The Witness

I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF YOU COULD SEE HIM.

Maren Voss takes things out of rooms for a living. From a spare bedroom in Van Nuys she lassoes laundry baskets and single running shoes out of real-estate photos, until each house looks like nobody was ever sad there. In a rental in Glendale, in the middle of June, she takes out a long wool coat hanging on the back of a door.

Her sister Nat sat in their mother's hospital room for five weeks. Maren came twice, and the second time she left at four in the afternoon for a delivery. She still hasn't called Nat back.

On the drive home she stops at an empty red light. Across the road, in a bank drive-through, a man is standing with his arms at his sides. The clearance bar crosses him at the chest. It reads 8 FT 6 IN.

He is looking at her.

"Looking's free," a stranger tells her through the glass.

His face is the one Nat wore in that room, sorry and settled in to stay until it's over.

Book one of a trilogy.

Click here to get The Witness on Amazon / Kindle