The Remains (18 page)

After a time, he looked up.

“Verizon,” he said, handing the phone back to
me.

“You’re not going to confiscate it?”

“I have your number. Cell phone records are
easy enough to access.”

“How is it Whalen would be able to block his
caller ID?” Michael interjected. It was a question both of us
wanted to ask.

“You want to block your ID and number when
making a call or a text,” he explained, “you just punch star-6-7
before dialing the desired telephone number. You want to unlock
your ID, punch in star-8-2. It’s as simple as that and totally
legal.”

Then I remembered something. “There was
another woman there at the Hollywood Carwash. A well dressed woman
who was driving a Mercedes Benz. She was upset because she had lost
her cell phone while her car was being washed.”

Harris bit down on his bottom lip.

“That explains it,” he said, as though a
light bulb lit up over his head. “I’m guessing Whalen is stealing
cell phones, using them to text you.” He opened a bottom desk
drawer, pulled out a phone book and slapped it heavily onto the
desktop. “I’m going to call the Hollywood Carwash, find out if
they’ve had a rash of lost mobile phones over the past few months.”
Looking back at me, he continued, “If that’s everything, I need to
get on this right away.”

I stood, a little out of balance.

“Detective,” I said. “I just have one
question.”

“What is it?”

“Do you truly suspect that Franny might have
something to do with all this? Something other than what’s going on
in his mind?”

The detective bit his bottom lip again.

“I’m still having trouble comprehending his
apparent accuracy in depicting your memories. On one hand we have a
paroled Whalen who might be sending you texts; who might have tried
to break into your Brunswick home; who might have left a photograph
of you and your sister on the home’s porch floor; who might in fact
be stalking you. On the other hand we have an autistic savant who
is able to accurately paint your memories and dreams, as though you
were dictating them to him.”

“But where do Whalen and Francis connect?”
Michael demanded.

“Rebecca has already told me that the black
and white photo of she and Molly matches one of Franny’s paintings.
That raises the possibility that Whalen and Francis might have had
access to the same photograph.”

“Not at the same time,” I said.

“We don’t know that,” Harris said. “Not
yet.”

I told him that it’s not unusual for an
autistic savant to be able to tap into portions of the brain that
normal people can’t even hope for. Franny’s talent might very well
include the ability to see inside my head. Or at the very least, to
be able to see the future.

“Okay,” Harris uttered, a note of cynicism in
his voice. “I’ll take your word for it, for now. But if it turns
out Whalen’s and Francis’s prints are on that black and white
photograph of you and your sister, it’ll only please me to pay the
Scaramuzzis a little visit.”

“Franny has been through enough already,” I
explained.

“How so?”

“The other day I got in his face, yelled at
him. Like you, I’d started to believe there could be something more
to the paintings than just an active imagination. An accurate
imagination, that is.”

I started toward the door, until something
else hit me.

“I shut down the center for the week. It’ll
hurt Franny, but…”

“Why do that?” Harris begged. “Keeping busy
might be the best thing for you right now.”

I took hold of Michael’s hand.

“My partner,” I said. “Robyn Painter. Are you
aware of the assault on her last night, Detective Harris?”

I felt my heart pound when I said it. Harris
was helping me. But I almost felt angry with him for not having
mentioned it already. But then, perhaps he didn’t know that Robyn
and I were best friends, despite our working together. The look on
his face was hard, angry, tight-lipped. I knew then that he knew
about what had happened at that motel.

“Wish I could say we had a better lead on the
creep who did it. FBI is taking over the investigation. Your
friend, Robyn… she’s not the only one.”

“I’m aware of that.” I swallowed.

Michael took my hand, gave it a squeeze.

Harris picked up the phone, held it in his
hand.

“Again, I’ll ask you to call me if something
else comes up.”

“What about the paintings?” Michael
asked.

“I’m going to hang onto them along with the
black and white pic of you and your sister, Rebecca. In the
meantime I’m going to check into these texts, see if they really do
somehow lead directly to Whalen.”

“I have another painting,” I said, nodding
toward the canvas where it was leaned up against Michael’s
chair.

Harris glanced at it. “That’s the house?” he
asked under his breath.

“Yes.”

“I’m so very sorry.”

I turned away from him, made my way out the
door, back into the foul smelling air.

WE LEFT THE CITY and drove in the direction
of my apartment.

Michael set his hand on my leg.

“Let’s skip town,” he said. “Why don’t we
pack a quick bag, head down to New York for the night. Just like
old times. We can get a room at the Gramercy Park, head out to Les
Halles for steak frit, maybe a hit a bar or two. Just like we used
to do.”

It sounded very appealing. Getting out of
town for a night. God it sounded good.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to leave
Robyn?”

“She needs rest, Bec. Not visitors. Besides,
she’s got her mother and we’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

Michael was making sense. But there was just
one more obstacle.

“What do we use for money?”

He tossed me a grin.

“Got a few bucks put away.”

“You robbed a convenience store and got away
with it. Congratulations.”

“I’ve been selling the occasional news
piece,” he offered. “Strictly online fluff stuff.”

We pulled into the apartment complex. Michael
parked the truck in my designated spot. As we walked around the
building to the terrace, I couldn’t help but notice how the sky was
blackening, how the clouds were gathering with some speed. There
was also a significant wind. Definitely a storm coming.

Outside the apartment door a team of blue
uniformed maintenance workers were raking up the leaves. No one
seemed to notice me.

I unlocked the door. Stepping inside the
apartment, I felt suddenly lighter. Even the thought of heading
down to New York for a night was enough to send a flash-wave of
optimism cruising through my body.

Michael closed the door behind me.

“So do I have a date for Les Halles tonight
or what?”

“Make the reservation,” I said, turning to
him, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m going to wash up,
pack an overnight bag and we’re gone.”

He smiled, hugged me tight.

“No worries, Bec.”

“It’s all good.” I lied. True or false, it
felt good to simply say it.

As I made my way through the hall to the
bathroom, I heard the sound of distant thunder.

TURNING ON THE HOT water, I looked at my face
in the mirror.

Looked
into
our
faces, I
should say.

Molly and me.

Sometimes when I saw my reflected self, I
couldn’t help but wonder if Molly would have looked the same, if
her ageing process would have mimicked my own. Of course it would
have. I wondered about her features, if she would have acquired the
same horizontal lines in the forehead, the same little bit of extra
skin under the chin, the newly emerging crow’s feet framing the
eyes, the subtle hint of grey in the otherwise dirty blonde
hair.

In a word, I wondered if she would be me.

I felt the vibration against my thigh. Drying
my hands, I pulled the cell phone from my jeans pocket and flipped
it open.

Another text.

My heart raced and my mouth went dry.

I thumbed it open.

Cry, cry, cry you naughty kitten

Tears built up behind my eyeballs. I never
bothered with checking the Caller ID. I knew who the caller was. I
simply closed the phone and slipped it back into my jeans pocket.
Breathing in and out, I turned off the water.

Then a loud bang, like someone closing a
kitchen drawer. It registered through the bathroom door. It gave my
heart a start. Following that, a slight commotion, muffled voices,
my bedroom door slamming shut.

Michael.

I wanted to call out his name, but I
couldn’t. My hand trembled as I opened the bathroom door and went
out into the hall. It took forever to reach the bedroom. But when I
did, a loud burst of thunder rattled my bones.

When I opened the bedroom door, I knew
immediately that we would not be going to New York City.

THE REALITY OF THE situation didn’t
immediately register.

It just looked like Michael was lying on the
bed as if he was simply taking a quick lie-down before we hit the
road for the 140 mile drive south to New York. But a fraction of a
second later the fog lifted and the real scene came to light. It
was only then that I could see how his shirt was ripped off, how
his mouth was gagged with duct tape, how his hands had been hastily
duct taped together at the wrists, his legs bound together at the
ankles.

He was unconscious, eyes wide shut, body
lying fetal on the bed.

I stood there paralyzed. Stood there staring
at Michael, one side of his face was pressed into the pillow. The
exposed half was lit from the light that leaked in through the open
window.

The
bedroom was as still as an empty church. My copy of
Mockingbird
had been tossed onto the floor
by the bed. I stood petrified, my feet planted in concrete. I gazed
up and down at Michael’s naked chest with a kind of frightened
curiosity. There was a small cut that had been made just below his
right nipple. A thin line of blood trickled from it, ran down along
his ribcage. The dark hair on his head was mussed up. A thin streak
of blood ran down the center of his forehead. I knew then he’d been
hit over the head with a blunt object.

I knew I could not be alone; that there was
someone else inside the apartment besides Michael and me. The
ashtray smell. It was a familiar smell. I knew that smell as well
as I knew myself.

I had no idea how long I’d been standing
inside that open door, just staring at the bound image of my
ex-husband. A half-second maybe. Or a full minute. Fear warped
time, bent it the same way it crippled my insides.

For me, the present moment no longer
contained any logic or proportion. I knew I had to do something.
What I wanted to do was lift my feet, put one foot in front of the
other. I wanted to unbind Michael, rescue him.

But I just stood there doing nothing.

My hesitation must have been exactly what
Whalen was counting on when he opened my closet door and stepped
out into the bedroom.

MY AWAKENING WAS AS painful as it was
sudden.

Michael was gone. Disappeared.

Aside from the sting in my head, his absence
was the first thing that caught my attention.

There remained only my cell which had been
removed from my jeans pocket, set on the wood floor directly before
my eyes. There was a throbbing pain in my head and an egg-sized
lump protruding from my forehead directly above my right eye. I
touched the lump with the fingers on my right hand only to pull
them back quick from the sting.

For the
moment, I didn’t quite know where I was. Rather, I knew where I
was, but I couldn’t be sure if I had entered into one of my vivid
dreams.
Had
my dreaming progressed from hearing his voice to actually hearing
the man; seeing him; smelling him; feeling him?
I breathed, tried my hardest to calm
myself; tried to focus on ending the dream, going back to
sleep.

I wanted it to be morning.

I wanted to wake up to sunshine, to my
routine. But every time I closed my eyes, I opened them again to
the reality of the moment. All objects inside my periphery were
blurry, distorted, depth-of-field spinning, pulsing like an out of
control video camera.

Pushing myself up off an exposed hardwood
floor, I sat up and felt a great weight inside my head. The throw
rug that had covered the floor was gone. I saw the empty place that
Michael had occupied in the bed. All that remained now were the
crumpled bed sheets, the discarded shirt tossed to the floor.

I pulled the bedroom door open, ran out into
the hall. That’s when the cell phone exploded in loud, bursting
pulses. Whalen must have adjusted the ringer setting.

Running back into the bedroom, I picked the
phone up from off the floor and put it to my ear. But there was no
sound coming through the earpiece. In the place of a voice came a
notice for a new text.

I thumbed OK on the keypad.

The text appeared on the radiant face of the
phone.

Do not run little kitten. Do not call the
police. Do not speak. Break the rules and Michael dies. Cry, cry,
cry.

I pressed the phone back up against my
head.

“Where’s Michael?” I screamed.

Heart pulsing inside my throat, I waited for
an answer. A voice. But then I remembered to pull the phone away
from my ear, stare down at the screen. The answer revealed itself
in the form of another text.

Little kitten broke the rules. Cry. Cry.
Cry.

I FELT ON THE verge of fainting. My breathing
became rapid and forced.