The Girl Next Door cr-3

by Brad Parks

  Having made the necessary determinations, he didn’t allow himself to linger. He knocked on the front door, making himself seem like just a casual friend who had stopped by for an unannounced visit and, finding the master of the house not at home, left just as quickly. He didn’t think any of the neighbors had taken note of him. The only person he saw was a woman outside watering her lawn, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention.

  Then he settled in to wait, parking just down the street. He had a place in his brain where he went at times like this-a small cerebral refuge that allowed him to keep himself physically dormant yet mentally alert. It was the place where he told himself his life story, as if he were dictating a memoir. He loved going there, and he had learned he could stay there, quite contentedly, for hours.

  He changed some of the details, of course, especially ones that pertained to his father. Everyone lies in their memoir these days, right?

  He had both a quick version and a slow version of the story. And since he knew he might be waiting for a while, he went with the extended edition, pacing himself. He was still only in his late twenties when he saw a car roll down the street and into the appropriate driveway.

  Instantly, his body came to life. He looked at the clock, which read 12:17. The car crept past the house, on its way to the detached garage. He began a small countdown, turning his ignition key midway through. The car came alive, illuminating the street in front of him. He had hoped to go dark-all the better to catch his target unawares-but the Escalade was equipped with daytime running lights and he didn’t know how to disable them. So he opted to go for the next best thing: high beams. If he couldn’t sneak up on Ross, at least he’d blind him.

  With the countdown complete, he shifted into Drive then hit the gas. The house was on the right side of the street, so he stayed on the left side, giving himself a better angle from which to swoop onto the front yard. He had decided he would enter via the neighbor’s driveway. Going over the curb might slow him down or knock him off track.

  Everything was going exactly as he hoped, right until the last moment. The first thing that surprised him was the presence of another person. His assumption had been that Ross, who appeared to live alone, would be coming home alone. Yet there Ross was with a young woman. Did she look familiar? There was no time to even consider it. Not at that speed.

  The second thing he hadn’t remembered to factor in was the slight upward slope to the front lawn, which slowed him down at a time when he should have been accelerating. It gave Ross enough time not only to get himself out of the way but to rescue the young woman as well.

  He watched in frustration as Ross and the young woman dove toward the house, into the safety of some shrubbery. He yelled as he passed them by-like that would do any good-but didn’t dare to slow until he was out of eyeshot. He just had to trust that his high beams, to say nothing of the element of surprise, had rendered them incapable of seeing anything that would identify him.

  But that, he knew, was a poor substitute for his real plan, which was not to leave a witness in the first place.

  He drove in circles for a while, aggravated at himself. Eventually, he realized he might as well make the best of a botched situation. After all, if Ross could be dissuaded from continuing to investigate Nancy Marino’s death, it would be as good as having Ross dead.

  It just had to be made clear to the reporter what awaited him if he persisted.

  CHAPTER 7

  For a long moment, I just lay there, panting. I had rolled off Nikki and was pinned between the shrubs and my house’s foundation, with a bug’s-eye view of a few small weeds that had crept up in the bare dirt. I began taking inventory of what might or might not be broken, dismembered, or paralyzed, but quickly determined I still had all my parts and they seemed to be functioning as would be expected. Except for a few scratches and perhaps a bruise or two, I had done nothing more serious than perhaps use up one of my nine lives.

  I looked over at Nikki, who was crumpled at an awkward angle, with her head resting against the house, her torso on the ground, and her legs up in the air, supported by the shrubs. Her dress, with its thin fabric, was bunched up around her midsection, exposing her strong, rounded thighs and green, seamless underwear. It struck me she ought to be tugging the dress down. But Nikki wasn’t moving.

  “You okay?” I said.

  No reply.

  “Nikki?”

  Nothing.

  I scrambled toward her on my hands and knees, then stopped. Even in the shadow of the shrubbery, there was enough light from a nearby street lamp that I could see her hair was wet with blood. There was a red smear mark, vivid on the painted concrete, leading in a short arc from where her head had crashed into the foundation to where it was currently propped.

  “Oh, Nikki,” I said. “Nikki, honey, can you hear me?”

  It was a stupid question. She couldn’t hear anything. Her eyes were closed, and it was difficult to tell if she was even breathing.

  Or alive.

  A small jolt of horror surged through me. I wish I could say I was one of those cool, calm, collected types, capable of blocking all but the essential facts, processing them, and acting accordingly. But that’s why newspaper reporters make lousy emergency responders: we’re trained to take in everything, leaving nothing out. So there I was, noting the cut and color of Nikki’s underwear instead of saving her life.

  I forced myself to think back to a thousand first-aid classes taken a million years earlier, when I was a Boy Scout and a camp counselor, doing things responsible kids do, getting certified in this or trained in that. You weren’t supposed to move someone with a potential spinal cord injury. That part came back to me quickly. But, then, wasn’t oxygen the first priority? Didn’t I have to make sure she was getting some?

  Then a long-ago video appeared in my mind, where some perfectly calm woman came across an inert body, bent down to assess it, then turned to the equally composed person with her and, in a totally inflectionless voice, said, “No breathing, no pulse, call Eee-Emm-Ess.”

  I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, brought up the dialing screen, and shakily punched the nine key, followed by the one key twice. Then I hit Send.

  “Nine one one, what is your emergency?” a voice queried.

  “Please,” I moaned into my phone. “Please come quickly. A woman is hurt badly.”

  “What is your exact location?”

  I faltered-because for a moment I couldn’t remember I was in my front yard-then recovered and gave my home address. The operator started asking me questions about the nature of the woman’s injuries.

  “No time. Just come,” I said, and planted the phone back in my pocket, returning my attention to Nikki.

  I got as close to her as I dared without jostling her, then made myself very still. I couldn’t see any breathing, so I reached out toward her arm, which was splayed on the dirt, and grabbed her wrist to check her pulse. To my relief, I could feel a small thumping-weak but extant. Then I looked at her chest and saw it rising and falling slightly beneath that summer dress.

  My next concern was the blood. There seemed to be a lot of it, too much of it. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and I didn’t dare touch her. I tried as best I could to get close to her scalp and see if I could locate the wound, but all I could see was wet, blood-matted hair.

  It was about that time I heard the first siren. Then I heard several. They were crying out at varying pitches and rhythms, everything from the long, low fire engine’s blast to the short bleep-blipping of an ambulance. We had to be the only emergency in Bloomfield that night because they seemed to be coming from everywhere. I grabbed Nikki’s hand.

  “Help’s coming,” I said. “Just hang with me.”

  The ambulance got there first. A short, stout guy and a tall, thin guy, both in tight T-shirts and multipocketed pants, hopped out of the back of the truck, with one of them carrying a duffel bag laden with even more pockets. I released Nikki’s hand, stood up, and
shouted, “Over here, she’s over here.”

  “What’s going on?” the short one asked, as he walked up my lawn.

  “A car tried to hit us,” I said. “I had to push us out of the way and she hit her head.”

  The short guy glanced at his partner and they shared some silent agreement on the subject-something along the lines of, Sounds like the worst excuse for domestic violence we’ve ever heard, but let the cops sort it out.

  “She’s breathing and has a pulse,” I continued, trying to be helpful. “But she’s bleeding from the head. I tried not to move her.”

  “What’s her name?” the second one asked.

  “Nikki.”

  “Nikki, are you okay?” he started yelling. “Nikki, are you there?”

  She was about as chatty with them as she was with me. So they got to work, stabilizing her neck, rolling her onto a backboard, mauling my shrubs in the process. One of them started raking his knuckle down her sternum, which looked like it must have hurt like hell. I couldn’t discern the medical purpose of it-unless they were now encouraging torture in CPR-but Nikki didn’t stir.

  A second ambulance had showed up by this point, as had a fire truck. I kept getting shoved farther out of the way. I could see they had gotten a breathing mask on her face and a collar on her neck. They seemed to be doing other stuff, too, I just I couldn’t tell what. Then they lifted her into the back of the ambulance.

  I was just sort of tagging along at that point, and they weren’t paying much attention to me until the tall guy turned and said, “We’re taking her to Mountainside if you want to follow us in your own vehicle. Just don’t follow too close. Nikki doesn’t need any more trauma right now.”

  * * *

  The next few hours at Mountainside Hospital were a blur of antiseptic corridors, stiff-backed waiting room chairs, interrupted naps, and at least two less-than-fun conversations.

  The first was with a lady from the admissions staff, to whom I had to explain that I knew next to nothing about the young lady I had accompanied to the hospital. No, I didn’t know her address. No, I wasn’t sure if she had insurance. No, I didn’t know how to contact her next of kin. No, I wasn’t really her boyfriend. Before long, the woman had decided I was some guy who hired a hooker, then decided to throw her around a bit, and so she was treating me with all the warmth and kindness you might expect.

  The next uncomfortable chat was with a pair of young Bloomfield cops, who came to ask me questions. I told them what happened, giving them as many details as I could-which, admittedly, were quite few. They were noticeably unimpressed by my version of the events and were debating whether to arrest me or just take me out back and rough me up a bit. Guys who hurt nice girls like Nikki are not looked upon fondly by the law enforcement community.

  The only thing that saved me was my insistence they would find tire marks on my lawn. I also dropped the name of Detective Owen Smiley at least four times, promising he would vouch that I wasn’t a total scum bucket. They still weren’t entirely convinced, but they eventually left me alone, making vague noises about how I shouldn’t go on any extended trips, in case they had more questions. They never asked if I thought someone might be trying to hurt me, which was probably good. It would have been tough explaining that one of the potential suspects was the injured girl’s father.

  Sometime toward dawn, Nikki was considered stabilized enough that I was allowed to enter her room. I glanced at her, lying sedately with gauze wrapped around her head, but mostly had to focus my attention on a guy in blue scrubs who didn’t introduce himself but was likely a doctor. He had that full-of-himself air about him.

  He explained to me what I probably could have figured out myself: Nikki had sustained what he called a “mild traumatic brain injury” (what they used to call a “concussion”) and might be out for a few more hours. The gash on her head turned out to be superficial. It just bled like crazy, as head wounds tend to do. They had given her an MRI and determined there was no “intracranial hemorrhaging” (what they used to call “bleeding”) or “cerebral contusions” (what they used to call “bruises”) inside her skull. Her respiration was fine, her oxygen level was adequate, her blood pressure had started a little low but was improving. When she came to, she might be disoriented, confused, or suffer from short-term memory loss. But even if she seemed fine, I should summon a nurse.

  The doctor asked if I had any questions, but he was already inching out of the room, so I let him go. I didn’t need medical science to explain to me that Nikki had bumped her head. Bad. And she needed some time to rest and give her body a chance to make itself better.

  I pulled a chair next to Nikki’s bed and held her hand for a while, because it felt like the hospital thing to do. Then I thought maybe I should talk to her a little bit. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with people who have lost consciousness? Give their brain a little bit of something to chew on in hopes you could make it hungry for more?

  “You looked beautiful tonight,” I said, sounding hoarse and throaty. “I was planning on telling you that when we got into my house, but I sort of got interrupted.”

  I looked at her, her chest rising and falling steadily, her color surprisingly good. Then again, she was Greek and this was the middle of the summer, so I suppose that shouldn’t have been quite so remarkable. I stroked her hand a little bit.

  “That SUV that tried to run us over is probably the same one that got Nancy. I didn’t really get a look at it. Or the driver. But I think I know who’s behind it.”

  And it might be someone you know pretty darn well, I thought. But that hardly seemed the right thing to say to whatever small part of Nikki was still processing information.

  She breathed some more. I babbled some more.

  “You have to understand, I’m coming out of this thing-I’m not even sure I could call it a relationship-with someone who was basically my boss,” I continued. “It was pretty messed up already. And then she fired me. Yeah, I got fired yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you that. Because what girl wants to think she’s on a date with some unemployed loser? So I guess you could say it’s over now. The relationship. My job. Yeah, all of it is over.

  “Anyhow, I don’t think this thing with you and me is some kind of rebound situation. But it might be. I probably should have warned you about that. I usually try to be up front about my emotional baggage. But you were so nice to talk to. And you looked so damn hot in that dress with that little tie on the side. It’s like you were some kind of present, and all I wanted to do was pull the string and unwrap it so I could see what was inside.”

  I looked over at the clock. It was quarter past five in the morning.

  “Oh yeah, and I’m sorry I tackled you,” I said. “You should know I’m generally not that rough with women.”

  Suddenly, a smile crept across her face, and she croaked out, “That’s too bad.”

  “Nikki? Nikki! Are you awake?” I said, standing up, as if I was in the presence of a miracle. I had never been around a person as they regained consciousness-or around someone who lost it, for that matter-but it had the feeling of rebirth. She coughed and opened her eyes.

  “I actually woke up when the doctor was still in here,” she said in a stronger voice. “But you guys didn’t notice. And then I just sort of felt like resting for a while.”

  “So you, uhh, heard everything I said just now, huh?”

  “It’s fine. I’m glad you liked my dress.”

  I felt my face getting red.

  “And sorry you lost your job,” she continued. “You don’t have to feel bad about that. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Yeah, about all that rebound stuff…”

  “Don’t worry about it. It was just a first date.”

  “And some date it’s been,” I said, gesturing to the surroundings. “I want you to know, I don’t take just any babe to a classy joint like this.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes again. I took her hand and let her relax for a while.


  “Nancy’s funeral is this morning,” she said, her eyelids still shut.

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “I want to go.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best idea. In any event, I don’t think they’re going to let you out of here.”

  Her eyelids opened, and she fixed those two lovely green eyes on me.

  “Can you go for me? Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

  I patted her hand and assured her I would. It seemed to be the least I could do.

  * * *

  I fetched the nurse, who did the necessary poking, prodding, and assessing, then left us in peace. Mostly, I just hung around as Nikki dozed. I might have caught a small nap myself, bringing my evening’s sleep to a grand total of perhaps three hours. Then I had to go home and ready myself for a funeral.

  When I returned to my house in daylight, it was difficult to tell what might have happened there the night before. I expected the SUV would have left deep, vivid tracks. But it had been so dry and the ground was so hard, it was difficult to make out where it had been. The trampling of my lawn and shrubbery was more from the EMTs than anything else.

  Upon entering my front door, I was greeted by Deadline, who had not been affected by the previous evening’s folderol, except for one important disruption to his daily routine: he hadn’t gotten his morning kibble. And he was rather frantic about this. He took one glance at me, walking in the front door, then ran to his food bowl in the kitchen. When he realized I wasn’t getting the hint, he came back and looked up at me, impatiently, as I thumbed through some mail. Then he dashed to the kitchen, because clearly I would fall in line and follow this time. He returned again, his anguish so pronounced-why doesn’t this moron take the hint? — that I finally walked toward the kitchen to remedy the situation.