White Lies Read online

  Living room—strike. Bedroom—strike. So where was she? In the kitchen baking cookies? He hoped the hell not. He moved on and reached the far corner of the bungalow. Looked around it. There were two more lighted windows along the back wall. The closest was the north-facing bedroom window. The other was the one he’d approached seconds too late the night before.

  This time he didn’t hesitate. He hurried forward and peered in.

  It was the bathroom.

  Several candles were burning, creating soft pools of yellow light. Shadows jittered as if frightened by the very flames that had created them. Directly in Zach’s line of sight was the bathtub. Katrina was in it. She was submerged up to her neck in bubbles, reading a book, her head resting on the lip opposite the faucets. Naked as Eve. Zach stared. He didn’t know for how long. Only that at some point he began to have an unsettling feeling, a shifting in his gut that sent breezy shockwaves up the back of his neck. Something was wrong. It took him another few moments to realize what it was. He was actually staring into the bathroom mirror. That meant the tub—and Katrina—were right on the other side of the wall, less than two feet away.

  Katrina reached over the side of the tub and exchanged the book for a glass of red wine. The water frothed, momentarily revealing her right breast. It was round and full. The nipple was a light shade of pink. Zach felt himself getting aroused. He pressed closer to the wall, his eyes widening. He could hear his breathing; it had become a little quicker, a little dryer. Katrina finished what wine was left and dangled the empty glass in front of her by the stem, as if she was contemplating something. Then, with a suddenness Zach wasn’t at all prepared for, she stood up, a cascade of water running down her upper back. He was so surprised he stumbled backward a step.

  Something cracked under his foot. It sounded as loud as a gunshot in a funeral home.

  Katrina’s face appeared in the window. A curious expression.

  When she saw him, her eyebrows shot up. Her eyes became saucers. Her mouth dropped open and she screamed.

  Zach fled. Maybe he’d screamed too, but he didn’t think so. He bolted along the back of the house, around the corner, toward the street. Blood was thumping so hard behind his temples he wasn’t aware of any other sound, only a constant drone, as if he’d been slammed by a large wave and pinned beneath the ocean.

  What the hell had he stepped on? How had she seen him through the glare?

  Candles, he realized. There wasn’t any glare.

  Had she recognized him?

  He was halfway across the lawn when he heard a dog bark. He didn’t break stride but glanced in the direction from which the bark had come. On the sidewalk, near where the mouth of Katrina’s driveway met the road, a man walking a black-and-white dog was standing perfectly still, staring at him. Zach couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking as he watched someone dressed like a shadow running from a house as if a legion of demons was licking at his heels.

  The dog snapped the leash taut. Started barking more furiously.

  “Stop!” the man shouted.

  Zach didn’t. If anything, he ran faster. He snatched his bike from where he’d left it leaning against one of the big trees in the front yard, hopped on, and pedaled furiously. He heard footsteps giving chase. More barking, closer. He pedaled faster, half expecting the dog to attach itself to his leg at any moment. That didn’t happen. The footsteps and barking diminished. He’d left his pursuers far behind. He tore off the skullcap and stuffed it in his pocket. Wind rushed past his face, turning the tiny beads of sweat on his brow icy cool. He sped down Birch Street and shortly thereafter reached his place, a stucco-and-timber two-story Victorian with a pointed roof and an overhanging roofline. He went to the side door, carried his bike down the stairs, and dumped it in the corner—all the while his vivid imagination was glibly exploring the ways in which forensic guys in crime scene suits could prove what he’d done tonight. Hair, fabric, blood. The skullcap would have kept his hair on his head, and he didn’t cut himself. His clothes? He stripped off his shirt, pants, and shoes, and dumped them all in a green plastic garbage bag, which he shoved into the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. First thing tomorrow he would dispose of the evidence in a proper fashion. Next he took a shower, not so much to wash away any dirt he might have acquired as to mark a return to normalcy. By the time he’d toweled off and dressed again, he felt calmer, more in control.

  In the kitchen, he put the kettle on for a cup of instant coffee. While he waited for the water to boil, he told himself he was overreacting. A CSI team wasn’t going to comb over Katrina’s house. This was Leavenworth, not Miami. And it wasn’t like he’d killed anyone. He’d just looked in a goddamn window. But it wasn’t as simple as that, and he knew it. He was a fucking Peeping Tom. That might not be as bad as being a rapist, or a pedophile, but the stigma would be almost as ugly. Like those guys who used cameras to look up women’s skirts. Pathetic. Sick. Sleazy. Desperate. He’d lose his job, that was for sure. He was a teacher. Teachers, like politicians, weren’t allowed to do any wrong. Especially not a wrong like this. Not in the eyes of protective parents, anyhow. In fact, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t chased from town by an angry mob of moms and dads wielding pitchforks and burning torches. Would he make the local papers? Surely. He could imagine the headlines: “Local Teacher Caught Peeping on Coworker” or “Nightcrawler Busted!”

  A whistling. The water was ready. Zach grabbed a mug with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it from the cupboard, added a spoonful of Nescafe coffee crystals, then poured in the steaming water. He sat down with the mug at the table and replayed everything that had happened, trying to remember Katrina’s exact reaction. A curious expression, like she’d expected to see a raccoon, or maybe a deer. Her eyes widening when she saw a man in black instead. Then the scream. He didn’t think she’d cried out a second time, but he couldn’t he sure. The memories right before he’d been caught were already starting to form into one indistinguishable haze. More important, however, was whether or not there had been any hint of recognition in her eyes.

  He didn’t know. It had all happened too fast. He shook his head.

  How the fuck had he let himself get caught up in this?

  Katrina. It was her fault. Not directly, of course. She didn’t put up pink lights in that front bay window of hers, dress in heels and a corset and not much else, and tap the glass to solicit passing neighbors. But she did kick him out of her car, which got him pissed enough to start a vendetta against her, which led him to check out her house.

  No, he couldn’t blame her. Man up, Zach, he thought. This is your doing, yours alone. Yes it was, and somehow he would have to get himself out of it. He began going over his story in case Katrina had, in fact, recognized him. He’d come home from work, had dinner, had a Scotch and soda. This was all true—though he wouldn’t tell the cops just how strong the highball had been, or how many he’d had, for that matter. Then he’d—what? Stayed in and watched television? Sure. Why not? Simple was best.

  Zach sat in silence, staring into his black coffee, waiting for a knock at the door.

  Chapter 7

  Someone was banging on Katrina’s front door.

  She was in the bathroom, a statue standing in the tub, like a naked woman who’d been petrified after glimpsing Medusa’s face. Although fear had frozen her body, her thoughts were liquid fire, racing through her head. Who the hell was knocking? Couldn’t be her neighbors. They were so far away they wouldn’t have heard a gunshot, let alone a scream. The intruder? Crazy. Why would he be banging on her door? Did he want to talk? Explain what he was doing? Excuse me, ma’am, I was just getting a few cheap thrills. Didn’t mean to alarm you. Didn’t mean to get caught either. So how about we just put this embarrassing little misunderstanding behind us? Whaddya say? Was there time to call the police? Yes—the police. She had to call the police. Right away. That broke her paralysis, got her moving. She stepped out of the tub and yanked on her robe.

  The pounding at the fro
nt door became louder, more insistent.

  Where was her phone? In the kitchen?

  She gripped the bathroom doorknob, but hesitated. Bandit was barking—he’d been barking the entire time, she realized, though she’d only just tuned into it now—but she thought there was another dog barking as well. She listened. She was right. Two dogs. Burglar, rapist, murderer—or whatever category the godforsaken bastard fell under—he surely wouldn’t have brought a dog with him. Curiosity replaced her fear. She opened the door and almost got bowled over backward by Bandit, who leapt up on his hind legs, his forepaws pressed against her thighs. She shook him off impatiently and went to the foyer.

  “Who is it?” she called. Her voice wasn’t as confident as she would have liked it.

  There was a moment of silence in which she half expected a gravelly voice to say, “I’m going to huff, and puff, and blow your house down!” But the voice that spoke up was mild and polite, if not somewhat concerned. “Quiet, boy. Shh.” To her, “You don’t know me, miss. My name’s John Winthorpe. I was out walking my dog when I saw someone running out of your yard. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

  Katrina slid the safety chain in place, unfastened the deadbolt, then opened the door a wedge. The man on the doorstep was dressed in gray jogging pants and a gray sweatshirt. Middle-aged and spectacled. Katrina had only gotten a glimpse of the man in her bathroom window, which had amounted to little more than his eyes and the bridge of his nose, but she nonetheless knew this was not the same man. The dog, a black-and-white border collie, snorted. Bandit went nuts.

  “Just a second,” she said. She closed the door, unclasped the chain, then swung the door a little wider. She grabbed Bandit by the collar and told him to behave. He whimpered but went quiet. “Did you get a description of this person?” she asked.

  “Height and build, sure. And a brief glimpse of his face. Are you okay? You look shaken.”

  “I saw the man too.” She found it more difficult to articulate what had happened than she would have thought. “He was watching me through the bathroom window.”

  “Good God! Have you called the police?”

  “I was about to. I … I just need a minute.”

  “Of course.” John Winthorpe patted his dog. “Listen, if you want, Molson here and me will wait out front. Keep watch until the police arrive.”

  “Thank you. But I think I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure? They might want to question me as well.”

  That was true, she thought. After all, he’d apparently gotten a better description of the intruder than she had. “Well, if you don’t mind waiting around.”

  “Of course not. What are neighbors for? We’ll be right out here. Just holler if you need us.”

  Katrina opened the door wider and stepped back. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll put on some tea. I don’t know about you, but I could use it. Molson’s welcome too.”

  As if to show his gratitude, the border collie stepped forward and sniffed her feet as she led them inside. Bandit began whining again, pleading to be let go. She released his collar so he could get acquainted with his new friend. The two canines immediately began playing Ring Around the Rosie.

  “Either you’ve previously lived in a monastery,” John said, glancing around the barren living room, “or you’re still waiting on your furniture.”

  “Please, have a seat. I only have one. But it’s comfortable.”

  “Can’t be vigilant sitting down, can I?”

  Katrina retrieved her cell phone from the bedroom and dialed 9-1-1, feeling apprehensive as she did so. She’d only called emergency services once before, when she was ten or eleven, on a dare. She’d hung up as soon as the dispatcher picked up. The dispatcher called back, but Katrina didn’t answer, navïely believing that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. A police cruiser pulled up to her house ten minutes later. The two big cops at the door gave her a verbal dressing down, telling her it was a very serious offence, what she did, and she could possibly go to jail. She promised she’d never do it again, and she hadn’t. Until now—until she really needed their help. She told the dispatcher what happened. The woman asked her a number of questions. What was her location? What was her callback number? Was there a crime involved? Had she seen the suspect? Finally she was informed an officer would be by shortly to take a statement. Katrina hung up.

  “Someone coming?” John asked.

  “Yes, right now.”

  Less than five minutes later a black and white pulled into her driveway, reminding Katrina once more of that dare all those years ago. It was a powerful image, a police car. It was the archetype of authority. It seemed to promise order would reassert itself. Wrongs would be righted. Criminals would be punished. Peeping Toms would be caught. Katrina had the front door open before the cop had climbed the front steps. She invited him inside and offered him a cup of the jasmine tea she had brewed. He declined. She went on to tell him what happened. At his request she showed him the bathroom. The air was redolent with the bath oil. The candles were still burning. She flicked on the overhead light and blew out the flames.

  While the cop—Officer Murray, he’d introduced himself as— examined the bathtub and window, Katrina took the opportunity to study him. He was downright small, maybe one hundred and forty pounds with his clothes on. He stood at around five foot five—including the extra inch his shiny black boots gave him. The standard equipment that made the typical barrel-chested cops so intimidating, such as a duty belt and gun, almost seemed to weigh this particular fellow down. The image was embellished by his apparent need to continually hitch his belt higher, a jerky, stop-motion action. A balding crown covered by a desperate comb over, buckteeth, too-large uniform, and the sense he was standing as straight as possible to gain an inch made him appear a caricature of authority. His attitude, however, was anything but comical. His eyes were intense, his tone clipped and to the point. It was clear he took his job very seriously. “So you say you were in the bathtub when you heard some noise”—he consulted his battered notebook in which he had been scribbling notes—“and when you turned around you saw some perp watching you?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He crouched down beside the bathtub and craned his neck to see up toward the window. “But from this angle, wouldn’t it have been tough to see out?”

  “I was standing.”

  “But you were having a bath, isn’t that right?”

  “I was getting out.”

  “That’s when you heard the noise?”

  “I think he might have stepped on a plastic flower pot. I saw a few out back the other day. Should we check?”

  “Not necessary,” Officer Murray said dismissively, jotting more notes in his notebook. He addressed John Winthorpe, who’d followed them into the bathroom. “You say he was tall and lanky? Anything else?”

  “He was wearing a black pullover and black slacks.”

  The cop nodded and raised his chin, failing to look bigger than he actually was. “I’d put out an APB, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t do any good. I’m the only one on the beat tonight.”

  “You’re kidding?” Katrina said.

  “Small town, ma’am.”

  “So you’re not going to do anything?”

  “Given neither of you got a good look at the perp, there’s not much I can do.”

  “What about footprints? He must have left footprints. You can get plastic molds, right?”

  “This isn’t a murder scene, Ms. Burton. From what you’ve told me, all we have here is some pervert looking through your window. I understand how that might bother you, but these kooks are usually harmless.”

  “This has happened before? Recently?”

  “No, ma’am. Real Peeping Toms are rare.”

  “Maybe that’s because they don’t get caught,” she said cynically. She knew she should be grateful to the cop, but she couldn’t help it. He was pretty much telling her all options were off the table.

  “I’m thin
king,” Officer Murray said, not rising to the bait, “what you have here is just some guy getting his kicks. Probably no more dangerous than those guys who cop a feel in a crowded place.” He stuck his notebook in his belt with a solid shove, as if to signal the matter was settled. Justice served. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. He took the peaked cap that had been tucked under his arm and replaced it on his head.

  “That’s supposed to be comforting?” To Katrina’s reasoning, it was about as comforting as saying, “Don’t worry. He doesn’t rape woman. No, no, he just harasses them. Gives them a good scare. He’s harmless.”

  “Better than a real crazy outside your window, Ms. Burton.”

  “But that’s the point! What if he is crazy? How do you know he’s not? What if he has a psychological disorder? What if this kind of voyeurism is an addiction to him? What if he comes back? What if he decides a quick look isn’t enough?”

  “I doubt it,” Officer Murray said matter-of-factly.

  Katrina clenched her jaw. Why couldn’t the dispatcher have sent her a real cop? Not half a man with half-baked thoughts on law and order? “So what happens?” she asked, not bothering to hide her frustration.

  “I’ll cruise around the neighborhood. See if I spot anyone who matches the description you and Mr. Winthorpe gave me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  “And if he doesn’t happen to be walking aimlessly around?” she demanded.

  Officer Murray gave his belt a hefty tug. “Like I told you. There’s not much else I can do. Without a good description, he could swap clothes and be any tall fellow out there.”

  “What about a stakeout?” John suggested. “Like Ms. Burton said, if he comes back—”

  “We don’t have the manpower for that.”

  “But what if he does come back?” Katrina pressed. They were going in circles, but she couldn’t steer the cop straight.

  Officer Murray shrugged. “Try to get a better description of him.”