The Watcher in the Wall by Owen Laukkanen Read Free Book Online

family immunity about the time Earl figured out she had a boyfriend.
    The boyfriend’s name was Todd McGee. He was a skinny kid with red hair, in Sarah’s grade at school. Drove a pickup truck, an old F-100. Todd would come by after Earl had gone out for the night. Honk his horn from the road, and Sarah would spring up from her bed, check the window, fix her hair in the mirror, and dash out the door before Gruber’s mother could stop her. Not that Gruber’s mother really cared.
    Sarah timed her escapes just fine for the first month or so. She waited until Earl’d gone out with his buddies, until Gruber’s motherwas more or less catatonic on the couch, the shopping network blaring. Then she’d sneak out to Todd and they’d peel away in his truck. Show up back home around midnight or so, a little later. She’d creep down the hall and into her bedroom, like she was never gone at all.
    Gruber never hated her more than when she came home from those dates. She would dance around the bedroom, humming to herself, smiling some secret smile. She would write in her journal, scribbling the words out fast, as if she were afraid she’d lose them if she didn’t write quickly. She would study herself in the mirror, fluff her hair, a normal girl, a happy girl. As if she never had to worry about Earl breaking her door down. As if she never had to wait as Earl reached for his belt.
    Gruber hated her then, for being so normal. He resented that she was so
happy
, that her life was so different from his own, even as they shared space in the same shitty trailer.
    But he never looked away. He watched her until she turned off the light, until she climbed into her bed in the darkness, and he would watch for longer still, listening to the rustling of the sheets as they clung to her body, wondering what it would feel like to slip between those sheets with her. When he was sure she was asleep, he would—reluctantly—move away, replace the painting against the wall, and retreat to his own bed, where he’d lie awake, replaying the images in his head.
    < 18 >
    “I don’t think Ashley Frey killed herself,” Windermere told Stevens. “I don’t think she ever intended to kill herself at all.”
    On the other end of the line, Stevens stifled a yawn. “It’s seven in the morning, partner,” he said. “How come you’re so awake?”
    “Couldn’t sleep,” Windermere replied. “Went home last night and couldn’t stop thinking about Ashley Frey and this little problem we were having tracking her down. So I went back to the office and did a little research. Stayed up all night on this suicide forum.”
    Nancy Stevens must have been nearby, because Stevens was talking to someone else, his voice muffled. Windermere waited, heard Nancy reply. Couldn’t make out the details, but she figured it didn’t matter.
    “Sorry,” Stevens said, coming back on the phone. “So, sure. You stayed up all night. What did you figure out?”
    “I was reading through the logs for some kind of clue,” Windermere told him. “Something that would help us place this girl. I got nothing. All Ashley Frey would tell Adrian is that she’s from Pennsylvania and she’s unhappy about the way her stepfather mistreats her.”
    “Sure.” Stevens yawned again. “So?”
    “So it’s not the chat logs,” Windermere said. “It’s the anonymizer thingy. That’s our key.”
    Stevens paused, and she could tell he was struggling to follow. “I thought that thing was for hiding your identity.”
    “It is,” Windermere said. “But Ashley Frey isn’t the only Death Wishmember trying to stay incognito. I was trying to figure out if maybe Ashley Frey had another username, a different account, some other way to find her, so I got a list of about sixty other profiles that exhibited the same cloaking patterns.”
    “
You
got this list?” Stevens said. “You figured this out yourself?”
    “Nenad helped,” Windermere told him. “He came in about an hour ago, had