“He wouldn’t be here this early,” I said, trying to convince myself. I had that same creepy feeling of being watched, but there was nothing we could do about it. I hoisted the yoga bag from the backseat before handing Sarah the keys and reminding her to park as close as she could to the entrance of the subdivision. Then I ran from the car to the small strip of shadowed land separating two houses.
Hidden from view, I rested for a moment, turning back to watch Sarah drive off before looking ahead to assess how to get across the no-man’s-land of open ground with the least exposure. The plan had been for me to enter the house from the back because the blackmailer, we assumed, would enter, like Julie, from the front. It made sense in theory, but now, confronted with the reality, it seemed like a foolish idea. I’d be totally exposed. There were no trees, no other vegetation or buildings to shield me from anyone who happened to look in the right direction. Julie didn’t think anyone had actually moved into any of the houses yet, but we couldn’t be sure and accessing the house by cutting through the backyards made it hard to pretend I was a prospective buyer. But it was too late to choose another option.
Shifting the bag on my shoulder, I started across the dirt yard, the bat bumping painfully against my back, my feet stumbling over the hard, uneven ground, my labored breathing loud in my ears. I ran straight to the house, up two steps and across the low wooden deck, yanking open the back door that Julie said she’d leave open, jerking to a stop only once I was inside.
I closed the door, leaning against it and breathing hard, looking out through the small glass panes to see if I could spot anybody, but there was no one. I turned around and examined the kitchen where I stood, hesitating to move because of the sudden thought that the blackmailer might have had the same idea and might already be hiding there, waiting until Julie came with the money. Flinging a hand over my mouth, I tried to stifle my breathing as I waited, listening. No sound other than my own thrumming pulse. I took the bag from my shoulder and clutched it in my hand, walking quickly and quietly through the house.
The house was pretty basic inside, too—pre-finished wood floors throughout with granite tile countertops and stock cabinets in the kitchen and baths. There were gaping holes where the kitchen stove and fridge should be, and some rooms still had naked lightbulbs instead of light fixtures. Julie was supposed to place the duffel bag in front of the empty living room hearth, and when the blackmailer bent to take it, my plan was to come out from hiding, whack him with the bat, and grab his phone.
“Hit him hard,” Sarah had said. “We can’t let him get away this time.”
“Aim high,” Julie added. “Hit him in the head or the chest.”
“And then what?” I’d asked. “Are we going to dig a hole out there and bury him in the subdivision? Or will we make this murder look like a carjacking, too?”
Julie didn’t answer, avoiding my gaze, but Heather said defensively, “It’s him or us.”
The awful truth was that I knew she was right. We had no more money to give this person, but we couldn’t risk ignoring him either. The police were snooping around, suspicious of Heather and Julie; all they needed was proof. And they were suspicious of me, too. They’d already been to my house once. The photographs were more than enough to bring charges against all of us.
“Just bring him down and get the phone,” Sarah said. “We’ll worry about the rest of it later.”
And I’d agreed to this plan because there seemed to be no other way.
Now was not the time to back out, not while standing in the house where the blackmailer would soon arrive to claim the money. I looked around, searching for a hiding space. There was a coat closet in the front hall, just off the room with the fireplace, and I stepped inside it, pulling the hollow door closed.
It was dark, so much darker than I thought it would be, and musty. I could hear hangers softly pinging against one another, but when I reached up to silence them there was only empty space. Memories assailed me. Another closet, another time. I always hid in the closet, crouching in the back, my hands covering my ears. It also had one of those hollow-core doors, because the house was “cheaply built and not worth a shit!” I can hear him complaining, proving his point by kicking through some drywall in the living room. He has knocked the door into the master bedroom completely off its hinges. This time because he’s been locked out. “Don’t you fucking do that again!” He’s proud of the damage that I’m ashamed of, pointing to it with pride. “There’s proof.” “But he’s not talking about his violence, he’s talking about the house being poorly made, a “crappy little Cracker Jack box.”
I pushed open the door, gasping for air and light. I couldn’t hide in there, it was too much. Pressing a hand against my head as if to physically suppress the memories, I hurriedly looked for another spot. The builders hadn’t finished the space behind the stairs. There was no door like the closet, but it was cloaked in shadows. I crept into it, crouching so I wouldn’t smack my head against the rough wood, breathing in the scent of sawdust. I made sure my phone was on silent and unzipped the bag, lifting out the bat. The end of a nail scratched the back of my hand and I sucked at the wound, tasting blood. There was light streaming in through the windows in the living room—I could glimpse dust motes dancing in it—but it was cold in the house. Didn’t they have to keep the heat on to stop pipes from bursting? I could see my own breath. Where was Julie? She’d said she’d text when she arrived, but there was nothing. I checked my phone once and then again. A minute lasted an hour.
Footsteps outside startled me. I sat up, banging my head against the stairs above me, and dropped back down into a crouch, suppressing a cry of pain as I checked my phone. She hadn’t sent a text. I heard the squeak of a door opening and then footsteps inside. I moved forward, about to pop out to see her, when all at once I realized it wasn’t Julie. The noise came from the back of the house and there was a strong, unfamiliar scent—an aftershave or cologne smell overlaid by cigarette smoke. When I heard the footsteps again I realized they were heavy. So the blackmailer was a man. Was it someone we knew? I heard the whine of another door and realized he’d opened the coat closet. Thank God I hadn’t hidden in there. The footsteps continued on into the living room, and the light shifted as he stepped in front of a window. I stayed as still as I could, barely breathing, waiting until I heard him walk out of the room. Then the footsteps were right above me and I shielded my face from the sudden shower of dust as he climbed the stairs to the second floor.
The blackmailer had come early, too. How had he known the back door would be open? Had he seen us circling the subdivision? Watched me running through the backyards? I gripped the bat more tightly and swallowed hard. Where the hell was Julie? Just as I was about to give up, her text appeared: Just pulled in.
It seemed like an eternity before I heard a new set of footsteps outside and a key turning in the lock. I heard Julie cough after she crossed the living room floor and I knew that she’d placed the money in the hearth. I held my breath, waiting, until her footsteps came back across the polished hardwood and out the front door.
And then I was alone with the blackmailer. I could feel his presence in the house, but there was no noise, not a sound. What was he waiting for? Time passed, painfully slow. My back hurt from being so tensely coiled and my head ached. I strained to hear the slightest movement from upstairs, but there was nothing beyond the sound of my own nervous swallow. Had he heard that? Could he hear me breathing? I thought I’d go mad.
At last, finally, footsteps echoed above me before descending the stairs. My hands felt slick against the grip on the bat and I wiped them off on my coat. The heavy footsteps crossed the living room, heading for the hearth. Clutching the bat with one hand, I inched out from below the stairs, moving soundlessly forward until I could stand upright.
A tall man stood with his back to me, bending over the fireplace. This was it. Hit him with the bat, hit him hard. I took a silent step forward, raising the bat high just as he stood up
right, duffel bag in hand, his back still to me. I had a perfect aim, either against his head or in that spot between his shoulders, but as I prepared to swing I flashed to a memory of other hands raised and more than ready to inflict a beating. Could I really do this? Could I bash him? It was a split-second hesitation, but the man turned and saw me and the opportunity was gone. He ran for the front door and I leapt forward to grab him, but his leather jacket slipped from my fingers. I chased after him as he went out the door and sprang down the front steps, running across the front yard with the duffel bag tucked under his arm. And then Sarah was there, chasing him with me as he ran across the neighboring yard and the one next to that, my lungs burning as we tried to catch him. He dashed between two houses, disappearing from view, and I pursued him, Sarah right behind me, both of us turning the corner in time to see him jump on a motorcycle he’d hidden down a driveway. We raced toward him, but the engine roared to life, and the bike leapt forward, wobbling dangerously as he swerved around us, the bag tucked against his lap. Sarah grabbed the bat from my hand, hurling it after him. It fell short, clanking harmlessly against the street as the motorcycle sped away.
chapter thirty-six
ALISON
“How the hell did you let him go?” Sarah cried, grabbing the bat again only to hurl it at the ground in frustration. She paced the street, both hands on her head, while I stood there panting and defeated, feeling as shitty as it was possible to feel. I’d failed. I’d failed, and when he saw that we’d cheated him out of the money, this guy would take the photos to the cops and they would show up at my house to arrest me.
I remembered when my father was taken away, the sounds of the handcuffs snapping around his wrists, his bitter protests that it wasn’t my fault, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. I imagined saying this to Lucy and Matthew, calling out to them as I was ushered into the back of a squad car.
A car roared up the street toward us. Julie screeched to a halt and jumped out, hopeful and twitching with excitement. “Did you get it? Did you get the phone?”
“She let him get away—she didn’t even hit him.” Sarah was angry and scornful.
“What?” Julie looked at her then back at me. “What do you mean, you didn’t hit him?” I didn’t answer and I saw her take in the bat lying abandoned where Sarah had thrown it. “What happened, Alison? Why?”
“He saw me—there wasn’t time.” But there had been time, there’d been those few seconds that seemed to last forever when I could have cracked the bat across the back of his head. It had been long enough for me to see that his black hair was shiny and damp, to notice the tattoo on the base of his neck, a detailed crucifix with a tiny hanging Christ. It had been long enough for me to flash back to another arm raised, to the whoosh the shovel made as it swung so fast through the air there was no time to react. It had been long enough for me to remember the horror as it connected, slicing through skin like a paring knife through a peach, the blood oozing like juice, dripping down the face, rolling over the chin.
There was no point in explaining this to Julie or Sarah; it didn’t change anything. I started to weep then, sinking to the ground, resting my head in my grimy hands and sobbing. Julie and Sarah thought it was about my failure to stop the blackmailer—I could hear them talking about what to do—but the tears were about so much more.
“Look, it’ll be okay,” Julie said after a while, patting my shoulder. An ineffectual gesture, but I appreciated the effort. “Here, take this.” She shoved some tissues into my hands. I swiped at my face, sniffling and struggling to regain some self-control.
“I got part of the license number,” Sarah said. “And the make—it’s a Harley-Davidson.” She scribbled it down on a piece of a paper that Julie fetched from her purse. I felt ashamed. Here I’d wondered if Sarah was fit to be there, and she’d done her job better than I had mine. Except where was my car?
“It’s parked where I dropped you off,” she said when I asked. “I figured you might have trouble so I doubled back and crept around the side of the neighboring house.”
“Is there some way to look up who the bike’s registered to?” Julie asked as I slowly stood up, my body aching as if I’d run for miles. “Do we know anyone at the DMV?”
“They wouldn’t give us that information,” Sarah said. “It’s not allowed. But maybe we could hack into their site?” She looked at me.
I shrugged, wincing as my shoulders protested. “I could try, but it’s risky and would probably take a while.”
Julie glanced at her watch. “We have to hurry—I’m sure he’s figured out by now that he doesn’t have twenty thousand dollars.”
Another way to get the information suddenly occurred to me. “I’ll ask my brother to look it up,” I blurted, so eager to make up for my failure that I didn’t add that I couldn’t promise he’d help me.
“It’s probably too late anyway,” Julie said. “The guy could have driven straight from here to the police.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He obviously wants more money and he’s not going to get that from the police.”
“But by now he knows we screwed him over,” Julie said. “He’s got to be pissed off about that.”
“Maybe, but if we dangle the possibility of the money there’s a chance he’ll bite.” I pulled out my phone and looked at the blackmailer’s last message. “What if we send another text and offer him the cash?”
“Why would he believe that?” Sarah said. “He’s got the fake bills—he knows we lied to him.”
“Greed,” I replied. “It’s worth a shot—what do we have to lose?” I typed quickly and held it up for them to see before sending it: Do you want what you asked for?
We took wet wipes from Julie’s glove compartment and wiped down the house’s front and back doorknobs and brushed away any visible footprints. I retrieved the yoga bag from under the steps and loaded the bat back into it.
There was no response to the text, not in five minutes or in ten, taking away the last bit of hope that I was struggling to keep afloat. Julie drove Sarah home, ostensibly so I could make the call to my brother before the kids got off the school bus, but I imagined them spending the ride complaining about how I’d screwed us all over because I was too weak to take down the asshole who wanted to rob us blind.
As I waited for Sean to pick up, I berated myself for my failure to get the blackmailer’s phone, even as part of me wanted to tell my brother that maybe he was wrong—that there was a line that some people wouldn’t cross. That even the right circumstances didn’t mean people always made the wrong choice.
“Hey, what’s up?” My brother’s cheerful greeting made me well up again, but I blinked the tears back, careful to keep my voice equally light.
“Hi. I’ve got a quick favor. You have access to vehicle registrations, right? Could you look up a license number for me—I’ve got most of it—and see who owns this Harley-Davidson?”
“Look, Alison, we’re not supposed to do that,” he said, sounding uncomfortable. “That information isn’t public.”
“I know, it’s a big favor, but what’s the point of having an older brother who’s a police officer if you can’t ask him to help you out?” I forced a little laugh.
He didn’t sound amused. “I can help you with a parking ticket, Ali, but this is different. Why do you want to know this anyway?”
I knew Sean would ask that and I’d played through several different scenarios before calling him. At first I’d thought of telling him that a guy on that particular motorcycle had cut me off in traffic, but Sean would ask the Sewickley police to give the guy a warning or, worse, he’d want to look into it himself, and neither of these would involve giving me the guy’s name or address. I could tell him that the motorcycle owner was a Good Samaritan who’d helped me change a flat tire, and I’d forgotten to get his contact info so I could send him a thank-you. But he’d probably ask why I hadn’t just called AAA or Michael.
“He had a FOR SALE sign on his motor
cycle,” I said, “but I didn’t get the phone number and I didn’t have the time to follow him in traffic until I could get it.”
“You’re going to buy a motorcycle?” It wasn’t easy to shock Sean, but I’d achieved it.
I switched lanes, passing an old man crawling along, keeping an eye on the time. The school bus would be arriving in less than ten minutes. “I’m just thinking about it, for Michael, for his birthday. He’s turning forty, you know—”
“And he wants a bike? Wow, I’m surprised you’re okay with that.”
“I’m not sure I am, it probably won’t happen, but I’m looking.”
“Have you looked on Craigslist? I bet he listed it there. And there are plenty of bikes for sale online.”
“I checked online before calling you, but I couldn’t find it,” I lied easily, pulling onto the street where the bus arrived and taking my place at the back of the cars already queued up. One of the other mothers waved as I passed and I lifted my own hand in response. The bus would be there soon—I needed to get off the phone before the kids got in the car. “I really wanted to take a look at that bike. Please, Sean.”
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll do it, but you can’t tell him—or anyone—how you got the information. Agreed?”
“Yes, definitely. Thank you so much, Sean, I really appreciate it,” I said, just as the bus came chugging up the hill.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Just hold on a second.” He put the phone down and I switched off the car and balanced my phone against my ear as I dug around in the glove compartment for a pen and something to write on. I found an old envelope as the bus wheezed to a stop and the door opened, the children clambering out, running to their mothers or the nannies sent to get them, chirping about their day like newly hatched chicks. I got out of the car, surprised to slip a little, weak-kneed with fatigue and relief. Lucy stepped off the bus, deeply engrossed in conversation with a friend. She nodded at me, holding up one finger in a perfect imitation of her mother staving off an interruption from her or her brother. Matthew came off a few kids after her, standing on the top step and looking around nervously before he spotted me and stepped down. My heart squeezed with the usual anxiety.
Just Between Us Page 29
