Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“ Is it true that one of the peeping incidents led to a girl’s death? ”

“ We are investigating whether the death by drowning of a mentally challenged girl in Fond du Lac is in any way related to a peeping incident involving the same girl. It’s too early to draw any conclusions .”

“Turn if off,” Clark told the bartender.

The bartender looked back at him with his arms crossed. “You sure, Clark?”

“Turn if off,” he repeated.

The man switched channels.

“Too early to draw any conclusions?” Clark asked.

Donna stroked his bare arm. “They have to say that. It doesn’t mean he won’t be charged. You can’t obsess about it, Clark. Let them do their jobs.”

“He’s going to get away with it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Clark closed his eyes. His drunken mind was like a dam, cracking and sprouting fissures under the relentless pressure of a swollen river. Each time one of the girls behind him squealed with laughter, he heard Mary’s laugh. It was as if she were still alive, holding out her hand and calling for him. When he tried to picture her face, however, he couldn’t see it. Another face intervened in his mind.

The sallow, leering face of Finn Mathisen.

“Clark?”

He heard Donna, but she was far away.

“Clark?” she asked again.

“I’m here,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m going to take you home,” she told him.

Clark nodded.

“Let me run to the ladies’ room, and then I’ll drive us back to the house. I’ll stay there, okay? I won’t leave you alone. I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” Donna said. She hesitated and added, “I need to tell you something, but not here. When it’s just the two of us, we can talk.”

She nudged past him, but he grabbed her arm. They were surrounded by people pushing and shoving against them, smelling of smoke and stale beer, screeching a jumble of words that made his head spin. He pulled her face close, so that he could inhale her lilac perfume. He saw yearning and despair in her eyes. The down on her neck felt soft and familiar under his fingers. Her chest rose and fell like a scared bird.

“Mary was lucky to have you,” he said.

Her face twisted with emotion. She put a hand on his face, and her skin was warm. He thought he would be able to feel that touch all night.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Clark nodded. He watched his ex-wife as she navigated the crowd and disappeared through the oak door into the restroom. This could have been a night like so many they had spent in their early years. He could imagine Donna as she had been at twenty-one years old, when their bodies were fit and their hormones racing. Before their dreams grew up, got old, and died.

He shoved a tip into the bartender’s jar and got off the bar stool, swaying as he tried to walk. No one paid any attention to him. He balanced himself against strange shoulders until his head cleared. Through the sea of drinkers, he saw the two tables of teenage girls, sipping Coke, laughing with mouths full of white teeth and braces, their innocent giggles like music. Some had dirt on their faces; others had their baseball caps turned backward. Under the table, they were all bare legs and white socks. Clark felt as if he had been stabbed in the heart.

He made his way to the bar door. The girls had piled their softball equipment in the corner there. He opened the door into the night, but before he left, he grabbed one of the wooden baseball bats by its knob handle and took it with him.

Tish sat with the manuscript of her book open on the laptop screen. Her fingers lingered over the keyboard, but no words came. She was at the point where she had to decide. Lie or tell the truth. She had postponed the decision on the belief that, by the time she reached this crossroads, it would be easy. But it wasn’t. She was nearly done, but she wasn’t sure now if she wanted to finish it at all.

She reached for a cigarette, but even the solace of smoking didn’t appeal to her tonight. Angrily, she slapped the cover of the laptop shut.

When she had first opened the door to the past, it had felt right, as if the time had finally come in her life to flush out the night creatures from their hiding places. To fulfill her promise to Cindy. To come home. Now she wondered if it would have been better for everyone if she had stayed away.

She crossed to the glass door that led to the porch, built high above the slashing waters of the lake. She opened the door and took a tentative step onto the deck without looking down. Fear of heights was an odd thing. People who didn’t have it didn’t understand it. They could shimmy up cliff faces or stand on rooftops or dangle their feet from ski lifts and feel nothing at all. For her, just thinking about those things made her flinch and sweat. It wasn’t the height that scared her. It was her own lack of self-control that brought terror. What frightened her was the idea that some foreign, desperate part of her soul would cause her to fling herself over the edge whenever she was faced with a sharp drop. It didn’t matter where she was. An escalator. A mountain. A bridge. She had to hold on tight and clench her fists to make sure she didn’t panic. It was bad enough to die, but she didn’t want to die by falling.

Her breath fluttered in her chest.

She went back into the apartment and shut the door. In the bedroom, she saw her suitcase lying open on the floor, mostly packed. There was no reason to stay in the city any longer. She had the answers she needed, and she would be happy to do what she had done years ago. Escape. Get away. Put as many miles between herself and Duluth as she possibly could.

Tish went into the bedroom and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her suitcase. Her clothes were neatly folded. She reached across the main compartment to the zipped pouch at the back and tugged it open. The envelope was inside, faded and wrinkled with time. She pulled it out and let it sit in her hands. She had caressed it so many times that the paper was shiny. The ink on the envelope was thin and black.

The handwriting was Cindy’s.

Tish read the words again: For Jonny .

She had held on to the letter ever since Cindy died. It wasn’t right to leave town without giving it to him. On the other hand, she wondered if it was fair to stir up his life any more than she already had, to reawaken the past when he had managed to lay it to rest. Let him go on with Serena and not think about Cindy anymore.

Lie or tell the truth.

There was no need to protect William Starr. He had never earned an ounce of her compassion. She didn’t need to protect herself, either. Not anymore. It was time to let go of the shame she had felt when Cindy told her the truth.

Tish slipped her hand inside the suitcase pouch again and extracted the plastic zip-top bag in which she kept the clipping. She removed it delicately, careful not to rip the yellowed newspaper. It was a fragment from another era. A lifetime ago. She unfolded the creases and held it at its edge with the tips of her fingers.

The headline screamed at her. Tore at her heart.

HOSTAGE SHOT, KILLED IN BANK STANDOFF

She read it for the thousandth time and then carefully refolded it and slid it back inside the plastic bag. As if, by putting it away, it didn’t exist. She got angry all over again to think of William Starr hiding this clipping in the pages of his Bible. Until Cindy found it.

The phone rang in the other room. Tish secured the envelope inside her suitcase and went to answer it.

“This is Tish,” she said.

“This is Peter Stanhope.”

She thought about hanging up, but she didn’t. “What do you want?”