The Pretty Woman Who Lived Next Door

by Preston Pairo

So now, Vance supposed, she was not just pretending to be a teacher’s aide to keep an eye on Miles Peterson, but was Elfin Arnold’s personal investigator? And to what end? What business was it of theirs what happened in Florida?

  What Vance failed to appreciate was that Arnold Baylor, stuck in near anonymity in the county law office with “green lighting” no better than the florescent tubes it had replaced, craved the idea of being a hero.

  That after first glossing over Miles Peterson’s arrival to the school district he represented, Arnold now saw this kid as a means to put himself in the spotlight, which he envisioned—at long last—as opening the door to private practice, a big pay raise, and a support staff of paralegals far prettier and more appreciative of smart, glib men like himself than the government workers he was currently burdened with—all those women out there whose time as public employees he often joked could be measured by how much wider their asses grew with each passing year, like the rings on the trunk of a tree.

  Arnold may not have had sufficient notice to keep Miles Peterson from starting Kensington High, but what if he could find a way to get him thrown out? And what if he could utilize the Board of Education’s recently enacted Student Code of Safety, Standards, and Behavior—which he had played a major part in creating—as a way to do it?

  The SCSSB provided that student acts that occurred off school premises could serve as grounds for expulsion, and specifically stated that the outcome of court proceedings related to those activities had no bearing. In other words, just because some prosecutor in Florida dropped criminal charges against Miles Peterson didn’t mean the Board of Education’s disciplinary panel couldn’t make its own independent evaluation of those same facts to determine if Miles’ presence was “contrary to the overall safety and wellbeing of the general student population”—a phrase Arnold prided himself on having drafted.

  4.

  “What do you think?” Jennifer Gaines turned a graceful circle on the sidewalk outside the Georgetown Starbucks, wearing different clothes now than when she’d told Miles to wait for her fifteen minutes ago. “Remember that woman last week?” Jennifer spun again, modeling her just-purchased outfit. “That woman with the beautiful dark hair…? She has a shop down the street and imports an entire line of dresses like this.” Jennifer’s latest funky fashion purchase was a flowing maxi dress with a bandeau top of pink and orange checks, and hibiscus-print skirt of the same colors. “Do you like?” she asked, certain that he did.

  Miles smiled, seated in the same positioned as she’d left him, leaning back, legs outstretched, soaking up what was left of the afternoon sun as if storing warmth for what would be the first winter of his life in a place where it snowed.

  “I think it’s amazing.” Jennifer swooshed the skirt, then settled back into the chair close alongside Miles, and kissed him.

  It was their first physical contact since last Friday’s prolonged embrace against that sunny brick wall, which Miles had ended with a pleasant smile that was almost an apology when his erection became obvious, and Jennifer had replied with an, “Mm-hmm,” that was neither scolding nor encouraging. She liked Miles, but hadn’t known him long enough to decide just how much she liked him, even if that thought flew against all the hook-up stuff her friends talked about—half of them rightfully scared by what it would mean once they got to college where that slutty culture was supposedly rampant.

  Jennifer had been unsure—and a little disappointed—when Miles hadn’t called or texted her last weekend. And once back at school four days ago, he’d acted as if they’d never had that moment at all. And she’d thought, Okay, well, we can be friends. But as the week had gone on, she’d sensed an urge in him, or maybe in herself, and wondered if he was leaving it to her how they were going to be, not just when it was the two of them, but when they were around her friends—who were beginning to accept him but remained wary, the way most everyone, even teachers, seemed to be.

  Although perhaps wary wasn’t the right term. It was more as if they were all so aware of Miles, similar to when Jennifer was a freshman and the pitcher on the school’s baseball team had been drafted by a professional team and got two million dollars, and suddenly every single person in the building seemed in awe of him.

  Still, she and Miles hadn’t spent that much time together. They were in the same trig class, had the same free period and hung out in the media center, and he’d been eating lunch with her and her group, and only Autee had said anything to Jennifer about him, commenting in private, “I see the way you look at him.” And when Jennifer had pretended not to know what that meant, Autee had whisper-laughed into her ear, “Like you want to do him.”

  Most of Jennifer’s friends, like Jennifer, were no longer virgins, but sex remained a little awkward and risky and clumsy, and sometimes painful, done more for the experience than the pleasure, and certainly not for love. Autee, whose father owned a successful chain of transmission shops, referred to it as “grinding the gears,” an automotive reference meaning they were working on shifting from having sex to enjoying sex, which sometimes seemed like a bit of a leap.

  Jennifer’s sex experience—meaning intercourse—involved two guys, both of whom had been good-looking, but dull and ultimately tended to hold beer-drinking in far too great esteem.

  Miles was yet to bring up beer. When not talking about school or getting to know the area, he’d discussed his father, his love of being on the water, and wanting to study oceanography. He hadn’t mentioned much else about Florida, or siblings or friends, and nothing about having killed a man and being arrested for murder. Which maybe he was trying to forget—although he wasn’t like those people who had to constantly distract themselves to keep trauma from running them down, like that friend of Jennifer’s mother who had to have talk radio going all the time—in her car, her office, her house—because she was afraid to be alone since her husband died. To the contrary, Miles seemed remarkably at ease.

  Picking up what was left of her now lukewarm coffee, Jennifer held the cup in both hands. She liked that Miles was still looking at her new dress and wondered if he realized she was braless beneath the strapless top—a way none of her friends dressed because it was all about boosting cleavage, even for girls with small breasts like her. But Jennifer liked the feel of the snug top against her bare skin, which was also how the exotic-looking woman wore it, and she also had a small chest.

  “Your mom do any substituting this week?” she asked Miles.

  The corner of his eye twitched slightly—that tell again—and after a couple seconds he said, “She went back to Florida.” Miles pulled his legs in and sat forward, resting his tanned forearms on the table. He had on another t-shirt with some marina’s logo and another pair of acid-washed jeans made from the sort of denim none of the other kids wore and Jennifer thought might be a Florida look. “Actually, she went back the weekend before school started.” He shrugged, as if apologizing for not revealing that sooner. “All of a sudden, a lot of cars were driving down our street, and when my mom saw them slow down in front of our house she started crying and said it was happening again.”

  “What?”

  “The reason we moved up here.”

  Jennifer thought she knew what he meant, but wasn’t sure—and wasn’t sure what to say. Because while he had to understand the curiosity about his having killed someone in Florida, he hadn’t talked about it with her. “Let’s take a walk,” she offered. She stood and held out her hand.

  Like last week, they walked arm in arm among pedestrians toting shopping bags, business types with their briefcases and folders, the ever-present delivery drivers pushing carts stacked with boxes, and everyone on their phones. But Jennifer didn’t do any window shopping. She turned them down the same side street, into the same alley, backed herself to the same sunny wall in her new dress, and drew Miles close.

  Two hours later, when Miles got home, the police were waiting for him.

  5.

  It wasn’t like when they arrested
him in Florida—breaking down the door to his parents’ house in the middle of the night, executing what Miles later learned was a no-knock warrant, one of the many legal terms he’d soon become familiar with.

  It was still daylight when Miles turned his used Ford pick-up onto the narrow street where he now lived, and saw half a dozen police cars at the curb and two more in the driveway of the house next door, where a woman Miles and his father were yet to meet lived with her young son.

  Uniformed cops were canvassing the area with a sense of urgency. Dozens of neighbors—a diverse mix of ethnicities—had collected outside in restless groups. Most of their faces were new to Miles, including a man in his 50’s, overweight and balding, who pointed sharply at Miles’ grey truck with its Florida Save-The-Manatee license plates and said something to the police that caused a trio of uniformed officers to surround Miles as soon as he pulled into his driveway—all three cops with hands on holstered weapons, not drawing their guns, but ready.

  A broad-backed officer yanked open Miles’ door, grabbed his arm, ordered, “On the ground!” Jerking Miles out from behind the wheel.

  Miles let the bigger man put him face down to the mowed lawn. He’d learned that cops didn’t want you to talk, they wanted you to listen, obey, and confess everything they’d already decided you’d done.

  The lawman jammed his knee in the center of Miles’ back, pushing air from his lungs, demanding Miles tell him what he’d done with the boy, shouting, “Where is he, Miles? Where’s Ian?”

  Miles could tell the cop wasn’t properly balanced on top of him. He knew he could escape the hold, spin upright, strike back—but he remained compliant.

  #

  Hours earlier, Ian Blakely, the eleven-year-old boy who lived next door to Miles, hadn’t arrived at the day-care center where he was enrolled in an after-school program—the same place he’d spent many unhappy days over the past summer. The efficient young woman who kept track of the comings and goings of the business’ more than fifty kids—ranging in age from diapers to 14, and ten of whom were embroiled in some type of child custody battle—promptly texted Ian’s mother as to his absence.

  Cara Blakely didn’t text back right away, which was not unusual. Like a lot of mothers or fathers, especially those suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into the role of managing a single-parent household, Cara seemed perpetually rushed in her first months back in the work force since her son’s birth.

  Before her husband had moved out, Cara had been staying home with Ian—a mutually-agreed-upon arrangement with Sean in happier times, when they’d reviewed day care options for their newborn son and reasoned that considering taxes and inconvenience it was better for her to be with Ian.

  When the care center had texted Cara, she’d been in a meeting with her boss and a co-worker, pitching hard to land a new client. Her boss hadn’t wanted any potential distractions and instructed that all personal electronics be left in the car. They’d needed to impress upon the prospective client that their attention was focused entirely on him. Their business was marketing and branding, and clients had to feel like they were a top priority.

  So Cara didn’t get that warning text until three hours after Ian was supposed to have arrived at after-school care. Once she did, her frantic calls went to the daycare center, neighbors, friends, then the police, setting off a sequence of events rife with misinformation and imprecise memories.

  Two of Cara’s neighbors said they saw Ian walking up the street about the time he should have been arriving at daycare. A third said she saw Ian talking to someone in a truck like the one driven by that boy from Florida everyone knows killed someone down there and got off on a technicality. A fourth neighbor claimed Miles had murdered a child in Florida, and yes, Miles’ truck had driven down the street around the time Ian disappeared. That same neighbor complained it was a hateful truck, believing the graphic of a manatee on the license plate to be some sort of sea monster.

  All of these accounts were incorrect—the result of poor observation, faulty recollection, and threads of suspicion and prejudgment so subtly woven into subconscious minds the untruth tellers would have easily passed a polygraph when speaking with police officers who, in turn, having been trained to handle missing child cases as if defusing bombs, were prime candidates to make rash—and wrong—decisions.

  All of which had given Cara Blakely’s estranged husband ample time to get Ian on a plane at Dulles Airport and leave the country, taking their son to the place Sean had once and now again thought of as home even though Ian had never been there: a very beautiful and remote section of the Irish coast.

  Legally, it wasn’t kidnapping because no judge had yet awarded physical custody of Ian to either parent in what had become contentious divorce proceedings.

  Cara’s husband—having tired of paying his attorney $400 an hour to battle over custody, child support, alimony, and a division of marital property—had decided upon this commando-like grab of his son as a cost-effective alternative to the junk-heap mess of the court system.

  Now, Sean had his kid—who he adored—and was in the process of being an ocean away. Good luck enforcing whatever some county judge in Maryland might order by way of the Irish judicial system. As for the rest of what they were fighting over, Sean figured Cara could have it.

  The little Tudor house on the small patch of green yard that looked so charming when Sean and Cara bought it was an obsolescent nightmare behind the walls, with their equity about thirty grand upside down. Not to mention all the credit card debt in both their names.

  The financial angles of Cara’s estranged husband’s plan would take a few weeks for her to feel. For now, all she wanted was her son back, and placed her faith in a legal system more deeply rooted in rules and precedents dating back to Colonial times than modern day functionality, practicality, fairness, or—for that matter—common sense. A legal system Miles had come to understand better than most from first-hand experience.

  #

  It was almost 11:00 p.m. when Miles received Jennifer’s text.

  He was propped up in bed with the window partially open, reading a saltwater fishing magazine. His bedroom door was open, the way he always left it, a fairly recent habit he thought might reassure his parents he had no secrets, nothing to hide—the same reason that most of what he read now was in print. He didn’t listen to music with earbuds so his parents could see and hear exactly what he was looking at or listening to, and wouldn’t worry if that screen swipe he just made had cleared some offensive image or closed a worrisome website. Not that Miles had ever been much into anything like that, but some of those video games got pretty violent. And in the hands of an aggressive prosecutor it didn’t matter that millions of other people played them if you played them and a man who attacked you ended up dead when you defended yourself.

  Miles set his magazine on the 70’s-era Scandinavian nightstand someone had painted white—maybe the same person they bought it from at a yard sale after coming north, having sold most of their Florida furniture because the moving costs were greater than their belongings were worth. He read Jennifer’s text:

  OMG. RU OK?

  He replied. Fine. And he was, other than a slightly sore wrist from where the cop had twisted his arm, pulling him out of his truck.

  That was effed up. You should sue those cops.

  Sure.

  I’m serious.

  It’s OK. In sweat shorts and a t-shirt, Miles looked out his opened window.

  An unmarked police car remained in the driveway next door, where every house light seemed to be on—inside and out—as if 11-year-old Ian might be hiding in the yard and not a continent away.

  Not OK. Cops can’t just harass you around like that.

  No big deal. He didn’t think it had been. A district commander had already come to their house to apologize. Some neighbors thought they saw me with the kid who’s missing.

  So sue the neighbors. Posha said it’s the old guy. He’s a shit. He told everyone Posha�
�s family were terrorists. How could he see you there when we were in Georgetown?

  Right.

  Starbucks has cameras. They’ll have video of us.

  I didn’t mention Starbucks. Or that I was with you.

  Y not?

  Miles assumed people didn’t want to be connected to him because of what he’d done. Once you killed someone, no one thought of you the same. You ceased falling within any range of normal. And you were a worry, because you’d revealed a capability many might think about, but very few test—even with those numbers growing given the country’s many wars. Although, the social worker assigned to Miles while he was in the juvenile system—who was actually a psychiatrist and just said she was a social worker thinking he’d communicate with her more freely—claimed more people in the military who’d killed someone denied than admitted it.

  He texted back to Jennifer: I didn’t want any cops showing up at your house.

  Thanks. But that was dumb.

  At the house next door, the front door opened and a man in a suit came out, a detective, Miles guessed, who got into an unmarked car, backed out of the driveway, and drove off down the street.

  Moments later, as Jennifer texted a long rant against the police, a shadow passed behind a side window of the Blakely house—what Miles assumed was the living room window if the floor plan was the same as their house. He wondered if Ms. Blakely was alone or had friends or family with her.

  Miles felt sorry for her, even though the cop who’d come over to apologize told Miles and his father she claimed she’d seen Miles watching her son. “Watching!” Miles’ father had demanded, voice shaking anxiously. “What does that mean?” Which had caused Miles to calmly place his hand on his dad’s arm and say that he had waved to the boy a few times, but hadn’t been “watching” him. Leaving out how he’d thought Ian looked frail and might be picked on at school, like some of the kids in the karate class Miles used to teach in Florida.