RUBY’S BODY WASHED UP A DAY LATER A QUARTER MILE FROM where she had swum out. It was reported on in the paper. The body was still listed as unidentified but the moment Noon saw it he knew it was her. He took the paper from the newsstand and went to a café on the other side of town and took a table near the window. A waitress came and asked if he would like to order anything. No, he said.
He sat there for almost an hour just looking at the paper. At the headline of the washed-up girl. No one had ever gotten away from him and now someone had and he couldn’t decide if what he felt was anger or amusement. The waitress came back at some point and asked if he had made any decisions. He looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. Then he smiled. Yes, he said, I believe I have.
He left the café with the paper folded in his hands and walked back to his car. He started the engine and swung out of the parking lot onto the street and drove to the shopping mall. He parked three or four rows back and at an angle so that the entrance to the mall could never be obscured. He shut off the engine and sat back and laid his arm across the seat and watched the entrance with hardly a blink. For long periods he sat so still that one might think a mannequin had been placed behind the wheel.
The hours passed. The sky grew darker. The rain had given way to a fine mist. There were sweet gums planted around the parking lot and tall fir trees out behind the mall and the clouds were low and the tops of the taller firs were hidden. In the cracks of the sidewalks weeds were pushing through.
Noon chain-smoked cigarettes, lighting a new one with the cherry of the old and dropping the butts out the window and listening to the hiss of each on the wet asphalt. The image of the mall was bespeckled through the windshield. Maybe a shopper would pass or a car would drive by but other than that it was quiet. For hours it was completely silent.
It was a little after five when he saw her. She was walking with a friend. It was dark and all the parking lot lights had come on. The two of them were walking quickly. Almost running. Under the cones of streetlights Noon could see they were smiling. Making a game of running through the rain. Noon watched them get to their car and open the doors. Then taillights flared. The wet pavement washed in red.
Noon watched the car pull out of the space and swing around and come toward him and as the car passed he could see the girls laughing together.
Hello, Eunice, he said.
Noon started the engine and followed them at a distance out of the parking lot and onto the road.
Their car pulled into a burger joint a ways down and Noon pulled to the shoulder and waited for them to get out of their car. Once they were in the restaurant Noon pulled in and backed into a space and left the engine running and turned off the headlights and watched them sit in a booth.
He must have sat for an hour or more. Never once did he take his eyes from her. Never once looking at the girl across the table. Only her he cared to look at. Only Eunice that mattered. The parking lot was full of puddles and the restaurant’s lights were mirrored on the surface. Sometimes the wind gusted and the puddles rippled and all those reflected lights went fuzzy.
He watched her eat. He watched her sip her milkshake through a straw. He watched her tuck her hair behind her ear. It was all perfect.
Almost two hours later they finished up and paid their bill and left the restaurant. The wind came at them and they shrieked as they ran toward their car. Noon cracked his window and listened to them scream. Their feet bursting puddles like children playing in the rain.
The girls drove off and Noon followed them for twenty minutes. It seemed aimless. They seemed to be wasting time. Avoiding going home. Doing all the things teenage girls like to do.
The rain abated and the wind swept the clouds away like dust and the sickle moon appeared. He followed them into a quiet neighborhood. The speed limit read fifteen miles per hour. One of those neighborhood watch signs. All the houses were modest but nice. Certain covenants with regard to decorum. Little lights for the landscaping. Newer cars in the driveways.
Noon pulled over and waited to see what house they were going to pull into. Their car pulled into a driveway and both girls got out and hugged behind the car and Eunice walked off alone down the street. Noon reached behind him and lifted a long piece of fabric. He wrapped it around his arm and shoulder several times and made a makeshift sling. Threw on a ball cap and pulled it low over his eyes. When the other girl had gone inside Noon shifted into drive and drove slowly past Eunice. The girl didn’t look up. Noon drove on ahead a couple blocks and pulled to the side and shut off the motor and got out and went around to the trunk and got out the tire iron and jack. He placed the jack under the chassis and fitted the tire iron over a lug nut.
As the girl approached Noon began to struggle with the tire iron. The girl slowed as she came up on him.
Are you alright, sir? she asked.
Noon startled for effect.
Heavens, he said. Scared me.
I’m sorry, she said. Do you need any help?
She pointed at his bad arm.
Tire went flat, he said.
She looked down at the tire. Her eyes pinched.
It looks fine to me, she said.
Would you hold this a moment? Noon said. I need to get something from the glove box.
He handed her the tire iron and opened the passenger door and leaned in and opened the glove box and pulled something out. He turned to the girl and smiled. His face was shadowed under the cap.
I really appreciate you stopping and helping me like this, Noon said. You’ve made my night.
No problem, she said. What happened to your arm?
Nothing is wrong with my arm.
Why do you have it in a sling then?
I don’t.
She frowned slightly. Noon’s unslinged hand was behind his back.
Well, she said. Here’s your tire iron back.
Thank you, he said.
She handed it to him and when she did he pulled his good hand around and stuck a needle into her shoulder and depressed the plunger. She looked down at it, uncomprehending. Then looked back at him and in the fleeting moments before she blacked out she recognized his face from that day in the store and he said: Hello, Eunice. He caught her as she went limp and he carried her like a sleeping child to the trunk and laid her gently in it and closed the lid and looked around. The street was empty. Nothing. Not even a dog.