Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

He thought about breaking in. Kick down the door or smash a window. He told himself that all he wanted to do was confront Finn and look for the guilt in his face, and tell him that he had robbed two lives when he set his sights on Mary. But that was a lie. Clark had darker things in his heart.

He squirmed in his seat because he needed to piss. He opened the door of his pickup and climbed down to the dirt. Overhead, there were no stars, only angry clouds growing blacker and more threatening as he stared at them. Wind drummed on his back. He stood between the steel rails of the tracks and unzipped and drained a clear stream of urine into the crushed rock. When he was done, he went back to the truck and reached across the seat to grab the baseball bat he had stolen. It was heavy and satisfying in his hand, like an instrument of justice.

Before he could close the truck door, he heard a voice over the howl of the wind, whispering in his ear.

“No, Daddy.”

Clark spun around. “Mary?”

He looked for her spirit in the darkness, but he was alone. His mind was playing games with him. Even so, the memory of his daughter’s voice, which was as clear and familiar as if she had been standing next to him, softened the fury in his heart. Clark stood for a long moment, hesitating. The storm was close and violent. The brittle air felt as if it would snap.

He wondered if Mary had come back to stop him. To tell him that what he was doing was wrong.

He threw the bat back into the truck, where it banged against the far door. He pulled himself up into the driver’s seat and held tightly to the steering wheel. The gales rattled the pickup. He took out his wallet and removed the photograph he kept of himself and Mary on the beach. The picture had been taken two summers ago. After staring at it silently and remembering the perfect Sunday afternoon they had spent together, he craned his neck back until his skull bumped against the head rest. His mouth hung open, gulping air. The tears he had been waiting for finally came. They were a silent army, marching out of his eyes, streaking his stubbled chin. He didn’t move or react, or feel his shoulders clench with sobs. It was just his grief letting go in a calm rain.

When it was over, Clark straightened up and wiped his face. He couldn’t do what he had been planning. He couldn’t kill in cold blood. He reached for the key, wanting to be away from this terrible place. He hoped that Donna was waiting for him at home. Maybe she was right. Maybe something could be salvaged between them. There had been an old yearning in her eyes at the bar, like an ember in a fire that could be coaxed back to life with a warm breath.

Before he could start the engine of his truck, however, he saw a ripple of movement on the front porch of the house across the tracks.

The door opened like the lips of a black monster, and someone tall and skinny sneaked out into the night. It was Finn, nearly invisible in dark clothes. He took each step awkwardly, like a sick man. He stopped at the bottom step, and his head swiveled, surveying the neighborhood. Clark held his breath as Finn’s eyes lingered on his pickup, but the darkness protected him. When Finn thought he was alone, he crept beside the towering lilacs in the front yard and made his way stealthily to his RAV.

Clark knew exactly what Finn was doing. It was the watching hour. It didn’t matter that a sweet girl had died. It didn’t matter that his face had been exposed to the city as a suspect. He was off to find another window, another girl.

That was something Clark couldn’t allow.

He shoved the photo of Mary into his front pocket. He apologized to Donna in his mind. He waited until Finn’s RAV pulled out of the gravel driveway, then started his own truck and left the lights off. He hung back several blocks, but the taillights of Finn’s vehicle were easy to follow. Finn led him on a crisscross path through the neighborhood, past unlit houses and oak trees slumping like giants over the road. On Stinson Avenue, Finn turned diagonally toward the northeast, heading into wasteland behind the municipal airport. The road cut through cornfields and past the stinking smokestacks of the oil refinery. Clark felt the bump of railroad tracks under his tires.

After several miles, the road led into the East End neighborhood, not far from the main highway and the harbor basin. Clusters of houses built on open lots dotted both sides of the road. The blocks here were laid out in neat squares. Clark noticed the red lights on the RAV grow larger as Finn slowed down, and he braked, not wanting to get too close. Finn turned, and the lights disappeared. Clark cruised past the intersection and eyed the street on his right. He did a U-turn and swung into the street, driving slowly and peering at the road ahead. There were more trees here, like parkland. He saw a playground and an old fence surrounding twin tennis courts.

Two blocks ahead, he spotted brake lights. Clark slowed to a crawl. When he arrived at the intersection, he saw that the RAV had vanished. He drove several more blocks and then retraced his steps and turned onto the side street where he had last noticed the brake lights. There was a handful of cars parked on the street and in driveways, but no RAV. No Finn. He had been gathered up by the night.

“Where are you?” Clark murmured.

He followed the checkerboard of streets like a rat through a maze. Once, he noticed a RAV parked adjacent to a detached garage, but when he got closer, he realized the color was wrong. Sand, not silver. He kept driving, wondering how Finn had managed to lose him and whether the detour through the East End had been a ruse to throw off anyone who might be behind him. Clark worried that Finn had escaped to the highway and turned north or south, heading for a completely different destination.

But no.

There he was.

Clark eased around the next corner and saw Finn’s silver RAV shunted off the shoulder of the road under the umbrella shade of an elm tree. The lot was vacant and overgrown. Clark stopped, put the pickup truck in reverse, and backed around the corner. He turned off his engine and got out, leaving the baseball bat inside the truck. To the northwest, the sky lit up for an instant and then went dark. Lightning. Clark counted until the bass drum of thunder reached his ears, but he didn’t have to wait long. The storm was drawing near.

He used the closest house as cover, ducking in and out of the trees. When he was opposite the RAV, he crossed the open lot and approached the passenger side. The truck was empty. Finn was gone. Clark examined the neighborhood in every direction. He didn’t see Finn and didn’t hear anything other than the whoosh of quaking elm leaves and another, louder peal of thunder.

Clark pulled on the passenger door of the RAV. It was open. The overhead dome light stayed dark. He smelled the man inside the car; there was an odor of sweat and a stale aroma of fried food. He looked for street maps, photos, or notes, but the garbage on the floor mats of the truck didn’t help him. The glove compartment was locked, and Clark dug in his pants pocket and yanked out a pocket knife and forced it open. He found the sports section of the local newspaper inside, folded to reveal a photo of three girls on the Superior High School swim team. One girl’s face was circled in blue marker. A pretty blonde. He remembered what Maggie had told him, that this man didn’t simply happen on his victims by accident. He identified them. Studied them. Stalked them. He had a destination in mind, a specific house, a specific girl.

Clark read the caption with the girl’s name. Angela Tjornhom. But where did she live?

He closed the door and studied the nearby homes. He looked for squares of light, but the neighborhood was dark. He shifted away from the RAV, off the street and back into the shelter of the houses. For a big man, he moved quickly and quietly in the spongy grass. At the corner of each house, he looked for Finn crouching in the earth near a first-floor window. He used the lightning to illuminate the way.