No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Get out of the building. Call someone! Seek help.

  Turn on the light and see … It’s nothing.

  Go for the gun, then turn on the light.

  Her gun was in her purse, and her purse was on the table by the front door.

  Indecision plagued her. She despised herself for just sitting there—a policewoman frozen in fear.

  She crouched, held her breath, and switched on the lamp. She didn’t look toward the source of that noise first, she looked toward her purse.

  She processed more information: A few steps to get there: A few added milliseconds to flick the safety off and load one into the chamber. From the moment she made her move, to having a functional weapon in hand, perhaps five seconds. An eternity if someone is inside this house.

  A lifetime?

  A good cop could not afford indecision. And if that was the only measure of a good cop, then she was not a good cop. Indecision had provided her with a four-inch scar across her throat. She hated that scar, not only for its appearance, but because she wore it like a flag. Indecision.

  At this point, all she wanted was to prove herself wrong: That squeak had been nothing. She wanted a hot shower, a warmed-up dinner, and a glass of Pine Ridge on the deck. After that, a good book, with every door and window locked tight. Tomorrow, a security system, courtesy of Kenny Fowler. Her feet felt nailed to the pine planks.

  The light, which had been on perhaps two seconds, went out. She grabbed for it and threw the switch. Nothing!

  Silence! she thought. Not even the refrigerator was running. The power was out!

  The board squeaked again.

  She moved fast: two quick, bounding steps. She planted her forehead smack into the center post and went down hard and fast. Head swimming. Nauseated and dizzy. She imagined dinosaurs in a tar pit struggling to get out, sinking deeper. Black and gooey. She didn’t know how much time had passed, if any. She struggled to her feet and clawed her way over to the gun.

  She announced in a slurred voice, “I’m armed. I have a weapon! Go away now!” Training. Arms sagging with the weight of the gun, her head swimming. “Go away now,” she mumbled. She fell to one knee and struggled back up to standing, feeling a thousand pounds heavier. Her head complained with the slightest movement. She inched her way forward, her right toe feeling in front of her. “Go away now,” she repeated in an unconvincing voice that sounded to her like someone else talking.

  Her left hand searched out the flashlight that she kept in the kitchen drawer with the knives. She plunged her hand inside the drawer. “Shit!” she said as she caught a knife blade on the tip of her finger and yanked her hand out quickly, instinctively delivering the cut to her lips and sucking on it.

  She switched on the flashlight, its beam a white tunnel splashing a large circle on the walls. But her vision was all wrong.

  Sweating heavily, heart beating furiously, she staggered uncertainly out of the galley and pivoted left, bracing for a shot. No one.

  Slowly, she lowered the intense beam of light until it illuminated the warped plank responsible for the bird chirps. She gasped as she saw beads of water catching the light like jewels. This was not her imagination. Someone was inside.

  Assess the situation! She had a 50 percent chance. The intruder could be to her left, hiding in the head, or to her right, down the small hall, about to go out the back door. She hadn’t heard the back door open or close, and although it wasn’t a terribly noisy door—might have been opened and closed without her knowledge, the intruder gone—she didn’t believe this.

  Think! But she could not.

  “I’m armed,” she repeated, this time more strongly, her strength returning.

  She leapt ahead, spun completely around, and slapped her back into the corner—the head now to her right, the back door nearly straight in front of her. No silhouette. She shined the flashlight there. No one.

  Hiding in one of the closets? Or is he gone? Did he get out without me hearing?

  She summoned her courage, maintaining a firm but awkward grip jointly on both the gun and flashlight. She spun to her right, first aiming into the head—nothing!—and then, in self-defense, spinning fully around and covering the closets. The quick motions drove her to the edge of vomiting.

  The intruder made contact from behind—pushed her hard. She screamed loudly as she lost her balance.

  Her furtive glance into the head had been too quick. He must have been standing in the tub, she realized, as she struck the opposing wall face-first. She heard two heavy steps, the back door come open, and then two more footsteps. In her mind’s eye she could see the intruder leaping to the next platform, the adjacent house, then, no doubt, the next after that, and the next. Too fast to be stopped. In the shadows, too dark to be seen.

  She clambered back to her feet and surged forward and out the back door, handling the gun with great care. She knew she had lost him, but her training and her nerves required her to determine the area was clear. She made no attempt to try to follow or catch up. Her intention was self-defense. The area was clear: There was enough ambient light here to see. She reentered the house, shut and locked the back door, and hurried to the front door, which was still locked.

  She found the flashlight, shook it several times, but it did not respond. Dark.

  Trembling, her heart now running away from her—slipping into shock—she came around the corner, found a chair that offered her back against a solid wall, her eyes on the front door, the back door down the short hall to her right, and she dragged the phone toward her by its cord.

  Twenty minutes later she unlocked the door for Boldt as she heard him running down the dock.

  Shining a flashlight on her, he said, “Jesus!”

  Daphne said, “The fuse box is inside the closet by the back door. I wasn’t about to go back there.”

  A moment later Boldt called out, “Do you have enough coats?”

  It made her laugh. Made her feel better. So did the light coming on.

  The refrigerator growled back into operation. A digital clock on the microwave blinked CLOCK at her.

  Boldt came around the corner wearing her faux leopard-skin hat. “Salvation Army time, if you ask me.” Daphne laughed. It hurt her head. He noticed her wince. “Gotta get you some pictures taken,” he said, meaning X rays.

  “I’d rather have a glass of wine.”

  He poured her one. He said, “I’m not going to harp on it, but I do think you should have that looked at.”

  “Maybe later, okay?”

  “It’s your call.”

  “You must make a nice husband,” she said. She did not mean anything more than to give out a compliment, but the comment made Boldt uncomfortable anyway. It made him think of Liz and Miles at home, where he had left them with barely any explanation. It made him think of Owen Adler. Then he looked at her forehead again and said, “Did he get anything?”

  “Haven’t looked,” she said. She locked eyes with him and stated, “It isn’t your standard breaking and entering.”

  “Not when they pick a cop’s house, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t mean like that.” She tried the wine. It tasted good. She drank some more.

  “Then how do you mean it?”

  “I’m being followed—stalked—I don’t know … Someone’s out there.” Another sip. “That someone was in here, I’m sure of it.”

  He did not argue; he did not question. He went to work. For Boldt it was sometimes the only thing he knew.

  Boldt conducted a thorough search of the house. Daphne was a compulsively neat person, so he assumed it would not be difficult to spot a burglar’s handiwork. The bedroom was tidy; the galley, he had already seen. He checked the bathroom—the head—and the back hall and closets. Daphne sat all the while, a bag of ice pressed against her forehead, the wine in the glass getting lower.

  His second time through the house, gloves on, he opened drawers, checked shelves and closets. He had not done any robbery/burglary work in years, but i
t came to him naturally: He had searched too many homicide crime scenes to count.

  The third time through the residence, he concentrated on minutiae—looking for smudges on the glass of doors and windows, crawling hands and knees across floors, alert for everything from bodily discharge to spilled change or a receipt—or even pet hair (Daphne did not own a pet). If she were being stalked by a parolee, it meant one kind of danger; if it was someone attracted to her looks, another entirely. For reasons that went mostly unexplained, Washington State and the greater Seattle area in particular attracted more than an average share of what the papers called “psychos.” Daphne and her colleagues used different terms. But to Boldt it all boiled down to the same thing: sick people, often violent, often targeting women; and when they snapped, their crimes were among the most heinous.

  It was during this third inspection that Boldt discovered the charred electrical outlet in the head and the small drops of water next to the sink. Without telling her, he checked the toilet thoroughly, as well as the shower/tub stall in case the stalker had used these. Masturbation was often the last step prior to the acting out of whatever violent act was planned.

  When Boldt had completed his search, he pulled up a chair alongside Daphne’s and said, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  She chuckled nervously. “You sound like me: That’s how I often get a therapy session going.”

  He waited her out. He knew she had to be terribly afraid no matter what exterior she presented. After a difficult silence she encouraged him, “Why don’t you go first? Please.”

  “Your visitor knew your schedule well enough to enter while you were on your run.” She looked good—too good—in the tight jog bra/halter top and shorts, but he said nothing. They could deal with what she could do defensively later; a baggy T-shirt and running pants was a place to start. “You cut your run short,” he said.

  This comment snapped her head toward him. “How did you know that?” she asked incredulously.

  “To put it bluntly? If he had meant to harm you, to assault you, then I think he would have tried. We both know that you can hear a person approaching. Right? He was already in the bathroom. Where are you going to head after a run?” he asked rhetorically. “So all he had to do was wait. You’re not going to carry a weapon with you on the way to the shower. But he wanted out. See? That’s why after your description I thought it was a burglary. Maybe a well-planned one. It would fit with your feeling of being watched. He determines your schedule, times your run, and breaks in after a few days of sizing you up. But you surprise him by cutting your run short. When you open the front door, he freezes. Then he decides to get the hell out of there.”

  “The door moved,” she interrupted, remembering. “The front door.”

  “Moved closed,” he told her.

  “Yes. But how—”

  “In a place this small and relatively tight, when one door opens, it moves air. It moves doors, or a curtain in a window.”

  “I think I knew that instinctively; when it moved, I was scared. I locked it immediately.”

  “He was trying to get out, but he looked back—his eyes were more adjusted than yours—”

  “There’s a night-light in the head.”

  “There you go. He looks back—he’s left something next to the sink. He doesn’t want you to find it.

  “He didn’t move after that. He stood very still, just inside the back door, which explains the small puddle of water. If you had come looking, he would have been out of there in a flash. But if he could pull it off, whatever he had left was worth going back for. I think we can be quite sure of that.”

  “But I didn’t come looking. I tried to find a light that worked.”

  “Exactly. And so he seized the opportunity. He stepped back into the house and you heard him.”

  “I hate this guy.” She crossed her arms, fighting a chill.

  “As you tried to find a light, the intruder crossed back into the bathroom.”

  “I heard the floorboard.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I turned on the light.”

  “You can imagine his panic. But he’s a fast thinker. There’s a basket of bobby pins and whatnot on the bathroom counter. He’s wearing gloves. We know he’s wearing gloves because he takes the bobby pin, spreads it, reaches around the corner into the hall, and puts the bobby pin into the live wall socket. He’s lucky. This is a small house and he shorts out all the downstairs outlets, including the light you turned on. The place goes dark again. Again, he makes for the door.”

  “I hear him and I run.” She felt suddenly colder. Perhaps it was not the sweat. Boldt’s descriptions enabled her to visualize the intruder. She felt violated. She felt lucky to be sitting here drinking wine.

  “But he hears you smack into that beam, fall over the chair. He hesitates—just an instant—unsure what to do. You’re too fast for him. Suddenly you’ve got a gun. It’s doubtful he has one. The law views breaking and entering without a weapon so much more leniently. But in any case, he didn’t come here to be shot, or to shoot you. Things are definitely looking bad. And now here you come, shouting your warnings, as you said you did, and he’s in trouble—a cornered rat … and all that. But the point is—” He caught himself. “Are you okay?”

  “You’re a little too good at this,” she said. “It wasn’t you, was it?” She forced a smile but winced with the pain it caused her.

  “Well, you know the rest.”

  She stood out of her chair and faced Boldt, arms crossed.

  He knew that same look in Liz. “Need a hug?”

  She nodded.

  He wrapped his big arms around her and pulled her tightly to him unreservedly, unashamed, unconnected to their past and that evening when they had done this without clothes. She did not want to cry. She returned the hug, and buried her face. Her hair smelled like sweat. A boat motored slowly across the lake. She thanked him.

  He said softly, “Why don’t you point me toward a newspaper? You get yourself showered and dressed. Let’s get you settled. Okay?”

  “I’d like that. But I hate to take your time.”

  “After that, we need to talk some more.” She nodded. “Do you want to report this? Officially, I mean? I don’t want to discourage that. You have every right—”

  “No, Lou. No thanks. I’ve been there. You’re asking, do I want to stay up until two in the morning? Do I want to answer a hundred questions I’d rather not? Do I want to make a huge scene, all in order to never catch this guy? I don’t think so.”

  “Still, it’s not right of me to discourage you.”

  “I can do that all by myself.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. I’m a big girl now. But if you would stay. Have you eaten?”

  “We eat early. Miles,” he explained.

  “Right.”

  “I’d like to use the phone if it’s all right.”

  She nodded. She went upstairs and he heard her undressing and he thought maybe he should go. But he did not. A few minutes later she descended the ladder stairs with an unavoidable amount of leg showing, and headed straight to the shower without comment.

  Boldt sat with her as she ate warmed-up leftovers and drank another glass of wine.

  She glanced up at him occasionally and smiled through her eyes while chewing. “I feel kind of silly,” she said. “You sure you won’t have something?”

  “Tell me, if you’re ready. I’d like to hear.”

  She set her fork down, took some more wine, and nodded. He saw that she was going to have a bruise on her forehead, though maybe not too bad, and if she kept up the ice as she was, the lump might not be there in the morning. Sitting this close to her, both on stools at the galley’s food bar, he could see the dozens of flecks of gold and red in her otherwise brown eyes—magical sparks that seemed to increase in candlepower with her enthusiasm. She had a ferocious amount of energy, of reserve power that at times seemed boundless. She stepped him t
hrough her experience leading up to the monorail ride. It took Boldt some getting used to that the planetarium meeting had taken place only yesterday; if he had been told a week, he might have believed it. She also described how she had lost the man in the crafts fair. She told him about the blue car she had seen what seemed like one too many times. And then she confessed her general state of paranoia over the last few days. “I don’t know that a man can understand it,” she said. “Women come to feel when they are being gawked at. It is something society condones: men undressing women with their eyes. Call it a zipless fuck. Whatever the term, when you’re on the receiving end from the age of twelve or thirteen on, you develop a real sense for it—at least I have. The thing of it is, I feel as if the person can see what’s underneath the clothing. Does that make sense? I feel violated. More than once I’ve felt like just ripping my shirt open and getting it over with. The fifth floor is the worst. Present company excluded, I find cops the worst—and I’m surrounded by them. But the point is, I know when someone like Michael Striker is looking down my blouse.

  “And that’s the way I have felt for the last three or four days. Just like that. As if someone has a pair of binoculars trained on me. As if someone is in the room with me when I’m undressing—when I’m in the shower—all the time. Like I’m being stalked. That’s the only way I know how to explain it. Someone back there. Someone creepy. Someone all over me, like an oil you can’t wash off.

  “And then the car, and yesterday morning, and now this … I know it looks like a burglary, Lou. Especially from a male point of view. But I don’t think so. I can’t tell you what. I can’t tell you why. I wish to hell I could tell you who, but someone’s out there and he’s got my name written all over him”—her voice cracked—“and I want it over with.” Her eyes were pooled. She pushed her plate away, her appetite ruined.

  Boldt felt responsible. In a strange way he even felt responsible for what was happening to her.