The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,77

Williams, were parked half a block up. They weren’t easy to spot. The street was lined with parked cars, but my headlights had hit them just right when I’d pulled onto the street from the other direction and I’d seen Williams clearly, then realized Balaki was behind the wheel. Rauser had said nothing to me about having Charlie under surveillance. Was he hinting at it earlier when he mentioned seeing Charlie so frequently on courthouse surveillance? He did seem very concerned when I’d told him Charlie had gotten out of line, but that was just Rauser, I thought. I’d seen that muscle in his jaw start to work. Did Rauser know more about Charlie than he was letting on? Or was it simply that a routine background check had pulled up Charlie’s violent college years, his parents’ death, the huge inheritance, details on the armored truck accident that had damaged his brain? That would be enough to start some bells ringing at headquarters.

I looked again at the tidy row houses that backed up to Edgewood Avenue where I was parked. Occasionally another light came on or off. I tried to imagine Charlie getting up for a snack or the bathroom, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture him anymore. I’d had to let go of the idea that I knew this man and had begun to look at him from an investigator’s perspective. While Neil had searched for killings in New York, I’d gone online to the Fulton County real estate records and found the deed for this town house. A local lender had financed the $340,000 “town-home” with fifty grand down from Charlie and a guarantee from a law firm called Benjamin, Recworst, Stickler, and Paille.

By eleven I was bored; while one earplug quietly transmitted a book on tape to help keep me awake, the other ear was free to hear the neighborhood. In the seat next to me, two Little Debbie wrappers, a testament to my nutritional concerns. I didn’t know what I was waiting for on Charlie’s street. I had just wanted to get a feel for where he lived. It was late. I really didn’t expect anything to happen. Tomorrow I’d come at different times when I could observe Charlie’s life in action.

A light appeared near the entrance that faced Edgewood. The front of the row houses looked out at DeKalb Avenue, which had no parking. The town house door opened. I picked up my binoculars and zeroed in. Charlie was pushing his bicycle through the door onto the porch steps. I cringed. White tape ran up and then across the bridge of his nose. He turned to lock his door, then carried the bike down the steps and pushed it, silent and agile, down the walkway. My blood pressure spiked. Where was the funny walk, the way he held his head to the side, all the ways Charlie moved that told you his disfigured brain was misfiring? Perhaps what was wrong in Charlie’s brain wasn’t at all what we had believed. The thick tongue slur had been gone earlier today, I suddenly remembered. I think I should fuck you the way Mr. Man fucks you.

He jumped on the ten-speed and turned right, down Elizabeth Street, heading deeper into the Inman Park neighborhood toward Highland, which was only moments from my office. All those visits from Charlie, all those times he’d ridden in with his squeeze horn honking, it had been a five-minute ride. I had just assumed, like we had all assumed, that Charlie lived in housing for the disabled. No. It wasn’t merely an assumption. All at once I remembered the moment Charlie had planted that seed. He’d told us a local church got him into their employment program and found him the courier job. And then he’d said, “They make sure I have a place to live.”

I saw Balaki and Williams pull out after Charlie, so I eased the Neon into gear, kept the lights off, and slipped into the space they’d left open, which was a full half block closer to Charlie’s town house.

A MARTA train whizzed by on the DeKalb Avenue side, inside lights bright, the passengers in silhouette. All those lives zooming past, all those destinations. How many of them would be afraid tonight when they stepped out of their train stations because another monster had fixed murderous eyes on our city? Across those tracks, on the edge of Cabbagetown, which was a millworkers’ district in the early part of the