LAST NIGHT
I wait because I have nothing but time.
From the quiet, dim interior of my car, I watch the quiet
neighborhood, settle into the upholstery. Autumn. Leaves lofting on cool air. Tacky, ghoulish Halloween decorations adorning stoops and lawns, hanging from trees—skeletons, and
jack-o’-lanterns, witches on brooms.
It’s a school night, so no
kids playing flashlight tag, no pickup soccer match in the street.
Maybe kids don’t even do that anymore. That’s what I understand, anyway. That they’re all iPad-addicted couch potatoes
now. It’s the new frontier of parenting. But you’ll know better
about this than I’m likely to.
Younger families live on this block. SUVs are hastily parked.
Basketball hoops tilt in driveways; bikes twist on the lawn. Recycling cans wait patiently at the curb on Wednesday, garbage
on Friday.
Tonight, there’s a game on. I see it playing on bigscreen televisions in three different open-plan living rooms.
But the house I’m watching is dark. A beautiful silver Benz
that’s about to be repossessed sits in the driveway. It’s one of
those cars—the kind that people dream about, an aspirational
car, the kind you get when… But it certainly hasn’t brought its
owner any happiness. The guy I’m watching—he’s depressed.
I can see it in his slouch as he comes and goes, in the haunted
circles that have settled around his eyes.
I can’t muster any compassion for him. And I know that you
aren’t shedding any tears. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you’ve
spent at least as much time thinking about him as I have—even
though, of course, you have other things on your mind now.
An older man walks his dog, a white puff of a thing on a
slender leash. Not a dog at all really, more like an extra-large
guinea pig. I sink a little deeper in my seat, then stay stonestill. I haven’t seen this man on this street before, and I’ve been
here most nights for a while. He’s out of his routine, I guess,
maybe decided to take a new route tonight. I’m not too worried,
though. My car—a beige Toyota Corolla—is utterly forgettable,
practically invisible in its commonness; the windows tinted (but
not too dark). If he doesn’t see me, a lone person slouched in the
driver’s seat and clearly up to no good, he won’t even notice it.
I’m in luck. He’s squinting at the screen on his smartphone.
He’s older, not fluent with it. So it takes all of his concentration.
That device is the best thing that ever happened to people who
want to be invisible. He walks right by, oblivious to the car, to
me, to his surroundings. Even his dog is distracted, incurious,
nose to the pavement. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Finally, they’re gone
and I’m alone again.
Time passes. I breathe into the night.
One by one, windows go dark except for the odd light here
and there. There’s an insomniac in 704, a nurse who comes home
after 3 a.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays to 708.
Just after 2 a.m., I slip from the car, close the door silently and
shoulder my pack. I am a shadow shifting through the shadows
of the trees, drifting, silent, up the edge of the house. I easily
pick the lock on the side entrance—you can learn how to do
anything on YouTube these days—and enter the house through
the unlocked interior door. From the garage into the laundry room.
From the laundry room into the kitchen—a typical suburban layout. I stand inside for a moment, listening.
I can still hear it, you know, the sound of her father’s voice.
I am willing to bet that you hear it, too. Maybe in those quiet
moments, when you lie in bed at night, the wail of total despair
comes back like a haunting. I imagine that your mind drifts
back to that courtroom. Your face pulled tight with that helpless mingle of anger and sorrow, nostrils flaring just slightly. I
was right there with you even though you didn’t know it. Or
maybe you did. Sometimes I wonder if you know how close I
am. If you sense me.
When the verdict was delivered, there was a moment, remember? A tiny sliver of time where the information moved through
synapses and neurons, a heartbeat. In that breath, I watched her
mother drain of what little energy and color remained in her
too-thin body. I watched her father buckle over, her brother dip
his head into his hands.
The unforgiving light of the courtroom
grew brighter somehow, an ugly white sizzle. And then the
room exploded in a wave of sound that contained all the notes
of despair, disbelief, rage. I’d been there before, in the presence
of injustice, as have you. You know how it wafts like smoke
from the black spaces beneath tables and chairs. It rises up, tall
and menacing. I was always here, it seems to say as it looms over
you, towering, victorious. It brings you to your knees. In the
presence of nothing else do you feel smaller or more powerless.
When we’re young, we’re naive enough to believe. We’re raised
on the comic-book ideal of good vanquishing evil. We believe
that white magic is stronger than black. That criminals are punished, and justice is always served. Even when it seems that evil
might triumph—no. In the final moment, a cosmic force does the
reckoning for good, one way or another. We want to believe that.
But it’s not so. Not always. Sometimes justice needs a little
push.
I make a quick loop through the house to assure myself that everything is as it was the last time I was here.
The decor is
Target, IKEA chic, white and dove gray, with bold accent patterns. There are lots of those picture collages with words like
LOVE and DREAM and FAMILY: her parents—smiling and
benevolent; her wedding photos—gauzy, a fairy-tale dream;
a gaggle of gap-toothed nieces and nephews; girls’ night out,
toasting with pink drinks in martini glasses. Throw pillows and
soft blankets, knickknacks, decorative pieces of driftwood are
artfully arranged. She was house-proud, the woman who lived
here once. She liked things pretty and comfortable. Now, surfaces are covered with dust. Her home, it smells like garbage.
As I finish my tour, I feel a twist of sadness for her. Here’s
someone who did everything right. She followed all the rules,
went to college, worked in public relations, got married, got
pregnant. Pretty, and, by all accounts, sweet and kind. And look.
Her cute house, her little dreams, her innocent life, empty, rotting. She deserved better.
Nothing I can do about that. But this is the next best thing.
I know what you’re thinking. What anyone might think.
Who am I to say that a man found innocent by a jury of his peers
is guilty as sin? And even if he is, who am I to deliver justice?
It’s true. I am no one. But this is how I knew.
When Laney Markham went missing, I immediately suspected
that it was her oh-so-handsome husband. Because let’s get real:
the incident of stranger crime is a statistical anomaly. (We both
have a thing or two to add to that conversation, don’t we? But
I’m sure you’d agree that statistically it’s true.) The idea of the
other, the stranger, the destroyer who breaks into your home and
kills your family, or takes your child? It does happen.
But not
as often as a man kills his wife. Or a father rapes his daughter.
Or an uncle molests his niece. Those things don’t always make
the news. Why? Because it’s not news; that’s the everyday horror show of normal life.
So there’s that. The it’s-always-the-husband thing. But whatsealed it for me was those national morning show appearances.
He did the circuit, ostensibly to plead for the lovely Laney’s safe
return. Tall, with movie-star good looks, he was a natural. And
those morning show hosts, they lapped it up. Laney? She was a
beauty, too.
One of those luscious pregnant girls—even prettier
with her little baby belly, glowing skin and silky, hormone-rich
hair. If the Markhams had been less good-looking, this would
have been less of a story. You know it’s true.
Anyway, he gets on camera and starts to weep, and I mean
blubber. Steve Markham stares right at the camera, tears streaming down his face and he begs for whoever took his wife and
unborn child to just bring them home.
Quite a performance.
Except.
Men don’t cry like that. Men, when they are overcome by
emotion to the degree that they lose control and start to weep,
they cover their faces. Crying is a disobeying of every cultural
message a man ever receives. To weep like a woman? It fills him
with shame. So he covers his face. That’s how I knew he killed
his wife. Steve Markham was a sociopath. Those tears were as
fake as they come.
You remember. I know you were thinking the same thing.
You might say that’s not enough. I know you; you follow the
rules—or, anyway, you have a kind of code. But we all know
there was enough physical evidence to send the bastard to the
electric chair. It was those lawyers with all their tricks—cast
doubt on this, get that thrown out, confuse and mislead the
slack-jawed jury with complicated cell phone evidence.
This
satellite says he was there at this time, couldn’t have done it.
Still, I generally wait a year. Just to be sure. I watch and wait,
do my research. At least a year, sometimes much, much longer,
as you know. I choose very carefully. I think about it long and
hard. Because it would suck to be wrong. I wouldn’t, couldn’t,
justify that. It’s a line I can’t step over. Really. Because then—
what am I?
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