By now, it was—I don’t know—five o’clock, let’s say. And Jim Bishop—or, that is, the man Chris and Kathleen knew as Frank Kennedy—still hadn’t left his house. Chris felt sick and weak with the suspense of waiting.
“Damn it,” he said. He was peeking out the bedroom window again, watching for any sign of the man. “We gotta get him out of there. If he’s a cop, I gotta find out.”
Kathleen, brooding on the bed behind him, answered nothing. She thought about it a moment, then just picked up the phone and dialed. Chris could hear Kennedy’s phone ringing faintly in the house across the way.
“It’s Kathleen,” he heard his wife say then. “I have to talk to you.”
Chris drew back from the window quickly. There was Kennedy now, a dim figure at his own window, holding the phone to his ear, gazing over at them as he answered her.
“No,” Kathleen said. “It’s about Hirschorn, Chris and Hirschorn. It’s important. I can’t tell you on the phone. Meet me in front of the Kmart in the River Mall in ten minutes. Hurry.”
She hung up without another word. She made a move to join Chris at the window but he waved at her behind his back. “Stay down, he’s looking this way,” he said.
Kennedy had put the phone down but he was still standing there, still watching their house. “He’ll see the truck,” Chris whispered—whispered harshly, as if Kennedy were close enough to hear him. “He’ll see the truck, he’ll know you’re here.”
Kathleen spoke clearly. “He knows I take the bus when you’re not around. Hell, I walk to River Mall sometimes.”
“He’s doing something.”
As he watched, Kennedy faded back from the window, faded into the shadows of his room. A long minute passed. Then Chris, excited, said, “Look! It’s working! There he goes.”
Kathleen sat on the bed. She stared at the floor. The Kleenexes still lay there from when she was crying. But she wasn’t crying anymore. Now she was just dark and hard inside. Kennedy had humiliated her and it had made her dark and hard. She wanted Kennedy to get hurt the way she was hurt.
“There he goes, there he goes,” whispered Chris, triumphant.
Kathleen heard Kennedy’s motorcycle, heard its engine sputter and roar. The bike went into gear. The noise of the engine quickly grew fainter and fainter. Then it was gone.
“Go on,” she said aloud. “He’ll be back any minute when he sees I’m not there. Go on and search the house. The key’s in my bag on the kitchen table.”
Chris obeyed her in a big hurry. Kathleen could hear his footsteps stampeding down the stairs. She just sat there—just sat there, dark and hard, staring down, frowning down at the Kleenexes on the floor.
Fuck you, Frank, she thought.