Watchers (17 page)
When he saw her despair, which evidently pleased him more than a cry of pain could have done, he stopped grinding her hand, but he did not let go. He said, “You’ll pay for that, for spitting in my face. And you’ll
enjoy
paying for it.”
enjoy
paying for it.”
Without conviction, she said, “I’ll complain to your boss, and you’ll lose your job.”
Streck only smiled. Nora wondered why he did not bother to wipe the bits of oatmeal cookie from his face, but even as she wondered about it she knew the reason: he was going to make her do it for him. First, he said, “Lose my job? Oh, I already quit working for Wadlow TV. Walked out yesterday afternoon. So I’d have time for you, Nora.”
She lowered her eyes. She could not conceal her fear, was shaken by it until she thought her teeth would chatter.
“I never do stay too long in a job. Man like me, full of so much energy, gets bored easy. I need to move around. Besides, life’s too short to waste all of it working, don’t you think? So I keep a job for a while, till I’ve got some money saved, then I coast as long as I can. And once in a while I run into a lady like you, someone who has a powerful need for me, someone who’s just crying out for a man like me, and so I help her along.”
Kick him, bite him, go for his eyes, she told herself.
She did nothing.
Her hand ached dully. She remembered how hot and intense the pain had been.
His voice changed, became softer, soothing, reassuring, but that frightened her even more. “And I’m going to help you, Nora. I’ll be moving in for a while. It’s going to be fun. You’re a little nervous about me, sure, I understand that, I really do. But believe me, this is what you need, girl, this is going to turn your life upside down, nothing’s ever going to be the same again, and that’s the best thing could happen to you.”
Einstein loved the park.
When Travis slipped off the leash, the retriever trotted to the nearest bed of flowers—big yellow marigolds surrounded by a border of purple polyanthuses—and walked slowly around it, obviously fascinated. He went to a blazing bed of late-blooming ranunculuses, to another of impatiens, and his tail wagged faster with each discovery. They said dogs could see in only black and white, but Travis would not have bet against the proposition that Einstein possessed full-color vision. Einstein sniffed everything— flowers, shrubbery, trees, rocks, trash cans, crumpled litter, the base of the drinking fountain, and every foot of ground he covered—no doubt turning up olfactory “pictures” of people and dogs that had passed this way before, images as clear to him as photographs would have been to Travis.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, the retriever had done nothing amazing. In fact, his I’m-just-an-ordinary-dumb-dog behavior was so convincing that Travis wondered if the animal’s nearly human intelligence came only in brief flashes, sort of the beneficial equivalent of epileptic seizures. But after all that had happened yesterday, Einstein’s extraordinary nature, though seldom revealed, was no longer open to debate.
As they were strolling around the pond, Einstein suddenly went rigid, lifted his head, raised his floppy ears a bit, and stared at a couple sitting on a park bench about sixty feet away. The man was in running shorts, and the woman wore a rather baggy gray dress; he was holding her hand, and they appeared to be deep in conversation.
Travis started to turn away from them, heading out toward the open green of the park to give them privacy.
But Einstein barked once and raced straight toward the couple.
“Einstein! Here! Come back here!”
The dog ignored him and, nearing the pair on the bench, began to bark furiously.
By the time Travis reached the bench, the guy in running shorts was standing. His arms were raised defensively, and his hands were fisted as he warily moved back a step from the retriever.
“Einstein!”
The retriever stopped barking, turned away from Travis before the leash could be clipped to the collar again, went to the woman on the bench, and put his head in her lap. The change from snarling dog to affectionate pet was so sudden that everyone was startled.
Travis said, “I’m sorry. He never—”
“For Christ’s sake,” said the guy in running shorts, “you can’t let a vicious dog run loose in a park!”
“He’s not vicious,” Travis said. “He—”
“Bullshit,” the runner said, spraying spittle. “The damn thing tried to bite me. You
enjoy
lawsuits or something?”
enjoy
lawsuits or something?”
“I don’t know what got into—”
“Get it out of here,” the runner demanded.
Nodding, embarrassed, Travis turned to Einstein and saw that the woman had coaxed the retriever onto the bench. Einstein was sitting with her, facing her, his forepaws in her lap, and she was not merely petting him but hugging him. In fact, there was something a little desperate about the way she was holding on to him.
“Get it
out
of here!” the runner said furiously.
out
of here!” the runner said furiously.
The guy was taller, broader in the shoulders, and thicker in the chest than Travis, and he took a couple of steps forward, looming over Travis, using his superior size to intimidate. By being aggressive, by looking and acting a little dangerous, he was accustomed to getting his way. Travis despised such men.
Einstein turned his head to look at the runner, bared his teeth, and growled low in his throat.
“Listen, buddy,” the runner said angrily, “are you deaf, or what? I said that dog’s got to be put on a leash, and I see the leash there in your hand, so what the hell are you waiting for?”
Travis began to realize something was wrong. The runner’s self-righteous anger was overdone—as if he had been caught in a shameful act and was trying to conceal his guilt by going immediately and aggressively on the offensive. And the woman was behaving peculiarly. She had not spoken a word. She was pale. Her thin hands trembled. But judging by the way she petted and clung to the dog, it wasn’t Einstein that frightened her. And Travis wondered why a couple would go to the park dressed so differently from each other, one in running shorts and the other in a drab housedress. He saw the woman glance surreptitiously and fearfully at the runner, and suddenly he knew that these two were not together—at least not by the woman’s choice—and that the man had, indeed, been up to something about which he felt guilty.
“Miss,” Travis said, “are you all right?”
“Of course she’s not all right,” the runner said. “Your damn dog came barking and snapping at us—”
“He doesn’t seem to be terrorizing her right now,” Travis said, meeting and holding the other man’s gaze.
Bits of what appeared to be oatmeal batter were stuck on the guy’s cheek. Travis had noticed an oatmeal cookie spilling from a bag on the bench beside the woman, and another one crumbled on the ground between her feet. What the hell had been going on here?
The runner glared at Travis and started to speak. But then he looked at the woman and Einstein, and he evidently realized that his calculated outrage would no longer be appropriate. He said sullenly, “Well . . . you should still get the damn hound under control.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll bother anyone now,” Travis said, coiling the leash. “It was just an aberration.”
Still furious but uncertain, the runner looked at the huddled woman and said, “Nora?”
She did not respond. She just kept petting Einstein.
“I’ll see you later,” the runner told her. Getting no response, he refocused on Travis, narrowed his eyes, and said, “If that hound comes nipping at my heels—”
“He won’t,” Travis interrupted. “You can get on with your run. He won’t bother you.”
Several times as he jogged slowly across the park to the nearest exit, the man glanced back at them. Then he was gone.
On the bench, Einstein had settled down on his belly with his head on the woman’s lap.
Travis said, “He’s sure taken a liking to you.”
Without looking up, smoothing Einstein’s coat with one hand, she said, “He’s a lovely dog.”
“I just got him yesterday.”
She said nothing.
He sat down on the other end of the bench, with Einstein between them. “My name’s Travis.”
Unresponsive, she scratched behind Einstein’s ears. The dog made a contented sound.
“Travis Cornell,” he said.
At last she raised her head and looked at him. “Nora Devon.”
“Glad to meet you.”
She smiled, but nervously.
Though she wore her hair straight and lank, though she used no makeup, she was quite attractive. Her hair was dark and glossy, her skin flawless, and her gray eyes were accented with green striations that seemed luminous in the bright May sunshine.
As if sensing his approval and frightened of it, she immediately broke eye contact, lowered her head once more.
He said, “Miss Devon . . . is something wrong?”
She said nothing.
“Was that man . . . bothering you?”
“It’s all right,” she said.
With her head bowed and shoulders hunched, sitting there under a ton-weight of shyness, she looked so vulnerable that Travis could not just get up, walk away, and leave her with her problems. He said, “If that man was bothering you, I think we ought to find a cop—”
“No,” she said softly but urgently. She slipped out from under Einstein and got up.
The dog scrambled off the bench to stand beside her, gazing at her with affection.
Rising, Travis said, “I don’t mean to pry, of course—”
She hurried away, heading out of the park on a different path from the one the runner had taken.
Einstein started after her but halted and reluctantly returned when Travis called to him.
Puzzled, Travis watched her until she disappeared, an enigmatic and troubled woman in a gray dress as drab and shapeless as the garb of an Amish lady or a member of some other sect that took great pains to cloak the female figure in garments that would not lead a man into temptation.
He and Einstein continued their walk through the park. Later, they went to the beach, where the retriever seemed astounded by the endless vistas of rolling sea and by the breakers foaming on the sand. He repeatedly stopped to stare out at the ocean for a minute or two at a time, and he frolicked happily in the surf. Later still, back at the house, Travis tried to interest Einstein in the books that had caused such excitement last evening, hoping this time to be able to figure out what the dog expected to find in them. Einstein sniffed without interest at the volumes Travis brought to him—and yawned.
Throughout the afternoon, the memory of Nora Devon returned to Travis with surprising frequency and vividness. She did not require alluring clothes to capture a man’s interest. That face and those green-flecked gray eyes were enough.
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