Dumpster, the sky lightened enough to have turned off the overhead lamps, his coffee long gone cold. He took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face and was not surprised to find moisture there. It happened each time. He was no longer mystified by the dream or the emotion. Nor was he one step closer to accepting it.
He sat up straight and surveyed the street. An additional delivery truck, maybe two, had arrived. At a bay halfway down the block, he watched the movement of a single man bending to pick up a ball of trash, or a wayward piece of hardware, or a half cigarette butt that might be used later in the morning. Then his eyes moved automatically to Archie’s and the empty spot where Robert Walker would park his F-10 pickup and then the beige color of the truck Nick had memorized forced him to focus. He watched Walker slowly approach, not speeding, never speeding, and then carefully pull into the open spot. Only then did Nick check his watch. It was six fifteen. Not a minute late or early, like Walker knew exactly how fast to drive to roll into that spot at the perfect moment, every day, Monday through Friday. Intersection of time and place.
When the truck’s brake lights went out, Nick watched the man’s head move slightly down, gathering things from his front seat. When Walker opened the door, the interior dome light came on and added color and dimension to the man. He stepped out, tall and heavyset with a mop of straw-colored blond hair sprouting from under a ball cap. He was wearing his work uniform, blue pants and a short-sleeved white shirt with the name ROBERT stitched across the breast pocket. Nick knew this even from a distance, because he had been up close and personal with Robert Walker.
The day after Nick learned of the release, he staked out the house where Walker lived before the accident, even though he knew the sight of the man would dig open the scar. On the second day he watched him pull into the driveway in an old pickup truck, the profile unmistakable, the face unforgettable. Nick stayed in his car parked across the street. The third day he did the same thing at the same time, early evening, when Walker was obviously arriving home from work. This time the truck pulled up next to Nick’s car and Walker rolled down his window.
“Mr. Mullins?” Walker said, his voice raspy and slow. “You can’t do this, sir.”
Nick just stared into his face, saying nothing.
“I called the Sheriff’s Office, Mr. Mullins, and they said you can’t just park outside my house and harass me.”
Nick remained silent.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mullins. I said that a hundred times, I’m sorry about what happened. But you can’t stalk me like this, sir. I did my time.”
Nick had almost spit out in anger that the street was public property and he would do any damn thing he wanted to on it. He wanted to scream in the man’s face that his lousy eighteen-month sentence was nothing. Nothing! The manslaughter conviction was a sham. It had been a homicide, and Walker knew it! Instead he just stared at the man’s face until he rolled his window back up and drove away.
Last Thursday one of Nick’s friends with the department warned him that they couldn’t ignore Walker’s complaints about him parking outside his house. So Nick found out where Walker worked and was required to show up each day during his probation, and now this was where he came at six fifteen in the morning.
Nick watched Walker holding a lunch box and thermos in one hand while he locked up his old truck with the other. Was there booze in the thermos? Nick thought. Could he catch him violating his court order to quit drinking? Walker had refused a Breathalyzer test at the scene of the accident, and they drew blood from him after he was hospitalized. By then his readings weren’t over the legal limit. There was no documented proof to make a DUI charge, but everyone knew that was bullshit when they did it three hours after the fact. Now Nick watched him walk to the door of Archie’s and work a key into the lock and then step inside without once looking back over his shoulder. Nick wasn’t sure if Walker had noticed him parked across the way beside the Dumpster. So he waited until he saw