Watch You Die (17 page)

“OK, I saw Paul Ardsley. He apologized for being unavailable on Friday. He was very concerned and I can tell you that he’s already put things into motion to protect you.”

I was encouraged by Elliot’s decisive tone and his choice of words:
concern
,
motion
,
protect
. Never before had I worked for such a big corporation and the idea that they could enfold you this way, defend you, felt liberating as if now I could set down my burden and sigh.

“Thank you, Elliot.”

“It’s my job, and it’s Paul’s job. But I
am
concerned about you on a personal level. I don’t like the sound of this at all. And I can tell you that I learned this morning that HR’s been under some pressure lately for their less-than-scrupulous handling of certain personnel matters, so they’re not hesitating on this one. What they’re doing, what they’ve done already as a matter of fact, is issue something called a workplace restraining order – a
WRO
. It limits contact at work, meaning he can’t use work as an excuse to get close while in the building. Am I right to assume you asked for a broader restraining order from the police this morning?”

“No, I didn’t get one. The detective said not to.” I explained Jess’s warnings about restraining orders sometimes backfiring, exacerbating instead of deescalating a situation. “He’s been doing this for twenty-five years. He seems to know what he’s talking about.”

“Oh,
great
.” Elliot raised his hands to his face, shook his head, dropped his hands into his lap. “I had no idea. Ardsley didn’t say anything about that. He said they print out an order that’s like a contract, and they call the guy in to read it in front of him and sign it. They send him away with a photocopy. They’ve issued them in the past and he said they’ve always worked.”

“
Always
?” That single word, infused with incredulity, ignited on Elliot’s face an expression of unease the likes of which I had never seen on him. Normally he was upbeat, in control, and now for a split second I saw that he was worried about the ramifications of the ball he’d set to rolling by visiting Paul Ardsley. I had never met the man personally, having been taken through new-employee processing by a more junior member of Human Resources, but from what I gathered Ardsley was
not
known for his stellar judgment – hitting on Courtney at the holiday party alone demonstrated that. Elliot may have known that about him, and my response, my
always
, seemed to have plunged him into regret for taking Ardsley’s advice in the first place. Elliot had been trying to help and protect me. I wanted him to know how much I appreciated that.

“Well,” I said, keeping my voice cooler than I felt, “let’s hope it does the trick. Maybe Joe will get the message and back off so we can all concentrate on our work.” But even as I said it, I didn’t believe it would make a difference to Joe if someone handed him a piece of paper to sign, a mere article of faith, like a homework contract given to a first-grader. Joe was in a different league than guys who paid female co-workers a little too much attention on the job.
He had followed me from the Vineyard to New York
. In a mere week, his stalking had bled into nearly every corner of my life. But Elliot was my boss and I liked my job a lot and it seemed important at that moment to let him know how much I appreciated his actions on my behalf and to give his judgment, even Paul Ardsley’s judgment, the benefit of the doubt, despite powerful misgivings.

Elliot nodded, looking distracted, glancing at his phone. Then he picked up the receiver and dialed Paul Ardsley’s extension. Someone answered, but
not
Paul – he had left for lunch. Elliot tried to find out if before leaving he had met with an employee from the mailroom, but whoever had answered the phone was not forthcoming.

He looked at me, smiled sheepishly. “
Do no harm
. That was my grandfather’s motto. He refused to leave China to come live with us. He believed the world would be better off if one fewer person shifted positions.”

“An interesting attitude.”

“Isn’t it? Well. We should listen to our elders. Sorry, Darcy.”

“But no harm’s been done, and maybe it
will
help. I don’t think this kind of situation has any particular rules, just guidelines. Meanwhile, Elliot –” I re-crossed my legs, leaned forwards, changed the subject “– we’re moving forward on the bones story. I have more information from my source. Hard copies of what we think are unofficial land sale documents for the lot where the bones were found.”

Shifting the conversation to pure work instantly lightened the room’s atmosphere. Elliot seemed relieved to be shown the door out of my
situation
. So was I. Anything seemed easier and better than thinking about Joe.

“
Ex
cellent.”

“Courtney’s going after the official documents; she’s at Buildings now. We’ve got a bunch more
legwork
to do before we can put this part of the story together.”

He nodded, thinking.

“It could be explosive,” I said.

“It already is.”

“What do you make of the outcry to ID the bones?”

“Me, personally? I say ID ’em. Not doing it is nonsense.”

I smiled. “And the paper? Is there an official stance?”

“Don’t know yet. That ball’s in Overly’s court. Ultimately it’s his decision to yay or nay an editorial position. He can pull the plug on the whole story if he wants to, but I don’t think he will because it would show him to be a businessman more than a newsman and that would irk him. And I think the guy kind of
likes
getting backlash from the city’s elder statesmen, you know? I think it’s giving him the traction he’s been looking for to really establish the Reign of Matthew.”

We laughed. He glanced at his watch then flattened his hands on his desk to leverage himself up. “OK, Darcy. Are we square?”

“Totally. Thanks again, Elliot.”

“I’m late for a lunch meeting. Keep me up on everything.”

“Will do.”

My stomach was rumbling with hunger as I left Elliot’s office and started across the newsroom. I would just check my email before going outside to pick up my regulation takeout tuna sandwich and grapefruit juice.

But as I approached my desk, something seemed
off
. It took a moment to register what it was, and then I saw it; or, I saw its absence. My laptop was gone. I checked all around my desk, in my drawers, inside my bag – everywhere. It was definitely missing.

“Did you see anyone take my laptop?” I asked Stan, another Metro reporter who was my nearest neighbor other than Courtney.

Curved over his keyboard, Stan turned his head slowly, like a turtle roused from sleep, to look at me. His curly salt-and-pepper hair looked unbrushed and a bruised patina darkened the skin beneath his eyes. Two months ago his wife had given birth to twins, their first children, and he still looked stunned by the unanticipated changes new parenthood wrought on every couple. “Just got in,” he said. “Can’t find it?”

“Nope.”

There were a few more reporters hunkered over their computers and phones, working, and I interrupted each one in turn. No one had noticed anyone at my desk.

Elliot had already left. So I picked up the phone, called Security and explained, giving only the bare
facts
: I had been away from my desk for about twenty minutes and upon returning discovered my laptop was gone. The response was interesting. It turned out that ever since the
Times
had issued a laptop to every reporter, loss and theft had been a common problem. They would issue me another one as soon as I filled out a form, which was available in the Security office on the second floor. I said I’d be there in about half an hour, deciding to pick up my sandwich first.

All the way to the deli, I fumed.
Joe!
I had no doubt that he had taken my laptop. Who else? I could just see him wheeling through the newsroom with his cart, finding himself alone at a unique moment when no one was at his or her desk, failing to resist (or not trying?) the temptation to plunder what he could of anything that belonged to me, sizing up the laptop as the richest opportunity, and then quickly hiding it among his boxes and letters. Yes, I had backed up my hard disk as recently as Friday afternoon – I was a stickler about that – but the information on it was
mine
, not his, and he had no right to it. And the computer itself belonged to the
Times
, so now he had added theft to stalking. Great first week on the job, kiddo. Of course I would have no way to prove that he had taken it and if I accused him he would only deny it. He might even claim sour grapes, that I had saddled him with a workplace
restraining
order and was disappointed that it hadn’t even bothered him. Then
I
could look like the nut. No. I didn’t want to go crazy accusing Joe of anything else. When Elliot got back, I would tell him my laptop was missing and he could draw his own conclusion.

I ordered my sandwich on automatic drive, hardly pausing my spinning thoughts to say hello to Brian behind the counter. After, walking down 43rd Street, I was only vaguely aware of the clamorous noises and smells that were lunchtime Midtown. It had been a grey morning and it was a grey afternoon, not sunny, not rainy, just plain dreary. Passing the hot-dog guy who was always parked near the
Times
’ entrance, standing beneath his yellow and blue umbrella, I walked through a cloud of meaty steam. A dozen workers snaked in a curved line away from his cart as his metal tongs pressed a hot dog out into a splayed bun.

“Mustard and sauerkraut, please,” said his nearest customer. Only then did I notice that it was Stan, my fellow reporter. Seeing him in line, I realized how tall he was, probably six feet. I paused to greet him, and that was when I saw, from the corner of my eye, the blur of what appeared to be a man racing in my direction.

CHAPTER 7

JOE RAN AT
me, his arms pumping and those off-kilter eyes bright with rage. He wore an overloaded backpack that swayed behind him like a burden restraining him from flight. He was angrier than I had ever seen anyone: nostrils flared, teeth clenched, blood drained from his already pale face. Passers-by instinctively veered away from him.

“Darcy!
Darcy!
” His shrieking voice sounded like an adolescent’s, lurching whole octaves in one word, in this case my
name
. It was like being hit with a bucket of ice water – and I froze. “
How could you do this to me? I never did anything to hurt you!
”

“Hey!” It was Stan, who, out of the corner of my eye, I saw turning away from the vendor, his mouth half-full of hot dog.

Joe came to a halt in front of me.

My heart, an echo chamber, beat so hard and fast I could hear the blood roil through my body. I grasped my lunch so close to my chest that the bag split open. Though he had stopped, in my mind he continued to propel forwards and his face, inches away, transformed into something truly monstrous. Grooves of deep distress ran down his waxy cheeks. His eyes, polluted marbles, threatened to pop out of their sockets. And his smell, it was awful: fumes of residual vomit emitted with each word.

Stan tossed his hot dog onto the sidewalk and stepped between us. “Leave her alone!” A damp stripe appeared down the back of his shirt behind which I huddled, immobilized by fear.

Joe’s hands grabbed Stan’s arms, his knuckles going white into the blue fabric of Stan’s sleeves. This close, I could feel the vibrations of my colleague’s effort to push Joe away. Joe was stronger than he looked; his physical determination took me by surprise. It was everything Jess had told me, this “bad reaction” to having been told to keep away. If Joe reacted this way to a workplace restraining order, how would he react to a real one issued by the police? Stan grunted and pushed forwards, blocking Joe from reaching me. Just then a woman’s hand grabbed my arm and pulled me away. Two men tackled Joe from behind, pushing him to the ground, and it was over.

My lunch now broke free of the bag, wrapped sandwich and juice carton falling to the dirty sidewalk without apparent damage. The woman picked them up and handed them back to me.

“I think he works for the
Times
, in the mailroom,” I heard Stan saying to the security guard who had run out of our building’s lobby.

“Yeah, I recognize him. Anyone call the cops?”

The
real
cops, he meant. An admission that workplace measures – good behavior contracts and security guards – could only go so far to protect you.

“I called,” a man from the hot-dog line said, receiving his foil-wrapped hot dog and standing off to the side to see what happened next.

Joe, pinned to the sidewalk now by four men all of whose faces were alert with purpose, had his eyes squeezed shut and his lips pressed together and he was taking deep breaths, calming himself. It was like watching a wild animal regroup, suddenly, for his own survival. I wondered if he had ever been institutionalized – medicated, strait-jacketed, therapied – because it seemed as if he knew what could come next if he didn’t pull himself together fast. As if he was calculating the price he’d have to pay for his stunning transgression and figured he’d get a discount if the police, when they arrived, didn’t see quite the same man
we
had seen charging at me. Standing there, surrounded by strangers who had
taken
the time to help and whose mere presence made me feel safer, fear sloughed off and left me with a stone of antipathy heavy in my stomach. The hunger that had sent me outside for lunch was gone, replaced by something I didn’t recognize: a survivalist’s determination to succeed against an overwhelming adversary. I had an enemy, a real one, and I would have to strategize against him.

The police came and took Joe away, shackling his hands behind his back. They had to remove his bulky pack to secure the handcuffs. They slid him into the back seat of the squad car then tossed the backpack in after him. Was my laptop in there? I felt like lunging in after him and demanding its return, but the laptop itself seemed inconsequential now. I would get another one and transfer my backup files onto it. The more I thought about it, standing there watching the car pull away with Joe slumped in the back, the more I didn’t want anything near me that he had touched.