AHMM, December 2009 (16 page)

But who was this woman if she wasn't Laura? At first, Anne considered that a question she'd never be able to answer, new to the valley as she was. She could see Gitry's woman without sunglasses and scarf and never know her, unless she turned out to be Mattie Koval or Rachel. The only other Jackson women she knew were just names and last names at that: a Dr. Millikan and a Mrs. Zollman.

Anne, who had given up on dinner by then and was sitting with
Love's Forbidden Memory
unopened on her lap, asked herself if it could be Dr. Millikan, the woman who owned the house Gitry watched. That relationship would certainly have thrown them together. She pictured the place as she'd seen it the morning of the fog, a spectral house, imagined Gitry alone, walking through rooms filled with the doctor's things, week after week, waiting for her to slip back. That would more than account for those bruised, sleepless eyes.

Putting her book aside, Anne crossed to the computer and signed on to the Internet. She searched on “Dr. Millikan,” adding “cardiologist” and “New York City” to narrow the field. She was hoping for a photograph but found instead a brief biography on a hospital's website. The bio proved to be enough. Dr. Millikan, first name Edith, was sixty-six years old.

Almost as an afterthought, Anne entered “Zollman.” Wayne Sedam had mentioned only one other useable fact: Zollman's husband was a dot com millionaire. Anne added “Internet” to the search parameters and hit the enter key. If she could first identify the husband, maybe she could backtrack to the wife, perhaps finding a photo of her at some charity event in Malibu. The search returned an entry for a Jonathan Zollman, inventor of an Internet security system called Osprey.

"Bingo,” Anne said aloud, clicking on the link for the site.

Its welcome page featured a color photograph of a smiling young man with ginger hair and sharp features, the man she'd met the night before when she'd shown up uninvited at Millikan House.

IX

Anne sat staring at the photograph for a long time. Then the humming of the computer made her realize that she was in danger. Its owner might be monitoring her searches at that moment, might even have tapped into Osprey House's security cameras to watch her as she had watched the team of house cleaners.

She signed off and made a show of turning out all the lights in the little house before going into her bedroom. Once there, she bent down to look under her bed. She felt more than saw the box her mother's books had traveled in and pushed it aside. Behind it was another box her father had given her, this one when she'd left his house for good. It contained a few tools, a favorite fishing reel, and, wrapped in a well oiled rag, a Colt single-action .44.

Anne retrieved the gun and a box of shells. She tested the pistol's action and loaded it. Only then did she pause to listen for any sound of movement outside the ranch house. Hearing nothing, she opened a window and slipped out. She made a wide detour around the main house and its cameras, crossing the meadow that ran parallel to the road.

As she walked, she thought it all through. She understood now why Koval's description of Gitry had fit him no better than his coat, why he knew his way around Osprey House, why he hadn't been seen in town for weeks. Anne even knew why “Laura” had worn a disguise when she'd driven in from the airport at Idaho Falls. Mrs. Zollman had only been to Jackson once under her real name, when she'd somehow met Chaz Gitry, but that once might have been enough for some local to remember and place her.

When Anne arrived at Millikan House, she was thinking of the nickname Wayne Sedam had given it with uncanny insight: Heart Disease House. This time the front door opened wide to her ring. The man she'd known as Gitry wore the same clothes he'd had on the night before. Anne decided that if he hadn't slept in them, it was only because he hadn't slept at all.

"I can't visit tonight,” he said. “She's coming. I got an e-mail this afternoon."

"We'll wait for her together,” Anne said. She'd been holding the big Colt behind her leg. She raised it now. “Back inside, Mr. Zollman."

"Mr. Zollman? I don't—"

"I found your picture on the Internet. Back on in. I have to call the police."

The man in the shadows licked his lips. “You haven't called them yet?"

"I couldn't risk your wife showing up while I was at it. You'd only need a minute to kill her."

Anne followed Zollman into the house, turning on lights as they went. Under the florescent ceiling of the very modern kitchen, he looked to Anne like a corpse prepared by a careless undertaker.

When she picked up the phone, she saw Zollman eye a rack of knives. Then he turned his back on it, limped to a chrome and steel breakfast nook, and sat down.

After she'd finished her call, Anne asked, “How'd you really hurt your leg?"

"Gitry threw a hatchet at me when he saw my gun. I think I only meant to scare him until he did that."

"Where's the gun?"

"Upstairs."

"And Gitry?"

"Under a pile of firewood. I didn't think it would be weeks until my wife came. If only it hadn't snowed up in the passes. If only that pothead caretaker at my place hadn't quit, bringing you around."

"If only you'd really gone to the South Pacific,” Anne wanted to say. “If only you'd found someone else.” She got as far as “if only.” Then a siren sounded in the distance.

"Do something for me,” Zollman said. “I really love that house. Would you look after it?"

"Always,” Anne said.

Copyright © 2009 Terence Faherty

[Back to Table of Contents]

Miller didn't go out much now, because the more people there were, the lonelier he felt. He hid in his flat, watched TV, read the books that he had borrowed on quick, nervous expeditions to the library.

Sometimes, though, he needed to remind himself that he was not alone. That night was one of those times. He had eaten a microwave meal and flipped channels but found nothing to watch that would not leave him either bored or anxious. So he pulled his battered laptop from under his sagging sofa, waited for it to grind into life, and then clicked on his bookmark.

He wandered at random at first: watched the endless press of people through Times Square, blurred streaks of light from car headlights on a rainy Kaiserplatz in Aachen, a solitary cyclist weaving from side to side across a bridge over the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.

And then his town, the three public webcams that never showed much of any interest. But it was home, and it gave him a connection to the way that he used to live before the illness, and for a while it stopped the walls of his flat from pushing in too close.

Miller watched taxi drivers talking and smoking outside their cabs while they waited for the next train to come in. A man in a suit sprinted from the pub next to the station, late for his train. Miller clicked back, and then on to the link for the camera that overlooked the pier. Shapes bundled fat against the cold sat in darkness, waiting for the fish. A few feet below them a deeper darkness moved and surged. Miller preferred to watch the pier camera when the nights were lighter. When it was dark like this, the sea almost invisible but always moving, it made him anxious and a little sick. He went back again, picked the last link. This one had only appeared a few weeks earlier. He was not sure why anyone had put a camera there at all, let alone made the feed public. It wasn't very reliable, sometimes there was a picture, sometimes just a page-not-found error.

The camera looked out over Burdon Square, a place that people went through, rather than to. A boarded-up Wesleyan chapel occupied most of one side, the short flight of stone steps to its door littered and stained. The wet asphalt of the road glowed orange from lights in the window of an interior design shop. Every few minutes, the light dimmed and changed color. Miller liked the orange best. Above and behind the shop a high embankment curved away toward the distant Victorian arches of the station. Miller sat and watched, waiting for the light to change color; he had nothing else to do.

A movement caught his eye, something dark against the steps of the chapel. A man was standing there, as if he were looking for something that he had lost. The man turned, looked across the square, and Miller saw what had caught his attention. A woman hurried out of the square, unsteady on high heels, tugging down at the hem of her short black dress with one hand, clutching tight at her handbag with the other. Then there was movement above her, a train passing along the embankment, rectangles of pale yellow light flickering past for a moment, and then one final arc of blue as the overhead power cable sparked. The man took two steps back up the steps to the chapel, as if retreating from the square. A taxi drifted along the far side, slowed. The man stepped forward, raised a hand, but the taxi accelerated away again, until it was just red lights, and then it was nothing at all.

The lights in the furniture shop window changed color, warm orange to a sickly green that turned the air into thick water, deep under the sea.

They came from the alley at the side of the chapel, two of them, not particularly hurrying, walking toward the man. One wore a light coat, one a dark coat, and both pulled their hoods up as they walked. The man took a step out, then back, then stopped, no time anymore, nowhere to go.

The figures did not seem to hurry, but they closed the gap very quickly, and then they were on him. One vicious punch to the gut dropped the man to his knees, and then a kick in the face threw him back onto the steps, where he flapped about like a fish just out of the water. Then there were more kicks, a stamp and then another, and then another, like they were trying to put out a fire, and the man on the ground did not move anymore, and the two attackers suddenly broke away, drifted down the steps and out of sight, not hurrying any more than they had when they arrived.

Miller sat in horror, hand opening and closing over the mouse as if with one click he could pause time, with another rewind it. But there was nothing that he could do that would change anything. The light from the shop changed from green to red, and the square looked as if it was on fire. Miller took a deep breath and hurried over to the phone on the kitchen wall. He took another breath and dialled.

He spoke to a calm voice, gave his name and address like a child lost in a store, and then described exactly what he had seen. He told the operator that he thought it best to phone the police first, but that they would need an ambulance too.

"I'll get them straight there,” the woman said. “Can you tell me, sir, is the victim conscious? Please don't move him, but can you see if he is conscious?"

"I didn't explain myself well,” Miller said. “I'm not actually there. I saw it on camera."

"On camera, sir?"

"Yes, on my computer. I'm not a security guard or anything. It's a public camera. You can watch it. On the computer."

"Thank you sir,” the woman said, as if she didn't understand what he meant but didn't have the time to find out more. “We'll send someone right away."

When he went back to his computer, the browser had refreshed to an error page, the camera or the server down, and no matter how many times he clicked refresh, he could not get it back again.

"Mr. Miller?"

There were two of them, a man and a woman, so bulked out by stab vests and dangling black equipment that they seemed bigger than ordinary human beings. They had to come though the door one at a time, and Miller had to walk off ahead of them. He led them to the small sitting room, hovered, and offered tea. They sat on his creaking couch, said that they were fine, thank you very much. He sat down opposite them.

They all sat in silence for a moment, and then there was a crackle of voices and static. The policeman reached up a hand, turned down his radio.

"You called us last night, Mr. Miller.” He flipped open a notebook. “About eight forty-five."

Now, Miller thought, now he could do some good for once, after years spent living a life unnoticed. He took a deep breath. It was very important that he remembered everything. Every last detail. That he told it clearly, without stammering or repeating. He wanted them to think: reliable witness, good citizen, strong character.

"That's right,” he said. “I did. I saw it."

"You reported that you had witnessed a serious assault. In Burdon Square."

"That's right."

"But as I understand it, you weren't actually present in Burdon Square, you were..."

"Here. Yes. I saw it on the computer, through a public webcam."

"A webcam."

"Yes."

The two police officers stared at Miller for a moment, and he felt uncomfortable. Had he said something wrong?

"Can I ask why?” It was the first thing the woman officer had said.

"Sorry, I don't—Why?"

"Why you were watching a webcam of Burdon Square,” she asked. “It's just an unusual way to spend your evening. Burdon Square, of all places."