The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  When James arrived home, Jean was waiting for him in their bed, and she listened as James climbed the stairs and went into the nursery to look in on William, who was sleeping soundly. The soft glow of the night light near the crib combined with the light that spilled in through the open door illuminated his son’s angelic face as he slept, and James stood for a few minutes admiring his son and listening to him breath. It was something James found himself doing each night before he allowed himself to go to sleep. Some nights, when William slept so deeply that he made no sound, James would stand quietly and hold his breath, watching and listening for his son to draw air. Only then could James be assured that he could leave him and go off to bed. Only then could he know for certain that his son was safe.

  Ben Jordan hadn’t yet confided in James the story of his last night with Rose or the suffocating remorse that he’d carried with him for the last forty years— that unrelenting regret that he hadn’t listened to the voice that whispered in his ear that night that something was wrong. He hadn’t wanted to startle Rose that night by turning on the light, and in that single moment— in that conscious choice to ignore his instincts— he’d lost her for good. He’d never know if he would have been in time to save her, or if saving her would have only delayed the inevitable end, but his decision that night had certainly sealed her fate.

  After she was gone, there were so many things he wished he’d done differently that might have changed the outcome. The bigger ones made him angry and bitter— if he could have been there when she was attacked; if he could have stopped it. But it was the small things, as small as placing his finger on a light switch and resisting the temptation to click it, that would pull at him and torture him for the rest of his life.

  James knew none of this as he watched William sleeping. He knew only that he couldn’t take a breath until he knew for certain that his boy was safe. It was yet another way that Ben and James were different—Ben was an optimist and a dreamer when he was younger; James was a worrier. He would have wanted to be certain. James would have turned on the light.

  When Jean came into the room, he became aware of her shadow first. It appeared suddenly as she stepped into the doorway behind him and then slowly draped over him and then over William as she came closer. She walked up close behind him, placing her hand on his hip and resting her chin on his shoulder so she could peer over it at their sleeping child.

  “I do this, too,” she confessed.

  James put his arm around her waist and pulled her body against his. They stood side-by-side looking down at their son. “Is it strange that I’ve only known him for a few weeks and I can’t stand to be away from him?” he wondered.

  “I think you’ve known him for a lot longer than that,” Jean said.

  The remark made him flinch, not in the way Joe Tibbits' outbursts and potential violence did, but more the way Claire Trumbull’s knowing looks unnerved him, or the way Dee’s remark in the hospital— He looks just like you— made his heart skip.

  “How do you mean?” he whispered.

  Jean smiled, though James couldn’t see her face. “I mean you’ve wanted this for so long. It means that much more when you have to wait for something as long as you have.” She meant that James had been in love with the thought of having a son for years before William finally came along. It was inevitable that his feeling for his boy would be that much stronger.

  Jean took his hand and gave it a little tug in the direction of the door, urging him to leave the nursery and join her in their bed, but James didn’t budge. Instead, he moved toward the crib and leaned so close to William’s face that he could feel his son’s tiny breaths on his skin. He placed the palm of his hand lightly on William’s little chest, feeling it rise and fall ever so slightly beneath it, and then he kissed him on his cheek, hesitating there a moment to breath in the intoxicating scent of him.

  It wasn’t until James climbed into bed beside Jean that she finally asked about Joe Tibbits. She’d been troubled ever since she saw the expression on James’s face when he recognized the man, and she worried that she’d done something wrong in surprising him.

  James tried to shrug off the question. “He’s nobody,” James said, unconvincingly. “Just somebody I used to work with.”

  “He wasn’t a friend of yours, was he?” she asked.

  James was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “No,” he said. “He wasn’t a friend.”

  Jean lay facing him, and she propped herself up on her elbow so she could see his face. “What did he want? Why was he looking for you?”

  James thought about the question for some time. He considered how even in this simple life he’d made, everything was still complicated, one small lie wrapped inside another. It had gotten to the point where it would have been impossible to peel back all the layers— all the lies— to get to the truth at the core of it all. It was easier now just to add one more layer.

  “He wasn’t looking for me,” he lied. “He was just in town for the weekend and saw the article in the paper, and he decided to look me up.”

  “You didn’t look very happy to see him,” Jean said.

  James wrapped his arm around her, and she settled into their familiar position, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest. “I’ll be happy to see him go,” he said.

  He spoke so softly that Jean felt as if she was listening to his thoughts. He held her a little tighter than he usually did, and when she finally felt sleep coming over her and turned away, he turned toward her as he always did. Only on that night, she could feel his body pressing against her so firmly, it was almost as if she could feel the weight of him upon her. She took his hand and pressed it firmly to her breast, holding it there until she drifted off to sleep.

  He woke in the middle of the night in a panic, climbing quickly out of bed and fumbling his way across the room in the dark. He was still sometimes disoriented when he got out of bed in the middle of the night in that bedroom, thinking he was still in his small bedroom in his apartment at Ruth Kennedy’s house, and he’d sometimes turn the wrong way and walk into the dresser or stub his toe on the rocking chair near the bathroom door. He was trying to be careful not to wake Jean, so he allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness for a minute longer, and then he searched the darkened room, trying to recall what he’d done with his pants. He found them draped over the rocker— a habit that ordinarily frustrated Jean but she’d allowed him to do it that night without making a remark, which was why he’d forgotten they were there.

  He lifted them off the rocker and carried them toward the door, which was left ajar so they could hear William when he cried, and he stepped out into the hallway. There was a nightlight in the hallway and another in William’s room, so James could find his way easily once he was in the hall.

  He walked past the open door to the nursery and down the stairs, and when he reached the kitchen, he turned on the light and took a pack of matches from the drawer next to the stove. He walked quietly to the front door, peering back over his shoulder to make certain he hadn’t woken Jean or Christina. He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, closing the door quietly behind him, carefully, so as not to make a sound.

  Dressed only in his boxers and a tee shirt, he sat on one of the Adirondack chairs and placed the jeans across his lap, and he reached into the right front pocket. At first he felt nothing and a surge of panic shot through him. Then he felt his fingers touch upon it. He removed the two newspaper clippings Joe Tibbits had handed him earlier— the wedding announcement and the obituary— one folded inside the other. He unfolded them and looked at the photograph of Edward Moody’s smiling face one last time. Then he folded the paper again and struck a match, lighting the corner of the clippings and watching them burn until there was nothing left of them but ash. He felt guilty burning the wedding announcement along with the other article, as if it should have been something sacred, but he wanted no reminders of Joe’s visit. Once James finished his
business with Joe Tibbits the following day, he wanted no evidence of his having been there at all.

  At noon, James drove to the pier and stopped at the top of the boat ramp. Joe Tibbits was already there waiting for him, and he climbed into the passenger’s seat. James circled through the lot and drove up West Street to Eden Street and then out of town on Eagle Lake Road.

  “Where we goin’, Jimbo?” Tibbits asked.

  “I just wanted to get out of town,” James said. He felt suddenly bold. “I’m hoping that when we’re finished, you’ll do the same.”

  Joe looked at him for a long time, his gaze so unyielding and without expression that it almost appeared as if he were simply waiting for James to blink. Finally, he offered a thin smile. “You’re not making me feel very welcome,” he said.

  At Eagle Lake, James pulled off the road and parked the Jeep in a small dirt parking area that was otherwise empty. He reached into his pocket and removed a folded piece of paper, offering it to Joe. “Here,” he said. “I wrote it all down.”

  Joe showed little interest in the paper, and he made no attempt to take it from James. It wasn’t what he’d come there for; it wasn’t what he’d searched for these last many months.

  James had expected this reaction. “I can’t do these things for you,” he said. “For most of them, you need to show up in person. At first, like for the PO box, you’ll use your own name— you won’t have a choice. Later, you’ll have to use your new one. But it’ll have to be you. That’s just how it works.”

  Joe slowly reached out and took the paper from James and unfolded it, which James took as a small victory. He watched as Joe scanned the list, his expression unchanged. James had written out all the steps and numbered them; they needed to be performed in that exact sequence or the plan would fail. He’d even included some notes, some things Joe should watch out for, things James might have done differently. He’d included them as a show of faith; he wanted to make certain Joe realized he was making a sincere effort to help him. Maybe then, he’d go.

  “You can help me with the first one,” Joe finally said as he perused the list. “You can get me a name.”

  James’s heart sank. He’d hoped the list would be enough to satisfy him, but he suddenly realized that wasn’t going to be the case. Still, he knew that finding a name was the simplest part. There was no risk in it. The risk came with everything after that, and all of that would be Joe’s responsibility.

  “And the last thing,” Joe finally added. “I might need help with that.”

  James didn’t have to look at the paper. He knew what the last thing on the list was. He thought for a long time, too long to suit Joe, who was awaiting his response to what he felt was a simple request, particularly given that James had little choice in the matter.

  “C’mon, Moody,” Joe finally said, and at the sound of that name, James knew Joe was growing impatient. “This shouldn’t be difficult.”

  If James had briefly taken control of the situation, or thought he had, Joe had clearly taken it back. “I was just hoping this would be the end of it,” James said.

  Joe relished the defeated tone he heard in James’s voice. “You’ll get me the name,” Joe said. “And when the time comes, you’ll help me disappear.”

  All that mattered to James at that moment was keeping his secret safe and going back to his life, back to his wife and his beautiful baby boy. “Then that’ll be the end of it?” James wondered.

  Joe smirked, which only made James feel even more uneasy about the arrangement than he had a moment earlier. “That’ll be the end of it,” Joe assured him.

  On the drive from Bar Harbor to Rockland with Hank Welch, Joe Tibbits was subdued. In three days, his life had changed. After searching in almost every village and town along the Maine coast for nearly two years, he’d basically stumbled across James Perkins in Bar Harbor, almost entirely by chance.

  He’d always assumed finding James would be the hardest part. He knew that once he sat down face-to-face with the former Edward Moody that he would have little trouble convincing him to help him. James Perkins was smart, he knew— after hearing his story, he was more certain of that than ever— but he wasn’t someone who was likely to give him any trouble. That assumption turned out to be accurate.

  Occasionally, as he drove down Route One, Joe glanced over at his passenger, who drifted in and out of sleep.

  After leaving James on Sunday afternoon, Joe spent the remainder of the day, and all of Sunday evening, with Hank Welch and Stan Darchik drifting from one bar to the next. For Joe Tibbits, it was a kind of private celebration. By the time they left on Monday, Hank was in no condition to engage in banter with Joe on the long drive home. As it turned out, Joe was grateful for the quiet; it gave him time to think.

  Somewhere along the drive back to Rockland, Joe came to a decision; while he would carefully follow James’s instructions for creating his new identity, he was in no great rush to disappear. For one thing, he decided he rather liked his life in Rockland. He enjoyed Hank Welch and most of his crew. The idea of leaving them behind and taking his chances with some other group didn’t appeal to him at all. As for Hank, he was a drunk and a bit of a fuck-up, but Joe enjoyed his company. Had Joe thought about it, he would have realized that Hank Welch was the closest thing he’d had to a friend in many years. But Joe Tibbits rarely thought about such things.

  Having Hank at his elbow when he went out at night was a good thing; Joe was less likely to get into trouble as long as Hank was nearby. If trouble was going to find him, it was most likely to do so on one of his excursions to Bangor. If he stayed away from the dance clubs in Bangor, and all the drunken little whores who frequented them, there was no reason to expect trouble. After all, they were almost always the cause of his problems. He just needed to steer clear of them for a few months, at least until he’d followed James’s instructions and created his new identity. Then, if trouble did find him, he’d have a chance at a fresh start somewhere else.

  Edward Moody had done it. He could, too.

  The other reason he’d decided not to follow through with the last item on the list was simple. For Edward Moody, the assumption that he’d drowned was the reason he could live his life with no one— except maybe Joe himself— searching for him. It enabled James Perkins to hide in plain sight.

  Joe realized that there could come a time when that would become necessary for him as well, which was why he’d been so obsessive about finding James Perkins. But Martin Beauchampe, the Augusta detective, didn’t know the identity of the man who had committed a series of rapes and assaults in and around Augusta a few years back. From the three women Beauchampe had interviewed, he had only a vague description of their assailant. If Beauchampe had more, Joe knew the detective would have caught up to him by now.

  Beauchampe had come close a couple of times; once just before Joe left Augusta before heading to Waterville, and once more just before Joe left Auburn, Joe’s first stop in his search for James Perkins. On that occasion, Beauchampe’s name had appeared in a newspaper article about an attack on a woman in the parking lot of a local bar. Joe vaguely remembered the girl, and he knew she was falling down drunk when he approached her; he doubted she was of much help to the police. Still, if Beauchampe was sniffing around it meant he suspected a connection between Joe’s past indiscretions and that one.

  Joe had already packed up his belongings and would have left Auburn a few days before his encounter with Jill Ouellette at Slick Willie’s were it not for the opportunity to stick it to Mike Cochrane, the little fucking midget of a foreman who irritated him on a daily basis. He doubted that Jill Ouellette would go to the police. She was one of those girls who had dressed a little too provocatively and had let a stranger buy her a few too many drinks. Combine that with the fact that her fiancé was a prick, and Joe Tibbits correctly assumed that she would tell no one of her encounter with him. Of course, if she ever did, and Cochrane was able to connect her attacker w
ith the man he’d fired that morning, the police would finally have a name to go with the vague description— and an equally vague sketch— of the violent man Martin Beauchampe had been pursuing for more than three years.

  That Joe was still free meant that none of that had happened and Detective Beauchampe was still out there scratching his head over a three year old case that seemed to have no end.

  Until the detective had a name, Joe Tibbits’ demise served no purpose.

  So for now, Joe would set up a new identity using the name James Perkins would provide, but until it became absolutely necessary to use it, he’d go on living in Rockland. When the time came, if it ever did, he could decide then whether Joe Tibbits had to die.

  26

  In The Presence Of Ghosts

  Anxious for the man to be out of his life for good, James focused his energy on finding an identity— or more accurately, a name— for Joe Tibbits. It meant finding a child who’d died prior to being issued a social security number. For that, he needed to search the obituaries, ideally for children who’d been born in the early 1960s. That would mean the child whose name he chose would be approximately thirty years old when Joe applied for a social security card. It was risky, James knew, but this time, it was someone else who was taking the risk. James was only supplying a name.

  He chose not to conduct his search in the local libraries on Mount Desert Island, and he concluded that even the larger library in Ellsworth was uncomfortably close to home. He decided to drive to Bangor the following Saturday morning to conduct his search there.

  It took him three hours to find a name that met his criteria.