Someone Is Watching (39 page)

“What’s this?”

“My mother didn’t tell you? We’re moving in.”

“What?”

“Just for a few days, until things settle down a bit. She’ll explain.” As if on cue, the phone rings. “That’s probably her now. Do you know you’re soaking wet?”

I walk back into the kitchen as Jade wheels her suitcase and overnight bag down the hall. Caller ID informs me that Claire is on the other end of the line. I pick up the phone. “Start talking,” I say.

It is eight o’clock Sunday evening, and Jade and her mother have been living here since Thursday night, Jade sleeping on the pullout bed in my office and Claire occupying the empty space beside me in my queen-size bed. Claire informed me—after I told her to start talking—that she’d made the decision to move in after receiving a phone call at work from Detective Castillo, confiding that he was pretty much at his wits’ end as far as I was concerned and that he was counting on her to keep me in check before I did irreparable damage to either myself or my case. Apparently, Adam Roth, Paul Giller’s property manager, contacted the police the minute I left his office, Adam Roth having already been briefed by Paul Giller about my so-called harassment. Detective Castillo told Claire that I was jeopardizing not only the police investigation but my own safety, that my behavior was such that any good defense lawyer would have no trouble getting a jury to question my sanity, and that whoever eventually got charged with my rape could very well end up walking free, especially if I continued to recklessly accuse every man in sight. The end result of this discussion was that Claire
called Jade at school and told her to go home, throw a few things into a suitcase, and get over to my apartment, that she’d join us as soon as her shift ended.

When she arrived, I tried to explain what I’d been doing in Adam Roth’s office, but I think whatever rational motives I might have had got lost amid the revelations of my quitting my job and ambushing Colin Lesser. Claire tried not to look too concerned as I was expanding on my meeting with Sean and my lunch with Colin, but I knew what she was thinking: that Detective Castillo was right, that I was out of control, that my credibility, my very sanity, was at risk.

It’s been raining almost constantly since they moved in, so we don’t go out. Instead, our days are filled with computer games and reality TV. We eat ice cream and watch movies and gossip about the newest salacious revelations in the Poppy and Aurora Gomez divorce, and as soon as the sun goes down, we get out the binoculars and take turns spying on my neighbor.

Paul Giller has done little this weekend of either interest or concern. He goes out; he comes home. Sometimes Elena is with him, sometimes she isn’t. There have been no erotic displays, no acts of violence, not so much as a glance in our direction. “He’s become very dull,” Jade remarked after he and Elena came home before midnight last night and climbed straight into bed.

I’m finding it comforting having Claire and Jade around. As much as I initially resisted sharing a bed with my sister, I’ve discovered that there’s something very soothing about having her there. What’s more, she seems blissfully unbothered by my restless sleeping patterns, not scolding me when I get up several times in the night to use the bathroom, not urging me to be still, not telling me to settle down when a nightmare wakes me up. Instead, barely conscious, she pats my back and mutters that it was just a dream, that she’s here and won’t let anything bad happen to me. This seems to do the trick.

Partly out of respect—I know her job requires that she get a good night’s rest—and partly out of fear—I don’t want her to
think I’m crazier than I fear she already does—I’ve cut way back on the number of times I search my apartment and the number of showers I take. Amazingly, I feel much less paranoid as a result. I’ll be sorry to see them leave tomorrow, when Claire has to return to work and Jade has to go back to school.

“Here they come,” Jade announces.

Both Claire and I run to the window.

“What are they doing?” Claire asks, straining to see through the rain that hasn’t let up since Thursday.

“Nothing, by the looks of it. Oh, wait. Elena just went into the bathroom. She’s shutting the door. Now Paul’s taking out his cell phone, and he’s looking back over his shoulder, like he’s checking to make sure she can’t hear, and now he’s talking into the phone and smiling and laughing. Very exciting stuff.”

“Let me see.” Claire lifts the binoculars from her daughter’s hands.

“How can you tell he’s smiling?” Claire asks. “I can hardly see anything through this rain.”

“That’s because you’re old and your eyes don’t work so good anymore,” Jade tells her, rolling her own eyes toward the ceiling.

“My eyes don’t work so
well
anymore,” her mother corrects.

“Exactly,” says Jade.

Claire hands me the binoculars. I peer through them just as Paul is returning his cell phone to his pocket. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opens and Elena comes out, wrapped in several towels, one around her torso, another around her head; clearly, she has just emerged from the shower. She sits down at the vanity table and plugs in her hairdryer as Paul disappears into the bathroom. “Looks like they’re getting ready to go out.”

“Where do they go all the time?” Claire wonders out loud.

“Hello?” Jade says. “It’s Miami. World famous for its nightlife. Not everybody’s in bed by ten o’clock, you know.”

“Gives me a migraine just thinking about going out in this weather,” Claire says as I hand the binoculars back to Jade.

“So, what’s happening with your brother?” my niece asks, returning
the binoculars to her eyes. “Haven’t seen him since Thursday.”

“Heath was here?” Claire asks.

“Just briefly.” I haven’t said anything to Claire about Heath’s visit or his request for money. Again I wonder if his gambling debts had anything to do with my rape. But sharing this concern with Claire will only complicate things further.

“This is boring,” Jade says. “Can’t we at least put on the TV?”

“Not till they go out,” Claire tells her. “I don’t want any light on in this room. Nothing that might tip them to the fact we’re watching.”

“I don’t think he cares.” Jade hands me the binoculars, although strictly speaking it’s not my turn.

“Anything?” Claire asks a few minutes later.

“No. Yes! He’s coming out of the bathroom,” I announce. “Towel around his waist. Walking to the window. Oh, my God.”

“What?” Claire and Jade ask together.

“I think he waved.”

“What?” they ask again.

“Let me see that.” Claire grabs the binoculars from my hand, raises them to her eyes.

“Is he waving?” I ask, my heart pounding.

“Not that I can make out. I mean, it’s raining so hard, I can hardly see anything. It looks like he’s just fixing his hair.”

Is that what he’s doing? I replay the motion in my mind, watching Paul Giller lift his hand to his head.

“Let me see,” Jade says, and Claire gives her daughter the binoculars.

“Well … what’s he doing?”

“Just standing there. Wait—he’s taking off the towel. Damn it. He turned around. Nice butt!”

“Jade …”

“Well, it is.”

“What’s happening now?”

“He’s walking into the closet. She’s still drying her hair. Doing
a lousy job, by the looks of it.” Jade watches Paul and Elena for the next half hour as they continue getting ready to go out. “Okay. I think we’re finally set to go. Terrible dress she’s wearing.”

Again, Claire commandeers the binoculars. “I think it’s nice.”

“I rest my case.”

“What do you think of her dress, Bailey?” Claire asks. “Take a look.”

I glance through the binoculars at what Elena is wearing: a sleeveless minidress with a scooped neckline and layers of ruffles at the hips. I search her exposed flesh for any bruises, but even if it weren’t raining, I know I wouldn’t see any, that the beating I was so positive I saw Paul administer happened only in my mind. What other explanation can there be? “She looks nice,” I say as Paul Giller, wearing a print shirt tucked into a tight pair of dark pants, comes up behind her, puts his arms around her waist, and nuzzles his chin into the crook of her neck, his hands reaching up to cup her breasts. Elena playfully bats his hands aside and they head out of the room, both of them laughing.

A few seconds later, Paul Giller walks back into the bedroom to retrieve the cell phone he left on the bed. He approaches the window, staring into the downpour.

Then he lifts his fingers to his lips and blows me a kiss.

I gasp.

“What?” Claire asks as Jade looks at me.

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

—

“That’s it for me, guys,” Claire announces at the conclusion of the eleven o’clock news. She grabs the remote from Jade’s lap and turns off the television over her daughter’s loud protests. “I’m going to sleep. I suggest we all do the same.”

“But it’s so early,” Jade says. She is propped up between us in bed, looking imploringly from her mother to me.

“It’s late,” Claire tells her. “I have to be at work by eight o’clock, and you have school tomorrow.”

“But they haven’t even come home yet.” Jade motions toward Paul Giller’s apartment.

“And who knows when that could be? Go on,” Claire tells her daughter. “You can watch TV in your room.”

Jade groans and crawls over her mother on her way out of bed. “Okay. Have it your way. See you guys in the morning.”

“Good night, sweetie,” Claire and I call after her.

“We don’t have to leave tomorrow, you know,” Claire tells me as soon as Jade has left the room. “We could stay another week. Until you’re feeling …”

“Not so crazy?”

“A little more secure,” Claire says.

“No. You have your own lives to get on with. I can’t expect you to babysit me forever.”

Claire reluctantly agrees. “Only on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to stop watching Paul Giller’s apartment.”

I’d pretty much decided this on my own already. “Okay.”

“It’s one condition with two parts,” Claire qualifies.

“What’s the second part?”

“I need you to hand over your binoculars.”

“What? No. Those were my mother’s.”

“I know, and I’m not talking about forever. Just for a little while. Until you’re feeling better. I’ll keep them safe, Bailey.”

“That’s not the point.”

“The point is that as long as they’re here, you’ll be tempted to use them.” She looks at me with the same imploring eyes Jade gave me earlier. “Please, Bailey. Enough is enough.”

I nod.

“Good girl.” She kisses my forehead, then hunkers down in the bed. “Try to get some sleep.”

I slide down beside her and pull the covers up over my head.

Claire flips onto her side, facing away from me. Within minutes,
I hear her breathing deepen, and I try to emulate its calm, steady rhythm, each one of my breaths an echo of hers. Within minutes, I’m fast asleep.

—

The ringing of the telephone wakes me up some three hours later.

“Claire,” I say as I grope for the receiver. “Claire, wake up. Do you hear that?” I answer the phone in the middle of its second ring. But even before I can say hello, I know no one is on the other end, that all I will hear is a dial tone. Probably it didn’t ring at all. Still clutching the receiver, I turn toward Claire.

Except she isn’t there. There is no one in bed beside me.

“Claire?” I climb out of bed, returning the phone to its charger and about to reach for the scissors when I see her.

She is sitting in the chair in front of the window, her head drooped forward, binoculars in her lap.

“Claire?” I say again, advancing slowly toward her, seized by the sudden fear she might be dead. “Claire?” I touch her shoulder, and then shake it when she fails to respond.

She startles and wakes up. “What? What’s happened?”

“Are you all right?” I ask. “What are you doing?”

It takes a few seconds for her eyes to focus. “What time is it?”

“After two. How long have you been sitting here?”

“About an hour,” she tells me. “I had to go to the bathroom, and I was coming back to bed when I realized the blinds were still up. I went to close them and I saw the light in Paul Giller’s apartment was on. So I thought I’d take a look. And I guess I must have fallen asleep.…”

“I take it you didn’t see anything very exciting.”

“No. Not a thing. God, I’m thirsty. You feel like some hot chocolate? I feel like some hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate sounds nice.”

She pushes herself to her feet. “I’ll go make it. You want to help me?”

“Would you mind if I stayed here and kept an eye on things?” I pick up the binoculars from the chair where Claire has left them.

“Bailey …”

“Last time, I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in two minutes. Then you hand those suckers over.”

I nod, sitting down in the chair she has just vacated as she tiptoes past the closed door of the room where Jade is supposedly sleeping, although I can hear the television. I raise the binoculars to my eyes and stare through the rain.

As if on cue, Elena comes running into the bedroom, Paul Giller walking slowly after her. She is shaking her head and gesticulating wildly.

“Claire!” I call out. “Jade!” But nobody hears me.

Elena makes a move for the bathroom, but Paul blocks her way, backing her up against the window. Elena raises her hands in the air, as if trying to ward him off. Paul has temporarily disappeared from my line of vision, swallowed by the ongoing downpour.

And then I see him.

He is advancing steadily toward her, his right arm extended. I stand up, move closer to the window, adjusting and then readjusting the lens of my binoculars, trying to convince myself that I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing, and that is the gun in Paul Giller’s hand, a gun he is waving menacingly at Elena’s head. Elena is crying and waving her arms in front of her, frantically trying to persuade him to put the gun down.

“Claire!” I call out again. “Jade! Get in here!” I hear sirens emanating from the TV in Jade’s room and the kettle’s whistle in the kitchen telling Claire the water for our hot chocolate is boiled and ready.