The Watcher in the Wall, page 4
She was getting ready to go out. Gruber watched her brush her hair, watched her dance around her little bedroom. Watched her pause while fixing her makeup to stick another poster on the wall.
He knelt at the hole, hardly daring to breathe. The hot, late-summer air suffocating, his shirt sticking to his skin, his whole body tense as he watched her. He was sure Sarah would notice him. Still, he couldn’t turn away.
He’d been afraid to move out there. He’d been afraid of the meanness he’d seen in Earl’s eyes, when he’d come to call on Gruber’s mother. Gruber suspected that Earl would have left him behind if he could have. That he’d only agreed to move them both so that he could be closer to Gruber’s mom.
But his new stepsister seemed happy. She looked radiant through that peephole, far too good for her bedroom, for that crummy trailer. And watching her, Gruber felt better. Maybe life with Earl wouldn’t be quite as bad as he’d imagined. Maybe he could survive there.
He watched Sarah bop around her little room. Watched her put the finishing touches on her makeup and wondered where she was going. If she had friends in this dump of a trailer park—a “motor court,” they called it, as if a fancy name could hide the sorry state of the place. He wondered if they would share the same friends. They weren’t so far apart in age after all.
The thought buoyed him. He hadn’t had many friends back in the city. The kids who’d known him in school had made fun of his soda-bottle glasses, the way he lisped when he talked. They’d left him alone, on his good days. On the bad days, they hadn’t. But maybe here would be different. Maybe everything would finally be all right.
• • •
All too quickly, the illusion shattered. Gruber was watching Sarah buckle her shoes when, behind him, Earl pushed open the door. Barged into the little bedroom; didn’t bother to knock. Just walked in and waited for Gruber to notice.
Gruber scrambled up from the floor. Prayed Earl hadn’t seen the hole. Prayed he wouldn’t think to ask why his new stepson was kneeling at the wall. But Earl didn’t notice. He fixed Gruber with a hard stare, didn’t bother to hide his distaste.
“Live in my house, you’ve got to earn your keep,” he said, and there was a menace to his tone. “There’s a pile of junk and old scrap out back. Get on out there and move it.”
The whole trailer seemed to still, waiting on Gruber’s response. He couldn’t even hear Sarah in the next room, or her music anymore. Earl’s eyes narrowed, and his fists clenched. “Don’t make me ask you twice,” he said.
Gruber glanced back at that hole in the wall. Knew Earl was waiting, itching for an excuse. And as he followed his new stepfather out through the shitty double-wide to the gravel-patch yard, the stench of cheap bourbon lingering in the warm air, Gruber knew he’d been wrong to put faith in what he’d seen through the wall, foolish to believe it had any bearing whatsoever on his own life in Earl’s trailer.
< 14 >
Windermere stayed up late. Sat in her living room and drank beer in near darkness, thinking about Ashley Frey, in the dim light from the kitchen and the glow of the streetlights outside. The condo was quiet. Mathers had long ago gone to bed. She’d pretty much pushed him away.
“So crazy about that Frey girl,” he’d said over dinner. “If Nenad can’t track her down, believe me, nobody in the world can find her.”
Windermere hadn’t said anything. She’d picked at the Greek salad he’d made them, tried not to think about the girl, how lonely she must feel, how desperate. Tried not to think about the people who must have driven her to that stupid, shitty end.
Big Bird, Big Bird. Go fly away.
Mathers scraped his plate. Studied her across the table. “You okay?” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get so caught up in a case.” He laughed. “And it isn’t really even a case.”
She didn’t answer. Speared a piece of lettuce with her fork and examined it, couldn’t find the energy to take the process further. She knew she should talk to Mathers, tell him what she was feeling. Knew a good girlfriend would communicate with her partner, tell him what was on her mind. Couldn’t bring herself to do it.
You sold your friend out for a stab at popularity. You let her walk away, and you laughed with the rest of them, even when you knew she was hurting. What’s Mathers going to say when you tell him? What’s he going to think of his girlfriend?
“You know you can talk to me, right?” Mathers asked her. “Anything you’re thinking about, that’s what I’m here for.”
She cracked open a beer. “Nothing to talk about, Mathers. Don’t go getting all soft and sappy on me. I’m not that kind of girl.”
He gave it a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know.”
A couple minutes passed. Mathers stood, took his plate to the sink, came back to her, leaned down and wrapped her in his arms. Windermere stared out the window at the dark, stayed rigid, drank her beer.
“Carla,” Mathers said. “Whatever you’re fighting yourself over, you can tell me. I can help.”
“I just want to freaking know this girl’s all right,” she said, pushing the chair back, breaking free of his arms. “Can you figure that out for me, or no?”
Mathers sighed. “Carla—”
“Didn’t think so,” she said. Then she stood. “It’s fine, Derek. I just need to be alone.”
• • •
Now it was late. She’d killed a couple more beers, chased her tail thinking about Ashley Frey and that goddamn anonymizer, or whatever the hell it was called. Realized with some surprise she was craving a cigarette.
She’d smoked only briefly in her life, a year at law school in Florida, when the stress threatened to overwhelm her, derail her career and send her spiraling back to Mississippi. To Wanda and Rene. She’d hated smoking, how dirty and weak and damn needy it made her feel, quit after that first year and hadn’t really looked back. She’d smoked a cigarette, once, when Stevens’s daughter had gone missing during the Carter Tomlin bank robbery case. Half a cigarette; she couldn’t make herself finish it.
Now, though, she wanted one. More than one. A pack. She wanted to smoke and drink and feel self-destructive and miserable. And, screw it, that’s what she was going to do.
Windermere dug out a pair of running shoes, pulled on her coat. Rode the elevator down to street level and stepped out into the night, the streets mostly empty and the air cold and raw. She wrapped her coat tighter and hurried down the block to the corner store, bought a pack of Marlboros and a little plastic lighter. Had to fiddle with the lighter a little bit to get it working—she was out of practice—but she made a flame. Lit the cigarette and inhaled, closed her eyes and held the smoke in her lungs. Wondered what Mathers would say if he saw her. What Stevens would say.
She’d expected that the cigarette would make her feel better. It didn’t. She’d figured she could coast on those latent, long-ago feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing as she smoked a couple, three cigarettes, go back upstairs and drink and smoke some more—in the condo, yeah, because, screw it, why not?—and forget about Ashley Frey and go to bed foggy.
But Ashley Frey wasn’t going away. Neither was Adrian Miller. At least one kid was dead, and another was still out there. Fuck Stevens and Mathers; there had to be a way to find her.
Windermere finished her cigarette. Flicked it to the curb and started back toward her building. Made the lobby and called the elevator, hit the down button, the parking garage. Figured if she was going to be up all night being self-destructive, she might as well be getting some work done.
< 15 >
Earl never found the hole in the wall. Gruber made sure of it.
He found a framed painting sitting in a trash pile a few lots down from the double-wide. A sailing ship in a storm. The glass was broken, but the painting was all right. The frame was decent, too.
He brought the painting home. Propped it up against the hole so that Sarah wouldn’t notice the light leaking in from his room to hers. Wouldn’t catch a glimpse of any movement.
He wondered what he would do if Sarah found out he was spying on her. How he would explain it if she found the hole. He needn’t have worried. Sarah was too focused on boring, teenage girl stuff to even look in Gruber’s direction.
She talked on the phone, at least while Earl wasn’t around. She lay on her bed and wrote in her journal and listened to those boy bands she liked. Practiced her makeup in the mirror. Sometimes she snuck a cigarette from the pack she stashed in the broken vent in the floor, slid open her window and smoked.
She never smoked when Earl was home. She never drank from the bottle of peach schnapps she kept hidden under the bed. She stuck to her best behavior, kept the music turned low, even though it didn’t matter so much what she did. She was Earl’s daughter after all. She was never going to get it half as bad as Gruber did.
It didn’t take much to set Earl off. Just a bottle of something strong and a perceived injustice, serious or otherwise. Then it was duck and cover. Run and hide. Listen to Earl’s heavy boots in the hallway and pray they didn’t stop at his door.
Most of the time, however, Gruber was shit out of luck. Earl seemed to reserve a special hate in his heart for his stepson. He’d kick open the flimsy door, come through piss-drunk and armed with some kind of blunt object. Take swings at Gruber for any reason he could think of—the dishes weren’t done, or Gruber watched too much TV, or he’d flunked his social studies quiz, or whatever.
“Runt,” he’d say. “Pip-squeak little shit-heel runt.” He’d punctuate his words with his weapon of choice, bear down on Gruber, belts and backhanded slaps, Gruber hunched over and trying not to cry, because crying only made Earl worse.
“Men don’t cry,” he’d tell Gruber. “You a man, son? Or are you just a pussy?”
• • •
There wasn’t much escape from the misery, even when Gruber got free of the double-wide. The local high school was small, mostly farm kids from the county. They didn’t like kids from the trailer park. They laughed when Gruber tried to call it a motor court.
“It’s a garbage dump,” someone told him. “Nothing but white trash and four-eyed hillbillies.”
Sarah didn’t have many friends, herself. Those she did have, she guarded. Wouldn’t introduce them to Gruber, wouldn’t let him talk to them. She hurried off to school before he could catch up, before he knew she’d gone. Gruber didn’t make friends. He stuck to himself. And it wouldn’t have been so bad—he’d done it before, back in town, lots of times—except now there was Earl, too, waiting at home. And Gruber was still young. He was small and afraid. He wasn’t strong enough to stand up to Earl, not yet.
Oh, but he ached to. He ached to do something, show the world he was more than just some dumb runt. The weeks passed, months, and nothing got any better. Earl kept bursting in, the drink on his breath. Kept beating Gruber. Nothing Gruber could do about it but dream of the day he could stand up for himself, the day he found an outlet for the frustration and hatred Earl was creating inside of him.
< 16 >
It was past midnight when Windermere piloted her daddy’s old Chevelle out of the parking garage. Saturday morning, early, the last of the Friday-night partiers still straggling their way home. She drove across downtown, aiming for the interstate, ran into a roadside checkpoint just before the on-ramp. A handful of patrol cars were pulled over with their flashers on, cops with flashlights and reflective vests funneling cars into a long, single line.
Windermere examined her reflection in the rearview mirror. Checked her breath. She’d had, what, three beers? Felt fine, not even tipsy, but knew she shouldn’t be driving. Screw it. Too late to turn around.
She rolled down the window for the young cop who approached the Chevy. “Had anything to drink?” the cop asked her.
“One beer with dinner,” she lied, handing over her license and her FBI badge.
The cop studied the badge. “Working tonight?”
“Headed up to the office,” she told him. “Couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d kick around some casework instead, you know?”
“No rest for the wicked, huh?” The cop handed the badge back, Windermere’s driver’s license. “Stay safe out there, anyway. Lots of crazies out tonight, especially this neck of the woods.”
“Don’t I know it.” Windermere rolled up the window, pulled ahead. Pointed the Chevelle north, trying not to think about what Stevens and Mathers would have thought if the young cop had pulled her over for a breath test.
• • •
CID was quiet when Windermere walked off the elevator. Dark, just a handful of emergency lights, and the hum of the computers in the rows of cubicles. Windermere walked past a motion detector and the lights came on around her. She navigated through the department to the office she shared with Stevens.
She’d angled for her own office for three years before Drew Harris, her SAC, finally relented and made good on the promise he’d given her when he recruited her from the Miami field office. “Your own office. Plenty of room. Plenty of autonomy.”
Well, she had her own office, anyway. Had to share it with Stevens, though—and Windermere was pretty sure she’d still be working a cubicle if her BCA colleague hadn’t joined the violent crimes task force.
Adrian Miller’s laptop was where they’d left it, on Windermere’s desk, still connected to the Bureau’s network but otherwise forgotten. Come Monday, Windermere knew she and Stevens would be back tidying up the last of the sex-trafficking case, no more time to spend on Ashley Frey, wherever and whoever she was.
But that left Saturday and Sunday. And Windermere wasn’t ready to give up on the girl yet, not after seeing Adrian Miller’s parents, after talking to Lucas Horst. She pulled up her chair and flipped open the laptop, squinted at the screen, the bright electronic light. Brought up the chat logs Adrian had cached from the Death Wish forum. His conversations with Ambriel98.
Adrian had talked to Ashley Frey for four months before he hanged himself. Windermere scrolled to the top of the logs, the very first conversation. Scanned the office, Stevens’s desk, the pictures of his wife and kids, looked out through the door to the empty cubicles beyond. Felt the pull of fatigue and craved a cigarette, wondered what she was doing here, middle of the night and a weekend besides.
Giving up already, Supercop?
She turned back to the computer. Settled in and started to read, the chat logs and Adrian Miller’s profile, Ashley Frey’s, anything that would help her get a fix on the girl.
Around dawn or so, she figured she’d found it.
< 17 >
Even Sarah couldn’t dodge Earl’s reign of terror forever. She lost her family immunity about the time Earl figured out she had a boyfriend.
The boyfriend’s name was Todd McGee. He was a skinny kid with red hair, in Sarah’s grade at school. Drove a pickup truck, an old F-100. Todd would come by after Earl had gone out for the night. Honk his horn from the road, and Sarah would spring up from her bed, check the window, fix her hair in the mirror, and dash out the door before Gruber’s mother could stop her. Not that Gruber’s mother really cared.
Sarah timed her escapes just fine for the first month or so. She waited until Earl’d gone out with his buddies, until Gruber’s mother was more or less catatonic on the couch, the shopping network blaring. Then she’d sneak out to Todd and they’d peel away in his truck. Show up back home around midnight or so, a little later. She’d creep down the hall and into her bedroom, like she was never gone at all.
Gruber never hated her more than when she came home from those dates. She would dance around the bedroom, humming to herself, smiling some secret smile. She would write in her journal, scribbling the words out fast, as if she were afraid she’d lose them if she didn’t write quickly. She would study herself in the mirror, fluff her hair, a normal girl, a happy girl. As if she never had to worry about Earl breaking her door down. As if she never had to wait as Earl reached for his belt.
Gruber hated her then, for being so normal. He resented that she was so happy, that her life was so different from his own, even as they shared space in the same shitty trailer.
But he never looked away. He watched her until she turned off the light, until she climbed into her bed in the darkness, and he would watch for longer still, listening to the rustling of the sheets as they clung to her body, wondering what it would feel like to slip between those sheets with her. When he was sure she was asleep, he would—reluctantly—move away, replace the painting against the wall, and retreat to his own bed, where he’d lie awake, replaying the images in his head.
< 18 >
“I don’t think Ashley Frey killed herself,” Windermere told Stevens. “I don’t think she ever intended to kill herself at all.”
On the other end of the line, Stevens stifled a yawn. “It’s seven in the morning, partner,” he said. “How come you’re so awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Windermere replied. “Went home last night and couldn’t stop thinking about Ashley Frey and this little problem we were having tracking her down. So I went back to the office and did a little research. Stayed up all night on this suicide forum.”
Nancy Stevens must have been nearby, because Stevens was talking to someone else, his voice muffled. Windermere waited, heard Nancy reply. Couldn’t make out the details, but she figured it didn’t matter.
“Sorry,” Stevens said, coming back on the phone. “So, sure. You stayed up all night. What did you figure out?”
