Sergeant Jen Brown sounded unimpressed with his opening salvo. “Pregnant woman raped and stabbed to death in Griffith Park a few hours ago. Picnickers just found the body.”
“I can’t.”
“Husband’ll be home from work any minute. Doesn’t know a thing yet.”
“I can’t.”
“He’s on the Westside, ten minutes from your door. If you don’t go, I’ll have to send Ken.”
Nate’s head was bent, his neck tightening up, the heat of Janie’s and Cielle’s gazes boring through his back. Ken Nowak serving a death notification to a man who’d just lost his wife and unborn child-Nate’s chest cramped at the thought of it. He did his best to stand still, to avoid squirming, to try to hold the course.
Instead he heard himself say, “Last time.”
Janie blew out a soft breath of disappointment, and Cielle’s head snapped away to face the wall.
He hung up, defeated, and turned to face them. “Look, I won’t be an hour. It’s an impossible one. This guy-”
Janie waved a hand. “I understand. Go ahead.” She slumped back down next to Cielle.
Nate lingered a beat, but neither seemed interested in kick-starting this particular argument. He didn’t blame them. Trudging downstairs, he breathed in the fragrances of the house-carpet cleaner, the lingering afterscent of a honey candle, a trace of ash from the fireplace. A faint rain tapped the roof, and the refrigerator hummed. He patted the dog on the head and stepped out onto the porch.
Halfway down the walk, he paused.
He turned around, gazed back at his house, at the square of his daughter’s window. There was a movement at the curtain, and then Janie and Cielle appeared, looking down at him. Something inside him swelled and broke, and he felt weak and emancipated all at once. Squinting against the flecks of rain, he stood for a time, night air crisp at the back of his throat, staring up at them, them staring down, the three of them motionless and silent as if the slightest movement would shatter this unspoken dialogue.
Then he pulled out his phone and dialed.
Jen answered gruffly.
“I’m not going,” he said. “I’m taking some time off.”
“Ken left for home already. What if I gave you an order to handle this?”
“Then I’d tell you what you can do with your order.”
A long silence, punctuated only by Jen’s breathing. He could have sworn he sensed her mouth shape into a smile on the other end.
“Hear that crackling?” she said. “Must be hell freezing over.”
He hung up and started back inside. His head was bent against the drizzle, but with each step home he felt the warm gaze of his wife and daughter overhead.
Chapter 25
Cielle’s scream shattered Nate’s sleep, and he bolted up from the couch, slamming his knee into the coffee table. For a moment he had no bearings-apartment or house? nightmare or real? — but then he snapped to awareness, clawing his way past the furniture toward the stairs.
Casper followed him up, two steps at a time, lunging as if fording water. Janie swung out of the master, nearly colliding with Nate at the landing, and then parents and dog were hurtling toward Cielle’s door. They found her backed as far as she could get from the window, turned sideways as if trying to burrow through the wall.
“What is it?”
“Are you okay?”
Cielle was shuddering beneath her T-shirt and boxers. A fall of dark hair covered one eye, the other wide and glossy. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She lifted a hand and pointed to the window.
Shoulders lowered, Casper slunk four steps toward the window and issued a growl seemingly too low even for his deep chest. Janie moved to Cielle and Nate toward the bare pane, setting each foot down slowly, heel to toe. He paused beside the dog, who hummed with menace, a stone grinder rumbling.
Four more cautious steps brought Nate to the sill. There lay the front yard, twin ellipses of mowed grass split by the snake of the front walk. The sturdy magnolia, its wrinkled, elephantine trunk dark with rain. Planters brimming with subdued lavender and juniper. And beyond, the wide street, the friendly facades of Craftsmen and Cape Cods looking on, observers at a parade. This panorama he knew in his bones, each lineament traced in memory, the curves and shapes of a cherished photograph. Comfort exemplified.
Except.
A dark figure stood centered on the patch of grass directly beneath Cielle’s window. From the shadowed head, huffs of cigarette smoke rose, beaten flat by the rain. The face tilted up at the window. Legs confidently spaced. The man did nothing more than stand and smoke, but his presence there, at this hour, was invasive, horrifying. Large boots sank into the saturated sod-sod Nate himself had rolled onto the primed soil a few months after moving in. The sight pinballed around his insides, striking nerves at random, playing fears too primal to be named.
“I got up to pee and…” Cielle’s words flared off.
“What is it?” Janie’s breaths were audible.
Keeping his gaze locked on the dark oval of a face, Nate said, “Yuri.”
The phone’s ring sounded like a scream, scaring Cielle into a yelp. After the second ring, Nate found his legs again and unburied the cordless from a sea of decorative pillows on the futon.
Mrs. Alizadeh’s voice seemed to arrive from a different dimension.
“No, no,” Nate said, moving back to the window. “Everything’s okay. Yes, it’s me. I’m back at the house again.” Across the street, through the diaphanous silk of the old woman’s bedroom curtains, he could make out her silhouette, down to the apprehensive curl of her shoulders. The two of them, like prisoners on their respective second floors, terrorized by a man on a lawn. The ridiculousness of this broke through his alarm, fired the breath in his throat. “It’s probably just some lookie-loo, tracked me down after the whole bank thing. You heard about the bank thing?”
“No,” Mrs. Alizadeh said. “I did not.”
“Better just to ignore whoever it is,” Nate said.
“He’s scaring me. I will call 911.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I do not like this, Mr. Overbay.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Nate said.
He hung up, threw the phone at the futon, and started for the door.
“You’re going out there?” Cielle asked.
“Lock the door behind me.”
Janie and Cielle followed him down. Stepping onto the porch, he waited for the thud of the dead bolt; seconds later two worried faces appeared in the living-room window.
His bare feet squished in the grass. The form waited patiently as Nate neared, the face becoming recognizable by degrees in the dim light.
“Get the fuck off my lawn.”
“It is not even your lawn anymore.” The cigarette flared orange. “Pavlo will watch you and your family as he please. Through my eyes or through someone else.”
Rain spit at them. Nate lifted his eyes past the big man’s shoulders to Mrs. Alizadeh’s perch by her upstairs window. She drew back slightly at his movement. Yuri’s gaze ticked left past Nate, no doubt taking in Janie and Cielle. Two men squaring off on an unlit stage of grass, a can’t-look-away spectacle. The wetness brought up the scent of the night-blooming jasmine. One wrong move and violence would explode here in the perfumed air of Santa Monica.
“You’re scaring the neighbors. Someone’ll call the cops.”
“We don’t worry about police.
