A Family of Strangers

by Emilie Richards

  I was too scared to think. If I had, I wouldn’t have tried to get inside the house, because the chances were 100 percent this nutcase would follow for tea and a chat. But I scrambled to my knees and grabbed the doorknob. I’m not sure what would have happened next if a dog hadn’t barked on the road in front of the house, a high yapping sound guaranteed to frighten a canary.

  Yap or not, the sound startled the intruder. In a neighborhood like this one, dogs are always on leash attached to an owner. And this guy probably didn’t want witnesses. Before I could scream, he turned and fled around the side of the town house and disappeared.

  I was so stunned I could only pull myself to my feet and struggle to insert the key. My hand was shaking so badly that getting it in the slot took three tries, but once I succeeded I pushed the door open, looked behind me to be sure the intruder hadn’t returned, and then slipped inside, slamming and locking the door behind me.

  Was this maniac going to try to enter another way? He’d been determined to get inside. Against every warning my pounding heart was struggling to send, I went through the great room to make sure he wasn’t trying to break in through the glass doors. The screen door to the outside stood open, but nobody was in sight, and the doors into the house were still locked and undamaged. I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Then I collapsed to the sofa, where I could continue to watch the back of the house.

  * * *

  “There was a pickup parked a couple of houses down the street.” The deputy and I had decided to hold our rendezvous by the front door. I pointed to the left, and my surly protector, somewhere in his thirties and not quite bald enough to shave his head, duly noted what I’d said in his spiral notebook.

  He glanced up. “No truck was there when I arrived.”

  “If it belonged to him, he’d have left in a hurry.”

  “It could have been anybody.”

  I tried to remember details, but I hadn’t registered many. “I think it could have been a workman’s truck.” I thought harder. “I guess I just assumed. You could ask the woman walking her dog. She lives somewhere around here.”

  “Color? Make? Identifying features?”

  He wasn’t asking about the dog. I tried to picture the pickup. What had I seen? Why hadn’t I seen more? I’m a journalist, and now that observations mattered personally, I only had a few. “Dark, maybe blue or even black. You know, I think there was lettering on the door. Maybe that’s why I assumed a workman was doing something on the house where it was parked.”

  “What did the letters say?”

  “Sorry, if I’d known what was about to happen, I would have taken notes and photos.”

  “Anything else about the man?”

  I’d already given him all the details I remembered, a guess about his height and weight, his jeans, and the dark hoodie that had been drawn so tightly around his face I hadn’t seen his hair. I thought I remembered a long nose and the beginning of a beard or stylish stubble, but that was all I could dredge up. Even the intruder’s race was a mystery. His skin was light brown, but this was Florida. He was either tanned or he’d been born that particular hue. I couldn’t guess which.

  “I can’t figure out why this guy tried to break into a house with an obvious security system.” I pointed to the sign in front of the house that said we were protected.

  “Half those signs are fake. People pay for security for a couple of months, then decide it’s not worth it, so they cancel, but the sign stays up. Nobody takes signs seriously. Did you have the alarm set this morning?”

  I shook my head.

  “You and nobody else. And even if he’d set it off? Probably not many people living around here to hear it. Then it takes the alarm company time to respond, call the phone numbers they have on file and finally call us. He could be in and out—with small stuff like jewelry, drugs, cash—in ten minutes. He probably figured law enforcement wouldn’t get here for at least half an hour.”

  His guess on timing was correct, because it had taken the deputy at least that long to show up and take my statement.

  On a roll, he continued. “We have groups coming through here this time of year and late in the spring. They travel back and forth from somewhere up north and break into houses along the way.”

  My mother had warned me. Apparently even bad guys needed a change of scenery in the winter. “I think he was alone.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They work all kinds of ways. We’ve had three daylight break-ins the past week. Have you noticed strange cars?”

  “It’s really quiet here,” I said. “The dog walker is about it.”

  “Nobody’s come to the door to ask where a neighbor lives, or whether they can do odd jobs? Because the people I’m telling you about will do that, strictly to see if the house is occupied.”

  I shook my head. “Spooky quiet.” Then I thought about the screen. “You know, we got home last night after dinner out—”

  “We?”

  “My nieces. Six and eight. I’m taking care of them while their mom’s away on business. My parents own the house.”

  “So...” He waited for me to finish.

  “There was a screen loose on the side of the house. Two of the screws were gone. Maybe somebody was trying to get in that way. The windows are pretty well hidden from the street.”

  “Probably not. He’d try the doors first.”

  “Maybe he did. Maybe today was his second try. And I’m pretty sure he did get into the screened porch. The door leading outside was open.”

  He slipped his notebook back in the shirt pocket of a dark green uniform. “He won’t be back. If somebody is really staking out this neighborhood, empty houses are better bets. Now that it’s clear this house is occupied, he’ll leave you alone.”

  I wasn’t happy he was so offhanded about my safety. “Why don’t I feel more secure?”

  “Some people leave a chain with a collar staked outside, or put a water bowl and a few dog toys on the porch. Anything to make it look like they have a vicious canine protecting them. You could give that a try, or get a real dog. If this is a group from somewhere up north, they’ll move on in a few weeks.”

  “Great, they skip town and I still own a dog.”

  “You don’t like dogs?”

  “Who doesn’t like dogs? I just think you get a dog because you want one, not because—” I stopped myself. I was babbling, residual of the attack.

  “You’re not hurt. You’re sure? You could go to urgent care and be checked over, just in case.”

  “I’m shook up. That’s it.” That and a bruise that was going to make sitting down a challenge for a while. I thought about Holly and hoped she wasn’t in trouble because I hadn’t returned with her backpack. Then I realized what might have happened if I’d brought the girls back home with me, the way that Holly had wanted me to. I shuddered.

  “I think we’re done here. You let us know if you remember anything else. Feel free to call if anything comes up.”

  He paused before he let himself out. “I just realized why you look familiar.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know Mateo Santiago? He used to be a K9 officer with the sheriff’s department.”

  A chill snaked down my spine. “I know Teo.”

  He looked substantially less friendly. “I thought maybe you did. Too bad he and his dog aren’t on our K9 unit anymore, isn’t it? I’m sure he would have been happy to help you now.”

  Then he was gone.

  * * *

  With the remote possibility that the intruder was still hanging around the neighborhood, I checked and rechecked the town house locks and turned on the security alarm before I dropped off Holly’s backpack and raincoat. Instead of heading to the natural foods store, I went home again, and after a careful check, got out and opened the garage and parked inside, closing the door quickly behind me.

/>   Something liquid was called for to help calm me down before I faced my parents. Since by anybody’s standards it was too early for alcohol, I settled on green tea and took it to the great room, where I could watch the rain through the doors to the screened porch.

  I wasn’t surprised that the deputy who’d interviewed me knew my connection to Teo, or remembered the events of four years ago that had made today’s attack seem like dinner with an old friend.

  I had met Teo Santiago on a gray, rainy day, like this one, although the month had been June, not December, and despite having been raised in Seabank, between the heat and humidity I’d felt trapped in a Tennessee Williams novel.

  After high school I’d abandoned Florida for college and my first job, but that summer I’d returned to do an internship at the Seabank Free Press for my master’s degree in investigative journalism.

  I had already earned an undergraduate degree in criminal justice, hoping to become a cop. After my cardiologist refused to certify me to lift more than half my body weight, I’d worked as a fraud investigator for a full-service risk mitigation company. For the most part I’d done background checks, and a limited amount of skip tracing, but I’d learned a lot. Most important, now I knew I thrived when digging up facts that other people found unimportant or useless. I particularly liked putting them together to form pictures of my subjects’ lives.

  Of course neither my talent nor interest in digging deeper had been particularly appreciated in my job. Still, that time had been invaluable. I’d realized I was a journalist at heart.

  At the end of my course work, I had hoped for an internship at a big city paper and had received a few nods of interest, but when I learned my mother was going into the hospital for knee surgery, I’d queried the Free Press, so I could be in town to help while she recovered.

  Even then newspapers had a host of problems, and a paper in a small Florida city with an economy fueled by winter residents had more than most. The Free Press had a tight budget, and the only reason they agreed to take me on was because they were planning a series of articles about a murder that had happened in Seabank when I was still in high school.

  During my interview, I brought up the case and volunteered to help conduct research, pointing out that as a Seabank native and the daughter of Dale Gracey, who had been on the city council at the time, I had contacts that might be invaluable.

  In a quiet well-heeled community like ours, the murder had been high profile. A tax accountant named Becky Drake had been murdered after leaving a local charity fund-raiser. At the event she’d been seen arguing with her longtime boyfriend, John Quayle, and the prosecutor claimed that he had followed and killed her later that night. Quayle had been found guilty.

  Then two months before I needed an internship, in a stunning turnaround, Quayle had been released. The prosecution’s star witness, another fund-raiser guest who had overheard the quarrel, had recanted, claiming the police had threatened to arrest her unless she told her story their way. Then a friend of Quayle’s had stepped forward to claim that Quayle had spent the night in his apartment, but his statement had never been admitted into evidence. Quayle’s court-appointed attorney had discounted the alibi because the friend had a criminal record and was probably lying.

  Based on that and more, Quayle’s new attorney won an appeal, and the appellate court ordered a second trial. In a decision that surprised everyone, the state of Florida had decided not to retry him, and Quayle was now a free man.

  That summer Quayle had moved back to the county to live with his mother. The Free Press wanted to do a series about the murder and include interviews with Quayle and others involved in the case who were still living in town. Their own staff was taking advantage of the summer slowdown to use up vacation time, and the managing editor was afraid that vital information and persons of interest might disappear if the paper waited until fall, when everyone assembled again.

  Maybe my hometown paper wasn’t the Washington Post or the New York Times, but I’d been thrilled. The Drake case had seared itself into the brain of a receptive high school junior.

  The Free Press newsroom was a sprawling affair with artificial light overhead and industrial carpeting underfoot. Cubicles that were defined by dark oak laminate cabinets lined the walls, and tables with multiple computers filled the middle. The building stood beside a city park thick with moss-draped oaks and magnolias, and their shade made the walk from the parking lot tolerable.

  The crime and investigation editor, Grant Telford, was a man in his fifties, and the fire in his belly had been extinguished years before. My enthusiasm puzzled him, but he took advantage of it, giving me lists of names and questions to ask. I was to do the initial footwork, then hand my notes to a staff reporter in the fall before I left.

  After Becky Drake’s body was found in a pond near the Quayle family home, John Quayle had become an immediate suspect. When the police had tried to question him, they had noticed a woman’s scarf on the floor of his car, similar to the description of one Drake had worn at the fund-raiser. When confronted, Quayle had disappeared into the night. A K9 deputy, Mateo Santiago, and his German shepherd, Bismarck, had tracked him to a tree stand in the woods behind his house, and after Deputy Santiago scrambled up the tree to confront him, Quayle had surrendered for questioning.

  Mateo, known as Teo, was on my contact list. During the murder trial, he’d testified that on the ride back to the sheriff’s office, Quayle had told him he was going to be found guilty.

  “Everything is my fault,” Quayle had said at the time. “I don’t make these kinds of mistakes.”

  I found Teo’s photo on the sheriff department’s website, but not his dog’s. The man was young, with a cocky, lopsided smile and a military haircut. By the time I called to set up an interview, I had already spoken to Drake’s grandmother and her stepfather, who had been a suspect early in the case. On the phone Teo sounded a shade too confident. He corrected my pronunciation of his name, from tee-o to tay-o, and told me since tio meant uncle, only his nieces called him that.

  “Tio Teo?” I asked. “Catchy.”

  “Try saying it fifty times.”

  He invited me to a K9 demonstration that his unit was doing for a local women’s club, and promised we could talk afterward.

  The demo was at a local soccer field, fenced and sprawling. Rain had fallen as I parked, and I wondered if the demonstration would go on. But as we waited in line, the clouds dispersed and feeble rays of sunlight appeared. I explained who I was to the woman ushering people into the bleachers, and she motioned me inside. Three deputies, in the same green-shirted uniform as the deputy I’d spoken to today, were on the grass with their dogs, all German shepherds.

  Judging from what I remembered of his voice, I tried to guess which of the men was Teo. All were about the same age, and since I was too high in the bleachers to see faces, I made a guess that he was the beefiest, a guy with a weight lifter’s body, who moved with an obvious swagger and seemed to think he was in charge. That man’s dog was slightly lighter in color than a similarly colored dog at the end of the line, and he held his tightly against him, as if to prove how tough he was to be able to control such a powerful animal. From my perch, the third dog looked to be coal black, although I learned later he was a bicolor, because he had a few small patches of brown. His handler seemed the most relaxed, as if he and the dog were so deeply in tune, they were chilling together until it was time to work.

  As it turned out, I had guessed incorrectly. The announcer introduced the men, and Teo was the laid-back handler with the beautiful black dog. I was glad.

  In the next minutes the deputies put all the dogs through basics using equipment set up on the field. They ran them through long pipes, up ladders, across what looked like balance beams, and over hurdles the dogs hardly seemed to notice. Then the fun began. Another deputy in a padded suit came out on the field, and one by one the K9 team issu
ed commands to their dogs to take the guy down. I was entranced at how perfectly each dog obeyed, but I was most entranced by Teo and Bismarck, who worked as a perfect team. When signaled, Bismarck stopped just feet from his prey and waited for Teo’s command. They clearly trusted each other and worked with efficient grace.

  The dogs leaped for arms and hung from the suit, their teeth clamped there like bizarre Christmas ornaments. I watched the dogs take the suited man to the ground when he tried to run. By the end of the half hour, I was sure I never wanted to do anything that would lead to being singled out by any of the three teams.

  Afterward I waited until most of the crowd was heading back to their cars before I went down on the field to talk to Teo. His dog was romping with another, chasing tennis balls one of the other deputies tossed for them. Up close Teo did resemble his photo, but he was one of those men photos would never accurately capture. His hair was dark, and his eyes were darker. I thought his family might have come to the US from Cuba, although later I learned his great-grandparents on both sides had been born in Puerto Rico. The grin I’d rated as cocky was more accurately defined as captivating, a point somewhere between warm and seductive.

  It also seemed possible that the seductive part wasn’t something he turned on for just anybody.

  “You look the way you sound,” he said, holding out his hand after I introduced myself.

  “How’s that?”

  He smiled. “Tio Teo. Catchy.”

  Not only had he nailed my voice perfectly, he’d remembered exactly what I’d said. My cheeks warmed. “I bet you do whole routines.”

  “Your voice is memorable. Low, musical.” He paused. “Sensual.”