The Good Neighbor

by Cathryn Grant

  “We’ve all noticed,” Freya said.

  Taylor took a step away from us. She looked upset, worried. “I’ve noticed him kind of looking around, but it’s not what you think.”

  “If you could have seen his face…” I closed my eyes. I tried to picture that kid, tried to remember the few times I’d seen him in daylight. Boys that age spend half their time watching porn. They think constantly about sex; they’re always looking at girls. Just because you don’t catch them doing it doesn’t mean they aren’t. They’re sneaky.

  “Even if he did look at her,” Taylor said. “I’m sure it was just a normal boy-girl thing.”

  “Brittany’s a little girl. He’s almost an adult. He is an adult, technically.”

  “Well, she’s not really a little girl. She’s a teenager.”

  “She’s a child. Innocent. She doesn’t think about boys at all,” I said.

  “I doubt that,” Sofia said.

  “You didn’t even know her.”

  Taylor patted my arm. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to upset you. But I think you’re on the wrong track with Luke. He might be a bit lazy, misdirected, but he’s not a creep.”

  “You can’t tell someone’s a creep just by looking at them,” I said.

  “I know him.”

  “How well, really?” I sipped my water, enjoying the bite of carbonation at the back of my throat. It felt good, made me feel alive. So did talking about the person who might have taken Brittany. We’d been too passive, waiting for the police, waiting for strangers to catch sight of her. If we were going to get our daughter back, we couldn’t just sit around hoping for the best.

  “I know his mother well.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  Taylor finished the contents of her water bottle. “I really wish you wouldn’t think like that. Luke is a decent kid, just trying to find his way.”

  “If they can ask Alan questions as if he’s done something to his own child, then I think they should be more suspicious of everyone, don’t you?”

  “They questioned all of us,” Sofia said.

  “How much?”

  “I know this is awful. It’s the worst thing imaginable, but what you’re saying is terrible. Are you thinking he has Brittany hidden inside his house? That’s crazy,” Sofia said. She moved closer to me and touched my shoulder. “I get what you’re saying though. A mother’s instinct.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what he did. I do know he was looking at her in a way that no man should look at a little girl.”

  No one spoke.

  Giving an eerie sense that she somehow knew we were talking about her, just then Nicole’s Audi pulled into the cul-de-sac, and her garage door began to open. The car stopped a few yards from the driveway. She looked at us, her face hidden behind dark glasses. Even through the car window I could see the hard set of her jaw.

  Freya folded her arms across her chest, rubbing her skin as if she’d had a chill. “I can’t even imagine. If my kids…well…All I’m saying is someone knows something. They must. She didn’t vanish into thin air.”

  I nodded.

  A few minutes later they began to drift across the street, returning to their homes to start dinner. All but Taylor.

  These people were strangers. Officer Carter and Officer Mae had spoken to them, asked questions about Brittany, but they didn’t feel it was their obligation to share any of those answers with Alan and me. Wasn’t it logical that one of them might be suspect? Most children who are abducted are taken by someone they’ve seen around, and often someone familiar. A man who chats them up on the way home from school, a guy who works as support staff at a school, or someone even closer. A coach, a teacher, a friend’s parent. A neighbor.

  All of them seemed nice enough on the surface, but most people seem nice on the surface. Even serial killers, when they’re shown on TV, have some charm and an average demeanor. No one looks like a monster. And those who do usually aren’t. It’s the ancient story of Beauty and the Beast.

  I considered Carlos and Sofia. He came across as tightly wound. Sofia was quiet and self-contained. She was devoted to her husband, although not in a subservient way. She didn’t appear to be the type who would say something if he had any disturbing habits. She was sweet, and they looked like they were still in love after raising their own children.

  Freya’s husband, Josh, was the one who found the used condom during that frantic search of the preserve. He’d been a little too wound up about the condition of the condom. He’d waved it in the air, and I had the impression that if it hadn’t been a serious and critically important search effort, he would have made a joke about it. I could see the words twitching across his lips while he waited for the police to come and chastise him for picking it up, even though he’d used a stick to do it.

  Officer Mae had had to warn him twice about not touching anything. Josh had laughed. He hadn’t been bothered that he might have compromised evidence.

  The other couple, Keith and Kelly, who lived on the corner across from Carlos and Sofia, had wandered far away from the others during the search. They’d covered the most territory. I had no solid impression of them.

  Maybe I was judging them as much as they were judging me. To them, I was the bad mother who didn’t keep her daughter safe. We were the bad parents who let her slip out of our grasp. We were new, the strangers, the unfriendly ones who hadn’t made an effort to integrate into the neighborhood. In their eyes, that meant there was something wrong with us. We were the outsiders.

  I studied my own house, getting a fresh perspective on it, seeing it in a way I never had before.

  Taylor picked up the small insulated bag where she’d stored the bottled water. “I wanted to tell you…I deleted all the messages from that crazy woman.”

  “Which one?” I laughed.

  “The one who said she thought Brittany was her daughter.”

  “Oh, good. She’s not bothering you anymore?”

  Taylor shrugged. I wanted to ask more, but she turned away. “Take care, Moira. I still believe she’s out there and she’s okay. We have to believe that.”

  Someone did know something. They had to. I looked around the street again, turning slowly to consider each house. The sun had moved lower and all the houses had a shadow cast over them now.

  24

  Taylor

  In the three days since Moira and the others had gathered in the center garden, the wonderful sense of community and support I’d sensed blossoming around me was dying once again. Nicole didn’t respond to my text messages. Moira said she wasn’t up to visitors. The others had gone back to their daily routines. Once again we were locked inside our houses, and what little communication we had took place on our phones.

  I tried to focus on work. I needed to focus. I’d missed several meetings, making excuses, but now I had to make myself visible to my clients and respond to the pile of emails asking for status updates. Some of them had a distinctly worried tone, trying to be casual while asking Are you sure we’re on track? Can you confirm that the lighting vendor gave final confirmation? When was the order placed? After several lengthy emails and a few phone calls, they were reassured, confident in my abilities.

  At five o’clock, I left my desk to turn over the chicken in the marinade. Duncan would barbecue and I was making a green salad. Discussing the dinner menu was the only exchange of words we’d had that morning. I opened a bottle of Chardonnay and poured myself a small glass.

  Sipping the wine, I went out to the courtyard to get the mail from the bin where it fell when it came through the slot beside the door. Mail had been sitting there for two days. I often forgot to get it. There was no motivation because ninety percent of it went straight to the recycling bin. No matter how I tried to remove our names from mailing lists, companies persisted in killing trees and printing glossy catalogs with products designed to make me long for something I’d never considered wanting. There were the occasional holiday and birthday cards, t
ax bills and, of course, all the promotional material around elections.

  Today there was something different.

  In the pile of advertising leaflets and a few solicitations from charitable organizations was a mustard-colored five-by-seven envelope with a metal clasp. It was addressed only to me and there was no return address. It was postmarked San Francisco. I placed the envelope on the counter, undid the clasp, and tore the flap loose.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper, a photograph of me and Duncan. It had been taken in the open space preserve the morning after we searched for evidence of Brittany and her captor. The front fender of one of the police cars was visible behind us. Neither of us was smiling. It hadn’t been posed, obviously. I wasn’t aware anyone had taken photos that day.

  A smear of something that looked very much like blood had been wiped across my throat. An eraser had been used to remove the color from my eyes, leaving stark white spots that gave my eyes the appearance of empty sockets. I looked dead.

  I let out a tiny cry and flung the envelope and photograph away from me, knocking over the vase of wildflowers in the center of the table. The glass cracked, and water spilled across the table, pouring onto the floor.

  I picked up the photograph and turned it over. In black ink it read Don’t scratch that itch too hard. It might bleed. The words sounded familiar, as if I’d heard that exact phrase before, but I couldn’t think where. Was it from a song?

  I stuffed the photograph back in the envelope, mopped up the water, and stuffed the flowers into the garbage. I put the vase in the recycling bin and the envelope in the cabinet where I stored baking supplies. Already I was planning how to hide it from Duncan.

  Although I had to tell the police, I did not have to tell him.

  After dinner, I excused myself to catch up on work. Duncan didn’t question me and added that he should probably do the same. We retreated to our separate corners: Duncan to the patio table, and me to my office, where I closed the door.

  It wasn’t completely clear to me why I was hiding more and more things from him. I should have craved his support and comfort. And I suppose that was the reason. His support had been sporadic. If he saw the threat implied by that photograph, he would insist I transfer the Facebook page to someone else and stop talking to the police unless they had specific questions for me.

  I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t stop. I had to help find Brittany. Without me, our neighbors wouldn’t be involved either. It was so important, like the future of our neighborhood depended on it. Moira and Alan were so alone. It upset me to think of them in that house every day and all night long, helpless and waiting and trying to avoid the torment brought on by their imaginations and the lack of progress.

  Duncan refused to see the importance. He was so wrong about me. He thought I was using Moira and Alan and their tragedy to bring the people on our street into closer, genuine contact. It wasn’t that at all. I saw this as something we needed to do. An imperative. If a group of people living side by side couldn’t come together for this, it meant the humanity had been drained out of us.

  Maybe it already had in all those years of isolation before the Cushings moved in, yet I felt I now had a chance to show everyone it didn’t have to be like this. That our previous way of life was hollow.

  I called Officer Carter and got her voicemail. I left a message that I hoped struck the right note between urgency and caution. I explained that I’d received something disturbing and she needed to see it first thing the following day. I hoped she wouldn’t pick up her messages and be so concerned she would show up at our house without calling first.

  At nine thirty Duncan knocked on the office door, then entered, which was our habit. I didn’t turn around. He came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. After a moment, he leaned down and kissed my neck. He stroked the space behind my left ear, then bent over me, slid his hand down the front of my shirt, and felt around for my breast.

  I shifted in my chair, though not into his searching hand. I turned to the side, making his quest more difficult.

  He pulled his hand out. “Are you coming to bed?”

  “I have a lot to do.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t move.

  “I’m kind of busy.”

  “Too busy for me?”

  “Right now, yes.” I reached back and patted his hand.

  “Is that Facebook open in the background?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you working or chatting about missing children?”

  “Working, mostly.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “This isn’t healthy.”

  “Not getting involved isn’t healthy.”

  “Quite a change. Going from the woman who thinks social media is the end of civilization to an addict who has to read every post and bask in every thumbs-up.”

  “It’s not like that. I still think it’s destructive, but that’s where people are.”

  He moved away from the desk. “I miss you.”

  I nodded.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  “Night,” I said.

  By the time I finished working and catching up with Facebook, deleting more messages from Crystal Green, the bedroom light was off. I tiptoed to the doorway of the room. I could see the outline of Duncan’s form, lying on his side, breathing deeply.

  I went into the kitchen and removed the envelope from the cabinet. I took it into the office and put it in my two-drawer file cabinet, dropping it into a folder labeled Misc. I considered taking the photograph out of the envelope and looking at it. Maybe it hadn’t been as awful, as threatening as it had become in my memory. The image of my vacant eye sockets rose in the back of my mind. Those strange words floated through my head, but they still wouldn’t come close enough for me to figure out why they were so familiar.

  Don’t scratch that itch too hard. It might bleed.

  Where had I heard that? I closed the drawer, turned out the light, and went to bed.

  Without really waking, Duncan rolled toward me, an instinct stirring in his unconscious brain to tell him I was there. I turned my back to him and curled up. I felt him against me, but he wasn’t thinking about me, about us. He just wanted sex, not a real connection. What I needed was a genuine connection of minds and souls. While I thought we’d always had that, now it seemed so far away I questioned my perception.

  In the morning, Officer Carter returned my call. After I told her about the image and the threatening words, she said she would come by to pick up the envelope and photograph. She asked me not to touch it anymore.

  When she saw it, she didn’t say anything about the image. She reminded me of the online crazies.

  “This person has seen me. He knows where I live. Or she. I suppose it could be a she.”

  “We’ll do some testing to see if we can get anything off the envelope or the image, but unless the sender has fingerprints on file, it won’t be that useful.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Keep your doors and windows locked. Be alert to your surroundings. Usually someone who does this sort of thing is more likely getting a kick from scaring you.”

  “But they saw me. They were right there, at the search. It’s probably someone I know!”

  She nodded. “It’s disturbing, and I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. We’ll do what we can.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “You could ask one of your neighbors to take over managing the Facebook page.”

  “I don’t want this guy to win. To think it’s so easy to upset me.”

  “I don’t think it’s a bona fide death threat. Do you want me to ask someone to take ownership of the page?”

  “No. People are used to me as the moderator. I don’t want to lose momentum.”

  “Okay. Your call.”

  “I guess this means I touched a nerve. I just wish I knew what caused it.”

  “Just be careful
. Keep your radar up. And thank you for doing this.”

  “That’s all? I mean, I’m not going to let it scare me away, but…”

  She glanced around the doorway and looked up at the eaves of the garage. “Do you have a surveillance camera?”

  “We just got one. We’re installing it this weekend.”

  “It’s a good idea for anyone. They’re inexpensive enough.”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you shut down the page for a few days and think about what you want to do?” she suggested.

  “But what if—”

  “None of the reports have been valid. If you’re more comfortable, a few days won’t hurt anything. I don’t want you feeling like you’re putting yourself at risk.”

  While I said I’d think about it, it seemed like going in the wrong direction.

  Officer Carter left with the photograph. Nothing she’d said lessened my fear. Although I was far more scared than I had been with the first threat, I couldn’t give up. The Cushings needed me. This might mean the person who had taken Brittany was nervous. Maybe they were getting ready to make a mistake that would expose their identity. The thought filled me with a thrill that eased my fear, slightly.

  I deactivated the Find Brittany page. I needed time to think. I hated that whoever was threatening me would consider me weak. It was a victory for them and a defeat for doing everything possible, no matter how unfruitful, to find Brittany. If nothing else, it would give me relief from Crystal’s constant flood of messages.

  I sat on the back patio with a glass of sparkling water, letting the cold liquid make its way through my overheated body.

  The words on the back of the photograph echoed in my mind, a shout inside my head.

  Don’t scratch that itch too hard. It might bleed.

  Then, as if the cold water had cleared sweat out of my brain, I remembered.

  It was Luke.

  The night Brittany went missing. When Moira and I were in the gazebo and he was wildly unconcerned about Brittany, he’d spoken that odd-sounding phrase. I’d pressed him about whether he’d seen any strange cars or people lurking, and he’d smirked and told us not to scratch too hard. At the time, I thought he was high. I assumed they were words from some song I’d never heard of. Maybe they were.