A thousand things can go wrong when you work quickly. But they won’t. They didn’t. Not for him.
He is alone and alive in the night, every nerve ending firing, perceiving, sending him information as he gets out of his car, dusk just falling, an unthreatening canvas shoulder bag dangling in his left hand, and knocks on her door with his right. This is the moment. The door swings open and Sunbeam faces him. Her eyes are blue and clear, her teeth are white, her skin pale, and her hair the color of Acacia honey. It shines like liquid glass. There can be fleeting disappointment when he is finally up close and personal with a subject. But not this time. No, this time perfection is close at hand.
“Hold on,” she says into the cell phone she is talking on, and then addresses him. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, maybe. It’s no big deal,” he says. “I used to live here. In this house. I can come back some other time …”
He sees her eyes light with curiosity, then she speaks into the phone again. “I’ll call you back, sweetie, someone’s here.” She hangs up.
“Like I said, I used to live here.”
“When was this?”
“It was a while back. A long time ago. When I was in high school. Did you guys buy the house from the Halls? We sold it to them.”
“No. It’s just me, and I bought it from the Putnams—with a little help from my dad. The Putnams bought it from the Halls. I think.” She is right, they had. He’s researched the chain of buyers and sellers on the place going back thirty years. It is all in the library and on the Internet—tax payments, real estate listings, sales announcements. He is pretty sure he knows it all better than she does.
“Right, we sold when my dad got transferred. We moved away right when I was supposed to finish high school. Then they held on to it for quite some time,” he says.
“They did.”
“It sure looks different now.”
“The Halls did a lot of work on it, I did the rest. I’m doing it anyway, as fast as I can.”
“You’re doing good, the place looks great.” He smiles. “I carved my initials on the wall down in the basement. You see that?”
“Basement? You mean the little furnace room?”
“Yep, that.” He feels a momentary sense of concern surge in his chest. He didn’t anticipate there not being a basement.
“I never saw any initials down there,” she says.
“I could show you where.”
She hesitates for the first time then.
“I know, I know,” he says. “Just feeling nostalgic, I guess.” Then he looks at his watch. “Well, I have to go meet my wife in five minutes.”
The idea that he has someplace to be, and a wife, puts her at ease. Then he reaches for his back pocket.
“This is me by the way …” He extends his driver’s license. It doesn’t provide her any protection, of course, but he’s learned that a willingness to show who he is creates some kind of instant, misguided trust in his target, and this time is no different. The fact that she can identify him makes her feel safe. As if she’ll get the chance.
“Oh, I see you don’t live too far away,” she says.
“No, just moved back kind of recently.”
“Well, okay, come on and take a quick look,” she says, and steps away from the door to allow him in.