The Watcher
Contents ( 33)
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ONE: KATERI
- TWO: SHANNON
- THREE: KATERI
- FOUR: SHANNON
- FIVE: KATERI
- SIX: SHANNON
- SEVEN: KATERI
- EIGHT: SHANNON
- NINE: KATERI
- TEN: SHANNON
- ELEVEN: KATERI
- TWELVE: SHANNON
- THIRTEEN: KATERI
- FOURTEEN: SHANNON
- FIFTEEN: SHANNON
- SIXTEEN: KATERI
- SEVENTEEN: SHANNON
- EIGHTEEN: KATERI
- NINETEEN: SHANNON
- TWENTY: KATERI
- TWENTY-ONE: SHANNON
- TWENTY-TWO: KATERI
- TWENTY-THREE: SHANNON
- TWENTY-FOUR: KATERI
- TWENTY-FIVE: SHANNON
- TWENTY-SIX: KATERI
- TWENTY-SEVEN: SHANNON
- TWENTY-EIGHT: KATERI
- TWENTY-NINE: SHANNON
- THIRTY: KATERI
- THIRTY-ONE: SHANNON
- Author Biography
THE WATCHER
A Novel
JENNIFER PASHLEY
For my mother, who told me I wouldn’t understand her until after she was dead.
Many are the deceivers.
—Anne Sexton
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to thank in the making of this book, beginning with my stellar agent, Wendy Sherman, and my editor and woman-who-truly-gets-me, Jenny Chen. I’m grateful to them both for their patience and their keen vision in bringing The Watcher to light. I’m also indebted to the many friends who offered me time and space to write: Georgia Popoff, Shanna Mahin, Kristen Sullivan, Tatyana Knight, and Jane Springer. Their generosity and their company during a solitary process meant the world to me. I’m grateful for the many readers and other writers who encouraged me along the long way to publication, but especially Wendy Walker, Danielle Girard, A. F. Brady, Vanessa Lillie, and Lena Bertone, whose daily text messages kept me afloat and continue to highlight my day.
This book was made fully possible by a six-week residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in the fall of 2016. It was there that these characters took shape, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be housed, fed, and well companioned amid the mountains and the Osage oranges.
Everything I am and able to do is because of the love and support of my family: my sons, Kieran and Liam, who encourage me daily by becoming the creative and amazing people they are, but especially my husband, Geoffrey, whose grace, patience, and love are my life’s blood.
ONE: KATERI
MONDAY, OCTOBER 16
He warned her in the dead of summer, when the heat blew over the trees like a dry lick of fire, that nothing happens here. Until it does.
It’s the same stuff over and over up here, Hurt told her. Drugs. Robbery. Domestic. Child abuse. Animal cruelty.
She’d cut her teeth as a criminal investigator in Syracuse. But after her own run-in with the law, she’d come to Spring Falls as a plea deal.
She hears Hurt call her name before he appears in her doorway. “Fisher,” he says, and then leans in, hair and pants misted from riding his bike in to work. “I need you on suspicious activity.”
“Where are the deputies?” she asks, and pushes her chair back. In truth, she’s happy to have something to check out, a reason to get out of the office, even if it’s just a task.
“Everyone’s out on the Lenox Ave fire,” Hurt says. Six months side by side and he is still awkward around her. He comes no more than a foot into her office and seems to look anywhere but at her. She folds her arms over her chest.
“All the deputies are at a fire,” she repeats, disbelieving.
“It’s a meth fire,” Hurt answers. “Blew up a motel room.”
She nods. She heard the call earlier. Twelve-room motel on Route 8, heading into the mountains. Everything a loss. Kateri stands and attaches her duty belt, and Hurt watches the wall behind her.