Dust

6

The backyard is flooded with standing water. Trees move fitfully in gusting wind and the sound of the rain is unnaturally loud, simmering on pavers as if the back patio is hot. The air is heavy with steamy mist.

Surrounding homes are dark, their holiday decorations on timers that black out electric candles and strands of festive lights from midnight to dusk. I know the patterns by now. Every day that I’ve been alone since I got sick, I’ve done exactly this when I take Sock out. I stand sentry in the open doorway, my left hand resting on the fanny pack. I’m aware of the weight of the pistol inside it as my shy shell-shocked greyhound trots to a favorite spot, sniffing behind boxwoods, disappearing into black holes where I can’t see him. He’s an expert at avoiding areas of the yard that have motion-sensor lights.

I probe deep shadows and the old brick wall that separates our property from the one behind it, and maybe what Benton suggested the other day is true. I’m more vigilant than usual. He said considering everything going on it’s to be expected that I might be uneasy and raw, and I didn’t argue with him or elaborate. He’s had enough on his mind and I didn’t want him to worry, but the feeling is there as I look around at the darkness and the rain. I feel someone is watching me. I’ve felt it since I came home from Connecticut.

I’ve heard noises, subtle ones, a stick cracking, the whisper of dead leaves disturbed, and I’ve come to dread taking Sock out after dark and he seems to dread it too. He hates wintertime and bad weather, and I’ve rationalized that it’s probably my unsettledness he’s reacting to, and my heart sinks as he sniffs the wind just now, searching it. He stiffens, suddenly bounding back to my post at the door, his tail curled between his legs as he tries to push past me inside the house just like he’s done repeatedly of late.

“Go potty,” I tell him firmly. “Everything’s fine. I’m right here.” I search for the source of whatever spooked him on the off chance it’s something other than me. “What is it? A raccoon, an owl, a squirrel somewhere?”

I listen carefully, hearing nothing but the loud splashing rain as I look around from my safe base. Light seeps through the open doorway, dimly illuminating a matted carpet of soggy brown grass and leaves and the shape of the circular low stone wall around the magnolia tree in the center of the yard. Above me, the French stained-glass window is brilliant against the back of the house, the jewel-like hues drawing attention to when I’m home or headed out with my dog.

I may as well be making an announcement to anyone with bad intentions, and it would make sense to leave the light off over the stairs. But I refuse. The vibrant colors and mythical animals give me comfort and pleasure. I won’t be ruled by irrational fear. I won’t allow evil people, even the thought of them, to rob me of more than they already have.

“What is it? Oh for heaven’s sake, come on.” I move away from the doorway, and Sock follows me into the yard, his muzzle touching the back of my knee. “Go on.” I sound calm and unconcerned but that’s not what I feel.

My conscious mind says all is fine but another part of my brain says something is off. I feel it strongly, what I’ve felt before. Blasts of wind-driven rain thrash the heavy branches and rubbery leaves of the magnolia tree and my pulse picks up. The storm howls around the roof and agitates the shrubbery and I physically react to something I can’t identify.

A stone or a brick chinks on the other side of the back wall and my scalp prickles and my legs feel heavy, but those days of being too terrified to move or breathe were left behind in my childhood. I’ve been through too much and it has hardened some primal part of me that no longer panics. I peel open the fanny pack and slide out the gun as I pull up my hood and escort Sock to the stone bench around the magnolia tree. Nearby is shrubbery.

“Go on. I’m right here,” I tell him, and he ducks behind a thick cover of boxwoods, his ears back, his eyes on me.

Heavy cold raindrops tap the waterproof fabric covering my head as I stand perfectly still and scan. I watch the wall. I listen and wait. It occurs to me with dismay that I haven’t chambered a round and it will be difficult to pull back the slide. The pistol is wet. It was stupid not to cock it before I came outside. Sock suddenly bolts to the open door and I follow him, not turning my back to the wall that separates the yard from the property behind it.

I feel it like a magnetic force, a malevolent presence lurking in the dark behind the wall, close enough that I can almost smell it, an acrid edge, a dirty electrical odor like something old shorting out. What people smell when they’re about to have a seizure but I’m imagining it. There’s no odor, only the muskiness of wet dead leaves and the ozone of rain. Water splashes steadily and the chilled wind blows humidly and whatever moved is silent and still. Physics displacing things, I think, like finding a coin on the rug and having no idea how it got there from the top of the dresser where you saw it last.

I look around and see nothing out of the ordinary, and, stepping inside the house, I shut the door and lock it. I look through the peephole at the empty rain-swept yard, then I towel Sock dry and praise him for a job well done as I wipe off the pistol and zip it back inside the fanny pack. I look through the peephole again and it’s a reflex when I place my hand on the knob. I do it before I realize what I’m seeing.

The figure standing on the other side of the wall is a young male, small, maybe a boy, I’m fairly sure. Bareheaded, light skinned, and for an instant he’s looking directly at the back door, directly at me looking at him through the peephole. I see the hint of pale flesh and the dark recesses of his eyes, and I swing the door open wide and he runs.

“Hey!” I yell.

He vanishes as suddenly as he appeared.

I walk inside my kitchen of stainless-steel commercial appliances, old wood, and antique amber alabaster chandeliers.

“What was that about?” Marino fills a glass with sparkling water, helping himself, and I can tell he assumes I was yelling at Sock, who heads to his bowls on a mat and sits expectantly.

“We had a visitor,” I reply. “Possibly a young male, white, dark hair maybe, maybe a kid. He was behind the wall and may have been there the entire time we were in the yard. Then he ran.”

“On your property?” Marino sets down the glass and the bottle as if he’s about to bolt to the back of the house.

“No.” I feel surprisingly calm — validated, in fact.

I’m not imagining things after all.

“He was on the other side of the wall in my neighbor’s yard.” I drape the wet towel over a towel bar on a cabinet.

“He wasn’t trespassing, then. At least not on your property.”

“I don’t know what he was doing.”

“Are you sure it’s not your neighbor back there?”

“At this hour and in this weather, and why would my neighbor be ducking behind the wall and then run? The person didn’t seem familiar but I didn’t get a good look, obviously.”

I open my pocketbook on the counter near the phone and pull out my wallet, medical examiner credentials, and keys.

“A young male who didn’t look local. Are you sure?” Marino returns the bottle to a refrigerator, not the one he took it from.

“I’m not sure of anything beyond what I just said.” I find my CFC badge with its embedded radio-frequency identification chip, on a lanyard and in a plastic holder. “But I’ve definitely had a weird feeling these past few days while I’ve been home, a sense that someone’s been watching the house. And Sock’s been uneasy.”

Marino thinks for a moment, weighing his options. He could go out into the rainy dark and look around for whoever it was but no crime has been committed, at least not that we know about. I’m also fairly certain my prowler is long gone and I tell Marino that. I explain that the person I saw ran off in the direction of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, which is a heavily wooded property and just north of that, across Beacon Street and railroad tracks, is Somerville. Then the jurisdiction isn’t Cambridge anymore. The person could be anywhere.

“Maybe some kid looking to do a smash-and-grab,” Marino decides as I retrieve a small powerful LED flashlight from a drawer and check to make sure the batteries are good. “Especially this time of year, there’s a lot of vandalism, car breaks, windows smashed, kids stealing laptops, iPads, iPhones. You’d be amazed how many rich people in Cambridge don’t have alarm systems,” he says as if I have no idea what goes on in the city where I live and work. “Kids case a house to figure out where the electronics are, then smash out a window, grab what they want, and run like hell.”

“We’re a poor candidate for a smash-and-grab. It’s obvious we have an alarm system.” Inside the pantry hanging on a hook is my nylon cross-body bag, what I carry when I’m traveling light. “There are signs in the yard, and if the person looked through a window he’d see keypads on the walls with red lights indicating the house is armed.”

“You always have it on when you’re home?”

“Especially when I’m alone.” He knows that about me, for God’s sake.

“And you started getting this weird feeling after Benton left for D.C.?”

“Not as long ago as that. He’s been gone for about a month, right after the second and third murders happened. I don’t think I noticed anything unusual as long ago as that.” He’s fishing to see if Benton’s cases have spooked me, abductions and murders Marino knows nothing about except what little has been reported in the news.

“Okay. When exactly did you start feeling weird?”

“Since I got back from Connecticut. Saturday night is when I first had the feeling.” My wallet, keys, credentials, badge, flashlight go inside the bag, which hugs my hip when I slip the strap over my shoulder.

Marino watches me, and I know what he’s concluded. What I went through over the weekend was traumatic and I’m paranoid, and, more to the point, I don’t feel as safe as I did when he worked for me. He wants to believe I feel his absence deeply, that life’s not as settled as it was, and it isn’t. I open a cabinet above the sink.

“Well, that’s understandable,” he says.

“What I’ve sensed has nothing to do with that, I promise.” I set a can of Sock’s food and a pair of gray nitrile examination gloves on the counter.

“Really? You want to tell me why you suddenly think it’s necessary to wear a gun to a crime scene? One you’re going to with me?” He continues to push because he wants to believe I’m scared.

Most of all he wants to believe I need him.

“You don’t even like guns,” he then says.

“It’s not a matter of what I like.” I talk to the rhythm of the can opener cutting through metal. “I also don’t happen to think that guns are something one should have feelings for. Love, hate, like, or dislike should be reserved for people, pets, food. Not firearms.”

“Since when do you wear one or even bother taking the trigger lock off?”

“How would you know what I bother with? You’re not around me most of the time and not at all lately.” I empty the can into Sock’s bowl as he waits by his mat, his pointed face looking at me.

“Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I don’t work for you anymore and all of a sudden you arm yourself everywhere.”

“I don’t arm myself everywhere but certainly when I’m in and out of the house all hours of the night, here alone,” I reply.

Marino gulps down the last of the fizzy water and quietly belches.

“It’s the oldest trick in the book to wait until someone disarms the alarm and goes out with the dog.” I feed Sock with my gloved hand, meatballs of grain-free whitefish and herring, making sure he doesn’t eat too fast and aspirate food.

My rescued companion is prone to pneumonia. Eating too fast is left over from early years at the racetrack when he wasn’t always fed.

“You really don’t think I’d do that unarmed,” I say reasonably as I return to the entryway.

Marino places his glass in the sink and follows me, our coats dripping slowly on the floor.

“How many cases have we seen where the stalker knows his intended victim has a dog and starts watching for patterns?” I remind him, and maybe I want to make him feel bad.

He walked off the job. He didn’t bother to share his news. Since I’ve been sick he’s not called once to check on me. I set the alarm and hurry us out of the house while Sock is preoccupied with a sweet-potato treat. A second one is in my pocket and Quincy knows it, he always does. He tugs after me down the steps and along the walkway.

The rain is letting up, and it’s unseasonably warm, in the low fifties, and it wouldn’t seem possible that we’re less than a week away from Christmas, were it not for the tasteful wreaths on doors, the red ribbons and bows on lampposts. We’ve not had a hard freeze yet, the weather temperate for December and overcast, but it won’t last. This weekend it’s supposed to snow.

“At least I don’t have to worry about you handling a gun safely.” Marino helps Quincy into his crate and latches the door. “Since I’m the one who taught you how to shoot.”

Quincy sits on his fleece pad and stares intently at me with bright brown eyes.

“I don’t want to mess up his training,” I say wryly as I produce the sweet-potato treat.

“It’s a little late now,” Marino says as if his dog’s complete lack of discipline must be my fault like everything else.

Quincy pokes his nose through the wire siding. I can hear him chewing as I settle into the front seat.

Marino starts the engine and reaches for his portable radio. He contacts the dispatcher and requests that any units in the area be on the lookout for a young white male who might be casing properties on the northern edge of Harvard, last seen running toward the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Car 13 immediately answers that he’s a few blocks south, near the Divinity School.

“Any further description?” car 13 asks.

“Bareheaded, possibly rather slight, possibly a juvenile,” I quietly remind Marino. “Possibly on foot.”

“No hat,” he says over the air. “Last seen running toward the woods in the direction of Beacon.”