The Visit

Calloway came to her building on a Tuesday.

She didn't see him coming — she was coming back from the grocery store, arms full of bags, and when she looked up he was standing by her car in the parking lot. Tall, heavy, hands in his pockets. He was watching her with an expression she couldn't read.

"Liza Marsh," he said.

She stopped. She didn't speak. She set the grocery bags down on the pavement, slowly, like she had time, like she wasn't afraid, like this was something she'd prepared for.

"You're supposed to be 500 feet away," she said.

"I'm not the one with the restraining order." He smiled. It wasn't a warm smile. "My name is Martin Calloway. I think you know who I am."

"I know who you are."

"Then you know why I'm here."

She looked at him — at his face, his size, the way he stood. He wasn't afraid of her. He wasn't afraid of anything. She understood, looking at him, what Reeves had meant about the kind of man who knew how to stay within the law while making people afraid.

"Drake sent you," she said.

"Drake didn't send me. I came on my own." He took a step closer. She held her ground. "I'm here to tell you something, Liza. Something you should hear from me and not from anyone else."

"I don't owe you a conversation."

"No. But you're going to give me one anyway, because you want to know what I know, and I know a lot." He stopped. "Your husband — your ex-husband — he's scared. More scared than he's ever been. Not of you. Of me."

She felt something shift — not in her body, in her understanding. She thought about what she knew about the fire, the fraud, the insurance money. Three men had done it. Raymond Drake was dead. Peter Voss was in a nursing home. Calloway was here, standing in front of her.

"Why would he be scared of you?"

"Because I have something he doesn't want anyone to have. And I'm thinking about giving it to you." He paused. "Not for nothing. Nothing's free. But I'm here to talk, if you're willing to listen."

She looked at him. She thought about the restraining order — how it covered Drake but not Calloway, how Calloway could walk up to her building and stand in her parking lot and say whatever he wanted and she couldn't do anything about it. She thought about the photograph that had appeared in her mailbox — the one with still watching written on the back. She thought about the voicemails from unknown numbers.

"I don't trust you," she said.

"That's smart. You shouldn't." He took a card from his jacket pocket and held it out. "Call me when you're ready to talk. Or don't. Your choice. But I think you'll call."

She took the card. She didn't look at it. She picked up her grocery bags and walked past him and went inside.

She did not call that day. But she kept the card.