Have You Seen Me?

by Kate White

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “You don’t envision us being friends?”

  I don’t. I sort of tried it once before, in my last months at Greenbacks, and there was nothing rewarding about it. Besides, at the moment I can’t envision anything except the next couple hours of my life.

  “No, it’s not possible. Sorry, I need to go. Thanks again for calling.”

  I tap the red button and hurry downstairs, trying not to dwell on the conversation. The living room is in total darkness, and the only illumination in the den comes from a small table lamp and the dying embers in the fireplace. What earlier seemed so comforting now feels gloomy, almost foreboding. It’s as if the house has shape-shifted, like a woodland fairy morphing into a she-wolf.

  “Rog?” I call. No answer.

  I ease open the door to the dining room to discover that it’s dark as well, but I see light seeping from beneath the kitchen door at the far end.

  I cross the room and swing it open. And Roger’s there, lifting a roasting pan from the oven.

  “Were you calling me?” he asks. “Sorry, the exhaust fan makes such a racket.”

  “Want me to set the table?”

  “Sure, I thought we’d eat in here since it’s cheerier.”

  The meal turns out to be simple but delicious—chicken breasts that Roger’s roasted with fennel and herbes de Provence, green beans, a Bibb lettuce salad, and fresh bread. We leave any talk of Hugh, Marion, murder, fugue states, and financial setbacks behind and speak about local politics, my upcoming book, and anecdotes from our dad’s stay in San Diego that Quinn has been better at sharing with Roger than with me. Whether it’s from the switch in topics or the crisp white wine, or both, my stomach unknots.

  As we’re loading the dishwasher, I start to tense up again and decide I have no choice but to spoil the mood. There’s something I need to know.

  “Rog, the other day Hugh asked me a question I couldn’t answer, and I realized you might be the only person who could, besides Dad. Are you aware of any time in my childhood or past when I might have ended up in a dissociative state? Perhaps not as long as the one I experienced recently but some period when I lost track of myself?”

  “What? No, certainly not. At least not that I witnessed or heard about.”

  “And not—back then . . . around the time I found Jaycee?”

  “Um . . . no. No one ever mentioned anything like that to me.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “Only because the question caught me off guard. Why would Hugh suggest that?”

  I smile ruefully. “Maybe he’s trying to determine how much of a nutjob he married.”

  Later, I make an attempt to read in the den while Roger disappears upstairs to his office for a while. Hugh calls at about nine to say good night and I keep it brief, too exhausted to play at sounding normal. Shortly afterward, my brother returns and joins me on the couch with an art book, but he seems distracted now, flipping pages without lighting on them. When I glance up, I see that he’s staring off into space, his head slightly cocked, and I half expect him to ask, Did you hear that? But he doesn’t. A minute later he announces he’s turning in, but I’m welcome to hold down the fort in the den.

  “No, I should call it a night, too,” I say. “Thanks for a lovely evening, Roger.”

  “My pleasure, Button.”

  I follow him upstairs and soon crawl into bed. Somehow, I manage to drift off to sleep pretty quickly. But when I awake with a start, I see that it’s ten past eleven, and I’ve been asleep for only a few minutes. I lie on my back beneath the covers as my mind churns with now-familiar thoughts of Hugh in his towel, Hugh lying, Hugh and Ashley. And then Mulroney, dead perhaps because of me. The large dimensions of the guest room, with its soaring ceilings, don’t help to put me at ease. But finally, perhaps from sheer mental exhaustion, I finally nod off again.

  And then once more I jolt awake. The bedside clock now reads 3:12. At first, I assume my internal agitation has roused me, but as I shift onto my back, I see a faint light shimmering outside the two windows looking onto the side yard.

  I scoot up in bed. Am I seeing car headlights from the road, the beams on high? But it doesn’t diminish as quickly as those would.

  I toss off the duvet, slip out of bed, and cross the room toward the window. Halfway there, I notice a fiery red bleeding into the yellow glow, and as I reach the sill, I gasp in shock. One side of the garden shed that sits near the edge of the property is engulfed in flames. Smoke is billowing up toward the treetops.

  I stuff my feet into flats and race down the hallway toward Roger’s room. Pounding on his door elicits no response, so I shove it open. From the dim light of the hall I can see that his bed is empty. God, where is he?

  I notice there’s light emanating from the base of the stairwell and rush down the wide steps into the center hall, pivot, and tear to the rear of the house. The chain’s off the door. I swing it open and spill into the night.

  “Roger?” I scream, staggering onto the gravel drive. I can hear the fire crackling from the side yard. “Roger?”

  I’m about to round the building to find him when a force whacks me hard from behind. My knees buckle, the wind knocked out of me.

  I try to right myself, but something comes out of nowhere and slams into my throat. It’s an arm in a jacket, I realize. A man’s arm. Panic explodes through my limbs. The grip tightens and he starts to yank me backward. Somehow I manage to struggle, clawing behind me. For a split second, I touch something scratchy on either his head or face.

  I make an attempt to scream, but he reaches up, clamps a hand on my mouth. His feet keeping moving, though. When squirming doesn’t free me, I kick at his shins. For a split second he freezes, still gripping me at a slant. Then, with his free hand, he punches the side of my face with the force of a battering ram.

  The shock from the pain makes me crumble, but he hoists me up and keeps dragging. I dig my shoes into the dirt, trying to slow our momentum. One flies off, then the other. My feet are bare now, and stones and tree roots tear at the skin. We’re descending, I realize. Down the front lawn of the house as it drops to the river.

  Finally, he stops. I hear his arms fall by his side and I make an attempt to bolt. “Roger,” I scream, but it comes out as a tiny squeak.

  An arm shoots out and this time I’m yanked backward by the neck of my pajama top. The movement makes me spin a little in place and I finally see his figure. His face is obscured by a ski mask.

  “Help,” I scream, louder this time. “Help!”

  Another punch to my face, and my cheek erupts in pain. He grabs me again with both arms and hauls me through the dirt and grass. Only a foot or so away I can hear the river water lapping against the banks.

  And then I understand.

  He’s going to drown me.

  29

  I try once more to fight him off, but it’s useless. He drives me to my knees, then grabs a wad of my hair in his fist and plunges my head into the river. The feel of the ice-cold water is like an electric shock and my heart nearly stops.

  I hold my breath, trying desperately not to inhale. Flailing behind me with my free arm, I make contact only with air.

  I’m going to die, I realize. Right here, right now.

  Then, even through the river water, I hear it—thwack. And a second later, the hold on me miraculously loosens. I tear my head from the river, retching. Propping myself on my elbows, I slide backward and gulp for as much air as I can.

  Behind me there’s the sound of footsteps, shoes scuffing in the dirt. Still on my knees, I turn to see the man in the ski mask a yard or so away. He’s on the ground now, but trying to stagger to his feet.

  In the glow from a security light I spot Roger a few feet beyond, legs wide and both hands grasping the oar of a canoe. He takes aim at the assailant and swings the oar, delivering a blow so powerful, I hear wood crack. Or maybe bone. It’s the second blow, I realize. The man teeters f
or a few moments and finally collapses, faceup on the ground.

  “Ally, are you okay?” Roger calls out, racing toward me.

  “Uh, I think so,” I say, though my cheek is throbbing and I’m shivering like crazy. I struggle to a standing position, noticing that the top of my pajamas is sopping wet.

  Roger reaches my side and wraps his free arm around me.

  “We need to get you inside, but first I have to tie him up.”

  He passes me the oar and hurries toward the nearby dock.

  “Can I help?” I call out, my teeth chattering.

  “Just stand guard, okay?”

  I glance back at my attacker, making sure he’s not moving. His chest rises and falls a little, so I know he’s breathing. I can see he’s six feet or more, on the stocky side. There was no way I could have fought him off on my own.

  “What about the fire?” I call out, looking back toward Roger.

  “I put it out already.”

  He unwinds a length of rope from a post on the dock and then returns to my side. Crouching down, he binds the man’s ankles together, then yanks the rope a couple of times to make sure the knot is tight. I watch, weirdly detached, as if the experience is happening to someone else. Next, Roger tugs the guy’s arms upward, overhead, and starts to secure his wrists together.

  “Do you think . . . do you think he might have followed me from the city?” I ask, almost in a whisper. “Or knew I was going to be here?”

  “What are you saying? That this might be the guy who killed the private eye?”

  “Right. Can we take off the ski mask?”

  He hesitates and then shakes his head. “Better to let the cops do that.”

  He finishes the knot with a jerk. After rising, he steps toward me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder again. I toss the oar to the ground and let him lead me up the embankment. The skin on the soles of my feet is raw from being dragged, and every step hurts.

  “The river side door’s locked, so we need to go in by the kitchen,” Roger says.

  We hurry along the perimeter of the house, and though we’re on the opposite side from the garden shed, the air reeks with the smell of wet, smoldering wood. The kitchen door, I notice, is still open. Roger ushers me inside and double-locks the door behind us. It’s chilly in the house from the door being ajar. Dark, too. Roger flicks on extra lights besides the one in the hall.

  “You need warm clothes,” he says. “Can you manage on your own while I call the cops from the kitchen?”

  “Yes, I’ll be fine . . .” Emotion overwhelms me and I choke back tears. “Roger, you saved my life. He was going to kill me.”

  “Oh, Button,” he says, enveloping me into a hug. “It was terrifying to see him shoving your head down like that. I—” His voice breaks and I realize he’s as shaken as I am. “I’ll meet you in the den in a minute, okay?”

  As Roger enters the kitchen, I head up the back stairs to my room. I change into the sweater and jeans I’d worn that day and dig a pair of socks out of my roller bag. My feet hurt too much for shoes, so I don’t bother. The shivering, I notice, has eased but not fully subsided.

  It’s only when I’m in the en suite bathroom, grabbing a towel for my hair, that I’m afforded a look at my face for the first time. The right side is bright red and starting to swell, as if it’s being inflated with a tire pump. I gingerly rest a finger on my cheek. The skin feels incredibly sore, but my cheekbone doesn’t seem to be broken.

  Before heading downstairs, I sit for a minute on the edge of the bed, trying to get a grip. Is the man tied up on the riverbank really the same person who killed Mulroney, who possibly shoved me into traffic? If so, what could I have seen or done that compelled him to hunt me down? And how did he know my whereabouts?

  I return to the ground floor but stop in the kitchen first, grabbing a bag of pearl onions from the freezer and resting it carefully against my cheek. Roger’s in the den as promised, now in corduroy slacks and a sweater, and standing by a freshly lit fire.

  “Come here,” he says, extending an arm. “I can tell you’re still shivering.”

  “You called 911?”

  “Yeah, and I assume they’ll send an ambulance, too, since I said the assailant was injured. They— Oh my god, your face.”

  “I know. It’s blooming like a flower in a time-lapse video.”

  “Should we call an ambulance for you as well?”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary.” I inch closer to the hearth and savor the warmth of its flames. “From what I can tell, it’s mostly swelling.”

  “What in the world happened? Did he grab you from your room?”

  I shake my head and quickly rehash the series of events—seeing the flames from my window, racing outside, being attacked from behind and then dragged to the water.

  “And what about you?” I ask when I finish. “You must have been putting the fire out when I came outside.”

  “Yup. I’d cracked my bedroom window, thank goodness, and so the smell woke me. I knew it wasn’t in the house or else the smoke detectors would have gone off, so I ran outside and took the hose to the shed. I was mainly trying to contain the flames until I could grab a phone and call 911, but within a couple of minutes, I’d managed to put it out. When I started toward the house, I spotted one of your shoes in the side yard and I panicked and went looking for you. I was lucky the oar was on the dock because I’m not sure I would have been a match for him otherwise.”

  “Do you think he set the fire as a diversion?”

  “Yeah, probably. Maybe to flush us out of the house so he didn’t have to break in.”

  Our conversation is cut short by the faint sound of car tires crunching on gravel. It must be the police.

  “I’ll go to meet with them,” Roger says, turning to leave. “You stay warm.”

  A minute later I hear the murmur of voices and the slam of a door. I slip out of the den and tiptoe on stinging feet to the living room, where I position myself by one of the tall windows facing the river. A minute later, I see the outlines of Roger and two uniformed cops, one male, one female, making their way across the lawn and down the embankment. Still shivering a little, I return to the hearth in the den. Before long I hear another vehicle approaching, accompanied by the whoop of an ambulance.

  I try to stay in the present, to focus on the scent of woodsmoke and the crackle of the fire, but my thoughts keep being ripped back to the terror of having my head forced into the water, sure I was about to die.

  The ambulance departs, with its siren wailing now. At least two more vehicles come up the driveway almost simultaneously, and shortly afterward, I spot the outlines of three people tramping along the side yard on their way to the riverbank. I’m still by the fire ten minutes later when footsteps approach the den and Roger bursts through the doorway, looking stricken.

  “I’ve got news,” he says. “But we need to talk quickly.”

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “More cops have arrived,” he says, taking two steps into the room. “And Nowak’s on the way. They’ll want to interview us separately.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “Yes. Not someone from New York. It’s Frank Wargo.”

  “Omigod.”

  “I didn’t recognize him when they pulled the mask off, but they took out his wallet, and it’s him.”

  “So he’s been in the area after all.” I press my hands to my head, my thoughts racing. “He wanted me dead—which means he must be the one who killed Jaycee. And he found out I’d gone to the police.”

  “It looks that way. Of course, he might also have been protecting the mother.”

  “Has he come to yet?”

  “He stirred a bit when they were loading him into the ambulance. I suspect he has a concussion from the blow to his head.”

  “God, how did he know I’d talked to the cops? And that I was here tonight?”

  His face darkens further. He shakes his head, but I sense there’s somethi
ng he’s not saying.

  “Do you know, Rog?” I ask, my voice almost hoarse.

  “No, no. I’m just wondering if he saw you that day in town, going into the police station.”

  “Maybe.” I bite my thumb, trying to think if I’d noticed anyone who might have recognized me, but the town had seemed pretty empty that day. “Or someone told him. And it definitely might have been Wargo who shoved me into the street in the city. . . . But he can’t be the one who killed Mulroney. What would the motive be? And how would he have even known I’d hired him?”

  Before we can hash it out anymore, a uniformed female officer appears in the doorway next to Roger.

  “Ms. Linden?” she says. “I’m Officer Bruin and I’d like to take your statement now.”

  “Of course.”

  But she’s barely gotten the words out when Chief Nowak, wearing a hip-length leather coat, comes up behind her and my brother. He greets both of us and then turns to the officer.

  “Luanne, why don’t I take Ms. Linden’s statement. You can handle Mr. Linden’s. Roger, is there another room I can use?”

  He suggests the dining room and the two of them trot off, my brother looking utterly weary.

  “You’ve had a pretty harrowing evening,” Nowak says, his voice warm. The sympathetic tone is wasted on me because I saw how little good it did me the other day.

  “It was pretty scary, yes.”

  “Your brother said you don’t want medical treatment, but I’ll have to have my deputy photograph your injuries before we leave tonight. For now, can you take me through everything that happened, right from the beginning?”

  I do my best. It was all so fast, it takes only a few minutes to recount. I also mention the incident in the city and pose the idea that it might be related to the attack here. As I wrap up, I allow myself a moment of perverse satisfaction, thinking that if tonight was clearly an attempt to silence me because of what I know about Jaycee’s death, at least Corbet will stop eyeing me suspiciously.

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through all this,” Nowak says. “I take it you’ve heard that your assailant appears to be Frank Wargo.”