What We Saw at Night (12 page)

A “sabbatical” does that to you.

EVERY WEEK, I had to get my arm checked.

My cast was a flexi-mold. I felt like barfing whenever they changed it, despite the efforts of the medical appliance makers to amuse me with a choice of subtle blue or wild paisley. My arm transformed into an old-lady’s arm: pale and shriveled. I couldn’t exercise, so I lost strength. The pain lessened but the itching drove me mad. Babysitting Tavish became my only real connection to the outside world, beyond my immediate family and doctors. I had to admit, showing up at Tabor Oaks three times a week
was
a thrill, like I was getting one over on Blondie.

Besides, Tavish and I were in love. Together, with the help of YouTube, we tried to learn to tap dance. He wasn’t even a year old. But to Tessa’s delight, Tavish danced on top of my feet.

The summer nights grew shorter. School was coming soon.

One night Tessa said, “Did you know that somebody made a prank call to the police about this place? And they said there was a murderer in here?”

I was changing Tavish, so I had a good excuse to look away. I had mastered the left-handed diaper change and was pretty proud of myself—especially since Tavish, now strong and solid, was a pretty squirmy challenge. I took a deep breath. “My best friend’s father is a police officer,” I said. “So yes, I heard about it. Small town. I didn’t know it was this very building though. Does that creep you out?”

She nodded. “Kind of. You know what, Allie? I don’t want to creep
you
out, but I came out in the morning, and there was dirt, like, soil, all over my balcony. There was a plant knocked over up there. And I thought I saw a shoe print in the dirt. But the rain washed it away.” Tessa looked at Tavish and me and laughed. “It’s so out of the way and quiet here. You start seeing things.…”

The shoe print?
My jaw flickered. It couldn’t have been one of ours. We never got down that far.

“Crazy stunts like that happen every summer, Tessa,” I replied. “Kids around here get bored. Believe me, I know.”

“That’s exactly what my husband said. It’s the reason we ended up here, besides the fact that his company has a hub in Duluth. He says it’s an innocent place. But he’s never around!”

I forced a laugh. “Maybe it was your own shoe. I do stuff like that all the time.”

Tessa sighed. “You’re probably right. The only time I’m not spaced out is at work, now that I’m pregnant.…”

Having finally managed to suit Tavish up in a new diaper, I lifted him and squeezed his little body against me. “You’re pregnant? Congratulations!”

She rubbed her tired eyes and laughed. “Well, it wasn’t the plan, but thanks. I wanted to wait three or four years and get my Master’s to be a nurse practitioner. Babies happen, though.” She took Tavish from me and snuggled with him.

Cautiously, I said, “You never see anyone around here who doesn’t belong here, do you?” I glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the blackness of the lake.

“How could I? I sleep half the time during the day, when my mom or James is here. I hope I get past the exhaustion stage of pregnancy pretty soon. The only person I ever saw was somebody that was James’s friend, the old doctor.…”

“Stephen Tabor.”

“He sent somebody to try to fix that old hole in the ground.”

“What hole?”

“Down there by the bluff. You know, where the parking lot drops off, the lawn by the lake? There used to be stairs that led down to this old boathouse that you can’t see from
here. It was like a garage underground, in the wall of the bluff. It scared me because Tav’s walking now. But there’s this little door thing in the ground covered by the grass. You know how little kids are. Steve’s putting up a fence back here, next week, a big sturdy chain link fence. But if we’re staying here, particularly with two babies, we’re going to need a place that’s not crawling with traps.”

My throat constricted. I forced myself to murmur something about being right, and something about being sensible, and that Tabor Oaks would end up being fine for a toddler with the right precautions.

Tessa handed Tavish back to me. “You’re such a sweetie, Allie,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

TWO MINUTES AFTER Tessa was gone, I’d wedged one of my shoes in the door to the apartment and one in the lobby door, just to keep both open and to be safe. (It would be like me to drop the keys and I didn’t want to take the chance that I might not be able to get back in). After that, I rocked Tavish to sleep. Once he was gently snoozing, I strapped him into his back carrier and headed down to the grassy area in back of Tabor Oaks, at the water’s edge.

First, I just kicked around with my bare feet. Then, I sunk to my knees to get a closer look. All of a sudden Tavish awoke again and began to laugh. He pulled out strings of my hair while I scrabbled through the grass, hunting—

There
.

Jesus. The door was hardly hidden. You couldn’t miss it, unless you were looking towards the lake from the parking lot, where Blondie had disappeared on me. But where the lawn sloped down near the bluff, it was plain to see: a clever mat of dry grass and weeds pegged to the ground by a tent
stake and sealed with a thick lock. Tavish began to fuss, and though I hated to give him a pacifier, I found the one attached by a shoestring to his carrier and stuck it in his mouth.

His lips bobbed angrily, but soon he surrendered and his eyes fluttered closed.

What was down there? Boating equipment? A bundle of sailcloth? Something else? Suddenly, it seemed urgent to get the hell back into the apartment. Maybe I was paranoid. I didn’t really care. If someone wasn’t actually watching me, it felt as though someone should be. I thought of that old line from sophomore AP English,
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
Standing up, I hurried back toward the apartment building. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

Rob?
I wondered, or hoped. I grabbed my sandal from the lobby door and took the elevator up. The phone stopped buzzing. I froze in the hallway on the fourth floor.

The apartment door was closed.

My sandal hung from the doorknob.

Maybe Tessa’s mom was here. Or maybe her husband had come back early. It would be nice, as I’d finally get to meet him.…

This was all fine. I was tired. If Rob had called, I wanted to use this as an excuse to reconnect. I wanted to tell him about what I’d discovered out there on the grass. Reaching back to pat Tavish’s sleeping head, I knocked him with my cast. No one answered. I rang the buzzer. Still no response. I fished in my pocket for the keys, but when I put the key in the lock, the knob turned easily.

The door was open.

Someone had closed the door but not locked it.

“Tessa?” I shouted, my pulse racing again. “Teresa? James?”

I’d left the living room lights on; now they were off.

I stopped breathing. With both hands, I reached back to Tavish. He squeaked in his sleep. No one, not even a monster, would hurt a baby.

My legs turned to jelly as I hurried back into the elevator and pushed the button to make sure the door stayed closed. The elevator alarm blared. Everyone in the county would wake up. Good. Fingers trembling, I dialed 911.

A COUPLE OF minutes later, I heard the lonely sound of a single cop car’s siren. I could finally breathe when it screeched into the parking lot. Juliet’s dad was on a fishing trip; the next in charge, Mike Beaufort, was a man I barely knew. He was young and slim and built, kind of like a younger version of Will Smith, Northwoods style. He completely understood my panic after all that business a few weeks before. Better to take no chances, especially with the sleeping baby still on my back.

There was no one in the apartment.

I followed Officer Mike from room to room as he searched everything, even dresser drawers. He asked me some casual questions; they blended into yes, yes, yes. I agreed that there had been vestiges of light in the sky when I’d gone out with Tavish. I agreed that I might easily have turned the lights off. I agreed, lying through my teeth, that discussing all that freaky stuff about the murderer must have scared me—and I agreed that it made me curious about the hole in the ground. I agreed that it was stupid to investigate in the first place, but thought it was a boathouse. Yes, yes, yes.

Officer Mike called Tessa at the hospital and asked her to come home. I wasn’t sure if I was ashamed or relieved. Probably both.

After that, Officer Mike escorted Tavish and me back
down to the door in the lawn. He said he had no idea what the door was—an old boathouse seemed about right, as far as he could tell—and he called his boss on his cell. I could hear Juliet’s dad laugh on the other end. Yes, yes, yes: the door opened to a boathouse no longer in use. Just like we’d all suspected. A derelict stairwell down to the lakeshore was all that remained of the structure, and Dr. Stephen would get rid of it when he built the fence next week.

That was that.

I had to hand it to Officer Mike: the whole time, he didn’t once treat me as if I’d done the wrong thing or overreacted. Back in the safety of the Cryer apartment, I finally summoned the courage to ask: “So, who hung my sandal on the door? I left it wedged in the door in case I dropped my keys.”

“That wasn’t very wise, to leave a door open,” he replied.

“I know. But still, when I got back, my sandal was hanging from the door knob.”

“If I had to venture a guess, I’d say someone came along, saw the open door, and closed the door for you. I’d say it was a kind neighbor who’s trying to avoid this misunderstanding, and I wouldn’t blame him or her.” He sighed, but his tone was not unkind. “It had to be one of the other building residents. Let’s go knock on some doors and we’ll find out which one.”

Let’s not
, I thought.
Let’s not increase the percentage of people in Iron Harbor who think I’m nuts
.

“I’m fine now,” I said. “I guess you’re right. You don’t have to knock on any doors. Seriously.”

Officer Mike sat with me, waiting for Tessa to return home. I laid Tavish in his crib and suddenly remembered that I hadn’t even looked at the text I’d received. I dug my phone from my jeans pocket.

It wasn’t from Rob.

It was from BLOCKED.

Have fun but don’t get hurt
.

Instinct usually doesn’t lie. Human beings are the only animals who ignore instinct, but, like Rob once said, we’re trained out of it. Parkour was a way to rediscover instinct and tap into that buried ability to survive, no matter what the cost. That crawling sensation I’d felt by the lake, the same sensation I felt right now, amounted to a pure reflexive reaction: a warning that someone knew what I was looking for.

Who would have known that?

Only someone who was watching me.

T
he next day, out of the blue, Juliet left a big bouquet of daisies on my porch, along with a handwritten note.

Is the cold war over? Can I come and see you tomorrow night? Even for a movie? I’ll bring enchiladas
.

I texted her back:
There’s never been any war
.

A moment later my phone rang. Juliet was a gush of “How are you?” and “I’m so sorry I haven’t stopped by!” and other crap that sounded as if it were coming from some random XP staffer at the hospital, not the best friend I thought I’d known my whole life. But I played along. I told Juliet that I was okay. Just recovering and babysitting. She was probably right that I had been hallucinating dead girls and demon drivers. For now, I was just laying low and getting better. Was that cool with her?

“I guess it’s cool?” she said. If it sounded like a question, it probably was, for the both of us.

How could I say what I felt? That she should have been with me the whole summer? Bringing me magazines and lip gloss, staying over, driving me around, taking me to the movies, French-braiding my hair, filling a bucket with soapy water and giving Angela pedicures, regaling me with her last triumph of running into Caitlin buying size 9 pants at the used boutique, then verbally slaying her?