next few hours trying to track down Sims. But like Charlie, he had no luck.
He then thought about visiting the Timson compound again, but he held off. Not because he ran out of time, but because he remembered what had happened earlier that morning in Charlie’s office.
He didn’t have a gun with him anymore.
There was, though, another one at his house.
Later that afternoon, Charlie received two telephone calls. One was from Sims’s mother, who asked Charlie why everyone was suddenly interested in her son. When asked what she meant, Sims’s mother answered, “Miles Ryan came by today asking the same questions you did.”
Charlie frowned as he hung up the phone, angry that Miles had ignored everything they’d talked about this morning.
The second call was from Sarah Andrews.
After she said good-bye, Charlie swiveled his chair toward the window and stared over the parking lot, twirling a pencil.
A minute later, with the pencil broken in half, he turned toward the door and tossed the remains in the garbage.
“Madge?” he bellowed.
She appeared in the doorway.
“Get me Harris. Now.”
She didn’t have to be asked twice. A minute later, Harris was standing in front of the desk.
“I need you to go out to the Timson place. Stay out of sight, but keep an eye on whoever goes in and out of there. If anything looks out of the ordinary—and I mean anything—I want you to call. Not just me—I want you to put it out on the radio. I don’t want any trouble out there tonight. None at all, you got me?”
Harris swallowed and nodded. He didn’t need to ask whom he was watching for.
After he left, Charlie reached for the phone to call Brenda. He knew then that he, too, was going to be out late.
Nor could he escape the feeling that the whole thing was on the verge of spinning out of control.
Chapter 28
After a year, my nocturnal visits to their home ceased as suddenly as they’d started. So did my visits to the school to see Jonah, and the site of the accident. The only place I continued to visit with regularity after that was Missy’s grave, and it became part of my weekly schedule, mentally penciled into its Thursday slot. I never missed a day. Rain or shine, I went to the cemetery and traced the path to her grave. I never looked to see if anyone was watching anymore. And always, I brought flowers.
The end of the other visits came as a surprise. Though you might think that the year would have diminished the intensity of my obsession, that wasn’t the case at all. But just as I’d been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying on them.
The day it happened was a day I’ll never forget.
It was the first anniversary of Missy’s death. By then, after a year of creeping through the darkness, I was almost invisible as I moved. I knew every twist and turn I had to make, and the time it took to reach their home had dropped by half. I’d become a professional voyeur: In addition to peering through their windows, I had been bringing binoculars with me for months. There were times, you see, when others were around, either on the roads or in their yards, and I hadn’t been able to get close to the windows. Other times, Miles closed the living room drapes, but because the itch was not satisfied by failure, I had to do something. The binoculars solved my problem. Off to the side of their property, close to the river, there is an ancient, giant oak. The branches are low and thick, some run parallel to the ground, and that was where I sometimes made my camp. I found that if I perched high enough, I could see right through the kitchen window, my view unobstructed. I watched for hours, until Jonah went to bed, and afterward, I watched Miles as he sat in the kitchen.
Over the year, he, like me, had changed.
Though he still studied the file, he did not do it as regularly as he once had. As the months from the accident had increased, his compulsion to find me decreased. It wasn’t that he cared any less, it had more to do with the reality of what he faced. By then, I knew the case was at a standstill; Miles, I suspected, realized this as well. On