See No Evil. Gayle Roper

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      The whole situation was preposterous. I was an art teacher, for goodness sakes, the original good girl. I painted on the side, and not even all that well if the truth be told, though I’d never admit it to my father. I sewed curtains and drapes for people for extra cash. I made fabric pictures—“fabric mosaics” Lucy called them—for the fun of it. I spent more time at church than I did at the mall. Any previous dealings with bad guys were absolutely nonexistent, any run-ins with law-enforcement authorities almost nonexistent. Almost.

      Once I’d called in a child abuse report about one of my students. Once I’d gotten a ticket I couldn’t afford because of my penchant for being heavy-footed. Once when I’d glanced at my watch and seen I was going to be late for a date, I’d accidentally walked out of a store with a pair of gloves in my hand. I’d rushed right back in to pay for them, probably passing the store detective coming after me to arrest me.

      I’d committed one of my two serious offenses when I was six years old. I lifted a chocolate bar at a Wawa mini-mart. When I climbed into the car eating it, Dad marched me right back to the store and made me apologize. He paid for the candy, then made me work off the price by helping him with his annual garage cleaning. He made certain the task took all day.

      You’d think that between the mortification and the sore muscles over the chocolate-bar incident I’d have learned my lesson, but I guess I’m just slow. Once, as a teen, I kept too much change at Kmart, using the undeserved five dollars to buy a colorful scarf. I still had the scarf, but I had yet to wear it. I kept it to remind myself of the fine line between evil and good, guilt and grace. I’d returned the five dollars as soon as I’d gotten my next babysitting job.

      That was about as close as I ever came to lawbreaking and lawbreakers, Skip Schumann excepted, if mouthiness and disrespect were breaking the law. Evil people, really bad guys, couldn’t usually be bothered with ordinary goody-goody people like me. They thought we weren’t any fun, and we sort of thought the same about them. We went our separate ways.

      Until tonight.

      I squeezed my eyes shut again and tried to get comfortable in my very comfortable bed. Lucy sneezed, Meaghan snored and I sat bolt upright, trying to see through the darkness. I told myself over and over that it was only Luce and Meg, but my nerves, busy jitterbugging up and down my spine, didn’t seem to grasp that truth.

      Light. I needed light. If he came after me, I wanted to see him, rather than be taken unawares. I reached for my bedside lamp. As soon as I snapped it on, all the shadows dissipated, and all my fears quieted. Just seeing that everything was normal made all the difference. With a sigh that was a combination of relief and fatigue, I slid down and pulled up the covers. I was asleep in seconds.

      

      I was up at eight the next morning, down at the police station by nine, and down in my basement workshop by ten. Lucy and Meg left to run errands, and I sewed. If I was lucky, I’d have almost everything done today. The rug should be down by then, assuming the cops were finished, and I could run to the model and work before the development became deserted. I was not staying there alone ever again.

      Praise music rang from my boom box, and I sang along, almost drowning out the muted roar of the sewing machine. In a momentary pause of both the machine and the CD, a muffled, “Anna, open this door,” sounded.

      What in the world?

      “Anna!” A fist beat rhythmically on the front door.

      The music started again and I lunged for the off switch.

      “Anna, come on!” The doorbell rang and rang, and knocking continued unabated.

      I hurried upstairs. It sounded like Gray, but why was he banging on my door in the middle of the day?

      I caught sight of myself in the mirror in the front hall. Yikes! I quickly combed my hair with my fingers and stuffed it back in the red rubber band I found in my shorts’ pocket.

      “Anna!”

      “I’m coming! I’m coming!”

      I threw the door open to find Gray, today wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, looking like an August thundercloud about to hurl lightning bolts at anyone within range. He had the day’s Amhearst News in his hands.

      He stalked into the house. “Look at this!” He shoved the paper at her.

      Staring at me from the front page above the fold was a picture of Ken Ryder, looking stricken. Standing beside him, hand on his shoulder, was Gray, and standing beside Gray, looking heartbroken, was me.

      “Ken Ryder, husband of victim Dorothy Ryder, being comforted by friends Grayson Edwards and Anna Volente,” read the caption beneath.

      “I didn’t even know the picture had been taken,” I said. “That reporter must have done it.”

      Next to the picture were my head sketches of the red-shirted man. Beneath his picture were the words: “Do you know this man? Wanted for questioning in the murder of Dorothy Ryder.”

      I put my forefinger on the face of the red-shirted man. “The drawings reproduced well.”

      “That’s not the only likeness that reproduced well,” Gray muttered. He dragged a hand through his hair.

      I stared at him. “What?”

      He pointed to my face, then to the caption beneath.

      I went cold all over. “He knows who we are.”

      FIVE

      Dar Jones was not a happy man, but he also wasn’t a particularly worried one. He just hated that the job hadn’t gone perfectly. He prided himself in being the best hands-on for-hire killer in New Jersey, maybe the whole Northeast. Maybe the entire country.

      He wasn’t one of those prima donnas the movies were fixated on, the guys who used rifles and scopes and elaborate scenarios. He was a good, basic craftsman. Hire him, and your intended target went down quickly and cleanly. No prints. No clues. No DNA. No nothing but a dead body, done up close and personal so there was never any doubt.

      So this time a woman saw him. Granted it irked him. After two weeks of casing the development, he knew that everyone was gone way before seven. Last night was the very first night someone other than the Ryder woman was there at that hour. Who could have guessed?

      But so what? It wasn’t like the woman in the window was a threat or anything. He hadn’t looked like himself. So what if she saw the man with the light brown hair and the bushy mustache? She’d never finger him, not in a million years.

      He ran his hand back over his naturally black, poker-straight hair and smiled to himself as he looked out his oversized window at the Atlantic Ocean rolling relentlessly onto the Seaside, New Jersey, beach. Even that red shirt with the little pony over the heart was a disguise. He’d never wear one of those preppy rags. He’d go naked first. And khaki slacks? He shuddered.

      Basic black was his color. Black jeans, black T, black athletic shoes and socks. If he had to get dressed up, like for a funeral or to eat at some fancy-schmancy restaurant, he had his black cashmere sports coat. When winter came, he had his black leather bomber. If it was unbearably cold, there was the black down jacket.

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