After two fruitless days when he wasn’t in town, she finally got a break. She found his car in the parking lot at Westlake Lock Systems, and as she sat low in her seat at the back of the lot she saw him come out of the building. He was wearing a suit, a navy blue overcoat, and shoes that were shined. He carried a briefcase. He was the perfect figure of a traveling salesman.
I guess I’m just that memorable, he’d said, and then he’d asked her name.
He acted normal and didn’t change his routine, but Viv knew better. She was tracking a hunter, a predator. There was no thought in her mind anymore that she could be wrong, that this maybe wasn’t the man who had killed Betty Graham at least, and probably others afterward. There was no thought that Simon Hess was just a blameless man going about his workday. There was no thought that she might be crazy.
Hess stopped next to his car and fished in his pocket for his car keys. As he did so he turned his head in a slow, methodical arc, taking in every corner of the parking lot. His eyes in that moment seemed dark and dead, like a shark’s. It was the same look he’d done after he’d almost caught her in his driveway. He was looking for something. For her.
Viv sank lower in her seat and tilted her head to the side so he couldn’t see the top of her head over the dashboard. She even closed her eyes and held her breath, as if that would help.
There was a long pause, thirty or maybe even sixty seconds. Then she heard the clunk of a car door closing and the turn of the motor. She peeked over the dashboard to watch Hess drive smoothly out of the lot.
I have to be careful, she thought, so she counted to sixty. Then she started her car and followed him.
• • •
He left Fell and took the interstate, exiting after an hour and coming to a town called Plainsview. She followed him down a suburban street, and when he pulled over she passed him, accelerating away. She circled until she found a spot on a side street and parked. She pulled a hat from her purse—a dark blue knit cap that she’d found in Jenny’s closet. She put it on, got out of the car, put her purse over her shoulder, and walked, like any girl walking down a sidewalk.
She spotted his car, parked in the small lot of a strip mall that had a portrait studio, a hair salon, and a closed-up dentist’s office. She zipped her coat up against the wind, dug her hands deep into the pockets, and kept walking, her eyes ahead and a small frown on her face as if she were thinking about something far away.
She couldn’t see him; she didn’t know where he’d gone. Then, with a jolt that almost startled her, she saw him only twenty feet away, ringing the doorbell of the house she was passing. The hedge had hidden him from view. His back was to her, and for a second she couldn’t help but stare at him as she walked. His body turned, and she realized he could see her reflection in the glass of the storm door. She ducked her head and darted past before he could turn and see her in full.
It was close. She quickly walked around a corner, then another. There was a bus stop with a bench and three people already waiting. Viv tugged the hat down on her forehead, sat on the bench, pulled her notebook from her purse, opened it to the blank pages in the middle, and stared at it as if reading. She kept her face relaxed even when she saw the traveling salesman come around the corner at the edge of her eye.
He paused at the head of the street and stood there, looking at the bus stop. Looking at her. He wanted to know why she had stared at him in shock as she’d walked past him, wanted to know who she was. Viv didn’t look up and she didn’t tense as he watched her. She kept her face blankly intent on her notebook and her breathing even. She knew he was hesitating, not certain he wanted to approach her at a crowded bus stop in the middle of the day.
He was still undecided when the bus pulled up. Her face still blank with boredom, Viv closed her notebook, stood in line with the others, and got on. She paid her quarter in fare and took a seat as the bus pulled away from the curb. She didn’t risk a look at him through the window.
Sloppy. He’s too smart for that. Be more careful next time.
She waited two stops—one seemed risky—and got off, circling back on foot to the place where she had seen him. This time she didn’t walk the street directly but circled behind a row of houses, where she found a walking path. She stood at the edge of the path, took out her notebook—it was useful for all sorts of things, it turned out—and fished a pencil out of her purse. She stood and faced the trees, the pencil moving over her page, so anyone out for a walk would see a pretty girl sketching a nature scene.
But in the wedge of space between two houses, she could see him. He was on the other side of the street, standing on a front porch, talking to the woman who had answered the door. Their conversation was swift and uneventful. The woman closed the door and Simon Hess pulled a folded piece of paper from
