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.Something he doesn’t want James to see.Because isn’t that the look he’d given James when he’d driven by? He’d looked suspicious, yes, but shocked, too! And guilty!Fat drops splat onto the windshield, and the morning, just brightening, darkens again.James hears thunder rumble low and to the west.Too far away to be able to see the lightning.James puts his car in gear, and once more, turns onto Mossy.This time he goes past Oak to Willow and turns onto it.It’s still very early, but most of the people who work on this street have left for their jobs.The houses are dark.What little light that comes from them comes from the back, where the kitchens are.Even the school busses have come and gone by now.James parks three houses down from his target and on the opposite side of the street.He is glad to see there are no lights on at his target or at either house that neighbors it.He leaves his car and pulls his light jacket over his head–the rain has increased, and the temperature has dropped enough to chill him as soon as he steps from his car.He trots quickly to the house and up the driveway.There is a side door to the garage, and it is screened from the neighbors by a stand of evergreens.James takes a credit card from his wallet and slides it into the jamb at the door handle.He’s already seen that there is no dead bolt, but it could be locked in some other fashion on the inside–chained or even padlocked.If it is, then he’s stuck until he can decide on another way in.But the doorknob turns in his hand as the card pushes the latch back, and the door opens easily inward.The smells of gasoline, rusting metal, oil, and old grass clippings surround him as he steps into the garage.He pulls the door closed behind him.There is a small amount of light that comes through a row of windows across the top of the garage door.Enough to see the outlines of two rakes, one shovel, one leaf blower, one workbench.Rows of neatly spaced tools hang on a pegboard above the bench.James appreciates the precision, the neat way each is held in its own outline of thin, painted line.An image flashes into his mind of his apartment, each piece of furniture outlined where it sits against the wall, each foot outlined where they connect with the floor.He pictures each print on the wall outlined, each glass in the cupboard, each plate.Then he pictures Lacey, lying on the couch, reading, outlined.Held in place.He would always know exactly where to find her.She’d never again appear unannounced in the kitchen while his back is turned or in the doorway to his office.A memory turns in his mind like a stranger on the street, turning toward you, and you realize that you know them.This is no stranger.James’ memory is of a doorway.A dark rectangle seen through soft bars.The anticipation and the terror, waiting for someone to come through that opening.Sweat breaks out at his hairline, and he rubs viciously, hating the tickling itch.The memory leaves him nervous, shaken.The feeling of anticipation tempered by fear stays.It is familiar, he can nearly smell it, taste it at the back of his throat.It reminds him of extreme hunger.Isolation.Terror.James swallows and takes a step further into the center of the garage.He shakes himself, trying to get the feeling of the memory to slide from his shoulders and away.He wants to drop it as though it were a wet, stinking blanket.Too heavy and too uncomfortable.As his eyes adjust to the gloom, he sees a black filing cabinet tucked under the workbench.There is a small corona of light around it and relief floods James mind, pushing the old memory aside.Assuaging his discomfort.He pulls out the top drawer.Slowly, gently, one hand on the pull, the other supporting the weight.There are rows of files hanging on tracks, neatly labeled.SNOWBLOWER, WEEDWACKER, CHAINSAW…each folder contains a manual, a warranty, a receipt.James closes the top drawer and opens the middle drawer.This one is filled with plastic bags, the kind you would use to store food in the freezer.The first contains plastic zip ties in various colors and lengths.Another contains three coils of phone cable.Still another holds plastic collar stays.There must be hundreds of them in there, James thinks.He has a desire to count them.He thinks about dumping the bag out on the floor, stacking the stays in groups of ten, adding up the tens, taking out the last few that don’t add up to ten…but where would he put them? The odd ones? He couldn’t burn them, they’re plastic.Could he shuffle them into another bag? No.That makes no sense.He’d have to take them with him, scatter them somewhere, one by one.The subway.He’s done it before.When he’s had oddball bits of things that don’t fit into the scheme.Then it occurs to him that it’s an odd find: a bag of collar stays? Who has a bag of collar stays? How could anyone have accumulated this many? Then he realizes with a sinking stomach that they were put here to try and trip him up.To slow him down.If he’d turned over that bag and begun counting…He closes that drawer and moves onto the third, the bottom-most drawer.He can’t keep his hand under it as he slides it out; it is too close to the ground.There is a muffled squealing noise of the small wheels on their metal track.James stops and listens.The sound the drawer made was not loud.It would never have been heard outside of the garage.Probably you wouldn’t have been able to hear it even if you were standing on the other side of the garage, James thinks.But then, at the thought of someone standing on the other side of the garage, he has to turn and check.Make sure there is no one standing there.Of course there isn’t, he thinks.Almost scoffing at himself.But of course, it is easy to scoff, now that he has seen with his own eyes that there is no one standing behind him.He eases the drawer out, slipping his fingers under the front to take at least some of the weight.The wheels make a soft grinding noise and nothing more.Nothing but old newspapers in this one.They fit neatly from side to side, but not end to end.It gives the stack a shuffled, haphazard look.James tries to shuffle them together, but there are too many, the weight and rough texture of the newsprint makes them resistant to tidying.He realizes he will have to pull them out and restack them, preferably with something in the back of the drawer holding them in place this time.He scans the shelves.There is a smallish cardboard box sitting on the workbench, the box a phone came in.That might do the trick, he thinks.He reaches up for the box, and as his hand closes over it, the garage is filled with a burst of white, white light.Terror washes through James, and his hands fly to cover his eyes, retinas contracting painfully.He turns to the door that leads to the house, expecting to see the man standing there
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