Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

He knew what Donna wanted-to see if they could rebuild a life, to put their marriage back together after Mary had forced them apart. She wanted something to fill the emptiness, but it was never going to happen. Without Mary, he had no life and didn’t want one.

“I wish you’d let me in,” Donna murmured.

Clark didn’t reply. He drank his beer. The bar was crowded, but the cacophony of voices created a bubble of privacy around the two of them. He would have been happier being alone. He didn’t want Donna or anyone else to share his grief.

“Do you still blame me?” she asked.

Clark hesitated and then shook his head. He had given up the anger he felt for Donna. She had no way of knowing that a monster was in the woods. It was just that life was so damn fragile, and there were so many predators out there. A girl goes to a store to buy a graduation gift and winds up kidnapped and strangled. A girl goes to a Halloween party and gets beaten to death in the backyard. A girl goes to an island resort and disappears forever. Fragile. There and gone in the time it takes to cry. No one was ever to blame, and no one ever seemed to pay the price.

“It wasn’t you,” he told her. “It could just as easily have been me with her when it happened.”

“Thank you, Clark. I needed to hear that.”

Clark realized that his hands were wrapped so tightly around the bottle of beer that his knuckles were white. The truth was that he wasn’t numb at all. He was holding his emotions down like a bathtub toy under the water, because he was afraid of them popping up. Afraid that his grief and fury would be like a tidal wave washing him away if he stared them in the face. He didn’t know how to deal with any of it. He could be hollow and dead, or he could open the locked door in his heart and go insane.

Behind him, wind and heat blew through the smoky air as the door opened. He heard a chorus of teenage chatter, and both he and Donna turned around as the players from a girls’ softball team squeezed into the bar, dressed in white jerseys and shorts, their long hair tumbling and blowing as they peeled off their caps. Their faces glowed with pinkness and sweat. They laughed and shoved each other; it was a postgame victory celebration. They dropped bats, gloves, and balls in a corner near the door, and one of the softballs rolled across the wooden floor and wound up at Clark’s feet. He leaned down and scooped it up. It was dirty and solid. A girl about Mary’s age, stocky and strong, with chestnut hair, clapped her hands and waved at him. Clark tossed the ball to her underhanded. She caught it with a big grin and juggled it in her hands as she slouched into a chair.

“Do you ever wish that Mary had been like that?” Donna asked. “Just an ordinary girl?”

“She was who she was,” Clark said.

“Yes, but she missed so much. Getting crushes. Getting her first kiss. Having a best friend. It could have been her on that team, Clark. She could have been any one of those girls.”

“She was happy,” Clark insisted.

Donna stared wistfully at the girls on the other side of the bar. “She was only happy because she didn’t understand what she couldn’t have.”

“What are you saying?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know. We always said it was God’s will, but did God really want her to be like that? Did God want us to split up because we couldn’t handle it? I don’t think God was watching us at all when He let it happen.”

“Are you saying Mary is better off dead?”

“No.” Then she said, “I don’t know. I can hardly put it into words, but yes, on some level, don’t you think she’s better off?”

Clark swung back to the bar. He didn’t want to look at the girls’ team anymore. He couldn’t bear their sweetness and young noise. “Mary’s not better off,” he said. “I’m not better off. Maybe you are.”

“That’s not what I mean. You know it’s not. I just need to find some meaning in this. Some explanation. Some purpose.”

“There’s no purpose at all.” He waved at the bartender. “Another beer over here.”

“Getting drunk won’t bring her back,” Donna said.

“What do you care? I’m not your husband anymore, so just leave me alone.”

Donna sniffled and took a sip from her cola. Clark was impatient as the bartender poured his beer, and he drank a third of it in the first swallow when the man put it down in front of him. The more he drank, the more the wall began to crack. Emotions slipped out. He felt his eyes burning with tears.

“Oh, no,” Donna murmured.

“What?”

She pointed at the television screen over the bar. Clark saw a press conference under way live on the nine o’clock news. The St. Louis County attorney, Pat Burns, stood in front of a battery of microphones in the lobby of the courthouse. Behind her, he saw the two Minnesota detectives he knew. Maggie Bei and Jonathan Stride. He caught the last few words of a crawl on the bottom of the screen.

NO CHARGES TO BE FILED.

“Hey!” Clark shouted at the bartender. “Turn that up, okay?”

The bartender aimed a remote control at the television. Clark leaned forward, straining to hear. Some of the conversation in the bar dwindled as faces turned toward the screen. It was a small town. They all knew Clark and Donna.

“ … substantial speculation about the murder of Laura Starr that occurred in Duluth in 1977 ,” Pat Burns said. “ Recent reports in the media have suggested that we have a suspect in custody and that charges in that case are imminent. Unfortunately, these reports are not accurate. We have made no arrests to date, and we do not have sufficient evidence at this time to put before a grand jury. We will continue to investigate any leads that emerge in this terrible crime, but it isn’t appropriate to raise false hopes in a community that wants justice .”

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

Donna wiped her eyes. “They’re giving up. That’s how lawyers talk.”

Clark heard one of the reporters ask a question. “ Is it true that a suspect in the crime attempted suicide following interrogation by Duluth police? ”

A photo appeared in the upper right corner of the television screen, and Clark saw the face of the man in the photo array that Maggie had shown him. He saw the name. Finn Mathisen.

“I can’t comment on that,” Burns replied.

“ … heard there might be a confession in the case, ” another reporter said over the chorus of voices.

Burns shook her head. “ We’ve conducted numerous interviews with witnesses, and we’re still evaluating them. At this point, the police do not have any statement in hand from anyone claiming responsibility for the murder .”

“Has Peter Stanhope been cleared of involvement in the murder?”

“I’m not going to discuss anyone’s guilt or innocence.”

“Do you think this case will ever be solved?”

“I very much hope so.”

Clark didn’t look at Pat Burns. He studied Maggie’s face behind her. What he saw there turned the hope in his heart to dust. When she looked at the camera, it was as if she were looking directly at him, admitting she had failed, apologizing.

Another voice. “ … is reporting that the suspect is a Superior resident named Finn Mathisen, and that Mathisen is also a suspect in the recent string of peeping incidents involving teenage girls? ”

Clark held his breath. Donna clung to his arm.

“We are gathering evidence with regard to the so-called peeping tom cases,” Burns said. “ Mr. Mathisen is a person of interest in that investigation, but he has not been charged. That’s all I’ll say .”