They're Watching (2010) Read online

  I trudged back inside, collapsed into a chair, and sat, breathing. Just breathing.

  After a time I rose and checked the kitchen drawer. Both new tubular keys to the alarm were there. Nothing appeared to have been touched. At the base of the stairs, I stopped to stare at the alarm pad as if it had something to say. I continued up, checked our bedroom and then my office. The cover had been removed from the DVD spindle and set beside it. A count confirmed that one more disc was missing. I went back downstairs and into the living room. The intruder had pulled the tripod clear of the lady palm and tugged the curtain closed. My camcorder's digital memory had been erased. I walked numbly into the family room.

  The DVD player tray was open, a silver disc resting inside.

  I thumbed the tray closed and sank into the couch. The popping of the TV turning on struck me as unusually loud. I kept getting a blank screen, so I fussed with the buttons, clicking "input select," "TV/video," and the other usual suspects.

  At last there I was. On the couch. Wearing my clothes. From today.

  I stared, waiting. I chewed my lip. My on-screen self chewed my on-screen lip.

  The blood in my veins turned to ice. I tried to swallow, found my throat stuck.

  I raised a hand. My double raised a hand. I said, "Oh, Lord," and heard my voice come out of the surround sound. I took a deep, shaky breath. My double took a deep, shaky breath. He looked utterly dumbstruck, blanched, his face an ungodly shade of pale.

  I got up and walked toward the TV, my image growing like Alice. I tugged the flat-screen off the wall and set it, trailing wires, on the floor. The same perspective of myself stared up at me. Shoving and pulling the tightly stacked equipment had no effect on the shooting angle either. Leaning into the top shelves, I ripped out a few plugs and snapped off the outlet covers. Nothing. I yanked out discs and books, used a paperweight to punch a hole in the drywall near a ding and the fireplace poker to pry around further. Finally I reached down and swung open the glass door of the cabinet protecting Ariana's teenage record collection. The TV image at my feet spun vertiginously.

  I crouched. A tiny fish-eye lens clipped to the top of the glass. I rotated the door open, closed, the room swaying correspondingly on the TV. I unclipped the little lens. A wire trailed back, across the dusty cover of Dancing on the Ceiling. I tugged. It came, giving some resistance. At the end, hooked as neatly as a rainbow trout, was a cell phone. Some shitty prepay model that you'd buy off the rack at 7-Eleven. Clenched in my shaking hand, the crappy cell phone, of course, showed full reception. Unlike my three-hundred-dollar Sanyo.

  I took a step back, and then another. Stunned, I mounted the stairs and retreated to our bathroom, the farthest point in the house from the fish-eye lens. I was acting automatically, like an animal, a zombie, and my actions made about as much sense. I turned on the shower, cranked it to red, and let steam fill the room. I wasn't sure if the sound of running water provided cover from whatever other bugs had infiltrated our house, but it always worked in movies and seemed like a good idea now.

  In a flash of lucidity, I went over to my office, where I grabbed a digital mini-recorder to document any call that might come in. I trudged back and sat with one arm resting on the toilet, the fuzzy oval rug wrinkled up beneath my shoe, the cell phone precisely centered on the floor tile where I could keep an eye on it. One knee was raised. I wasn't cowering in a corner, but it might have looked that way to an impartial observer. The water drowned out my thoughts; the steam cleaned my lungs.

  I don't know how long I'd been sitting there when the door banged open and Ariana came in. Her face was red, her hair frizzy; she clutched a butcher knife like a crazed soprano. At least she'd upgraded from the badminton racket. The knife clattered into the sink, and she sagged against the counter and pressed a hand to the slope of her bosom in what seemed a genetically conditioned response.

  I felt more protective of her in that moment than I could ever remember.

  Her gaze took in my expression, the throwaway cell phone, the mini-recorder I'd left on the counter. "What . . . The TV . . . What . . . ?"

  My voice sounded dry and cracked. "I came in on an intruder. Ski mask. He ran away. There's a bug in the house. A hidden camera. They've been recording us. Every fucking thing we've . . ."

  She swallowed hard, her chest jerking, then crouched and picked up the phone.

  "It was hidden," I said, "in the cabinet under the TV."

  "Has it rung?"

  "No."

  Working her bottom lip with her teeth, she punched a few buttons. "No incoming. No outgoing. No saved numbers." She shook it, frustrated. "How . . . how'd he get in?"

  "The back door, I think. He must've picked it. Or he has a key."

  "And turned off the alarm?" The air was thick with steam, moving in wispy sheets. Condensation clung to her face, mimicking a good sweat. "The cops. They saw where we hide the alarm keys. They're the only ones who know besides us."

  "That's what I thought. But then I realized. The house is bugged. So when you told me the new code, someone was--"

  The cell phone shrilled. Ariana jerked back against the counter, dropping it. It bounced but did not break. It rang again, rattling against the tile. I reached across and turned off the water. The trill seemed amplified. As did the silence.

  I pointed at the mini-recorder, and Ariana snatched it from the counter and tossed it to me. The phone rang again.

  "Jesus, Patrick, get it, just get it."

  Readying the recorder, I pressed the phone to my cheek. "Hello?"

  A voice, electronically distorted, made the hair rise along my arms. "So . . ." it said, "are you ready to get started?"

  Chapter 19

  The next statement was just as chilling. "Turn off the tape recorder."

  I obeyed and set it gently on the toilet seat, glancing apprehensively at the walls and ceiling. My voice was hoarse, shaky. "It's off."

  "We know that you stopped by Bel Air Foods Tuesday morning to buy a bag of trail mix, a banana, and an iced tea. We know that you watch your wife cry most mornings through the kitchen window. We know you went to the West L.A. police station today at four thirty-seven, that you saw Detective Richards at her desk on the second floor, that you spoke to her for thirteen and a half minutes." Cold. Steady. Scrubbed of emotion. "Do you have any question as to the range of what we can find out about you or anyone else?"

  "No."

  "Do you have any question as to our capability to reach into your life and touch you where we want?"

  The electronic filter made the voice flatter, the utter lack of modulation all the more unsettling. My mouth felt gummy. "No."

  Ariana was leaning toward me, hands on her knees, her eyes wide and wild. I tilted the earpiece away from my face so she could hear better.

  "Do not go to the police again. Do not talk to the police again." A pause. I rotated the mouthpiece up so the caller couldn't hear how hard my breath was coming. "Stand up. Leave the bathroom."

  I exited, Ariana ahead of me walking backward, stumbling over books and strewn clothes. The bedroom air iced my face, a bracing contrast from the lingering steam of the shower.

  "Go out into the hall. Watch your shin on the corner of the bed. Turn right, pass your office."

  Ariana was now scurrying alongside me as I marched, my cheek sweating against the plastic.

  "Is there anything I can do to make you stop?" I asked, but the voice forged ahead.

  "Pass the M movie poster. Down the stairs. Pass the alarm pad. Hard left. Watch out for the table. Right. Left. Rotate. Another forty-five degrees."

  I was standing with my back to the TV, facing my meager puddle of blankets.

  "Open the couch that you've refused to fold out."

  I flung the cushions aside, my heartbeat kettledrumming in my ears. What was inside? What had I been sleeping on top of?

  The vinyl loop handle slipped from my hand, and Ariana stepped in to help pull. My other hand pressed the phone to my ear, a shock c
onnection I couldn't break. We tugged and the contraption opened, an insect unfolding from its shell. Ari grabbed the metal brace, which creaked and thumped to the floor, the bottom third of the weary mattress still folded back.

  Hiding something.

  With a numb hand, I reached out and nudged the mattress, which flipped over. It landed flat, setting the crappy springs on twangy vibration and revealing a manila folder and a black wand, maybe four feet long, with a circular head like that of a metal detector.

  "That folder contains a floor plan of your house. The red circles indicate where we have planted surveillance devices. The instrument beside the folder is a nonlinear junction detector. It will help you locate those devices and search for any others you believe we may not have indicated on the floor plan."

  I didn't have to examine the folder itself to know it had been taken from my desk drawer upstairs. Inside, as promised, two printouts, one for each floor of the house--JPEGs from our contractor that I'd saved in my computer after we'd opened up the fifties bathrooms a few years ago. Down the center of each page ran a faded stripe from my mostly spent toner drum--they'd been printed in my office recently. But that's not what sent the wave of panic-nausea through my stomach.

  It was the dozen or so red circles pockmarking each sheet.

  Placing the pages side by side, I tried to process the scope of the intrusion. All this time I'd thought my life had turned into Fatal Attraction. But I was really in Enemy of the State.

  Ariana mopped hair off her forehead and let out something between a sigh and a groan. Slowly, I tilted my head and took in my disused proofreading marker, tucked into a year-end edition of Entertainment Weekly at the edge of the coffee table. With shaking hands I retrieved the pen and drew in the margin of the top page, the frayed felt tip tracing a matching, distinctive circle.

  Ariana stepped back, her eyes darting around the walls, the furnishings. With a glance to the printout, she trudged over and stuck a finger into a tiny dent in the plaster just below a framed Ansel Adams she'd had since her dorm-room days. "It can't . . . They can't . . ."

  The voice startled me out of my stunned reverie; I'd forgotten that the call was still live. "A Gmail account has been set up for you, patrickdavis081075"--my birthday. "Password is your mother's maiden name. The first e-mail will arrive Sunday at four P.M., telling you what's next."

  The first e-mail? The phrase intensified my controlled panic into full-blown terror. I was a fish newly hooked, my journey only beginning. But I barely had time to shudder when the voice said, "Now walk outside. Alone."

  Forcing my feet toward the door, I gestured for Ariana to stay put. She shook her head and trailed me, chewing at the side of a thumbnail. I stepped out onto the walk, Ariana waiting behind, shouldering against the jamb and tugging the door tight to her side so only the front sliver of her was exposed.

  "End of the walk. You see the sewer grate? Just past the curb-painted house numbers?"

  "Hang on." I stopped ten feet shy of the grate. "Okay," I lied, "I'm standing right on top of it."

  "Lean over and look at the gap."

  So they weren't watching all the time. The trick was to know when.

  "Patrick. Patrick!"

  With dread, I turned to see Don making his way over from his driveway, toting a box of office files. I muttered, "Wait a second," into the mouthpiece through clenched teeth. And then: "This really isn't the best time, Don."

  "Oh, didn't see you were on the phone."

  "Yes. I am." Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement at the front door, Ariana easing back and shutting it to barely a crack.

  "Don't stall us."

  Don was stammering at me, "Listen, I just . . . felt I should apologize for my role in . . . everything, and--"

  "You don't need to. It's not between me and you." My face burned. "Listen, I'm on a critical call. I can't get into this right now."

  "Get rid of him. Now."

  "I'm trying," I muttered into the phone.

  "Well, when, Patrick?" Don asked. "I mean, it's been six weeks. For better or worse, we are neighbors, and I've tried a number of times--"

  "Don, I don't need to discuss this with you. I don't owe you anything. Now, get out of my face and let me finish this call."

  He glared at me and took a few backward steps before turning for home.

  "Okay," I said, "the curb drain . . ."

  "Once you've removed the devices from the house, put them in your black duffel bag on the top shelf of your closet and drop them down there. All lenses, cables, even the nonlinear junction detector. At midnight tomorrow. Not a minute before. Not a minute after. Say it back to me."

  "Midnight tomorrow, sharp. Everything down the grate. Sunday at four P.M., I get an e-mail."

  Until then, live with dread about what that e-mail might hold.

  "This is the last time you will hear my voice. Now set the phone on the ground, smash it with your foot, and kick it down the sewer grate. Oh--and, Patrick?"

  "What?"

  "This is nothing like what you imagine."

  "What do I imagine?"

  But I was talking to a dead line.

  Chapter 20

  After disposing of the phone, I returned inside. The front door swung open to greet me, and I grabbed Ariana by the wrist and pulled her into me. Our cheeks pressed together. Sweat. The smell of her conditioner. Her chest was heaving. I cupped a hand around her ear and whispered, as faintly as possible, "Let's get ourselves to the greenhouse."

  The only place on the property with clear walls.

  She nodded. We pulled apart. "I'm scared, Patrick," she said loudly.

  "It's okay. I know what they want now. At least what they want me to do next." I gave her the broad strokes of the phone conversation.

  "And what about after this, Patrick? These people are terrorizing us. We have to call the cops."

  "We can't call the cops. They'll know. They know everything."

  She stormed toward the family room, with me at her heels. "So keep giving in and giving in?"

  "We don't have a choice."

  "There are always choices."

  "And you're an expert on sound decision making?"

  She wheeled on me. "I'm not the one who sold out my life to get fired off a shitty movie."

  I blinked, stunned. Holding her hand low by her stomach, she beckoned with her fingers: Come on.

  I caught my breath again. "Right. You're much more grounded. It took what? One crank call to get you to step out on our marriage?"

  "It took a lot more than that."

  "Because I was supposed to read your mind to know about all the resentment you were silently storing up?"

  "No. You were supposed to be present in this marriage. It takes two people to be able to communicate."

  "Nine days!" I shouted, so loud I caught us both off guard. Ariana started, took a half step away. Bitterness rode the back of my tongue. I couldn't stop myself. "I was gone nine days. That's less than two weeks. You couldn't wait nine fucking days to talk to me?"

  "Nine days?" The color had returned to her face. "You'd been gone a year. You disappeared the minute an agent returned your phone call."

  Her eyes welled. She turned and banged through the rear door. I shoved the heel of my hand across my cheek. I lowered my head, exhaled, counted silently backward from ten.

  Then I followed.

  When I pushed through the rasping door into the heat of the greenhouse, we grabbed for each other. She hugged me around my neck, squeezing hard enough to hurt, her forehead mashed to my jaw, my face bent toward hers, mossy humidity coating our lungs. We let go of each other a bit awkwardly, and then Ariana rotated a finger around the small enclosure. Lifting pots, crawling under shelves, running hands along posts, we searched. The translucent siding made the job easier. We finished and faced each other across the narrow aluminum staging table.

  Our exchange inside, for the cameras and in spite of them, our clumsy embrace, the intruder's even stare
, the feeling of horror when I'd discovered the first hidden device, the casually marked floor plans showing dozens more--the pressure from it all exploded in this first moment of relative privacy. I hammered a fist into the staging table, denting the aluminum, splitting the scabs on my knuckles. Two terra-cotta pots toppled off and shattered. "These assholes moved in to our house. Our bedroom. I've been sleeping on top of equipment they planted. What the fuck do they want from us?" I stared at the shards, waiting for the rage to recede. Nice work, Patrick. Sound strategy, responding to a grand master with a temper tantrum.

  "They heard everything," Ariana was saying. "All the arguments. The petty stuff. What I told you Tuesday night over the dining table. Everything. Jesus, Patrick. Jesus. There's not an inch of our lives that's been just ours."

  I drew in a deep breath. "We need to figure a way to get out of this."

  Her lips were trembling. "What is 'this'?"

  "It's got nothing to do with an affair. Or a student. Or a pissed-off movie star. Whoever these guys are, they're experts."

  "In what?"

  "This."

  Silence, broken by the gentle whir of the shutter fan. I wiped the back of my hand across my shirt, leaving a streak of crimson. Ariana looked at the lifted scabs and said, "Oh. Oh. That's how you . . ." She took a deep breath, nodded. "What else do I need to be clued in on here?"

  I told her about everything from Jerry to Keith, Sally Richards and the boot print, and how I'd lied and told the caller I was standing on top of the sewer grate and he hadn't known the difference.

  "So they're not watching everything all the time," she said.

  "Right. We just don't know where the dead spots are. But they seem to be backing off the surveillance. Why else would they give us the location of the bugs in the house?"

  "To set up something else." She took a deep breath, shook her hands as if drying them. "What the hell's gonna be in that e-mail, Patrick?"

  My stomach roiled. My lips felt dry, cracked. "I don't have a clue."

  "What can we do? There's gotta be something we can do." She looked helplessly through the green siding at our house. Here we were, huddled, displaced. "If they know specifics about your trip to the police station, they probably have someone inside. Is Richards involved with this?" She'd dropped her voice instinctively to a whisper.