved is silent and still. Physics displacing things, I think, like finding a coin on the rug and having no idea how it got there from the top of the dresser where you saw it last.
I look around and see nothing out of the ordinary, and, stepping inside the house, I shut the door and lock it. I look through the peephole at the empty rain-swept yard, then I towel Sock dry and praise him for a job well done as I wipe off the pistol and zip it back inside the fanny pack. I look through the peephole again and it’s a reflex when I place my hand on the knob. I do it before I realize what I’m seeing.
The figure standing on the other side of the wall is a young male, small, maybe a boy, I’m fairly sure. Bareheaded, light skinned, and for an instant he’s looking directly at the back door, directly at me looking at him through the peephole. I see the hint of pale flesh and the dark recesses of his eyes, and I swing the door open wide and he runs.
“Hey!” I yell.
He vanishes as suddenly as he appeared.
I walk inside my kitchen of stainless-steel commercial appliances, old wood, and antique amber alabaster chandeliers.
“What was that about?” Marino fills a glass with sparkling water, helping himself, and I can tell he assumes I was yelling at Sock, who heads to his bowls on a mat and sits expectantly.
“We had a visitor,” I reply. “Possibly a young male, white, dark hair maybe, maybe a kid. He was behind the wall and may have been there the entire time we were in the yard. Then he ran.”
“On your property?” Marino sets down the glass and the bottle as if he’s about to bolt to the back of the house.
“No.” I feel surprisingly calm — validated, in fact.
I’m not imagining things after all.
“He was on the other side of the wall in my neighbor’s yard.” I drape the wet towel over a towel bar on a cabinet.
“He wasn’t trespassing, then. At least not on your property.”
“I don’t know what he was doing.”
“Are you sure it’s not your neighbor back there?”
“At this hour and in this weather, and why would my neighbor be ducking behind the wall and then run? The person didn’t seem familiar but I didn’t get a good look, obviously.”
I open my pocketbook on the counter near the phone and pull out my wallet, medical examiner credentials, and keys.
“A young male who didn’t look local. Are you sure?” Marino returns the bottle to a refrigerator, not the one he took it from.
“I’m not sure of anything beyond what I just said.” I find my CFC badge with its embedded radio-frequency identification chip, on a lanyard and in a plastic holder. “But I’ve definitely had a weird feeling these past few days while I’ve been home, a sense that someone’s been watching the house. And Sock’s been uneasy.”
Marino thinks for a moment, weighing his options. He could go out into the rainy dark and look around for whoever it was but no crime has been committed, at least not that we know about. I’m also fairly certain my prowler is long gone and I tell Marino that. I explain that the person I saw ran off in the direction of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, which is a heavily wooded property and just north of that, across Beacon Street and railroad tracks, is Somerville. Then the jurisdiction isn’t Cambridge anymore. The person could be anywhere.
“Maybe some kid looking to do a smash-and-grab,” Marino decides as I retrieve a small powerful LED flashlight from a drawer and check to make sure the batteries are good. “Especially this time of year, there’s a lot of vandalism, car breaks, windows smashed, kids stealing laptops, iPads, iPhones. You’d be amazed how many rich people in Cambridge don’t have alarm systems,” he says as if I have no idea what goes on in the city where I live and work. “Kids case a house to figure out where the electronics are, then smash out a window, grab what they want, and run like hell.”
“We’re a poor candidate for a smash-and-grab. It’s obvious we have an alarm system.” Inside the pantry hanging on a hook is my nylon cross-body bag, what I carry when I’m traveling light. “There are signs in the yard, and if the person looked through a window he’d see keypads on the walls with red lights indicating the house is armed.”
“You always have it on when you’re home?”