Page 4 of I'm Watching You

Twelve years and her hands still trembled when she remembered that day. Twelve years and she still had nightmares. Twelve years and she felt that if she didn’t have a white-knuckle grip on her life it would all slip away.

‘Stop it, Lindsay,’ she muttered. ‘It’s long over.Done.’

Purposefully, she shifted her mind from the past to her to-do list that she made certain never ended. The first thing she needed to do was call her boss Dana and apologize for missing their conference call. The second must-do job was to write the summation for the grant application, which, if they won, would pay the salary for a full-timecounselor. Then there were the fund-raiser ideas, the notes for her talk to a local church group tonight, and the hospital intervention awareness seminar. …

A therapist had once called Lindsay’s jam-packed schedule an avoidance device. He’d said it was easier for her to stay busy than to think about her losses. Lindsay hadn’t argued, because she knew he was right. But she didn’t know how to slow down and keep the dark thoughts at bay.

When she turned into the quiet residential neighborhood where Sanctuary was located, she slowed to the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. She was so far behind schedule today that she’d be working late into the night just to break even.

She downshifted to first gear when she spotted the two police cars and the unmarked Impala parked in front of the shelter.

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel and tension nearly choked her breath away. ‘Oh, God, what’s happened now?’

The last time the cops had been to the shelter’s secret location, one of the residents, Pam Rogers, had broken strict protocol and called her abusive husband. Pam had divulged the shelter’s location and asked him to come get her. He’d arrived fifteen minutes later. She’d run out to him, begging him to take her back. Instead of welcoming her, he’d hit her and then ordered her into his car. When the hysterical overnight volunteer had called Lindsay at home, Lindsay had immediately contacted the one brother Pam had mentioned. He didn’t know where his sister was so Lindsay had called in favors hoping to find Pam.

The woman was found dead the next day behind a convenience store. She’d been badly beaten and strangled. The cops had tracked down the husband two weeks later and arrested him. Jack Rogers had shown no remorse but had talked about his rights as a husband.

Hisrights. What about his wife’s right to live a life free of fear?

Lindsay pulled her Jeep into the paved driveway. She jerked the parking brake up, grabbed her satchel purse, and hurried up the concrete sidewalk to the glass front door.

Sanctuary was on a corner lot and wasn’t distinguished by signage but by a wide front porch furnished with weathered white rockers. A collection of planters that Lindsay had filled with red geraniums over the Fourth of July weekend added a splash of color. The yard was neatly cut and edged and the beds had been freshly mulched. It had been her experience that people in the neighborhood didn’t pay much attention to those who kept their yards in good shape. And going unnoticed was vital to Sanctuary’s success.

The shelter’s first floor had four main rooms that were divided by a center hallway. The first room on the right didn’t serve as a living room but her office. It was closed off by french doors and filled with stacks of files, manuals, and sacks of unsorted donations.

A conference room, a dining room in a conventional home, adjoined her office. In its core there was a circle of chairs that reminded her of the counseling meeting she’d missed that morning. The walls were decorated with posters that denounced domestic violence.

Across the hallway was a den furnished with a large television, a couple of secondhand couches covered with white sheets, and huge throw pillows on the floor. At the back of the house was a kitchen she’d painted yellow last month. Upstairs there were five rooms, each having two sets of twin beds. Often women moved here with their children and she tried to put the entire family in one room together. She even had a couple of cribs and a bassinet.

The house was normally teeming with the women and their children who made Sanctuary their temporary home. The chatter of women and children often mingled with theTVand ringing phone.

But now, the place was silent and it appeared deserted.

Silver bracelets jangled on Lindsay’s slim wrist as she pulled the rubber band from her blond hair and released the too tight ponytail that was already giving her a headache. Blunt, straight hair fell around her shoulders.

Lindsay started toward the kitchen, unable to suppress the growing panic as she searched for last night’s volunteer. ‘Ruby!’

A heavyset black woman rushed out of the kitchen, a phone in hand. Ruby Dillon, when she wasn’t working at the nursing home as an aid, volunteered nights at the shelter. About fifty, Ruby was a big woman who wore her hair short and her pants and shirts oversized. Her dead-on honesty about her own past mistakes, including time in prison and drug use, had earned the residents’ respect.

‘It’s about time you got here. I’ve been calling you for an hour,’ Ruby said, shaking the phone at her.

‘My power went out last night. The house phones didn’twork and my cell phone didn’t charge. What’s with the police? What’s going on?’

‘They came because of the body.’

Images of her mother lying dead in her backyard flashed in her mind. ‘Body? Please tell me it wasn’t one of ours.’

Ruby touched Lindsay gently on the arm. ‘No, no, honey. It wasn’t one of our residents. All our people are off to work or school.’

Relieved, Lindsay closed her eyes. She had to choke back a sudden rush of tears. ‘Who?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But the body is male. I found him when I was taking out the garbage this morning. He was propped up against the trash cans behind the toolshed, his suit buttoned up and his hair combed as if he were headed to Sunday church.’

Lindsay moved down the hallway into the kitchen and looked out the window over the sink. The backyard was filled with a half dozen cops gathered at the yellow tape. Most were uniformed but in the center stood a plainclothes detective. His back was to her.

The cops blocked Lindsay’s view of the corpse. ‘Did you recognize him?’

Ruby folded her arms over her chest. ‘Who? The dead guy? No, ma’am. And I didn’t look in his face either. The devil can steal your soul if you look the dead in the face.’

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