I’m sitting in the living room watching Mr Whiskers groom one paw with the kind of concentration I usually reserve for problems that don’t exist yet. Pandora is curled up on the other end of the couch scrolling through her phone, and somewhere behind me John Mercer is opening and closing kitchen cabinets. Normally, none of this would bother me. Except John has opened the same cabinet three times.
I turn slightly and look toward the kitchen. The cabinet opens. John looks inside. The cabinet closes. A few seconds pass, and the cabinet opens again. Same cabinet. I look down at Mr Whiskers. “You seeing this?” Mr Whiskers continues licking his paw. Fine. Apparently I’m handling this investigation alone.
John closes the cabinet and opens the refrigerator. “You looking for something?” I ask.
“Nope.”
That stops me. “You’ve opened that cabinet three times.”
John looks at the cabinet, then at me. “Have I?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
Then he walks away. Huh? That’s his explanation? I watch him cross the living room and disappear down the hall like a man who hasn’t just been caught repeatedly inspecting the same cabinet for reasons he refuses to explain.
Pandora glances up from her phone. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring at John again.”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“You turned your entire body to watch him walk down the hall.”
That’s technically true, but I don’t appreciate the implication. I turn back toward the television and try to forget about it. Maybe John was looking for something. Maybe he forgot which cabinet he had already checked. Maybe he’s tired. There are dozens of perfectly reasonable explanations for opening the same cabinet three times.
Four, apparently.
John has returned. He walks straight into the kitchen and opens it again. I slowly look at Pandora. She doesn’t react. That’s what bothers me. Nobody reacts. John Mercer has now opened the same kitchen cabinet four times in less than ten minutes, and apparently I’m the only person in this household who finds that noteworthy.
“John.”
He looks over.
“What is in that cabinet?”
“Cups.”
“I know what’s in the cabinet.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
I stare at him. He stares at me. Mr Whiskers stops grooming himself long enough to stare at both of us. John takes out a glass and fills it with water.
Interesting. Very interesting.
“You wanted a glass?”
“Yeah.”
“So the other three times?”
John pauses. “I forgot what I was looking for.”
There it is. The oldest excuse in the book.
Pandora laughs. I look at her. “What’s funny?”
“You.”
“I’m noticing a pattern.”
“You’re watching a man get a glass of water.”
“After three reconnaissance missions.”
John takes his water and walks out of the kitchen. Pandora shakes her head and goes back to her phone. Nobody takes these things seriously until it’s too late.
The cabinet incident wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if it were isolated, but it isn’t. I’ve been noticing other things about John lately. Yesterday he came into the living room, picked up the television remote, looked at it for several seconds, and put it back down without changing the channel. Why? Tuesday, he stood near the front door with his shoes on for almost five minutes before leaving. Five minutes. What was he waiting for? And earlier this week I caught him looking through the refrigerator for something, only to close it and announce, “Never mind.”
Never mind what?
These aren’t random events anymore. They’re a pattern.
I mention this to Pandora. She doesn’t even look up. “People forget things, Hal.”
“Four times?”
“Yes.”
“In the same cabinet?”
“Yes.”
“Within ten minutes?”
Now she looks at me. “Yes.”
I don’t like how quickly she answered that. Maybe Pandora already knows about John’s behavior. That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I study her for a moment.
She notices. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
That’s another interesting development. Apparently Pandora can now predict what I’m going to say before I say it. I file that away mentally.
Mr Whiskers jumps down from the couch and trots toward the kitchen. He stops directly in front of the cabinet John kept opening and sits.
Oh, come on.
I lean forward. Pandora sees me.
“No.”
“The cat went straight to the cabinet.”
“He wants treats.”
“Are the treats in that cabinet?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t considered that. Actually, that explains quite a lot. Except John wasn’t getting treats. Unless he was checking them. Why would John be checking Mr Whiskers’ treats?
I stand up. Pandora lowers her phone. “Where are you going?”
“Kitchen.”
“Why?”
“I’m thirsty.”
She gives me a look. I walk into the kitchen and open the cabinet. Cups. Exactly as John claimed. I move a few things around. Nothing unusual. Mugs, glasses, Mr Whiskers’ treats, and a container whose lid hasn’t matched the container itself since approximately 2019. No secret documents. No mysterious devices. No coded messages. I close the cabinet, then open it again. Just to be thorough. Still nothing.
When I turn around, John is standing behind me. I nearly jump out of my skin.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting water,” I say.
John looks at the glass already sitting beside the sink. Then at me. Then at the cabinet. “Okay.”
He walks away.
That “okay” bothers me. It wasn’t a normal okay. It was an I know exactly what you’re doing okay.
I return to the couch. Pandora is smiling.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“Am I?”
Now she’s doing it too. This is spreading.
Later that afternoon, I notice another pattern. Every time John enters the living room, he looks toward the window before sitting down. Not for long. Just a glance. Once could be nothing. Twice could be coincidence. Five times? That’s surveillance.
I wait until John leaves the room and walk over to the window. Mrs Jenkins is outside next door tending to something near her front steps. She looks up. I immediately step away from the window.
Interesting.
John keeps checking the window. Mrs Jenkins happens to be outside. Coincidence? Probably. But “probably” is doing a lot of work there.
Then something else happens. John returns to the living room. He looks toward the window. He sits down. Mr Whiskers jumps onto the couch beside him. John scratches Mr Whiskers behind the ears. Mr Whiskers begins purring. I stare at them. John notices.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been saying ‘nothing’ a lot today.”
“So have you.”
“When?”
“Kitchen.”
John looks confused. Exactly how someone would look if they were trying to appear confused.
Pandora gets up and heads toward the kitchen. As she passes me, she pats my shoulder. “You need a hobby.”
“I have hobbies.”
“Watching John isn’t a hobby.”
“That depends on what John is doing.”
John sighs.
That’s another thing. He’s been sighing more. I hadn’t noticed until now.
I start counting. Over the next hour, John sighs six times, checks his phone four times, looks toward the window twice, goes into the kitchen three times, and opens that cabinet once. At this point, the pattern is undeniable.
I grab a notebook. John looks over. “What are you writing?”
“Nothing.”
Pandora laughs from the kitchen. John shakes his head. I write that down too.
7:14 p.m. — John asks what I’m writing.
7:15 p.m. — John attempts to appear unconcerned.
7:15 p.m. — Pandora laughs for unexplained reasons.
Mr Whiskers jumps onto the coffee table. I add another line.
7:16 p.m. — Cat becomes involved.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Eventually John gets up, walks into the kitchen, and opens the cabinet again. I immediately sit forward. He reaches inside and takes out the bag of cat treats. Mr Whiskers bolts toward him. John gives him two, then looks at me.
“There.”
“There what?”
“That’s what I’ve been looking for all day.”
I stare at him. “The cat treats?”
“Yeah. Pandora moved them.”
Pandora calls from the kitchen, “I moved them six inches!”
John shrugs. “I couldn’t find them.”
I slowly lower my notebook. That explains the cabinet. It also explains Mr Whiskers sitting in front of it. And John repeatedly looking around the room could simply be John trying to remember where Pandora had moved something that had apparently traveled the enormous distance of six inches.
Fine. One mystery solved.
But the window?
“What about the window?”
John looks at me. “What about it?”
“You keep looking outside.”
“My car’s parked under a tree.”
“So?”
“Birds.”
I wait for more. There isn’t more.
“You’re worried about birds?”
“I’m worried about what birds do to cars.”
Okay. Also reasonable. Annoyingly reasonable.
I look down at my notebook. Most of my evidence has collapsed in under thirty seconds. Pandora walks back into the living room, sees the notebook, and takes it from me before I can stop her. She reads silently until she reaches the final entry.
7:16 p.m. — Cat becomes involved.
Pandora starts laughing so hard she has to sit down. John takes the notebook from her and reads it. He looks at me, then at Mr Whiskers, then back at me.
“You tracked my sighing?”
“Patterns matter.”
“I sighed because you were watching me.”
I hadn’t considered that.
Mr Whiskers jumps onto John’s lap. John gives him another treat. Pandora is still laughing. I lean back into the couch and reconsider the day’s evidence. Apparently John wasn’t hiding anything. He couldn’t find the cat treats. He was checking the window because he didn’t want birds decorating his car. He kept checking his phone because normal human beings apparently do that. And the sighing was, according to John, a direct consequence of living with me.
Every individual explanation makes sense. Which is precisely what bothers me. Because when every suspicious behavior has a perfectly reasonable explanation, eventually you have to consider the possibility that all those reasonable explanations are part of the pattern.
I look at John. John looks at me. Then he deliberately opens the cabinet. Closes it. Opens it again. Closes it. Opens it a third time.
Pandora starts laughing. John smiles. Mr Whiskers meows.
I reach for my notebook.
John immediately stops smiling.
Exactly.
Now who’s noticing patterns?