The Unquiet

Chapter III

I sat at Rebecca Clay’s kitchen table, watching as she cleaned the broken glass from the sink with a brush and pan. There was still blood on the windowpane. She had notified the cops immediately after calling me, and a South Portland cruiser had arrived shortly before I did. I had identified myself to the patrolman and listened as Rebecca gave her statement, but otherwise I had not interfered in any way. Her daughter, Je

There was another woman sitting with Je

“You call me,” said April. “Anytime.”

“I will. Thanks, hon.”

April kissed Je

I watched Je

“You doing okay?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“When something like this happens, it can be kind of scary,” I continued. “It’s happened to me, and I was scared.”

“I wasn’t scared,” she said, and her tone was so matter-of-fact that I knew she wasn’t lying.

“Why not?”

“The man didn’t want to hurt us. He’s just sad.”

“How do you know that?”

She just smiled and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know that he doesn’t mean you harm?”

She looked away, that almost beatific smile still on her face. The conversation was clearly over. Her mother came back inside with the cop, and Je

Rebecca Clay lived in an area known as Willard. Her house, a compact but impressive nineteenth-century structure in which she had grown up, and to which she had returned after her father’s disappearance, stood on Willard Haven Park, a dead end that ran perpendicular to Willard Beach, a few steps across Willard Haven Road. When the cop eventually left, promising that a detective would call either later that night or the next morning, I took a look around, walking in his footsteps, but it was clear that the man who had broken the glass was long gone. I followed a trail of blood to Deake Street, which ran parallel to Willard Haven Park on the right, then lost it where he had climbed into a car and driven away. I called Rebecca Clay from the sidewalk, and she gave me the names of some of the neighbors who lived within sight of where the car had been parked. Only one of them, a middle-aged woman named Lisa Hulmer, who sported the kind of look that suggested she might consider the description “whorish” a compliment, had seen anything, and even that wasn’t much help to me. She remembered a dark red car parked across the street, but she couldn’t tell me the make or the tag number. She did invite me into her home, though, and suggested that I might like to join her for a drink. I had clearly disturbed her in the act of consuming a jug of something fruity and alcoholic. When she closed the front door behind me, it reminded me uncomfortably of a cell slamming shut on a condemned man.

“It’s a little early for me,” I said.

“But it’s after ten-thirty!”

“I’m a late sleeper.”

“Me too.” She gri

“That’s…nice,” I said, for want of a better word.

“You’re nice,” she said. She swayed a little and fiddled with a seashell chain that hung between her breasts, but by then I had opened the door and was backing out of the house before she shot me with a dart and chained me to a wall in her basement.

“Did you find out anything?” Rebecca Clay asked me when I got back to her house.

“Not much, apart from the fact that one of your neighbors is in heat.”

“Lisa?” She smiled for the first time since I’d arrived. “She’s always in heat. She even propositioned me once.”

“You’re making me feel less special,” I said.

“I suppose I should have warned you about her, but-” She waved a hand at the broken window.

“Well, she was the only one who saw anything. She said there was a red car parked outside her house for a while, but the lighting isn’t so good there. She could be mistaken.”

Rebecca threw the last of the glass in her trash can and put the brush and pan in a closet. She then called a glazier, who promised to be out to her first thing in the morning. I helped her to tape some plastic over the damaged pane and, when all of that was done, she made a pot of coffee and poured each of us a cup. We both stayed standing while we drank.

“I don’t trust the police to do anything about this,” she said.

“Can I ask why?”

“They haven’t been able to do anything about him so far. Why should this time be any different?”

“This time he busted through a window. That’s criminal damage. It’s escalating. There’s blood, and the blood could be useful to the cops.”

“How? So they can use it to identify him if he kills me? By then it may be a little late for me. This man isn’t scared of the police. I was thinking about what you told me when we first met, about how this man might have to be forced to leave me alone. I want you to do that. I don’t care how much it costs. I have some money. I can afford to pay you to do it, and whomever else you want to hire to help you. Look at what he did here. He’s not going to go away, not unless someone makes him. I’m afraid for myself, and I’m afraid for Je

“Je

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that she didn’t seem particularly frightened or shaken by what happened.”

Rebecca frowned. “I guess she’s always been that way. I’ll talk to her later, though. I don’t want her bottling something up just because she doesn’t want to upset me.”

“Can I ask where her father is?”

“Her father’s dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. He never had much to do with her anyway, and we weren’t married. But I meant what I said: I want this man stopped, whatever it takes.”

I didn’t reply. She was angry and frightened. Her hands were still shaking from the shock of the incident. There would be time to talk in the morning. I told her that I’d stay if it made her feel better. She thanked me and made up the sofa bed in her living room.

“Do you carry a gun?” she asked as she prepared to head up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Yes.”

“Good. If he comes back, use it to kill him.”