“I bet he’s got a bad heart,” said Albert. “He could die any minute now, right, Kelly? Has he ever had a heart attack?” He gave Kelly an inquiring look. She shook her head and replied, “No, not yet.”
“Well, he’s definitely going to have one tonight,” commented Albert.
“Let’s cut off his dick before he dies,” suggested Tony.
“Do you remember the bat you hit with your truck on the way back from the lake?” Josephine smoothed George's hair, wiped his forehead with her handkerchief. “Do you?”
“Josephine,” the old man muttered and opened his swollen eyes. “Kelly, please. Josephine.” He was not making sense anymore.
“He can't hear you, Josie,” said Albert. “I think it’s a pain shock.”
“Josie, I'm going to chop off his dick.” Kelly waved her knife enthusiastically. “I’ll do it now.” She began to cut the elastic band of George's underpants.
“Kelly, wait a second, I want him to know what he is being killed for,” said Josephine. She wiped the old man's face and blew on his forehead to assuage the heat. “He committed murder and he must know that.” She looked at her hands and legs splashed with blood and grimaced with revulsion. “George, do you remember the bat you killed in August? Do you remember it, you fucking asshole?”
“Pain shock,” Albert said with a thoughtful air, “Maybe it’s time to cut his dick off.”
“It's such a pity he is so old,” said Josephine. “He won’t last even fifteen minutes.”
“He’s already dying.” Kelly opened the old man's ripped underpants to reveal his groin. “Look at this old dick. I’ve never seen my dad’s dick, by the way. I’m not impressed, to tell you the truth.”
“Maybe he’s a grower, not a shower,” said Albert. “He might be nine inches when hard.”
Kelly turned to Josephine. “Should I cut it off?”
“If he doesn't answer me now, you can cut it off.” Josephine shut George's lower jaw forcefully to lower the noise he was making. “Looks like your father can’t take pain.”
Once Josephine let go of George’s jaw, he opened his mouth again, continuing to scream at the top of his lungs. Josephine slapped the old man on the cheek as hard as she could, but it did nothing to silence him. She whacked George in the face a few more times, now just for fun; it had become clear to her that the man wasn’t going to keep quiet.
“He’d about to die,” declared Kelly exclaimed. “Hurry up, Josephine.”
“George, do you remember the bat?” Josephine shouted. “Do you remember killing a bat? Do you remember, you motherfucker?”
“No, no, I don’t remember the bat!” George yelled out. “Please let me go!”
“This moron’s going to make me deaf.” Albert thrust his drill into George’s left shin. “Josephine, it seems like he’s not thinking straight anymore.” He turned to the laptop to see if Tony or Ron had anything to say; both men kept silent.
“Okay.” Josephine nodded and punctured George's eyes with the knitting needle. “Kelly, get ready to cut his dick off. It’s time to wrap things up.”
“Tell me when,” said Kelly, grabbing the tip of George’s penis.
“Is it going to kill him?” asked Ron.
“Who knows,” said Kelly. “He might survive.”
Josephine took two linen napkins from the counter and stuffed one of them into the old man's mouth. Then she added another napkin for a tighter gag and said, “Cut it now.”
“Yeah, cut it,” hollered Tony.
“What if he chokes?” said Albert. “He’s barely alive as it is.”
Josephine stuck a knitting needle through George’s right biceps and replied, “He might, but I'm sick of his screams.” She stabbed the needle into the old man’s left biceps. “If he chokes, he chokes.”
“Look!” Kelly yelled, swinging George’s severed penis in front of the web camera. “I cut his dick off! Let's fry it and feed it to this fucker.”
“That must be the most surreal thing I’ve seen in my life,” said Ron.
“Let me feed it to my neighbors.” Albert burst out laughing. “That would be one hell of a joke, wouldn’t it?”
“Are we going to fry it or not?” Kelly turned to Josephine. Grinning, Josephine shrugged her shoulders.
“Put it in the bag.” Albert opened a Ziploc plastic bag and brought it in front of Kelly.
“How does it feel to hold your dad’s dick in your hand?” asked Albert.
Kelly dropped the penis in the bag, and Kelly zipped the bag up and put it on the counter.
“I’m serious, guys,” Albert went on. “There’s enough meat in this dick for a burger. I’ll cook it next time my wife has a barbecue.”
“Please remind me to skip your next barbecue, Al,” said Kelly.
Nine minutes later George died. But before it happened, they had chopped off his hands, ripped his stomach open, and drilled seven holes in his chest.
They placed George’s body into an eighty-gallon wooden barrel, which they were going to bring onto Ron’s gorgeous fifty-foot powerboat later tonight: a dead body was the last thing that crossed people’s minds when they saw an innocently looking wooden barrel being loaded on a boat. They had no desire to get involved with acid for their corpse disposal needs—can you imagine how much acid you would need to get rid of four to six stiffs a month?—so they stuck with the basics and simply dumped their victims in Lake Erie several miles offshore. To prevent the bodies from floating up, they tied one-hundred-pound concrete blocks to their legs. It was an easy, reliable, and eco-friendly way of covering their tracks: in a few months, there was nothing left of a person but a skeleton thanks to the fish and crabs.
Even though George would vanish from the face of the earth, he was not going to go missing in the public’s eyes. Officially, George would die in a car crash. The role of his body double went to Sam Talbott, a man of similar height and size, whom they had kidnapped two days earlier.
After folding the table, deflating the pool, and packing the drills and knives, they checked the garage for stains of blood. Then they celebrated the successful revenge by devouring half a bottle of Beefeater gin—Kelly and Albert only had a shot each since they were supposed to drive hours later.
At half past midnight, Graham and Albert tossed the barrel with George’s body in the lake. Four hours later, they pushed the old man’s truck with Sam Talbott’s body in the driver’s seat into the ditch four miles south of Jamestown and set it on fire; the propane tank explosion was beautiful. Their plan worked without a hitch: the fire rendered Talbott’s corpse completely unrecognizable, the police didn’t bother to do any DNA testing, and Jane was too emotionally devastated to question the official story of her husband’s death. After a short but heartfelt funeral service on a cold Thursday morning, George’s remains were cremated, forever sealing the terrible secret of the old man’s death.
Chapter 7.
COMING HOME
1.
They told him he had gotten off easy, and Frank was fully aware of it: his Guardian angel had done a good job since the car crash; it would have been a great job if the angel had prevented the car crash from happening in the first place.
“You’re doing incredibly well, Frank,” Doctor Raynolds told Frank on the eighth, and the last, day of his stay at the hospital. “I’ve seen your X-rays, I’ve seen your test results, and I must say that you are way ahead of the typical schedule. A lot of people with a head trauma similar to your require months of physical therapy, so you ought to consider yourself very lucky. However, you should keep in mind that your head is a terribly fragile thing, and from now on you should treat it as if it were made of glass. It contains your brain, and I guess you agree that the brain is an important part of the body.”
Frank told the doctor that he agreed with him on that.
“I would recommend avoiding extremely strenuous physical activity for the next several months, which means no racing, no jumping from heights, no boxing—you get the idea. Take it
easy, relax on a couch, now you have a perfect excuse for that.” Raynolds laughed softly. “Unless you want to be back in our nurses’ arms.”
“I’m an expert in relaxing on a couch,” said Frank. “I’ll gladly follow your advice.”
“And as for your amnesia, you shouldn’t worry if the recovery takes longer than expected. Sooner or later, most of your memories will come back to you. Don’t be upset if the recovery is not complete. Look on the bright side: among those lost memories could be things you wanted to forget but couldn’t. Amnesia might have saved you a lot of stress, Frank.” Raynolds paused. “It’s like you were born again, isn’t it?”
2.
So, a thirty-seven-year-old accountant from Shapiro Bender Winkler was finally going home, where no one was waiting for him with outstretched arms.
He had a lot of getting used to do ahead of him. Even though he remembered his house—he had bought it eight years before, the point in time outside the black hole chewed out by amnesia—its interior was terra incognita to Frank. Actually, there was a bright side to that: while other people have to buy new furniture to revamp the design, all Frank Fowler had had to do was hit a freeway wall at seventy miles per hour, have his car roll over three times before coming to a halt, and, as a result, drop six years of life from his memory.
Nothing like a change of scenery, right?
“What are you thinking about? Kelly?” Josephine, who had offered him a ride home in her beautiful Porsche Cayenne, gave him a curious look. Her car, by the way, could have easily set her back a hundred grand, which confirmed Frank’s hunch that she was loaded.
Frank nodded, just to humor her.
His house was empty, he had accepted this unfortunate fact. Three people used to live there, but now two of them were missing, and he was the only one left.
However, he didn’t feel sad about it. You see, he didn’t remember the time when Kelly and Kathy had lived in that house. You can’t mourn someone you have forgotten, let’s be honest here, okay?
What a coincidence.
“Are you feeling okay?” asked Josephine. “You need to get a lot of rest the next couple of weeks.”
“I’m okay,” he muttered. “Thanks for asking.”
“Our family will do our best to help you, Frank,” said Josephine. “If you need anything, just let us know.”
What a nice coincidence it was. He lost his daughter, a cute five-year-old girl, who must have been raped, dismembered, and thrown in Lake Erie by some perverted psycho. Then he lost his wife, who had most likely been dumped in Lake Erie as well. And just when it was about time for him to have an emotional breakdown, a car accident wiped out his memories about these two people along with all the related pain and suffering he must have gone through.
What a perfect coincidence! It was like he’d been born again and could start a new life now.
“Do you still remember how to do your job, by the way? They are not going to fire you, are they?” Josephine asked.
“It might take some brushing up, but I’ll be fine.”
As a matter of fact he was planning to start checking on the latest developments in partnership taxation tomorrow morning. He wished it were as easy for him to remember his wife and daughter.
On second thought, he was in no hurry to do it.
It suddenly occurred to him that if someone were able to look inside his mind right now, this person would be horrified: “This guy doesn’t give a shit about his wife! This guy doesn’t give a shit about what his daughter! Look at this asshole!”
Remembering nothing from the last six years.
His head was a bit heavy, but he could easily solve this problem by taking an Aspirin pill at home.
You don’t give a shit about them because you have to remember who they are to give a shit, buddy. It’s a solid excuse. Kathy and Kelly are missing? Sure, it’s a tragedy, but you can’t just flip the switch and start caring about them any more than about a hundred thousand other people that disappear every year in America. That’s not how it works.
Yes, all these busybodies ought to leave him alone. There was no point in beating the dead horse; he still remembered virtually nothing about his wife and daughter. Someday Kelly and Kathy would emerge in his memory, but at this point in time these names meant nothing to him.
“Did you remember anything about Kelly? Anything that could help us find her?” asked Josephine, with her eyes fixed on him.
Frank shook his head, but Josephine continued to drill him with a look full of hope, risking a collision with a Dodge Charger coming in the opposite direction. Frank pointed to the Dodge and said hastily, “Be careful, Josephine.”
Yes, she had to be careful because he didn’t need another car crash. From now on, he was going to treat his head as if it were made of glass.
Josephine turned her face back to the road, sighed, and bit her lower lip. Frank thought he had noticed a grimace of gloom flicker across her face.
“Are you going to see a psychiatrist?” Josephine asked one minute later in a slightly hoarse voice. “I could arrange a meeting with an excellent specialist if you’d like. And I’d pay all expenses, too.” She glanced at Frank to find out his reaction.
Oh no, Frank Fowler needed no stinking psychiatrist. All Frank needed was lots of rest. Maybe he should take a vacation and go to Las Vegas for a week? That was an idea worth considering.
“Why?” asked Frank.
“He could help you recover your memories faster. They have methods. Hypnosis and stuff like that.”
Hypnosis and stuff like that. Next thing you know Josephine would want to irradiate his head with x-rays or gamma-rays so that the memories of Kelly could come unstuck from the bottom of the amnesia deep and rush back to the surface. Or drill a hole in the frontal bone and insert electrodes into his brain.
“I doubt it will help,” he said.
“I wouldn’t refuse it if I were you.”
Marilyn Hancock. He was going to call her as soon as he got home. According to Marilyn, they used to meet each other at least twice a week, and there was no reason for them not to resume this schedule.
She wouldn’t refuse it if she were him? It didn’t sound like a threat, did it?
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The psychiatrist could help you remember something important about Kelly’s disappearance. Something that could lead us to her. We have to act fast, Frank. You must understand that chances of finding Kelly alive get worse with every passing day. And we can’t rely on the police; they are too dumb and lazy.”
“I’m afraid you’re overestimating what I might know about Kelly’s disappearance.”
“Kelly and you live together. You might have heard or seen something we can use. You could know where she was going the day she disappeared. Or maybe you know someone who has the information that could help us find her.”
Okay, Josephine Buckhaus, you win. Now please shut up.
“I’m sorry, Josephine. I’m having a headache. Let’s discuss it later, okay?” Frank winced to make his pain more obvious to Josephine. “I could use some quiet time right now if you don’t mind.”
“Very well, Frank. I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning,” said Josephine.
“Sounds good.”
Frank heaved a sigh of relief, pleased that Josephine had left him alone at last. He was slightly surprised that the conversation with his sister-in-law irked him so badly.
“I hope you make the right choice.” Josephine smiled.
3.
He had little trouble recognizing his house because he had bought it eight years ago, well before the period affected by amnesia. While in the hospital, Frank had this hazy mental snapshot of his house, which turned out to be a surprisingly accurate match to the real thing. The few discrepancies that Frank’s mind was able to register stemmed from the shape and the size of the trees and shrubs around his residence. The elusive feeling of déjà vu immediately came over Frank as he stepped out of the car and
fixed his eyes on the house.
While he was walking up the path leading to the porch, he noticed an interesting detail: his lawn appeared freshly mowed and was free of leaves.
“I had your lawn prettied up yesterday,” said Josephine, seeing what had caught his attention. “I was also worried about burglary. It’s always risky to leave a house unattended for more than two days, even in a nice neighborhood.”
“Thank you, Josephine.” Frank stepped onto the porch. Yes, she was right, these days robbers could target your house even if it had home security stickers plastered on every window. “Were there any break-ins while I was in the hospital?” he asked in an anxious voice.
“Thankfully, nothing bad happened. I’ve been coming here every other day to check windows and doors. I even put one of those lamps with a timer in the living room to make it look like somebody was in the house. Graham gave me this idea.”
Frank was a little surprised to find that he felt genuinely grateful to Josephine for watching over his place while he had been away. Muttering ‘thank you, Josephine,’ he pulled out the keys. At this moment he felt a lump in his throat, and although he was not a sentimental person, nostalgia suddenly overcame him. He was home again!
Once he stepped over the front door threshold and breathed in the air of the foyer, a vague recollection of that weird dream about a woman murdered in the bathroom flashed in his mind again. This time, the memory stayed with Frank long enough for him to be certain that he had been the one who had stabbed that woman to death. Thank God, it had only been a dream.
He walked inside. The nostalgia dominated his feelings for a while and began to diminish as he inhaled the smell given off by the walls, the floor, and the furniture and soon turned into curiosity.
“Do you need any help?” asked Josephine, who had shut the door and now was observing Frank.
Frank was pleasantly impressed by the interior design of the house. Whoever had been in charge of picking furniture had made a great choice. It had most likely been Kelly; those trips to furniture showrooms would have definitely bored him to death.
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