The Man Behind The Glass Asked Me To Forget A Face

I marked a red square beside the angelfish before I heard the woman beg.

A red square meant no food. That pair had eggs on a filter pipe, and extra flakes would foul the water. Every tank on my route had its own handwritten feeding sheet. Fish could not tell the next person what the last person had done.

People had that problem, too.

I was forty-six, a white American woman with a broad face, pale freckles, and brown hair I kept in a short braid.

My name was Laurel Vance. I cleaned commercial aquariums around Chattanooga, tested water, treated sick fish, and kept nine businesses from killing what they had bought.

That Tuesday, I was at Greer Ornamental Fish in Alton Park. Rain tapped the loading door. Beyond the glass wall behind the display tanks, somebody dragged a chair across an office floor.

"Please call it off," a woman said. "My sister still sleeps up there."

My siphon kept pulling dirty water into a bucket.

"Then move her," Russell Greer said.

Russell was a tall white American man with silver hair brushed flat, a narrow mouth, and soft gray coats that never seemed to catch dust.

He was fifty-eight. He owned three fish warehouses and enough other buildings that people lowered their voices when they named him.

"You said it would only look like a fire," the woman said.

"Keep your voice down."

I stopped the siphon with my thumb.

Their faces floated in the glass behind the angelfish. The office itself was hidden by a row of cabinets, but the partition gave me its reflection. I saw the woman's green sleeve pressed against her mouth.

Then Russell saw me in the same glass.

He opened the office door.

"Laurel. Come here."

I stayed beside my bucket. "I need to finish this water change."

The woman came out behind him. She held a folded rent notice. A brass key shook against its ring.

"Tell him," she said to me. "Tell him he can't burn it while she's there."

"You heard a tenant upset about repairs," Russell said.

He spoke softly enough that I had to lean toward him.

"I heard fire," I said.

"A mistake. People make them. Even people with little routes and old vans."

The woman looked at the loading door.

"May we leave?" I asked.

"She can. You have fish to finish."

The woman went past me. I caught the smell of cold rain and furniture glue.

Russell took a feeding sheet off its clip.

"Nine customers," he said. "People I know. How long could you manage if none of them needed you?"

My route brought in $3,860 a month before expenses. He had never asked me that number. He did not need to.

"I'd like my sheet back."

He set it down by the bucket.

"You clean glass, Laurel. Don't mistake that for seeing through it."

Above his shoulder, my feeding camera showed a small green light.

He glanced at it.

"At least somebody watches the fish," he said.

I had installed those cameras after a hotel blamed me for a dead school of tetras. The recordings had shown an employee emptying a vase into their water. Since then, my signed service riders allowed feeding video and sound, with a notice beside each lens.

The cameras were mine. So were the private backup accounts. Customers received short fish clips when they asked. They did not receive my passwords.

I paid $18 each month to keep the original files for six months.

That seemed like a large bill until Russell smiled at the green light.

I finished the water change because leaving a half-empty tank would have hurt the fish. Then I carried my bucket outside.

The woman was gone.

From my locked van, I called 911. I gave the warehouse address, Russell's name, the woman's words, and everything I knew about the possible building. She had mentioned rooms upstairs. She had smelled of glue. I did not know her name.

"Please don't put this down as a noise complaint," I said.

The dispatcher asked me to repeat the exact words.

I did.

At home, I opened my backup account. The office wall appeared behind a blue angelfish, backward but clear. So did Russell's face. The microphone had caught the woman asking me for help, then his promise to take my work.

I marked that night's square red on my own kitchen calendar.

Do not add anything. Do not trim anything. Keep the original.

I gave the dispatch officer an update about the recording and asked where to bring it. Then I sat in my work clothes until morning.

At seven, a man knocked on my door. His badge case was open. Rain darkened his shoulders.

"Laurel Vance? Gideon Brooks. Fire investigation."

He held a photograph of a burned stair tread.

"We need to talk about the woman in the green coat."