Edited Out

by E. J. Copperman

  Rod’s house sat there. It’s what houses do.

  Then my worst nightmare came true.

  A woman walked out of the house on the corner, the one whose shrubbery was serving as my cover, and looked over in my direction. “What are you doing there?” she called fairly loudly. “Who are you?”

  I remember when people would see a stranger nearby and ask if there was anything they could do to help. Those days are gone. It’s possible I was imagining them.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said in a stage whisper. “I’m just standing here.”

  “Is this drugs?” the woman bleated. “Are you buying drugs?”

  “No, ma’am. There’s no one else here. I’m just standing outside on a nice night.” I looked over at Rod’s house. It was maintaining its insistence on embodying the opposite of activity. For once I was grateful for that.

  “Well, stand outside somewhere else!” she shouted. “This is private property! Get out of here, or I’ll call the police!”

  Thanks, lady.

  I gave up my position just to get the volume level on the street to subside. I didn’t see any neighbors looking through windows or opening doors, which was helpful. I just nodded at the woman and walked off her property and toward my car, which I’d parked a block away. Normally, I would have surveilled Rod’s house from the Prius c, but his street allowed parking only on the side on which his house stood, and it was parked up. Putting my car in his driveway seemed just a little obvious for the task at hand.

  The woman watched me as I walked away, then shook her head with derision and stomped back into her house.

  I didn’t go all the way back to the car, though. I figured if Rod’s house was just going to sit there, I didn’t necessarily need a prime vantage point. There were trees on the street that might obstruct my view from certain angles, but if I leaned next to one of the trees on my side of the street, Rod would only see me if he knew he was being watched. And if he knew that, my effort had already failed.

  The phone buzzed again, and I looked at it. The text was from Ben. Louise staying in the house but moving around a lot. Movement in the house. I wondered what that looked like.

  I texted back, Rod’s house is a house. I figured that was an evocative summation of my experience so far. I didn’t get into the whole writing biz for nothing, you know.

  Duffy texted nothing, undoubtedly to prove to us that he was disciplined and we were not. For a guy who based his life on fact and deduction, he could be as petty as a twelve-year-old girl when he felt like it.

  So Ben pushed his buttons and texted, Duffy check in.

  Seconds later came, Roger. I’m sure Duffy would have preferred something even more terse, like Rog, but he went with convention and acknowledged Ben’s request. Lord, the man could be a pain sometimes. I wondered why I’d created him in the first place.

  Then one of the lights went out in Rod’s bedroom, or at least the front room on the second floor. I walked a couple of trees closer. I checked my phone for another text from Duffy, but nothing more came in. I texted back: Anything happening?

  There was no answer. I tried to do the right thing and just wait, assuming Duffy was in the middle of something and didn’t want his phone to make a noise right now. I waited for much longer than I wanted to, which was probably about five minutes. Then I waited a little bit more, but each minute felt like an hour.

  Nothing happened. Then everything happened at once.

  My phone buzzed with a new text from Ben: Louise on the move. Getting in her car. Heading south.

  And then I heard a gunshot reverberate through Rod’s house.

  I hadn’t seen a flash of light, but I had been looking down at my phone and not at the house when the shot rang out. I texted to the group: Shots fired at Rod’s house. Technically, it had been one shot, but you never hear cops say that in the movies: “Shot fired!” It didn’t have the same dramatic oomph that way.

  When my phone buzzed after that, it was a call, not a text, from Ben. “Gunshots?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It was actually one gunshot. I’m across the street. I just heard it; I didn’t see it. I can get closer.”

  “No!” Ben sounded like he wanted to jump through the phone. “Don’t go near the house. Do you hear anything else? People yelling? More shots? Anything like that?”

  “No, outside of that, it’s been quiet,” I said. That sounded stupid. “A couple of people have stuck their heads out of their front doors to look, but they don’t seem especially worried. Maybe Rod takes target practice in his house every night.”

  “Call the PDP,” Ben said. “Report the shots. I’m going to head that way right now.”

  It took me a moment, I’ll confess, to realize the PDP was the Poughkeepsie Police Department. I write for a living; don’t judge. “You’re on foot,” I told Ben, although I could be relatively sure he knew he wasn’t in a motor vehicle at the moment. “It’ll take you a while.”

  “Well, I can’t do much good here,” he answered. “Louise took off in her car, and I don’t run that fast. Now call the cops and wait for me. Don’t move, Rachel.” And he hung up before I could argue, which was just as well because I had no intention of contesting his point. I did wish he’d said it in a slightly less condescending let-the-men-handle-it-little-lady way, but you can’t have everything. He was right that I should stay there and call the police. I could have suggested he get an Uber, but he’d probably think of that anyway.

  I was about to dial the cops when I realized Duffy had not responded to my text about the gunshot. That was very odd; it was the kind of thing Duffy would usually leap at. He loved solving crimes, and there was little doubt he’d find the idea of a discharged firearm in the home of one of our suspects irresistible.

  And yet he’d resisted. My stomach clenched a little, and I noticed the damp chill in the air all of a sudden. I didn’t like it.

  If there was nothing wrong, Duffy would be annoyed with me for calling, I mused. But we’d been texting, and that didn’t seem to bother him too much. I decided to try that again and sent: Duffy? Respond please.

  A minute went by. Two. I know because I kept checking my watch, and it was moving much slower than usual, it seemed. Time passed, and no reply from Duffy.

  That guy was going to drive me crazy. Maybe I already was crazy, and everything that had happened to me since he called my house the first time was a hallucination. There was something strangely comforting in the thought.

  I called his cell phone and got sent directly to voice mail. That wasn’t good. It was very, very not good.

  Maybe I should call Ben. I texted him: Duffy’s not answering.

  No immediate answer from Ben. What was I supposed to be doing? Right. Calling the cops.

  But it was weird that there had been one gunshot and then nothing. You’d—or at least I’d—expect other noises from the place. I definitely wasn’t going into Rod’s house, but I could certainly get closer. Just to hear.

  I had taken exactly two steps when the phone buzzed. Ben: Probably turned off his phone. That was sensible. Ben was on his way. I’d just cross the street to see if there was anything else to hear and report back to him when he got here. And I’d call the cops as soon as I knew if there were moans or other scary sounds.

  This was not something I’d refrain from having a character do; I was not taking an unnecessary chance. I could see the house, so I’d know if anyone came out. I wouldn’t get close, not even inside the front walk. I’d learned my lesson about venturing where I shouldn’t.

  See, I have this policy about not looking for trouble. Even when I was trying to help Ben and Duffy catch a serial killer, I did my very best to avoid danger. The fact that it ended up with me coming very close to being the killer’s next victim was irrelevant. In that argument. Clearly, I would have preferred not to have been in that situation.

  Maybe that wasn’t a good example.

  Anyway, I approached the house very carefully a
nd slowly. I had my phone up next to my ear despite not actually being on a call. Years of spending evenings in New York City had taught me how to be a less attractive target for people who might be looking for targets. I didn’t say anything into the phone, but I did nod now and again to give the impression I was listening to someone.

  I thought about calling my father, but the explanation alone would have lasted until after Ben got to me. It might have lasted until the sun came back up the next morning.

  Nothing seemed to be going on in the house. There was no sound coming from the windows, and the front ones were open. There was no visible movement. Lights stayed on where they were on and off where they were off. It was almost like nobody was home, but I’d heard the gunshot. Unless it was part of a suicide attempt on Rod’s part, there had to be someone inside, and alive.

  The cops. Right. I wasn’t going inside, so I wasn’t going to learn anything else. It was time to summon the people whose job it was to figure this stuff out, or at least to haul the body away.

  Crime writers. We’re like everyone else, only we constantly think there’s a dead body, or should be, in every location.

  Just to cover myself for the unseen, nonexistent audience I was imagining, I said, “Okay, talk to you later,” into my phone and then brought it down away from my ear. I pulled up the keypad and had punched the “9” of “9-1-1” when I heard a sound behind me.

  I wasn’t sure what it was, but when I started to turn my head, I heard a voice I only vaguely recognized say, “Don’t turn around.”

  That’s never good.

  But that was no reason to think things couldn’t get worse. Not a moment later, I felt a pressure in the left side of my lower back, the side away from the street, where it was less likely to be seen by any neighbor still curious enough to be watching through the front door or the living room window. A hard, round pressure right around the location of my kidney.

  The barrel of a pistol.

  Chapter 29

  The semifamiliar voice, which was not Rod’s, was speaking in low tones, so it was more difficult to get a read on the speaker. “That’s good. Just keep looking forward and give me your phone.”

  Give him my phone? This guy wasn’t just a dangerous person with a gun in his hand; he was completely insane. Asking a Jersey girl to hand over her phone is tantamount to asking a Texan to stop wearing a large belt buckle or a Canadian to admit that baseball is a better game than hockey. It’s just not going to happen.

  “No,” I said in a conversational, bland tone. “You can shoot me in the street, but I’m keeping my phone. What if I get a text on the way to the hospital?”

  “If I shoot you, you’re not going to make it to the hospital,” the man said, just as casually and just as calmly. That made it scarier somehow. “Now give me your phone.”

  Okay, so I’d give him my phone. After I pressed “1-1,” something I was hoping I had done without looking at the touch screen.

  Apparently my aim was off because the phone made a rude noise, and the guy snatched it out of my hand with his right. He was holding the gun in his left hand. I wondered if that was significant.

  Mostly I was pissed off at myself. I hadn’t done anything wrong, no too-stupid-to-live move that I’d have avoided at all costs in one of my books. Yeah, I could have called the cops earlier, but would they be here by now? Probably not. What if Sgt. Phil Dougherty was leading the charge? That wouldn’t have helped.

  No, I’d played it smart, and I still had a gun in my back. Life ain’t fair.

  “Feel better?” the guy behind me asked. “You didn’t have to give me the phone; I just took it.”

  “Yeah, I hope that makes it into my obituary.” Maybe I shouldn’t have given him any ideas, but I doubted the pistol in my back meant he just wanted to get to know me better as a person. My snarky side comes out whenever my life is threatened. “So you can sneak up on a girl on a dark street. Is this how you shot Michelle Testaverde?” Guns, Poughkeepsie . . . it seemed a pretty decent bet I was dealing with Michelle’s killer. If I was a gambler, I would have bet heavily on that assumption.

  “I didn’t shoot Michelle,” the guy said. “I loved Michelle.” Now you know why I’m not a gambler.

  “So who did?” I asked. If I was going to get shot, the least the guy could do was answer my questions.

  “Walk toward the house,” he said. Apparently he didn’t want to do the least he could do. The cad.

  “Why? So you can shoot me there? I don’t think I want to help you.”

  “Do it, because if you don’t, I’m going to shoot you here, and if you do, maybe I won’t shoot you at all.”

  Finally, a reasonable argument. I started walking toward the house.

  “Slowly,” said the guy with the gun. He didn’t want the pistol visible. That left it open to me to decide whether I wanted to obey his command and probably get shot in the house or take a chance and almost certainly get shot on the street.

  This was not like deciding whether Duffy Madison the character should be driving a Honda or a Hyundai, and that choice took me three days to make. (He ended up driving a Prius c because that was the car I knew best.)

  In the end, I just walked to the damn house. It wasn’t even really a conscious decision so much as it was a reaction to my primal fear of getting shot. If I could put it off even for a minute, that was worth doing.

  “Nice and slow,” the guy said. It wasn’t a warning, just a reminder. But the way he said it made me want to bolt for the door at top speed just to thwart his wishes.

  I was getting a little irritated, in case you hadn’t caught that bit of subtlety just yet.

  We got to the front door of Rod Wilkerson’s house about an hour later, it felt like. Once at the threshold, however, we stopped, and the guy behind me didn’t say anything. I wondered whether I should knock. I mean, who wants to barge in on somebody and get shot in the back at the same time?

  “What?” the guy finally said.

  “What do you mean, what?” I wasn’t giving him any ideas. If he wanted to turn back now and forget the whole thing, it would certainly be all right with me. You grab on to somewhat unlikely scenarios when you’re desperate.

  “Open the door.” Like it was obvious that was what I should do.

  I figured that meant I didn’t need to ring the doorbell, so I reached for the doorknob and turned it. The door swung open into the house. I really didn’t want to look, having heard that gunshot only a few minutes before. (Really? That wasn’t three days ago?)

  But all that was inside the house was furniture. The same furniture I’d seen when we’d interviewed Rod twice before, once with Duffy and once with Ben. No bloodstains on the rug. No corpse on the couch. The TV wasn’t even on.

  “Where’s Rod?” I asked.

  “Go in.” I didn’t see how that was helpful.

  Inside, without the ambient noise of the street, the gun guy’s voice was just a bit more familiar. I knew I’d heard it recently but couldn’t place it exactly. Did it have something to do with these two murders? That seemed fairly obvious. But it definitely wasn’t Rod, and it certainly wasn’t Walt Kendig. I’d spoken to Sgt. Dougherty only briefly a couple of days ago, but somehow the back of my brain was telling me that wasn’t his voice. Should I turn around and look?

  I followed his instructions and walked into the room, then sort of felt the movement of his right foot pushing the door closed behind us. The gun never left that spot on my back.

  Now I was exactly where I wouldn’t want a character to be, inside and out of sight of the street with a ruthless killer (or maybe a ruthful killer; what did I know?) holding a deadly weapon to my back. I think it was the unfairness of it all that overwhelmed me. If I was going to get killed, at the very least I was going to know who killed me. It was small comfort, but you set the bar pretty low under such circumstances.

  I took two steps into the room at a faster pace than I’d been using, which meant I actually broke physical conta
ct with the barrel of the gun. Then I spun around to face my assailant.

  And found myself looking into Barry Spader’s eyes.

  Honest to goodness, I actually said, “What the—” and stared.

  “That wasn’t smart,” Barry snarled at me. “You’ve seen my face.”

  I managed to regain the power of speech. “Yeah, like you weren’t going to shoot me anyway. But you’re in Arlington, Virginia! How’d you get here so fast?”

  “Take three steps back,” he said, gesturing with the pistol.

  That didn’t sound good. “Why?” I asked. My voice wasn’t nearly as defiant as I’d hoped it would be.

  “Because I’m not going to shoot you right now unless you make me, and I want you in the center of the room where I know there won’t be any surprises.” Okay, that was fair. I took the three steps back and avoided a side table by inches. It was the part about not shooting me now that made me feel better about being compliant.

  “Arlington, Virginia,” I reminded Barry.

  His mouth flattened into an expression of utter contempt. “I was never in Arlington,” he said. “I was never in any of those places they thought I’d gone. I left this town, and I lived in the city for a few years.”

  The city. “Manhattan?” I said. If I could keep him talking for just a few minutes, Ben would get here, figure out I was in the house, and possibly even prevent me from getting shot. That would be good.

  Barry nodded. “I had a nice place on the Upper East Side,” he said. “Selling the bar gave me enough for a big down payment, and the mortgage wasn’t too bad. It’s the co-op fees that really get you.”

  Maybe that was why he’d come to Rod Wilkerson’s house—to discuss real estate. “I know,” I agreed. “Prices in the city are out of control.” Why not? If I could find common ground, agree with Barry on a thing or two, the whole shooting thing could become less certain. It was hard to think of much else, especially since the pistol was still pointed at my midsection.

  “But I saw you in Arlington on my laptop only a few hours ago,” I said.