Someone Is Watching Read online

  “A little more secure,” Claire says.

  “No. You have your own lives to get on with. I can’t expect you to babysit me forever.”

  Claire reluctantly agrees. “Only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need you to stop watching Paul Giller’s apartment.”

  I’d pretty much decided this on my own already. “Okay.”

  “It’s one condition with two parts,” Claire qualifies.

  “What’s the second part?”

  “I need you to hand over your binoculars.”

  “What? No. Those were my mother’s.”

  “I know, and I’m not talking about forever. Just for a little while. Until you’re feeling better. I’ll keep them safe, Bailey.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “The point is that as long as they’re here, you’ll be tempted to use them.” She looks at me with the same imploring eyes Jade gave me earlier. “Please, Bailey. Enough is enough.”

  I nod.

  “Good girl.” She kisses my forehead, then hunkers down in the bed. “Try to get some sleep.”

  I slide down beside her and pull the covers up over my head.

  Claire flips onto her side, facing away from me. Within minutes, I hear her breathing deepen, and I try to emulate its calm, steady rhythm, each one of my breaths an echo of hers. Within minutes, I’m fast asleep.

  —

  The ringing of the telephone wakes me up some three hours later.

  “Claire,” I say as I grope for the receiver. “Claire, wake up. Do you hear that?” I answer the phone in the middle of its second ring. But even before I can say hello, I know no one is on the other end, that all I will hear is a dial tone. Probably it didn’t ring at all. Still clutching the receiver, I turn toward Claire.

  Except she isn’t there. There is no one in bed beside me.

  “Claire?” I climb out of bed, returning the phone to its charger and about to reach for the scissors when I see her.

  She is sitting in the chair in front of the window, her head drooped forward, binoculars in her lap.

  “Claire?” I say again, advancing slowly toward her, seized by the sudden fear she might be dead. “Claire?” I touch her shoulder, and then shake it when she fails to respond.

  She startles and wakes up. “What? What’s happened?”

  “Are you all right?” I ask. “What are you doing?”

  It takes a few seconds for her eyes to focus. “What time is it?”

  “After two. How long have you been sitting here?”

  “About an hour,” she tells me. “I had to go to the bathroom, and I was coming back to bed when I realized the blinds were still up. I went to close them and I saw the light in Paul Giller’s apartment was on. So I thought I’d take a look. And I guess I must have fallen asleep.…”

  “I take it you didn’t see anything very exciting.”

  “No. Not a thing. God, I’m thirsty. You feel like some hot chocolate? I feel like some hot chocolate.”

  “Hot chocolate sounds nice.”

  She pushes herself to her feet. “I’ll go make it. You want to help me?”

  “Would you mind if I stayed here and kept an eye on things?” I pick up the binoculars from the chair where Claire has left them.

  “Bailey …”

  “Last time, I promise.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back in two minutes. Then you hand those suckers over.”

  I nod, sitting down in the chair she has just vacated as she tiptoes past the closed door of the room where Jade is supposedly sleeping, although I can hear the television. I raise the binoculars to my eyes and stare through the rain.

  As if on cue, Elena comes running into the bedroom, Paul Giller walking slowly after her. She is shaking her head and gesticulating wildly.

  “Claire!” I call out. “Jade!” But nobody hears me.

  Elena makes a move for the bathroom, but Paul blocks her way, backing her up against the window. Elena raises her hands in the air, as if trying to ward him off. Paul has temporarily disappeared from my line of vision, swallowed by the ongoing downpour.

  And then I see him.

  He is advancing steadily toward her, his right arm extended. I stand up, move closer to the window, adjusting and then readjusting the lens of my binoculars, trying to convince myself that I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing, and that is the gun in Paul Giller’s hand, a gun he is waving menacingly at Elena’s head. Elena is crying and waving her arms in front of her, frantically trying to persuade him to put the gun down.

  “Claire!” I call out again. “Jade! Get in here!” I hear sirens emanating from the TV in Jade’s room and the kettle’s whistle in the kitchen telling Claire the water for our hot chocolate is boiled and ready.

  And then suddenly Elena’s hands are flying into the air above her head, and her body is lifting up and spinning around, her face flattening against the glass of the window. Blood is pouring from the gaping wound in her forehead, as her dead eyes search through the rain and stop on mine. Her fingers scratch through the blood on the window as she slides to the floor and disappears from sight.

  Paul Giller walks slowly toward the window. He points his gun at me.

  Which is when I start screaming. And screaming. And screaming.

  Claire comes racing into the room, followed the next second by Jade, both of them trailing screams of their own: “What’s happened? Bailey, what’s going on?”

  They find me on the floor, as if I’ve been shot myself. I’m crying and incoherent, unable to pull myself together.

  “What is it, Bailey?” Claire asks again, her hands on my shoulders.

  “He shot her! The bastard shot her!”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Jade pries the binoculars from my fingers and trains them on Paul Giller’s apartment. “It’s dark,” she says.

  “What? No!” I’m already scrambling back to my feet. “What do you mean, it’s dark?”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “The light was just on. You saw it,” I tell Claire, my eyes pleading for confirmation.

  “Yes, I did,” Claire says. “The light was definitely on when I left the room.”

  “Well, it isn’t on now,” Jade insists.

  “What happened, Bailey?” Claire asks. “What is it you think you saw?”

  The words pound against my brain. What is it you think you saw?

  I recount the exact sequence of events, starting from the moment Claire left my bedroom and Elena came running into hers.

  “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Claire asks, her voice soft and kind. “Maybe you fell asleep.…”

  “I didn’t fall asleep.”

  “And you’re positive he had a gun? I mean, it’s raining really hard. Before, you thought you saw him wave, and now … How can you be sure it was a gun?”

  “Because I know what a gun looks like,” I insist. “Because what else could it have been? It killed her! Blew a hole right through her forehead. There was blood all over the window. There’s no way she could have survived. We have to call the police.”

  No one moves.

  “Maybe we should hold off on that,” Claire says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it, Bailey. There are only so many times you can cry wolf.”

  “You think I’m crying wolf?”

  “No, of course I don’t think you’re crying wolf. But it’s what the police will think,” she says, tears filling her eyes. “I just don’t want you setting yourself up to be …”

  “What?”

  “I believe you honestly think you saw Paul Giller shoot his girlfriend.”

  “You just don’t think it actually happened,” I state, hearing the disappointment in my voice. If Claire doesn’t believe me, who will?

  “The police are going to say they find it odd that none of this happened until after I left the room.”

  “What? N
o. Why is that odd? It could have been a coincidence.…”

  “That’s some coincidence, Bailey. The three of us have been watching Paul Giller’s apartment for days. Absolutely nothing happened in all that time.”

  “Well, it happened a few minutes ago. I’m telling you I saw Paul Giller shoot his girlfriend.”

  “Okay. Tell me again. Convince me. Then maybe we can convince Detective Castillo.”

  I take a deep breath, tell my story a second time, and then a third. There are only two possibilities: (1) Paul Giller did indeed shoot his girlfriend, or (2) I imagined the whole thing. “I know what I saw,” I insist, although the truth is that I’m no longer as convinced as I was even minutes ago. Claire is right. The police will find it highly suspicious that this happened only after Claire left the room, that once again, I’m the only witness. If this latest incident proves to be another false alarm, it will only cement their suspicion that my rape has left me totally unhinged. “There is one other possibility,” I say.

  Claire and Jade stare at me expectantly.

  “And that’s that Paul Giller staged tonight deliberately,” I continue, the idea beginning to flesh out, gain weight.

  “What do you mean?” Claire asks.

  “What if it’s a setup?”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean, a setup?”

  “Maybe he just pretended to shoot his girlfriend.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To make Bailey think she’s going crazy,” Jade says, latching onto my reasoning.

  “You’re definitely watching too much television,” Claire says.

  “What if I’m right?” I ask.

  “About what? You seriously think that Paul Giller staged the shooting of his girlfriend for your benefit?”

  “Not just that,” I say, thinking out loud. “What if he staged everything? From the beginning. The wild sex in front of the window, the beating and rape that apparently never happened, the shooting I just witnessed.”

  “But why would he want to make you think you’re going crazy?”

  Three reasons spring to mind. “The first is that he’s just a sick son-of-a-bitch who thinks this is fun,” I expound, amazed at how calm, how rational I’ve suddenly become.

  “Could be,” Claire agrees, “but he’d have to be a real whack job.…”

  “And the second?” Jade asks, interrupting.

  “The second is that by making me think I’m crazy, I don’t report what I saw tonight to the police, and he gets away with murder.”

  “I don’t know,” Claire says. “He’s taking an awfully big risk.…”

  “And the third?” Jade asks.

  I take a deep breath. “The third is that …” I take another breath. “… Paul Giller is the man who raped me.” I exhale slowly. “And if he can undermine my credibility by convincing everyone I’m crazy, that I’ve been harassing him for weeks for no good reason, accusing him of anything and everything, then the police are never going to charge him, and he gets away with it.”

  Claire and Jade give this theory a moment’s thought.

  “It still doesn’t add up,” Claire says, her eyes moving rapidly from side to side, as her mind tries to grapple with everything she’s hearing. “How would he time everything? How would he know when you’d be watching or when you’d be alone? How did he know I’d left the room? It doesn’t make sense,” she repeats. “Something’s missing.”

  I have to agree. How would he know any of those things? It doesn’t make sense.

  I replay tonight’s events in my mind, watching Elena run into the room, cowering in front of her furious boyfriend as he raises the gun in his hand and pulls the trigger, her blood splattering against the window, her lifeless eyes pleading with mine. Did Paul Giller stage the whole thing? And can I take that chance? Can I let a man get away with murder because I didn’t report his crime? “I know what I saw,” I tell Claire.

  “Then I don’t think we have any choice,” she says.

  —

  Of course everything happens exactly as Claire predicted it would.

  Claire calls Detective Castillo on his private line and tells him what happened. He is not happy at having been woken up in the middle of the night, and he’s dismissive of our story. He keeps Claire on hold while he checks with the station to find out if there have been any reports of gunshots in the area or a call from someone else who might have witnessed the shooting, then informs her that there have been neither. It is only when Claire lies and tells him that she herself was a witness to tonight’s events that he agrees to send a police cruiser over to check it out.

  “You shouldn’t have lied to him,” I tell her.

  “I shouldn’t do a lot of things,” she says.

  The rest of the night goes pretty much according to script: The police go to Paul Giller’s apartment; they find him alone and angry at being awakened in the middle of the night; he gives them permission to search the premises; they find no trace of Elena, no signs of blood anywhere, no hint of a disturbance of any kind; while there are security cameras on all the floors, they haven’t been turned on due to the low volume of tenants; there is no photographic proof that Elena might have snuck out or that she was ever even there. Paul Giller threatens to sue, not only me, but the entire Miami-Dade Police Department and Detective Castillo personally, if this outrageous harassment doesn’t stop; the police come to my condo to relay this information and voice their dismay; they refuse to buy into any of our conjectures, parroting virtually all of Claire’s earlier questions, although Detective Castillo concedes that if my third theory is right and Paul Giller is the man who raped me, then at least I’m right about one thing: I’ve pretty much ensured his never being charged. He warns me to stop watching Paul Giller’s apartment or he will have no choice but to arrest me for stalking. He reminds Claire that it’s a crime to lie to the police. And then he leaves.

  “Well, that was a roaring success,” Jade says after they’re gone.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Then whose fault is it?”

  “It’s nobody’s fault. It just is what it is,” Claire says, clearly exhausted. “Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight. Let’s just get some sleep.”

  “I was so sure,” I mutter.

  I’m not crazy.

  “I know you were,” Claire says. “And I believe you. I really do.”

  “I believe you, too,” Jade seconds.

  “Unfortunately, the police don’t,” Claire points out. “And now we have a bigger problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Now they don’t believe me either.”

  — TWENTY-NINE —

  At seven thirty the next morning, having slept maybe a total of two hours all night, Claire goes to work. She leaves me with a verbal list of instructions: Stay away from the bedroom window; don’t leave the apartment; leave Paul Giller alone.

  She entrusts my binoculars to Jade and instructs her to drop them off at their house on her way to school. “I’ll call you on my break, see how you’re doing,” she tells me. I know what she is really saying is that she’ll call on her break to check up on me.

  “Don’t be late for school,” she warns Jade on her way out.

  “So, you want some scrambled eggs?” Jade asks as soon as her mother is gone. “They’re my specialty.”

  “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “I can’t. The only thing I know how to make is scrambled eggs. That’s why they’re my specialty.”

  I laugh. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?”

  Jade walks into the kitchen, quickly commandeering a frying pan and a bowl from their respective cupboards. “I’m not going to school today,” she says matter-of-factly, tugging on the yellow polka dot pajama bottoms that have slipped halfway down her slender hips as she reaches with her other hand into the fridge for some eggs. She cracks four of them into the bowl, quickly fishing out some errant egg
shells with her long, elegant fingers, before adding water, salt, and pepper, and then stirring vigorously. “I’m staying here with you.”

  “You can’t. Your mother will be furious.”

  “Not if you don’t tell her. Come on, Bailey. You really think I’m gonna be able to concentrate on algebra after what went down last night?”

  I decide not to argue, having watched enough exchanges between my sister and her daughter to know that nobody wins an argument with Jade. Besides, I’m glad for the company. I no longer trust myself to be alone. I don’t trust what I might see.

  Or not see.

  Minutes later, the scrambled eggs are on a plate, along with several pieces of buttered toast, all neatly arranged on the dining room table. Claire made coffee before she left, and Jade pours me a cup and then gets herself a can of Coke. “How can you drink that stuff first thing in the morning?” I ask.

  “Caffeine is caffeine,” she says. “I’m gonna need something to stay awake.”

  “Sorry about last night,” I tell her, wondering how many times I’ve apologized already.

  “Are you kidding? I loved it. It was like being in an episode of Cops.”

  I smile, swallow a forkful of eggs. “These are delicious, by the way.”

  “Thank you. They’re my specialty.” She yawns.

  “Were you able to get back to sleep after the police left?” I ask.

  “I dozed off and on. You?”

  “A bit. Between nightmares.”

  “About your rape?”

  “I guess. Indirectly. They’re always the same: masked men chasing me, faceless women watching, sharks circling underneath my feet.…”

  “Sharks?”

  “My therapist calls them anxiety dreams.”

  “She needed a degree to figure that one out? You think they’re trying to tell you something?” she asks in the next breath. “I mean, other than that you’re anxious?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Dr. Drew once said that the reason people have recurring dreams is that these dreams are trying to tell you something, and you’ll keep having them until you figure it out.”

  “Who’s Dr. Drew?”

  “Celebrity Rehab?” Jade asks with a shake of her uncombed hair. “Honestly, Bailey. How can you be a detective when you don’t know anything about the modern world? It’s like you’re this visitor from another planet. Although maybe it wasn’t Dr. Drew. It could have been Dr. Phil, or maybe even Dr. Oz.”