Don't Turn Around

by Hunter Morgan

  Casey slid her bare feet to the floor and stepped into her slippers. “Come on, Dad, let’s go back to bed.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Freckles. I told you there’s someone out there.” He shuffled toward the door.

  Freckles was Jayne. He had called her that when Casey and Jayne were kids because Jayne had a sprinkle of freckles on the end of her cute little nose. Casey had no freckles. Casey had never been the pretty sister. Not the smart one, either, in her father’s eyes.

  “You saw someone where?” In the hall, she led him toward the stairs, surprised he had dared to climb them. When he first moved in, Casey had intended on putting him in the guest room on the second floor, but he had been afraid of the stairs and when she had coaxed him up them, he’d been wobbly on his feet. In the end, she’d given him and the dog the roomy master bedroom suite and she now slept upstairs, where there was a bathroom down the hall.

  “Outside, Freckles.” Standing at the top of the stairs, Ed studied her face. “Did you see him?”

  “You weren’t outside, were you?” She started down the steps in front of him. Frazier bounded ahead of them both. “Please tell me you weren’t outside, Dad. I took Frazier out before I went to bed.”

  “Not outside.” He halted on the stairs, looking down at her. “In the window.”

  “Someone was looking in the window?” Her heart gave a trip. It was totally irrational, yet the first person she thought of was Charles Gaitlin. “Was he an average-height man, Daddy, with thin hair brushed over like this?” She gestured.

  Ed shuffled down the steps. “Hurricane season. Already up to Henry. Monitoring it off the coast of Cuba.”

  At the bottom of the staircase, she grabbed her father’s shoulders, facing him, making him look at her. “Dad, this is important. Was there a man looking in the window? What did he look like?”

  He thought for a minute, his eyes glazing over, then refocusing on her face again. “Been through a couple of hurricanes in my day. Remember Hazel?”

  The dog trotted back and forth in the living room, waiting for them. He didn’t seem nervous. Frazier was usually a good watchdog. He barked at delivery men, the garbage truck, and any child who strayed to the front lawn chasing a ball. He usually warned Casey when Ed was straying from the yard, as well.

  Ed turned away from her and shuffled toward the short hall that led to his bedroom. Frazier took the lead. Casey followed them. The light was on beside the bed. The TV was on and the accordion shades were still lowered. She had closed them herself when they returned from Jayne’s. There was no way her father could have seen anyone through the shades, and he didn’t have the dexterity to raise them and then lower them himself without making a telltale mess.

  “Sit down, Dad. Take off your slippers. You need to use the bathroom?”

  “I’m not a child,” Ed mumbled, kicking off his leather slippers and sliding his bony feet beneath the comforter.

  She turned out the light.

  “Dark,” he said.

  “Shhh. I just want to have a look.”

  She crossed the room, located the string on the nearest window shade, and raised the shade. The front lawn was well lit by the street lamp near her driveway. She could see as perfectly as if it were midday. All was quiet on the street. No lights shone in any of the neighbors’ windows. The red maple she’d planted in the front yard bent and whipped in the wind.

  “Dad. There’s no one there.” After checking to be sure her father hadn’t been playing with the locks on the windows, she lowered the shade and walked back to his bedside.

  He leaned in one direction and then the other as she cut in front of his TV. There was a commercial on for a prescription sleeping aid. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to start medicating her father to get him to stay put at night.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. Frazier had settled on the floor near the door. “You want me to turn the TV off?” she asked.

  “Timer.” He stared straight ahead at the TV.

  He was right. She had set the timer to turn the TV off at one. He still had more than half an hour left to watch The Weather Channel.

  “Well…goodnight.” Casey left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She checked all the doors and windows downstairs again, and satisfied, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

  At the top of the staircase, she looked down, almost expecting to see someone behind her. The stairwell was empty, of course.

  She stood there, staring down the stairwell. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She was always careful about doors and windows, about lights, but she wasn’t paranoid anymore. Not like she had been once.

  Ed listened to the sound of Casey’s footsteps on the staircase. He rolled onto his side, his gaze drifting to the TV. The young girl doing the forecast was pregnant. He could see her big belly under her red shirt, even though the cameraman was trying to avoid a belly shot. But he just couldn’t get Galveston in on the map without her belly. Tornados in Galveston.

  Ed had once read a poem about Galveston. He wished he could remember it. It was silly, he knew, the idea of a poem about Galveston. But he hadn’t imagined it. He had known several lines of it. They were there, jumbled up somewhere in his head.

  Ed used to like his head, but not anymore. Not the way his thoughts flew around inside, half the time making no sense. Not to his daughters, not even to him. It was the disease, Freckles said. He didn’t care what it was; he didn’t like it.

  This wasn’t how Ed had imagined getting old would be. He had thought he would retire and live on a golf course in Palm Beach or somewhere warm like that with his wife. A couple of rounds of golf a week. Playing cards with friends on Wednesday nights. He hadn’t expected to be widowed and living with his daughter. Now his favorite pastime was watching TV. His only friend was a dog. Not that he and Frazier weren’t good friends—it just wasn’t the same.

  And Frazier didn’t play cards.

  The weather girl on TV pointed to Oklahoma. At least Ed thought it was Oklahoma. His geography wasn’t as good as it had once been.

  He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Had he really seen someone outside or had it been his imagination?

  No, it wasn’t his imagination. He’d been there. He had watched Ed. Ed had watched him. He had seemed vaguely familiar to Ed.

  But maybe the man wasn’t really watching Ed through the blinds. Maybe the man was watching The Weather Channel.

  Casey wasn’t entirely surprised by Adam’s call Monday. He said he wanted to let her know that he was serious about the Gaitlin case. That it was not over and that his office would be in touch with her concerning her statement. They chatted for five minutes about nothing in particular. She asked how his grandfather was doing. He asked about her dad.

  When a conference call came in, Adam had to excuse himself. He didn’t ask her out, but she had a feeling that the next time he called—and she knew there would be a next time—he’d offer that cup of coffee or dinner and she’d accept.

  Nine months previously, after dating for two years, Casey had broken up with the man she had thought was the one. Apparently, his other girlfriend had also thought she was the one. Since then, she’d been too busy to date, or so she told herself.

  But as she hung up from her conversation with Adam, a smile played on her lips. The idea of going out with Adam appealed to her. He was smart and warm, and she suspected he could be a lot of fun. An attorney looking toward politics, he was just the kind of man her father had always thought she should be dating. Ed would like Adam. Or at least the idea of Adam.

  Casey was still smiling when she got in line at the hospital cafeteria. Tray in hand, she leaned over the counter, checking out the soups for the day. “Chicken noodle soup or vegetarian chili. What do you recommend, Sarge?” she asked the middle-aged gentleman in the paper hat behind the counter stirring the soup with a ladle.

  “Definitely the chili,” someone behind her said.

 
She turned to see a nice-looking guy about her age. He was wearing a green corduroy blazer and he needed a haircut. He reminded her of a slightly older version of Matthew McConaughey. Definitely cute.

  “The chili?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. Had it yesterday. Homemade. Excellent. The chicken noodle here?” He frowned. “Straight out of a can. Enough MSG in it to kill you.”

  She turned back to Sarge. “I’m thinking the chili. You have whole-wheat crackers?”

  “Just for you, darlin’.” The black gentleman began to ladle a healthy portion of the chili into a plastic bowl.

  “Hey, what about me, Sarge?” McConaughey moved up beside Casey. “I asked for whole-wheat crackers yesterday and you said you didn’t have any.”

  “Yer not as pretty as Miss McDaniel here.” He winked at Casey.

  Casey laughed as she accepted the bowl, placed it on her tray, and scooped up the handful of crackers in cellophane Sarge had dropped on the counter.

  Casey paid for her soup and a bottle of water. At the condiments bar, the McConaughey look-alike set his tray down next to hers and grabbed a couple of napkins. “I can’t believe Sarge said you were better looking than I am,” he announced. “I mean, he’s right. You are.” He glanced at her. “But isn’t that prejudice of the worst kind? I’m thinking my rights have been violated here.”

  She smiled, grabbed several packets of crackers and dropped them on his tray. “There you go, wrong righted.”

  “Hey, thanks.” He had a nice smile.

  “You’re welcome.” She picked up her tray and scanned the room. It was her lucky day; her favorite table was unoccupied. She always had to fight the orthopedic docs for it.

  He followed her across the noisy cafeteria. “You eating alone?”

  “Uh-huh.” She took a table next to the window. Directly below was a parking lot, but beyond it was a tree line. Sometimes she ate lunch in her office, but sometimes, especially in the winter, she liked to sit here and look out over the woods. Most people thought a forest in winter was ugly, but she liked the look of the bare branches and flattened underbrush. She liked the idea of the promise of spring.

  “You mind if I join you?”

  She lifted one shoulder. “Um…sure.” She indicated the empty chair across from her.

  It had been longer than she could remember since someone had hit on her, and now twice in a week? Her friend Marcy, who worked in hospital administration, said it was the vibes Casey sent out that made her seem unavailable. Her vibes seemed to be working for Mr. McConaughey.

  “Casey McDaniel.” She offered her hand over the bowls of chili as he sat down.

  “Lincoln Tyndall. Nice to meet you.”

  She shook his hand. “Lincoln, wow, that’s an interesting name.”

  “Yeah, I know, but my middle name is worse. My grandmother named me.”

  “No, I like it.” She nodded thoughtfully, opening her water bottle. “It’s nice. Different, but not too strange, you know what I mean?”

  He opened a cellophane package and began to crumble the crackers onto his chili.

  “My dad likes to do that,” she remarked, pointing with her spoon. “Well, he used to.”

  He must have picked up on her wistful tone because he said, “I’m sorry. Is your dad ill? I saw your name badge and just assumed you worked here.”

  “My dad is ill”—she put down the water bottle and unwrapped her plastic spoon—“but he’s not in the hospital. I do work here.”

  He took a bite of chili, crunching the crackers. “I’m visiting my grandmother. She broke her hip. She was trying to unload a hundred-pound bag of goat food for my grandfather, who is on crutches, because he broke his ankle in the spring and is still healing from it.”

  “Oh, my.” Casey pushed a spoon of chili into her mouth, trying not to laugh.

  “It’s okay,” Lincoln assured her. “It’s pretty funny when you think about it. I laughed, too, when my grandfather called me from the ambulance.”

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  “She’s going to be fine.” He put his spoon down and wiped his mouth with the napkin from his lap. “She’s just really pissed right now because her doctor says she can’t go home yet. He told her she had to go to a rehab facility, and she thought he was suggesting she had a drug or an alcohol problem. She thought he wanted to send her to a rehab facility like the kind the Hollywood stars are always checking into.” He grabbed his drink. “Elsa’s a big E! Television fan.”

  Casey chuckled and took another bite of chili. “You’re right. It’s good.”

  “Told you.” He picked up his spoon again. “So…what do you do? You a doctor?”

  “I’m the victims’ rights advocate.”

  “Wow. I hadn’t even realized SCH had one. How progressive of them. What exactly do you do?”

  For the next forty-five minutes Casey and Lincoln talked. They bounced all around, touching on subjects ranging from child abuse to what kind of goats produced the best milk. Before Casey realized it, her lunch hour was over, and if she didn’t hurry she was going to be late to a staff meeting.

  “Gosh, I have to run,” she said, jumping up. “I’m going to be late to a meeting I can’t be late to.” She started to clean up her tray, but he rose, waving her away.

  “Let me take care of this. You go.”

  She took a step back, slipping her purse onto her shoulder. She’d had such a nice conversation with him that she hated to leave. “It was nice to talk to you, Lincoln. I hope your grandmother is feeling better.”

  “It was nice talking to you, too.” He set the tray down again, turning to her. “And thanks. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  Casey started to turn away, beginning to feel awkward. “Guess maybe I’ll see you again, sometime. Sounds like your grandparents are here a lot.”

  “Hey, wait.” He reached into his corduroy suit jacket and produced a business card. “I’m really clumsy with this whole asking-women-out-on-dates thing,” he confessed. “But if you’d like to have lunch again. Or dinner, or coffee.” He chuckled. “Anyway, here’s my card. My phone number’s there.”

  She took it.

  “I hope you don’t mind me not asking for your number. I…do it this way so I don’t have to suffer through that embarrassing moment when I call a woman to ask her on a date and it’s the Jiffy Lube number, or it is her number and she says no, or she tells me to call back and I do and then she accuses me of stalking her.”

  Casey laughed. He was funny. She liked funny. “Thanks.” She waved the card. “I really do have to go.”

  She hurried out of the busy cafeteria and down a hall, waiting until she was out of his sight to look at the plain white business card. They’d been so busy talking about goat food and soy products that she had never gotten a chance to ask him what he did for a living. She guessed architect…or maybe graphic designer. Something creative. She guessed wrong.

  He was an attorney. The second one to hit on her in the same week.

  Casey walked into her meeting smiling.

  Chapter 5

  Maury lay on his back on the bottom bunk, his arms tucked behind his head, and stared up at the way the mattress above him poked through the metal bedsprings. The wire frame produced perfect little quilted puffs of blue ticking. Like little square pillows. Or diamond pillows if he shifted his focus. The discovery delighted him. Patterns, textures delighted Maury.

  Then his roommate moved and the pattern was, at once, altered. Ruined really, because if TexMex rolled back into exactly the same position, he would never be able to distribute his weight in precisely the same way. The mattress patterns could never be reproduced perfectly. Never. The magic was gone forever.

  Maury wondered what blood would do to the pattern.

  Annoyed, he rolled over onto his side to study the pale green cinder-block wall of his jail cell. It was a decent pattern, but nowhere near as interesting as the mattress had been.

  Closing his eyes, Maury lis
tened to the sounds of the pod. Patterns, he had learned, could be audible as well as visual. Sounds were not as satisfying as images, but not so worthless as to be totally dismissed, either. He listened to the voices…of inmates, of guards. Some were low voices, some higher in pitch. Maury could identify the voice of CO Jameson at once. She was a woman. And even though she was pretty butch, her voice was still higher than the voices of her male counterparts.

  Maury heard the squeak, squeak, squeak of Corporal Tatter’s shoes. Names being called out. Mail call didn’t interest him. He had no girlfriend to write to him. No parents. Just a sister who never wrote or came to visit. Her punishment for him getting arrested and sent to jail.

  Maury never got mail except from his attorney, and he had nothing to say. Maury would be out of Sussex Correctional in less than four months, and out of this cell within days. He was moving up to work release and a taste of freedom just as soon as there was a place for him. At least semi-freedom. He had no interest in mail.

  There were other sounds in the pod. More-rhythmic sounds. Old Man Snort snoring. The guy in the end cell jacking off. The flip, flip, flip of the guy in the next cell over playing solitaire. They were nice, rhythmic noises, noises that drew steady patterns, but just not exciting. Just not as good as the mattress pillows had been.

  “Mail call!” Corporal Tatter—Bambi, other COs called him—was an ugly black man with splotches all over his face from a burn suffered as a child. Maury hated ugly, uneven patterns and he hated the name Bambi. The nickname was completely inappropriate. Bambi had had such perfect spots. The Disney animators had done an incredible job, especially for having drawn the character so many years ago, what with all the advances that must have taken place in animation over the years.

  “Maurice Pinkerton,” Bambi read aloud in a bass voice.

  Bambi always did that. He read the name exactly as it was printed on the mail. He could never just call you by your name. Better yet, pitch the delivery through the cell bars not speaking at all. But Bambi took his mail room job seriously.