“What do you mean?”
Harry’s brow creased, and his eyes seemed to empty out, as though he’d forgotten what he was about to say. Then he lightly shook his head, and said, “I came here to see you. I walked, actually, because I didn’t want Alice to hear me start the car, and when I got here there was a man standing”—he pointed straight up with the index finger of his left hand—“a man standing over near the woods.”
“Where? On the other side of the parking lot, by the picnic tables?” Caitlin could picture what Harry was talking about. It was really just a cluster of pine trees that separated the parking lot from Route 1A.
“Yeah, he was by the picnic tables in the dark. But I could see him, and he was watching your window.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I watched him for a while.”
“Where were you?”
“I was hiding behind a truck that was parked near the office.” His brow creased again like he wasn’t trusting his own words.
“Could you see who it was?”
“No, it was too dark and he definitely didn’t want to be seen. A car went by and he’d crouch so the headlights wouldn’t reach him through the trees.”
Caitlin looked up at the cheap blinds in the window. They were pulled closed, but not tightly closed. There were some gaps between the plastic strips. Whoever had been watching might have been able to see her, and at the very least could see movement in the room.
“Who do you think—”
“It was whoever killed your sister, and probably my father. I don’t know who it is, but you need to leave. I don’t think you’re safe.”
“How did you get hurt?”
“Oh,” he said, removing the towel from the side of his head, and looking at the dark stain. “I chased him. He must have seen me behind the truck because he was suddenly leaving, heading around to the back of the motel, and I shouted ‘Hey’ and was running between parked cars, and came down funny on my ankle, and then I was on the pavement. And my head . . .”
“What did you hit?”
“A car, I guess. I don’t remember. Then I came to you.”
“You were very brave.”
Harry laughed, then grimaced. “I tripped and fell.”
“What were you going to do if you caught him?”
“I don’t know. See who he was.”
“Did you get a better look at him when he took off?”
“Not really, but he looked funny when he was running. He was flapping, like he was trying to take off or something.”
“Flapping?”
The window suddenly filled with intermittent red light. “The ambulance is here,” Caitlin said, and opened up the door. She stood as the two EMTs entered the room, one dropping to his knees to take a look at Harry.
“I think he has a concussion,” she said. “He fell and hit himself on the head.”
The crouching EMT was already asking questions. She heard him ask Harry if he knew what year it was, but couldn’t hear Harry’s answer.
“What did he hit?” The slightly doughy EMT who was talking with Caitlin smelled like Bazooka chewing gum.
“I don’t know. He thinks it was a car. He came here to see me, and he said there was someone lurking in the woods, or over by the trees, and he started to chase him and that’s when he fell.”
“Uh-huh. Did you see this person?”
“I didn’t. He did.”
After they’d placed him on the gurney and wheeled him into the ambulance, Caitlin followed them—no sirens, just lights—as they drove what had to be less than two miles to a modern, rectangular block of a building that looked more like a building in an office park than a hospital. She parked in the visitors’ lot, then walked to the emergency room, where she was pointed toward a seat in the small, overly lit waiting area, a TV bolted into the wall playing CNN. She sat still for a moment, listening to the woman at the check-in desk talking quietly on her cell phone. One week ago, she was living in Boston, worried about how to tell her mother that her relationship with Dan was over, and wondering if her sister was going to spend the rest of her life chasing older men. And now she was here in Maine, waiting to fly with her sister’s body back to Michigan and accompanying a stranger to a hospital. And someone had been watching her room.
She was so relieved when she saw Detective Dixon walk through the double doors that she almost began to cry. She stood up and waited for him as he talked briefly and quietly with the receptionist, then he came into the waiting area. “What happened?” he asked. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Caitlin sat back down and told the detective everything that had happened that night.
“Why was he coming to your room in the first place?” the detective asked.
“He was just coming to say good-bye.”
“And he sounded sure that there was someone watching your room?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Have you felt watched at all, since being here in Kennewick? Any sense of being followed?”
Caitlin thought for a moment. “No, not really.”
Detective Dixon was scrolling through his phone for something, then showed Caitlin the screen. There was a photograph—a mug shot, actually—of a scruffy-looking man somewhere in his thirties. “Does he look familiar to you at all?”
He didn’t, and Caitlin said so to the detective.
“How about her?” He showed her another picture, more pixelated than the previous one, of a blond woman with a round face. The picture looked like it had been cropped from a larger shot.
“No,” Caitlin said, shaking her head. “Who are they?”
Detective Dixon didn’t answer, because two more people had entered the waiting room: a curvy, middle-aged blonde that Caitlin instantly knew was Alice, Harry’s stepmother; and a much older man, maybe her father, with a bald head and a white mustache. Alice had her arm through his, as though she was unable to stand on her own. Definitely father, Caitlin thought, then remembered that Harry had mentioned an older man who worked at the bookstore, and she wondered if that was who it was, instead.
Alice and the old man both looked across the room at Detective Dixon and then briefly at Caitlin. Alice, her mouth slightly open, her eyes blank, showed no reaction, but the old man seemed to look at Caitlin for a fraction longer than he should have. Maybe he’d met Grace, and he was confused by how much Caitlin looked like her. If it was the man from the bookstore, then he probably had met Grace. It was where she’d gone to meet Harry.
The detective went to them, and the three talked quietly for a moment, then slid through the swinging doors into the emergency room, Dixon glancing back at Caitlin, mouthing the words Stay a moment and holding up a finger.
Caitlin stayed, although the adrenaline from earlier had worn off, and she was now exhausted. Part of her just wanted to get up, go back to her car, and drive back to the motel. She had a big day tomorrow, flying back to Michigan, preparing for Grace’s funeral. But the detective had asked her to wait, and besides, she wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to go back to the motel alone.
Thirty minutes later, the detective returned and crouched in front of her.
“He’s going to be fine, but he has a bad concussion,” he said.
“That seemed pretty clear.”
“He wants to talk with you, but his doctor wants him to rest.”
“That’s fine.”
“He’s very insistent that you are in danger, though, so I’d like to have one of my officers escort you back to your motel room, if that’s okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “That sounds good.”
“Great. Five minutes, okay, Caitlin?”
The uniformed officer that arrived at the hospital was about fifty years old. He had jowls, and a sparse, blond mustache. He followed Caitlin back to the Sea Mist Motel, parking the cruiser next to her car, then together they entered her motel room. There was a quarter-sized bloodstain on the patterned wall-to-wall carpet where Harry had sat. She rubbed at it with the toe of her clog, but it had dried.
“You okay here by yourself?” the officer said.