Someone Is Watching (28 page)

“I could have been more observant, more aware.”

“I could have been shorter,” she says with a shrug.

“It’s not a valid comparison. You have no control over how tall you are.”

“And it’s important to feel in control?”

“Isn’t it?”

She scribbles the word
control
across the middle of the piece of paper on her lap before she catches me looking and gently shifts the pad out of my line of vision. “I think everyone likes to feel in control.”

“Except there is no such thing, is there? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That I had no more control over the situation than you had over your height?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything. You tell
me
something,” she continues. “Would having been more observant that night, more aware, have changed anything?”

“I might have heard him earlier. I might have seen him. I might have stopped him.”

“Really?” she says. “Realistically. You think you could have stopped him?”

I see myself crouching in the dark inside a clump of flowering shrubs, staring through my binoculars at the building across the way. I hear the sound of twigs snapping behind me and experience the slight shift in the air. Once again, I taste the gloved hand that covers my mouth and blocks my screams and feel the flurry of fists at my stomach and face, overpowering my resistance and bringing me to the brink of unconsciousness. Could I have done anything differently? “I don’t know.”

“I do,” she says. “Nothing you could have done would have stopped him.”

“I could have screamed.”

“You think anyone would have heard you?”

“I don’t know.” It was late. Most people would have been in bed or glued to their TVs. Their windows would have been closed to the outside heat, their air conditioners on full-blast to keep out the humidity. Even if anyone had heard me, chances are my screams would have been discounted or ignored. Even had people glanced
out their windows, the odds are they wouldn’t have seen anything. I had been well hidden.

I suddenly remembered the feeling I’d had of being watched by someone in one of the overlooking apartments when I’d gone to scout things out that morning. I’d dismissed the feeling as professional paranoia, but maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe someone had been watching me. Maybe even the man who raped me.

“Ultimately what you might have seen or done doesn’t really matter,” Elizabeth is saying, unaware of my inner musings, “because the only thing that
does
matter is what you
did
see and what
did
happen. And that’s more than enough to deal with without trying to deal with what
might
have been. It’s the
might haves
that are keeping you stuck, Bailey, keeping you from dealing with your real issues.”

“Which are?”

“You tell me.”

“What if I don’t know?”

“Then, that’s what we’ll have to figure out,” Elizabeth tells me. “That’s what we’ll have to work on together.”

I nod, half-expecting her to tell me that our hour is up, that this will be a good starting-off point for our next session. Instead, a glance at my watch tells me the session has barely begun.

“Perhaps you have more to tell me,” she says.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Aside from the incident with your brother, what else has been happening?”

Can I do this? Can I really tell her
everything
? Can I trust her with
crazy
? I take a deep breath, then release it slowly, the air escaping my body like air from a balloon. I push the words from my mouth. “I think I might be losing my mind.”

“In what way?”

“I see him everywhere.”

“The man who raped you?”

“Yes.” I shake my head. “I mean, weird, huh? I didn’t see him, and yet I see him everywhere. Every man between the ages of twenty and forty, white or black or anything in between, as long as
he’s of medium height and build, I look at him, and I think, it could be him.”

“Doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” Elizabeth says. “You’re right. It
could
be him.”

“The other day I thought I saw him on a street corner in South Beach,” I continue, refusing to be comforted so easily.

“Go on.”

“I think I hear his voice whispering in my ear, telling me to tell him I love him. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, convinced the phone is ringing, but when I answer it, there’s just a dial tone. When I check the phone’s history, I see that yes, somebody
did
call, and I think it must be the man who raped me. Except maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just my brother.…”

“Why would your brother call you in the middle of the night and then hang up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Surely the police have ways of checking.…”

“The police already think I’m crazy.”

“Why is that?”

I recount the earlier episode with David Trotter. “And then there’s this guy …,” I begin.

“What guy?”

What the hell?
I think again. I’ve gone this far; I might as well go the rest of the way. “His name is Paul Giller. He lives in one of the apartment buildings behind mine.”

“Is he a friend?”

“No,” I say loudly. Too loudly. Elizabeth jots something on her piece of foolscap. “I don’t know him at all.”

“But you know his name.”

“Yes. The police told me.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“They don’t think so.”

“But
you
do.”

I tell her about Paul Giller, alias Narcissus, how I started watching him, why I continue to do so, how I can’t seem to stop. “I should probably be ashamed to be telling you this.”

“There’s no reason to be ashamed. You’re just telling me what’s on your mind.”

“But I’ve been watching him having sex.…”

“In front of his window, with all the lights on, and his curtains open,” she reminds me.

“I don’t think he has any curtains,” I correct. “I think they might have just moved in.”

“They?”

I tell her about Elena, and about following her to her place of work, of the information I gathered from her during the course of my impromptu manicure. “Crazy, right?”

“It doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” Elizabeth counters. “Risky, maybe. But not crazy. You were taking control of the situation in the best way you know how. You were doing what you’ve been trained to do.”

I bury my hands between my knees to keep from clapping.
She doesn’t think I’m crazy,
a voice inside me is shouting.
She thinks I’m taking control.

“And one night you actually caught this man staring back at you through binoculars?”

“I
thought
I did. But when the police went to check him out, he claimed he doesn’t even own a pair of binoculars. He offered to let them search his apartment.”

“And did they?”

“No.”

Elizabeth gives her shoulders an exaggerated shrug, as if to say, it figures. “So he could have been lying. Does Paul Giller have an alibi for the night of your attack?”

“The police claim they can’t ask him that without sufficient cause. You really don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Well, let’s recap what we know so far, shall we? You discover a man who fits the general description of the man who raped you living in the apartment building directly behind yours; your sister and your niece also see him. Correct?”

“Correct.”

“So we know he isn’t a figment of your imagination. We know
he’s real. And that he likes to parade around naked in front of his window, for all the world to see.”

“Well, he
is
twenty-four floors up.…”

“Okay. So, for
half
the world to see,” she amends, with a smile. “And your sister and your niece have witnessed this behavior as well.”

“Yes.”

“So we know
that’s
real. And that he likes to have sex in front of the window.”

“Well, I’m the only one who’s actually seen him having sex,” I tell her, my voice growing suddenly weak.

“Are you saying it might not have happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you
think
you only imagined it?”

“No.”

“What?”

“No,” I repeat, my voice stronger with the repetition.

“Good. Neither do I.”

“And you don’t think I’m paranoid? Or psychotic?”

“You’re hardly psychotic. And I’d say you have good reason to be a little paranoid. You were beaten and raped. Your world has been turned upside down. You have every right to feel the way you do.”

I have a right,
I think.
I’m not crazy.

“You’ve been through hell, Bailey. And this creep you’ve been watching—whether he knows you’ve been watching or not, whether he’s the man who raped you or not—certainly isn’t helping things. You’re obviously tense and on guard. The dreams you’ve been having signify your feelings of being out of control, as does your overall anxiety. You made a very interesting distinction today: that you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. This doesn’t mean you’re psychotic.”

I’m not crazy.

“You’re familiar with the term
post-traumatic stress disorder
?”

“Of course. Aren’t hallucinations a symptom?”

“They can be. It still doesn’t mean you’re crazy.”

I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress. I’m not crazy.

“So what can I do about it?”

“Exactly what you’re doing. Coming here. Talking about it. You’re smiling. What are you thinking?”

I feel the smile I hadn’t realized was on my lips grow wider, stretching across my cheeks. “Just that it’s funny.”

“What is?”

“I feel better.”

“How so?”

“You just said I’m not crazy, even though I feel crazy. So maybe I’m not crazy after all. Crazy, huh?” I laugh.

“You’re not losing your grip on reality. You’re just stressed out and traumatized.”

“Thank you.” I want to stand up, to leave, to get out of her office before this feeling of euphoria dissipates. “Thank you so much.”

“We still have a lot of work to do, Bailey.”

“I know. But just knowing that you don’t think I’m crazy makes me feel more in control.”

“You
aren’t
crazy.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“Can you remember the last time you felt you had control, Bailey?” Elizabeth asks.

I search my memory, feeling my newfound confidence starting to wane. “I don’t know. Probably before my mother died,” I admit. “Everything has seemed so helter-skelter since then.”

“You certainly had no control over what happened to your mother. But you did find a way to cope. You found a way to take control of your life.”

“You mean by becoming a detective?”

“I don’t think your choice was happenstance. Or helter-skelter, as you called it. You wanted answers. You chose a profession that allows you to actively search them out. It was the same thing after your father died. Your work helped you deal with his passing, helped you move on with your life. And even now, when the police
refused to investigate Paul Giller, you took matters into your own hands, investigated him yourself. It may not have been the most prudent thing in the world for you to do, but it certainly made you feel less victimized. It made you feel more in control.”

She’s right, I think. I’m never more in control than when I’m working.

“Except I was raped when I was working,” I say out loud before she can ask me to put my thoughts into words.

“Which has made this all the more traumatic for you. You were attacked in the very place you felt most in control.”

This time I do stand up. “You’ve given me a great deal to think about.”

“I hope it’s been helpful.”

“I think maybe you cured me.” I laugh as if to underline my meager attempt at humor. Although what I’m really hoping she’ll say is that it’s not a joke, that I
am
cured, that there’s no need for me to come back, that my anxieties have been banished for all time because
I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy.

“We’re just scratching the surface, Bailey,” she says instead. “We still have a great deal to talk about.”

“Such as?”

“Well, for starters, we’ve never really talked about your father.”

“I think he’s Claire’s issue, not mine.”

“You have nothing to say about him?”

“Just that I miss him.”

“I’m sure you do. So, are you saying that some men are good?”

I smile. “I guess I am.”

“I think that’s a nice note to end on for today. Don’t you?”

—

I all but fly out of Elizabeth Gordon’s office, walking to the corner and hailing down the first cab I see.

I’m not crazy.

Not all men are irresponsible liars. They don’t beat up on their
girlfriends or lie about not sleeping with their wives; they don’t have drug-induced orgies in their dead father’s bedroom. They aren’t all rapists.

I’m not crazy.

“Where to?” the cab driver asks.

He is about forty, with broad shoulders, a strong back, a mustache, and wavy dark hair. Normally this would trigger a panic attack, but this is not the man who raped me. Not all men are rapists. Some men are good.

I’m not crazy.

I am about to give the driver my address when I change my mind.
I’m never more in control than when I’m working.

It’s time to get to work. The police claim they’ve questioned everyone who lives in the immediate vicinity of where I was raped. But so far, their investigations have turned up nothing. And if the police can’t help me, I’ll have to help myself.

Which means returning to the proverbial scene of the crime.

To borrow a page from Elizabeth Gordon’s notepad, it might not be the most prudent course of action, but it might make me feel less victimized, more in control. I take a deep breath. “Northeast 152 Street in North Miami.”

The street looks so benign in the daytime, I think, glancing down the row of pastel-colored buildings, none higher than six stories, all neat and tidy and speaking to a decidedly different era, a time before towering glass houses became the norm. Palm trees cast long, lazy shadows across the center of the wide road. The cab driver pulls to a stop in one such shady patch, about half a block down from where I’d parked my car the night I was attacked. “This okay?” he asks.