Beyond Suspicion

A gust of wind howled outside, and a flock of dead leaves pecked at her window. Cindy pulled the covers over her head. Stupid fools.

She heard a noise, a slamming sound. It was as if something had fallen or been knocked over. It had come from downstairs.

“Daddy?”

She was alone with her father in the house for the weekend. Her mother and older sister had traveled to Manchester for a high school soccer tournament. The boys, more than her father could handle, were with their grandmother.

Cindy waited for a response but heard nothing. Only the wind outside her window, the sound of leaves moving. She listened harder, as if with added concentration she could improve her own hearing. Swirling leaves were scary enough, all that pecking on the glass. But it was the crunching sound that really frightened her-the sound of leaves moving outside her bedroom window, one footstep at a time.

“Is that you, Daddy?”

Her body went rigid. There it was. The crunching sound!

Someone was walking outside her house, she was sure of it, their feet dragging through the leaves. Just the thought frightened her to the core, brought tears to her eyes. She jumped out of her bed and ran down the hall.

“Daddy, where are you?”

The hallway was black, but Cindy could have found her way blindfolded. She’d run there many nights screaming from nightmares. She pushed open the door to the master bedroom and rushed inside. “Daddy, there’s a noise!”

She stood frozen at the foot of the bed. Her eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness to see that it was empty. In fact, it was still made. No one had slept in it, even though it was long past her bedtime, long past her father’s. At least it felt late. The digital clock on the nightstand was stuck on midnight, the green numbers pulsating the way they always did with the power surges on windy nights.

Am I by myself?

Cindy ran from the bedroom. Fear propelled her down the stairs faster than she’d ever covered them. Her father had fallen asleep on the couch many times before, and maybe that was where he was. She hurried into the family room. Immediately, her heart sank with despair. He wasn’t there.

“Daddy!”

She ran from the family room to the kitchen, then to the living room. She checked the bathrooms and even the large closet in the foyer, doors flying open like so many astonished mouths. He was nowhere. Tears streamed down her face as she returned to the kitchen, and then something caught her eye.

Through the window and across the yard, she could see a light glowing inside the garage. Her father’s car was parked in the driveway, so she knew he was home, perhaps busy in the garage with his woodworking. That could have been the noise she’d heard, his scuffling through their leaf-covered yard, the sound of her father carrying things back and forth from the garage.

After bedtime?

Part of her wanted to stay put, but the thought of being alone in the big house was too much for a nine-year-old. She let out a shrill scream and exploded out the back door, into a cold autumn night that felt more like winter’s first blast. She kept screaming, kept right on ru

“Daddy, are you in there?” Her little voice was even more fragile against the cold, north wind.

She tried the latch, but it was locked, and she was too small to raise the main door anyway. She ran to the side door and turned the knob. It, too, was locked. On her tiptoes she peered through the window. The light inside was on, but she didn’t see any sign of her father. The angle gave her a view only of the front half of the garage.

“Daddy, are you-”

Her words halted as her eyes fixed on the dark patch on the floor. It wasn’t really a patch. It moved ever so slightly, back and forth. A spot with a gentle sway. Not a spot. A ghostlike image with arms at its side. Feet that hovered above the ground. A rope around its neck.

And a hunter’s cap just like her father’s.

She fell backward to the ground, pushed herself away from the garage door, and ran back toward the house. Except she didn’t want to go back inside, didn’t know where to run. She ran in circles around the big elm tree, crying and screaming, the sound of fallen leaves crunching beneath her feet.

•

A pounding noise jostled her from her memories. She blinked hard, trying to focus. It sounded like the footsteps in the hall she thought she’d heard earlier, but it was louder, like galloping horses. Another round of pounding, and she realized it wasn’t footsteps at all.

Someone was knocking at the front door.

Her heart raced. She couldn’t even begin to guess who would come calling at this hour, and she didn’t want to think about it. She had yet to clear her mind of the memories she’d stirred up. That unforgettable image on the garage floor. The one that looked so much like the dark spot in her photograph of that little girl and her dog. The shadow that had never existed.

Or that had disappeared.

With the third round of knocking, Cindy’s feet were on the floor. A voice inside her told her not to answer the door, exactly like her dream. And just like the dream, she found herself ignoring the warning, putting one foot in front of the other as she slowly crossed the bedroom.

A light switched on at the end of the hall. Her mother peeked out of her room and said, “Cindy, what the heck is going on?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get it.”

23

•

Jack woke to a shrill ringing in his ear. His pillow felt hard as concrete, and then he realized it was concrete. His cheek was pressed against the sidewalk, exactly where he’d fallen.

At first, he had no memory of where he was. Dawn was just a sliver of an orange ribbon on the horizon. Jack tried to sit up, but his body ached all over. It was as if he’d been hit by a truck. Finally, he forced himself onto his knees. The ringing in his ear was gone, but he felt nauseous. Probably a concussion. He closed his eyes and tried to stop the spi

He touched his jaw. It was definitely sore. His gaze drifted toward the fence, and he spotted a little orange light blinking in the darkness. He squinted, then realized what it was: his cell phone emitted that light whenever he had a message. He tried to stand up, then yielded to the pain. He rolled like a dog and grabbed the phone, then dialed Cindy at her mother’s. She answered after just three rings.

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Jack, where have you been? I’ve been calling your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

His head was pounding. “What time is it?”

“Almost five.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, the morning. What’s wrong with you? Have you been drinking?”

“No. I got beat up.”

“What?”

The simple act of talking made him short of breath. He groaned lightly and said, “Somebody beat the holy crap out of me.”

“Are you okay?”

Jack forced a yawn in an effort to loosen his jaw. A sharp pain ran though his head like a railroad spike. “I think I’ll be okay.” In about a month, he thought.

“Who did this to you?” she asked, her voice quaking.

He started to explain, but it hurt too much to talk. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not okay! They just left, and you weren’t even here. I had no idea what to do.”

He sat bolt upright, concerned. “Who came?”