A beat up old Jeep pulls into the driveway and the driver kills the engine and the lights. I lift my camera and push the button for the zoom with my thumb. The closed car windows muffle the mechanical whirr. He didn’t leave the porch light on for her. I switch off the flash. I can’t have her see me.
She exits the car and pauses for a moment and looks out across the road. There is enough in the streetlights to get a rough make. Dark hair, pale skin. She’s short and thin and looks tiny next to the car. She has a backpack. She’s staying the night. She enters the house without knocking. The hall light shining through the narrow glass panel beside the front door goes out and leaves the house in total darkness.
I sigh and turn on the engine. The clock reads 10:17. I’ll need to be back at sunrise, she might be an early riser. I wait until I round the corner at the end of the street before I turn on the lights. I’m not surprised a girl came. Usually they’re suspicious for a reason.
At my apartment I know I should go to sleep but I don’t. I pour myself a drink and sit and swirl the glass, the ice clacking in the otherwise silent room. The lamp over my shoulder casts long shadows on the floor. I unfurl my fingers and the shadow waves back. I drain the glass and feel comfort from the way the room spins. I close my eyes and wait for sleep.
Back at the house the Jeep is still there. I take more photos in the light. I type out a message to my client. I check my notes to get her name right. Jessica. I thought as much but it’s not something you want to get wrong. It pays to be professional.
I didn’t think much of Jessica the first time I laid eyes on her. We met at the Blue and White Café. She had to come across town to get there but I told her it was better that way. Less chance someone sees her and asks questions she doesn’t want to answer. She wore sunglasses and a scarf wrapped up around her chin. She didn’t look me in the eye when she sat.
“I’m not even sure why I’m doing this,” she said.
Sure she knew, they always know. Husband has been ignoring her and spending too much time on his phone. Now he’s working late and taking weekend trips with friends she’d never known had existed.
“I don’t think he’s up to anything.”
Of course you do. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. You wouldn’t be about to slide five hundred in a yellow envelope across the table if you didn’t think he was tangling with someone else. It is a thin veil of fiction for show. You know the truth, but you don’t want to admit it to yourself.
“But I want to be sure.”
“That’s why I’m here. To give you the answers.”
“Will you be discreet?”
“He’ll never know I was there.”
I get a name and an address, both home and office, and I get to business. I don’t pity them. The world is a cruel place at times and when it decides to be cruel it takes courage to face it. Courage would be confronting the bastard, not handing me envelopes of cash. But I’ve got bills to pay so who am I to complain.
The door opens and the girl comes out alone, the same backpack slung over her shoulder. My camera clicks. She’s pretty in a wholesome kind of way and young, not young enough to be his daughter, but not far off. She gets straight into the Jeep and pulls out and starts down the road. The house stays silent, no sign of the guy.
I start the car and go after the girl. It’s not something I usually do, but there’s something about this girl that makes me wonder where she’s going and what she’s doing. Why did a girl with her pick of the toys end up with a tired old bit of rope?
She takes the highway North and exits and heads for the hills. Maybe she’s heading for a mountain home, paid for by daddy. But she doesn’t take the road up the hill. Instead we negotiate tight corners on the flat. We pass by all the gravel car parks at the foot of the walking trails. I keep my distance, few cars come this way outside of weekends and holidays.
The Jeep indicates and makes a right. It’s a no through road. At the end there’s a grassed area for parking and a children’s playground. It’s a strange place for a young woman to go alone. I pull over before the turn. If I follow her in, she’ll be sure I was tailing her. So I wait.
Sunlight filters through the tall trees. It’s going to be another scorcher. The forest is thick and the shadows keep the ground dark. There is no wind. I wait an hour and there’s no sign of the Jeep or the girl. She might have gone for a walk.
I start the engine and turn down the road and park. The grass lot is empty of cars. There is no Jeep. I drive around looking for a connecting road or track she could have taken. Nothing. There’s one way in and one way out.
I park and look around. There’s no one here. I get out the car. I scan the gravel road for tyre tracks. Nothing fresh aside from my own. The forest is silent. Dark and silent. Like it’s mocking me.
“She made me,” I say aloud.
I spit on the ground and get back in the car. She must have made me. And then she lost me somehow. How the hell did she know I was following her and how did she pull it off? I let it go and I make my way to the Blue and White.
When Jessica walks in her shoulders and her head are already slumped. She knows what’s coming. She wears the same scarf and sunglasses as before and we sit at the same table. She unwraps herself and folds her hands on the table. She doesn’t know what to say. So I start.
“I’ve got your evidence.”
I put a thumb drive on the table and slide it to her. She looks at it but she doesn’t move.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she blonde?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not a blonde girl in a red Mazda?”
“It’s a brunette, young and in a Jeep.”
“A brunette in a Jeep? I don’t know who that could be.”
“Take a look at the photos.”
“Find out who she is.”
I don’t need this. Find the girl who already lost me once. A girl who has a knack of disappearing into thin air. She takes a yellow envelope from her bag and puts it on the table and slides it to the middle. She’s prepared.
“Find out who she is.”
“I don’t want the assignment.”
“You don’t want the money?”
“I don’t want to get involved.”
“You doubled your pay. I want to know who she is.”
“And what’s going to happen when you find out?”
“I need to know.”
She puts her sunglasses back on and wraps herself back up as if the conversation is already done.
“I didn’t say yes.”
“I heard you were good at this. Don’t you think you can do it?”
“Don’t pull that with me, lady.”
“It’s a simple question and I’m paying well for the answer. Find out who she is.”
She puts her bag on the table and takes out a mint and slips it in her mouth. She brushes her fringe with her hand and stands and walks out leaving the envelope on the table. I put it in my jacket pocket and order the turkey club.
I call in a favour with an old friend on the force. I give him the license of the Jeep and ask him to run it. Name and address is all I need. He messages me back asking to meet at The Elephant tonight. I guess the cost is a steak sandwich and a pint of beer. So be it.
I get back to my place at the hottest part of the day. The stairwell is cool, but my second floor flat is not. The air is warm and suffocating. I go to the window to close the shades and I see it out on the street. It’s the Jeep. It’s parked right across the road, right where I’d never fail to see it. It’s like she is waving it in front of my nose. Not only had she made me, but she’d followed me. She was probably at the Blue and White, sitting in a corner sipping an iced-tea. And then she’d followed me home and to rub it all in had parked right in front of my living room window. The Jeep looked empty but it was hard to tell with the glare from the sun.
There’s a knock at the door. My head snaps and I turn my body to face the door. I don’t move. Another knock. Two clear raps. I tiptoe over and press my ear against the thin timber. There is no noise. Then the sound of footsteps. Light footsteps like someone on tiptoes. I finger the lock and twist the knob and inch open the door, bending my head at an angle to peer through the gap.
There is no one. But I smell something. Cigarette smoke lingers in the air. The opening door disturbs whisps of grey smoke. The air clears leaving only the stucco ceiling and a beige mass of plasterboard walls broken by the doors of my neighbours. At my feet is a single cigarette butt, flattened and extinguished. I kick the butt away and close the door.
It was her. It had to be her. If she followed me she knew I was inside, so why knock and leave? What game is she playing? I go to the window and look back out to the street. The Jeep is gone.
I throw back my arms and slip out of my jacket. I fold it over the back of the stool at the breakfast bar and I get a beer from the fridge. I sit on the couch. The cold from the beer snakes down to my stomach. My head is hot and it swims in the heat.
The girl appears before me against the blank wall opposite as if someone were playing a movie with a projector. She gets out of the Jeep with her backpack to enter the house. She stops and looks back across the street, but this time she looks right at me. She looks and she stares. When our eyes lock I’m paralyzed. Her face turns from youthful and pale to dark and wrinkled. Her eyes sink into her skull and her hair thins and stands up on her head. I see all her teeth because her lips wither away. Her skin turns translucent and I see the muscle and sinew holding her face together. Then the image vanishes and it’s a blank wall again.
I finish the beer and grab my coat and go out. The car is hot and the city feels close and claustrophobic. I cross a set of lights and the reflection of the sun off a tall glass building catches my eyes. I blink the flash away and I flick my eyes to the rear vision mirror and there it is, a few cars back. It’s the Jeep. The tint on the windshield is dark under the sun and I can’t see the driver. It has to be her. This isn’t a coincidence.
I turn off into a multi story car park. I wind my way up the concrete ramps, the smooth exposed slabs echoing back the screech of my tyres. I check my mirrors but the Jeep is not there. I park and I wait. I watch the mirrors. Nothing. Then a big black truck, but it’s not a Jeep. I get out and head for the elevator.
The air outside feels like it did in the apartment. The slight breeze is warm and I slip off my jacket and carry it. The noise of cars and traffic signals and kids yelling at each other grate at me. I’m early but I need a drink. I make for The Elephant.
I’m about four deep when Greg walks in. He holds two fingers up to the barman and takes the stool next to me. He taps me on the shoulder and I wrestle my eyelids open.
“You look like shit,” he says.
“Thanks. You run the plate?”
“Straight to business. We’ll get there. How have you been?”
“Did you run the plate?”
He sips his beer and turns his body to face me. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Do what?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m running around after a cheating husband for some woman. She wants to know who the girl is. Did you run the plate?”
“You should never have left the force. We’d have got you help.”
“Quit fucking with me Greg.”
He sighs. A big old I’m over it kind of sigh. “You know who the girl is. You know the plate.”
I shake my head at him. He’s looking at me the way we used to look at mothers and fathers when we had to tell them their daughter wasn’t coming home. That we’d found her body, beaten and violated out in the forest somewhere. It’s the kind of look that says I don’t know how I can fix this. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do so I’m going to sit here and look at you like this. Of course we used to promise them we’d get them justice, but we couldn’t always follow through no matter how much we tried.
I take a big gulp of my fresh beer and I look over to the corner and there at a table for two is the girl. The girl with the backpack and the Jeep. The girl from my movie on the wall. The girl from the forest. I sit bolt upright. She’s there nursing a glass of ice water. She puts the straw to her mouth and looks right at me, expressionless.
“You know who it is,” Greg says. His voice sounds distant.
I close my eyes. Images flash in my head, like old memories you haven’t thought about since you were a kid. I’m in the forest and I’m in uniform. Around me are officers and dogs sniffing about the ground. Up ahead is a clearing and there’s already tape strung up between the trees forming a barrier. I lift the tape and swivel my body and there she is. The brunette girl from the Jeep. A backpack lies crumpled next to the base of a tree.
“Her name is Laura Townsend,” someone says. “It looks like the same guy.”
The guy they mean is the forest killer. The rapist preying on young girls. The serial killer had been active off and on for a decade. We locked up a guy the year before but he didn’t act alone. Where we found the victim we always found cigarette butts, two types from two different people. We’d nabbed one and got him on DNA but we never found the second guy. But the jury and the public and my superiors didn’t seem to care. Justice was being served, the families had some closure and we could close the book. And I let it happen. I let it go like everyone else.
Then a year later we found Laura. I see her now. Her clothes ripped. Animals have torn chunks of flesh off her. The monster we didn’t pursue has done worse.
I open my eyes and Laura is gone. The table is empty. I rub my eyes and stare into my beer. It feels like getting shoved off a solid footing and going into free fall.
Greg puts his hand on my shoulder but I shrug it off. I get up and walk right out of there and onto the street. It’s dark now and the air has cooled. I’m going to be sick. The beer has gone to my head and I stagger down the street. I try to make myself walk in a straight line but my body doesn’t cooperate.
My phone rings. It’s Jessica, the woman from the Blue and White.
“What game are you playing?” she says.
“What?”
“You took photos of an empty driveway. I want my money back.”
I hang up the phone.
Late night shoppers and school kids pack the street, mingling and laughing. A girl stands in the crowd, the only stationary object in a sea of moving bodies. It is Laura. I turn away and in a shopfront window three mannequins stand in line and the one in the centre is Laura. I put my hands over my eyes and cry out. People are staring now. Laura is staring.
I stagger down the street and slip into the first bar I find. I take a stool and raise my hand. I fix my eyes on the wooden bar. How many more before I forget her for good?