“Coming,” I yell, hitting Pause before standing up from the table.
I’m expecting it to be Waylon, not quite comfortable enough in my home to let himself in—after all, he’s only been gone for an hour, just enough time to drive to the station, get shut down, and drive back empty-handed—but when I open the door, that’s not who I see.
“Good morning,” Detective Dozier says, hands on his hips. “Mind if I come in?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
For a second, I’m too stunned to speak. Dozier is not supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be at the station, with Waylon, talking about my neighbor.
“Got your voice mails,” he says when I don’t respond. “And your emails. Figured I’d swing by on my way to the station as opposed to calling you back.”
“Oh, thank you,” I say, finally finding my voice. “Yes, please come in.”
I open the door wider, and Dozier steps inside, offering Roscoe his hand to sniff.
“So, what’s this about your neighbor?” he asks, getting right to it. “Seventeen-forty-two Catty Lane?”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a seat on the couch. I gesture for him to sit, but he keeps standing. “He’s not really my neighbor, exactly—he lives on the street parallel to mine—but I noticed the other day that he has a direct view into my backyard. He can practically see Mason’s window from his porch.”
I look down and realize that I’m clenching my fists tightly. I uncurl my fingers, flex them a few times.
“When I tried to ask him about it, he got very defensive,” I continue. “Basically chased me off his property, like he didn’t like the fact that I was snooping around. He wouldn’t even tell me his name.”
Dozier shifts on his feet, moving the weight from one foot to the other. I watch as he chews on his own lip like a toothpick, as if turning something over in his mind.
“I talked to him once before, last year, and he didn’t raise any red flags,” I continue, pushing on. “But there’s just something about the way he spoke to me—”
“I’m going to stop you right here,” Dozier interrupts, holding up his hand. “I thought we made it clear that you’re not to be interrogating anyone on your own anymore.”
“I wasn’t interrogating him,” I say. “I just wanted to ask—”
“—if he kidnapped your son without any probable cause or proof?”
“No,” I say, getting agitated. “But I don’t understand why he wouldn’t at least be open to talking to me, unless he has something to hide…”
“Maybe because the last time you tried to ‘talk’ to someone, you broke his nose.”
I stop, my mind back in that grocery store. To that old man in his apron and my fists flying, connecting so hard with his face. The wet crunch of cartilage and his old, leathery hands cupped over his head, shaking like a kid in a tornado drill. The tissue-paper skin of his arms already streaked with bruises, and the blood trickling down his chin, thick and sticky as it pooled on the ground and seeped into the tile cracks.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” I murmur. “I told you that already.”
“Yeah, well, you did. So maybe you shouldn’t be surprised when folks get a little skittish when you show up unannounced. Why were you on his porch in the first place?”
I hesitate. Part of me doesn’t even want to tell him about the man I saw before. I can still picture his brown robe and stringy gray hair; the way he had stared at me, through me, his eyes fogged over with cataracts, like he hadn’t even seen me at all.
That man wasn’t like the other times, though. I know he wasn’t. He wasn’t just a shadow or some blurry figure dancing in my peripheral vision; a noise my sleep-deprived mind had simply made up and cast out into the world. An imaginary friend.
No, this man was real.
“There was someone else,” I say at last, forcing myself to continue. “I was walking my dog around the neighborhood. Late—like, one in the morning—and there was an older man sitting on his porch.”
I wait for Dozier to respond, but instead, he remains silent.
“He was just sitting there,” I continue. “Staring into nothing. I’ve never seen him before. And why would he be out there so late at night? What if he was out there the night Mason was taken? What if he saw something, or—”
“Do you make it a habit to walk around your neighborhood at one in the morning?” the detective asks, cutting me off. “Seems a little strange, even with the dog.”