The Remains (26 page)

The house that no longer existed.

I let the water pour over my hair and onto my
face. I felt the good feel of the hot sting. I poured shampoo onto
my hair, kneaded it in with my good hand. The thick foam ran down
my face. When a little got into my eyes I felt the sting, but I
didn’t mind. I actually started to laugh as though getting soap in
your eyes was the funniest thing in the world. But I’m sure it all
had something to do with being alive, being pregnant with a child I
really wanted and really looked forward to loving. It would be my
most purist work of art.

Placing
my face directly below the nozzle I let the water spray directly
into my eyes until the sting started to go away. I made sure to
keep my eyes closed tight while I rinsed my hair. When the cell
phone chimed I automatically whispered, “Crap.” Of course
someone
had
to be
calling me while I took a shower; while I was blinded by soap in my
eyes. Reaching outside the shower curtain I picked the cell phone
up off the sink, opened it to see that a new text had been
delivered. Immediately I thought of Robyn as the water dripped onto
the electronic readout.

Thumbing the Send button I opened the
message

Cry, cry, cry, little kitten.

The shower curtain flew open. The cell fell
into the tub. A hand wrapped itself around my mouth. The hand
squeezed my mouth and nostrils tight. I couldn’t breathe. An arm
wrapped itself around my waist. The shower curtain began to tear
away from the rod, one ring at a time. The pop-popping noise of the
breaking plastic filled the bathroom along with shower spray; along
with my muted gasps, along with Whalen’s high-pitched strains.

He released his right hand, producing a
knife. He pressed the blade of the knife up against the underside
of my neck, then quickly pulled the knife back just an inch or two,
cutting into the skin. The pain was searing. It shot up and down my
spine. I wanted to scream, but the hand was covering my mouth.

My vision escaped me. I saw blackness lit up
with stars, neurons exploding in my brain.

He pressed the knife up against the underside
of my ribcage. He pressed the sharp blade up against the skin,
flicked the knife back quick.

More burning pain.

Legs went wobbly. Blood poured down my ribs
and belly.

Then an explosion. A gunshot.

The hand that covered my mouth released and
fell away. The knife dropped into the tub. I looked down, saw the
blood circling the drain, circling the thin knife and my shattered
cell phone. I heard Whalen’s body hit the tile floor. I heard
footsteps. Out the corner of my eyes I saw the blurry image of
Detective Harris. In his right hand he held an automatic. He
grabbed the towel from the rack, put it into my hands.

I was too shocked, too frightened to speak,
to cry, to do anything.

“How bad are you hurt?” he demanded.

I managed to shake my head.

He reached down with his right hand, pressed
two fingers against Whalen’s jugular.

“He’s gone.”

My back pressed up against the water-slick
ceramic wall, I sank down into the tub, the water spray shooting
down onto my head, onto my now exposed cast.

Whalen was gone.

I shivered and was suddenly overcome with the
urge to cry.

Cry, cry, cry…

It’s exactly what I did.

MORE POLICE CAME. SO did the state troopers
who blocked off the entrance to the apartment complex with their
blue and yellow cruisers.

The EMTs
came. The press showed up. TV
and
print.

Caroline and Franny rushed to the scene when
they got wind of it on the radio.

I sat in the back seat of Harris’s Jeep. He’d
sent one of the uniformed officers out for tea and I now held a
steaming cup in my trembling hands. The EMTs had already looked me
over, examined the wounds to my neck and chest. The surface cuts
required no stitches. Only butterfly bandages. Still, they insisted
I be transported immediately to the hospital for further tests and
observations. Given the condition of my healing heart along with
the early stage pregnancy, there was no telling what I might suffer
in the short term.

I flat out refused.

I’d just been released from the hospital two
weeks before. Tests proved there had been no permanent damage to my
heart after having suffered the mild heart attack up on Mount
Desolation. The EMTs looked at me with skeptical frowns. They asked
me to signature a waiver of release absolving them of any and all
responsibility should I drop dead on the spot. I did it.

Then they left me alone.

As soon as Whalen’s body was bagged and
lifted into the back of a big, black SUV with tinted windows,
Harris joined me in the Jeep. He sat behind the wheel, an identical
Styrofoam cup in his hand, the only difference being his held black
coffee.

He asked me if I was all right. I sipped my
tea, running the exposed fingers on my damp, cast-covered right
hand through still wet hair and breathed.

“Just a little shaken up is all.”

He sipped his coffee.

“You know now that without question, that
Whalen is out of your life forever,” he consoled. “Without…
question.”

“The future is bright,” I smiled, then stared
down into my tea. “How did you know he’d be here?”

“I didn’t really. Late last night I got a
call from forensics in Albany telling me the bones found on Mount
Desolation didn’t belong to a male meeting Whalen’s criteria for a
man of approximately sixty years of age. In fact, the bones
probably belonged to a female who passed away decades ago. More
than likely, one of Whalen’s early abduction victims.

“
Our
theory now is that he buried the women outside his home in the
woods and periodically interred them, laying them to rest in
different areas in and around Mount Desolation. That is, until
finally laying them to rest down inside that basement
after
he was released from prison.
That would explain why we never uncovered remains inside his house
all those years ago. It’s not that he was always one step ahead of
us. It’s just that we just didn’t have the technology we have at
our disposal nowadays.

“All morning long I thought about it. If the
bones didn’t belong to Whalen, there was a good chance he’d
survived the damage inflicted to his head by Francis. Which meant
he might still be out there, waiting to strike again.”

“What about the black and white photo you
returned to me along with a note?”

He shook his head, vehemently.

“That’s just it. I jumped the gun when I sent
that out yesterday afternoon. It dawned on me that Whalen’s prints
didn’t have to be on that photograph for it to have been in his
recent possession. The man spent thirty years in prison. It’s not
difficult to scrape away the prints on your fingers given the time.
Anyone can do it with a common household disposable razor blade. Or
even if he had left prints, it’s not impossible for him to dissolve
them from the picture’s face before planting it on your folk’s
porch floor.”

“And the jimmied window? That was Whalen’s
handiwork?”

“I can only imagine that he wanted to get a
personal feel for your childhood home. You know, step into the
footsteps of his beloved Molly and Rebecca; his two little kittens.
I now believe he broke into the home many times over the past six
months. He scoured the place and came up with the photo. On the day
you went out to Brunswick to have a face to face with Caroline
Scaramuzzi, Whalen followed you, planted the pic in a spot you were
likely to find it. Call it his way of playing with your head on top
of those cryptic text messages.”

“But how did Franny paint that exact image of
us back in the seventies if he never had access to the photo?”

“That’s just it,” Harris said. “He did have
access to it. In fact, dozens of people did.”

I didn’t quite understand what he was getting
at, until he reached into the Jeep’s glove box, pulled something
out. “Caroline gave this to me yesterday after I’d already FedEx’d
the original to you.”

He handed it to me.

It was a Christmas card. A postcard-sized
Christmas card with a reproduction of that same black and white
photo of Molly and me printed beside the words “Happy Holidays.”
Written in my mother’s unmistakable ballpoint, “Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year from the Underhills.” It was dated December 3,
1976.

That was the reason Franny was able to paint
Molly and me all those years ago.

“But how did you know Whalen was coming back
for me here at my apartment? How did you know he was going to do it
tonight?”

“Intuition, plus a little help from your
friends, the Scaramuzzis.”

I shook my head as if I didn’t comprehend
him.

“Caroline called me on my cell as soon as you
left her house last evening. She didn’t want you to know that she
called me. But she felt it would be the prudent thing to do,
considering Whalen hadn’t been officially declared dead yet and
this was the first night you’d be alone since the incident on the
mountain.

“I acted on a hunch. Instead of going home
last night, I parked outside your apartment. I was just about to
leave this morning when I noticed a FedEx truck pull up to your
building. At the same time, I also noticed a strange looking
individual walking around the back toward your terrace door. He was
dressed in blue overalls like a maintenance man. I didn’t like the
looks of it. I followed him, right into the apartment.” He took
another sip of coffee. “The rest you know.”

I sat back, felt my hands, warm around the
cup of tea.

“I never knew,” I exhaled. “Never had a clue
you were out there.”

“I guess I’ve still got the touch.” He
grinned. “Maybe I’ll go private when retirement kicks in.”

“By the looks of it, you’re only a few X’s
away.”

It was over. Finally. No more Whalen. Still,
I didn’t feel as relieved as I should have felt. Maybe relief would
come when the events of the morning finally settled in. Who knew
how long that would take?

Harris was about to turn away when I stopped
him.

“Detective,” I said out the open window.
“What about the cell phones? Had Whalen been stealing them from the
Hollywood Carwash like we thought?”

He nodded. “Stealing them, but not enough of
them to make it seem suspicious. From what the manager told me,
four or five phones were reported missing by various customers over
a period of about six months. When you consider that the manager
gets calls on a daily basis about a missing this or a missing that,
he never would have suspected a pattern.”

“Until you pointed it out to him.”

“Exactly. In any case, it certainly explains
how Whalen texted you without having to acquire his own cell phone
account.”

I took in a breath.

“Thank you, Detective.” I smiled.

Harris left me alone again.

I sat in the backseat, stared out onto the
apartment parking lot and all the people that had gathered there. I
looked on the scene until the people began to disperse along with
the police and the EMTs. I stared until all that was left were
Franny and Caroline amidst a backdrop of ivy-covered brick
buildings.

When Harris came back to the Jeep, he told me
he had to get back downtown. I slipped on out, gave him a hug.

“Thank you again.”

“Thank you for being strong,” he said. “For
all these years.”

I looked into his eyes.

“You never told me that you knew my father,”
I added.

He cocked his head.

“I knew all about what your dad discovered in
that house in the woods back in ’63. I figured if he never told
you, and you had never found out about it on your own, then why
should I be the one to do it. By the looks of it, your father
didn’t want you to know. He wanted to protect you, Rebecca. You and
Molly. He wanted to protect you from Whalen’s evil.”

He told me that he would be in touch. That he
would need to question me further later on in the week. But for now
my statement on the incident inside my apartment bathroom would do
nicely. After all, he’d been there to witness the event
himself.

With a smile on his face, he got back into
the Jeep and took off.

I could
only assume that for a man on the verge of retirement, he too had
realized some serious closure this morning with Whalen’s death—with
having personally put a bullet in the monster; the devil. I know I
did.
But
then why did I feel so sad about the apparent source of all those
texts? Had I ever really believed that they’d somehow come from
Molly? Was it possible I could believe in something heaven
sent?
It was all a
question of faith.

Standing in the parking lot I faced my
friends.

“You guys want to come in?” I asked. “Get out
of the cold?”

Franny smiled. It was a rare event to see him
smile. It made me feel good to see it.

“
We’ll go
inside your apartment,” Caroline exclaimed. “It’s a crime scene
now. We’ll pack up your things and move them back to the
farm.
My
farm.”

I took a look back around at the apartment
building. I pictured the torn away shower curtain, the blood
stains, the yellow police ribbon that blocked off access to the
bathroom. I would help Caroline pack my things. But I would never
return to the place again.

Like Whalen, and that now burned down house
in the woods, it was all a part of the past. All that remained was
to move on.

“Have you eaten?” Caroline asked.

“I had breakfast,” I said, setting my hand on
my stomach. “I’m not sure where I’m getting my appetite, but I
could definitely eat again.”