Chapter 5: The Neighborhood Watch
Across the street, Mrs. Gable peered through her vertical blinds with a pair of vintage opera glasses she had inherited from her aunt in Baltimore. She had lived in Oak Creek since the Nixon administration, and she knew the sound of every car engine on the block. The black SUVs did not belong to the exterminator, the cable company, or the county water board. They belonged to the federal government—she recognized the government plates from the time the EPA had inspected her neighbor’s oil tank back in ninety-eight.
Beside her, her poodle, a nervous creature named Barnaby, whimpered against her ankle. "Hush, Barnaby," she whispered, her thumb rubbing the dented brass rim of the binoculars. "Something’s happening at the Vance house again. That boy Marcus was out there playing basketball, and now there’s a man with a gun standing by the porch."
Down the block, Mr. Henderson was ostensibly raking leaves into a neat pile by the curb, though his rake hadn't moved an inch in ten minutes. He kept his eyes on the lead SUV’s tinted rear window, wondering if Arthur Vance had finally cracked under the weight of whatever lonely, dusty job he did downtown. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Arthur was a quiet man who kept to himself, but quiet men were always the ones who ended up on the evening news with federal marshals escorting them to an unmarked sedan.
Toby’s mother pulled her station wagon into her own driveway three doors down, but she didn't get out of the car. She sat behind the steering wheel with the engine idling, watching the two agents stationed near the Vances' azalea bushes. She had three sons of her own, and she knew the look on Marcus Vance’s face—that tight, white-lipped stillness that meant fear was turning into something harder, something dangerous.
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"Don't you go over there," she muttered to herself, though her hand rested on the door handle as if she were ready to leap out and demand an explanation from the nearest man in a black suit.
In Oak Creek, secrets didn't stay buried for long, especially when they arrived in a convoy of heavy-duty trucks with dark windows and armed passengers. The silence of the cul-de-sac was thick enough to choke on, broken only by the distant, rhythmic thrum of an airliner climbing out of Dulles Airport toward the west.
