In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📕

wondering if Laurie is right and I’m out of my mind. I’m not totally sure what I’m doing here but I don’t know what else to do. I need answers and I don’t know where else to get them. Robert won’t talk to me, Nate is convinced it’s Robert so there is no point talking to him – and besides, if he had any idea of what I’m about to do he’d probably arrest me – and Gene never came home after buying groceries so I had no chance to confront him. My only option, I decided, was to go elsewhere for answers. I’m tired of sitting around and waiting; for June to wake up, for the police to tell me what’s going on, for Gene to come home, for the truth to emerge like a springtime flower poking through the soil of its own accord. I need to be pro-active and chase after it.

Laurie thinks I’m mad, but if I can talk to the men who met with Robert maybe I can get them to tell me what he wanted. They wouldn’t talk to the police but perhaps, somehow, I can make them talk to me. I can find out what Robert gave them money for and why. I can find out if Gene is involved.

Someone grabs my arm and I whip around in fright, heart leapfrogging into my mouth, but it’s only Laurie. ‘I thought you were going to wait in the car?’

She arches an eyebrow at me and shoves her arm through mine, and I don’t bother to argue. She’s not letting me go through with this by myself, or perhaps she just doesn’t want to wait alone in the car on a dark street. I don’t ask which it is, because when I push open the battered door to the bar and the entire room – two dozen or more men – pivot on their bar stools and look up from their pool games to stare at us, I’m grateful I’m not alone.

Throwing back my shoulders, I make a beeline for the bar, Laurie at my side. A heavy silence has fallen and every eye in the place swivels to follow us. I can feel their gazes on my back like dozens of laser sights. We are so out of place we’re like aliens landing on the White House lawn.

The barman, wiping out glasses, watches us approach wearing an amused expression on his face. I can guarantee the last time two white, middle-aged women walked into his bar was ten past never. Two men to our right, slumped on stools and nursing beers, openly stare at us, their faces blank as stone.

‘You two ladies lost?’ the barman asks.

‘No,’ I say, staring him in the eye. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘You looking for me?’

I turn. A man has appeared and is leaning against the bar right beside me, grinning a lizard-like smile. His thigh rubs up against mine accidentally on purpose. He’s forty, maybe, with a pockmarked face and receding, stringy hair that he’s scraped into a ponytail.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I’m looking for Raul Fernandez.’

He shrugs and pulls a face. ‘Never heard of him.’

The barman has turned away, is busying himself with the bottles that line the back of the bar. The men sat on the stools on our other side have returned to studying the labels on their beers. The noise in the bar has started up again, but it’s subdued, as if everyone has one ear tuned to our conversation.

‘What about James Hill?’ I ask, mentioning the second man who was arrested.

‘Who’s he?’ the man asks, frowning.

Did I make a mistake? I knew it was a long shot coming here. When Nate showed me the surveillance photos of Robert handing over the money to James and Raul I made a mental note of the bar that appeared, fuzzy but still distinct, in the background. I figured that if this is their neighborhood, then someone in this bar should know them. Maybe, even, I expected to find them here.

‘You cops?’

Another man has sauntered over. This one is in his early twenties. He’s short, wearing jeans so baggy they fall halfway down his thighs, revealing his underwear. He’s holding a pool cue, rubbing a square of chalk on the end in a gesture that, though innocuous enough, unnerves me. The other man with the straggly ponytail saunters away, making a tssking sound with his tongue and eyeing me through lowered lids.

I turn to face the younger man. Maybe he knows something and will be prepared to tell us.

‘Don’t I know you?’ he says, narrowing his eyes and frowning at me. A second later recognition erases the frown and he nods vigorously. ‘You’re that woman from the TV. They arrested your husband.’

‘Raul Fernandez,’ I repeat.

His expression hardens. ‘Why you want to see him?’

I leap on that. ‘So you do know him?’

He pulls a face. ‘Nah, didn’t say that, just asked why you wanted to see him.’

‘Because I have questions I need to ask him.’

The man glances quickly around the bar and then leans forwards, putting his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the heat of his breath and struggle not to flinch. ‘If I were you,’ he says, ‘I’d turn around right now and walk out of here, while I still could.’

I hear a loud, dramatic sigh. It’s Laurie. ‘You listen to me,’ she says loudly. ‘The only place we’re going is over there to those bar stools. And we’ll stay right there until you go fetch your friends.’

The man looks up at Laurie, startled. He tries glowering at her, but Laurie, towering over him, stares him down unflinching. Before our eyes the man visibly shrinks, his swagger melting away, until he looks just like a twelve-year-old.

Laurie plops herself down on a vacant bar stool. ‘Two Coronas,’ she calls to the barman. The men sitting to her right swivel their heads in unison to stare at her. Laurie smiles broadly at them until they