Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

Someday I hoped the truth would come out, but that wasn’t up to me.

Jonny took it hard. He felt as if he had let me down. He took the blame on himself; he had let Dada escape. The doctors worked on his jaw, but his face always looked imperfect after that, slightly flawed. I liked it. It made him human. He looked older, too. Tougher. Like the scar on his face from Dada’s ring was a reminder that you could fight and lose, but you could never win if you didn’t fight at all. I began to see the man I would live with. Love. Marry.

The strange thing is, I knew he was going to be a cop before he did. The experience with Laura, Peter, and Dada changed him. So did Ray. I never told him that I didn’t trust Ray, not ever, not for a minute. But Jonny had found someone’s footsteps to follow, the way he once expected to follow his father’s path. I always thought he would be a better cop than Ray, because Ray was in it for himself. Jonny was different. He was in it because something had been taken from him that year, and this was a way to get it back.

Not that he ever would. When you lose some things, they’re gone for good.

Life goes on, for better or worse, but sometimes in the silence, your mind travels back. I never really got past that summer. We never talked about it again, but I carried it with me every day. I knew he did, too.

I never went back to the park. To the lake. I didn’t want to be reminded. Even so, there would be days when I drove along the highway that skirted the wilderness refuge, and I would stare down into the nest of trees, and I would be seventeen again. In my bare feet. The baseball bat in my hands.

If only I could tell Jonny the truth about what happened that night.

Clark Biggs looked stiff and uncomfortable in a straight-backed wooden chair pushed against the living room wall. His hands sat limply in his lap. His eyes were fixed on a bookshelf across the room. Maggie followed his stare to a picture frame with a photograph of Clark and Mary in the backyard. They were playing in the fall leaves. Mary tossed colored oak leaves in the air, her smile big and wide, her blond curls flying. In the photograph, Maggie could see the contentment and pride hiding behind Clark’s solemn eyes. Today, that happiness had been vacuumed away, leaving his heart empty.

“Mr. Biggs?” she asked again softly.

He broke out of his trance. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was asking if you had ever seen a silver RAV4 parked around the neighborhood, or whether anyone you know owns a vehicle like that.”

“Oh.” He put his hands on his knees and studied the faded pattern in the carpet at his feet. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I,” Donna Biggs said. “I’m sorry.”

She sat beside Maggie on Clark’s sofa. Every few seconds, she stole nervous glances at her ex-husband, as if she were struggling with her desire to comfort him. Donna’s eyes were red-ringed and moist.

“The bad news is that there are hundreds of vehicles like that in the Duluth and Superior area,” Maggie told them. “That’s a long list. However, we’re cross-referencing vehicle ownership with criminal records to see if we can narrow down the suspect pool. We’re also going back to the other neighborhoods where the peeper struck to reinterview people who may have seen something, now that we have a specific vehicle type. We’ll also be checking the vehicle ownership records against the list of people and organizations you’ve given us, to see if there’s anyone who was part of Mary’s life.”

“No one who knew Mary could have done this,” Donna said.

Clark bobbed his head. “Yes, it was a stranger. If it was anyone she knew, Mary’s reaction would have been different.”

“I understand, but we have to cover every angle,” Maggie said. “Remember that this could be someone who had little or no direct contact with Mary. Peepers and stalkers often develop elaborate fantasies about their victims based on nothing more than their physical appearance or a minor encounter. To a girl, it may be no more than saying hello to a clerk at a store. To a maladjusted mind, that simple conversation can trigger an obsession.”

“Mary was a child,” Donna protested. “Who could possibly think of her that way?”

Maggie sighed. “Mary was also a pretty girl.”

“She was vulnerable,” Clark said. “How could you leave her alone, Donna? How? Tell me that.”

Donna’s cheeks turned bloodless and white. “What could I do, Clark? I mean, for God’s sake, what could I do?”

“You call 911, and you sit there with Mary. That’s what you do. She was your responsibility.”

“And leave that boy bleeding in the street?”

“You should have locked Mary in the car.”

“There was no time! I didn’t have time to think!”

Maggie put a hand on Donna’s knee. “Mr. and Mrs. Biggs, I know you’re both upset, and I understand. Whatever you both think, you are not to blame. Mrs. Biggs, you almost certainly saved that boy’s life, and you had no way of knowing that anything like this could happen to Mary. Mr. Biggs, I know you’re devastated, but the best thing we can do right now is try to find the man who terrorized your daughter and make sure he doesn’t do this to anyone else. Okay?”

Clark Biggs got out of his chair and paced. Some of Mary’s plastic blocks were littered across the living room carpet. He bent down, picked up one of the blocks, and squeezed it inside his meaty fist. His eyes were closed. He was unkempt, with dirty hair and blond stubble on his face.

“Mr. Biggs?”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Maggie said.

“Why did it have to be water?” Clark murmured.

“Oh, Clark, please don’t,” Donna said.

“Was God pissed off that we saved her the first time? Did He think she hadn’t suffered enough? How could He put her back in the water? Tell me that, how could God let her die in the water?”

Maggie expected to see tears on Clark’s thick cheekbones, but his sun-cracked face was dry, and his eyes were empty. On the sofa, Donna moved to go to her ex-husband, but then she stopped herself. Maggie could see that the love between them wasn’t dead, but they might as well have been on opposite edges of a canyon, with no way to cross.

“Did you find anything in the woods?” Donna asked quietly. “You said they were going to search the woods for clues.”

“I wish I could tell you we had more luck,” Maggie replied. “We found some trash on the path, in the trees, and on the side of the highway, but nothing with any obvious connection to the peeper or his vehicle. Later, when we identify him, it’s possible that something we found will help us place him at the scene.”

Clark let Mary’s block fall out of his hand. “When you find this man, will you charge him with murder? Will he have to pay for what he did to Mary?”

Maggie hesitated. “That’s not my decision. The county attorney will make that call, based on the evidence we gather. I assure you, I will do everything possible to make a case that we can bring to trial. I want to see justice for Mary.”

Donna shook her head sadly. “If you can’t find corroborating evidence, then it’s just my word, isn’t it? I work in a law office, Ms. Bei. I know that’s a problem.”

“Why is that a problem?” Clark asked. “If Donna says she saw him, then she saw him.”

“But I didn’t see him,” Donna said. “I saw a car and a man I can’t identify. I know how defense lawyers work. They’ll say it could have been anybody. Or they’ll say I made it up.”

“Made it up?” Clark asked. “What the hell does that mean?”