The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  When Tracy was confronted with Gloria’s penetrating gaze, she stammered, searching for the words to rescue her, but they eluded her. Then she broke down and began to weep uncontrollably.

  Gloria had pulled the information out of her at the time. She guessed most of it, and once she did Tracy confirmed her suspicions, as much with her weeping as with her words. Even when Tracy couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, Gloria could tell by Tracy’s tortured expressions when she’d guessed correctly.

  It all struck Gloria like a blow to the stomach. She felt ill, as if she were reliving the shock and the agonizing pain of that day three years earlier when she’d first lost him. For days after, she wandered through her life in a kind of trance.

  She considered driving to Maine to confront him, to show him that she knew what he’d done to her. She drifted from shock to despair to anger, and all of it was accompanied by the numbing sense of betrayal she felt knowing that the man she’d loved had gone to such great lengths to be rid of her. It enraged her that she’d mourned him; for weeks she slept fitfully, that thought often waking her from whatever semblance of peace she managed to find briefly in her dreams.

  During those weeks, her initial heartache and rage was reduced to a dull anger that came upon her only in waves, and then even that diminished until she was finally able to simply detach herself from it all. Then one day she woke with a feeling of liberation; she no longer had to mourn him. It was time to get on with her life. It was as if daylight had suddenly shined on her dark little world, and from that day on she decided to simply put Edward behind her for good.

  It was the day Tom Kendall remembered as the day Gloria came out of her fog and returned to him.

  Standing in the doorway, Gloria Moody managed to smile coolly at Kate, who looked up at her, her face stricken and pale. When Gloria finally spoke, her tone was surprisingly calm, even detached. “I’ve known for a while,” she said softly.

  Kate said nothing. She thought about denying it, but it was too late. The truth had already registered on her face, and she couldn't take it back.

  “You knew all along, didn’t you?” Gloria asked her. When she saw Kate’s devastated expression, she smiled warmly as if to console her. “It’s okay,” she assured her. “It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

  Kate was shocked by Gloria’s composure. It was not the reaction she would have expected from a woman who learned that her husband had deceived and deserted her.

  “How long have you known?” Kate asked.

  “Over a year,” Gloria said.

  Kate was so stunned she could manage only a single word: “How?”

  Gloria considered the question, trying to decide how much she wanted to share. “It was something Tracy said when she came by to say goodbye to me before she left for Florida. She didn’t mean to say anything. It just slipped out and then she panicked.”

  Kate suddenly understood why Tracy had left so abruptly; why she'd never said goodbye. Finally, it made sense.

  “You never said anything,” Kate said with astonishment.

  Gloria offered a faint smile, but it was laced with years of heartache. She shrugged. “There was nothing to say,” she said. “And no one to say it to.”

  “I’m so sorry!” Kate said. She averted her eyes, unable to look at Gloria’s face. “You must hate me,” she said.

  Gloria shook her head slowly. “No,” she said softly, her tone pensive, as if she was still wrestling with the decision. “I think I did at first, but not now.” She looked down at the floor, and she felt all the old heartache returning. She drew a deep breath, and looked again at Kate. “I have so many questions!”

  Gloria began to weep uncontrollably, and Kate moved toward her, opening the screen door and throwing her arms around her just as Gloria’s knees buckled beneath her. Kate led her to the sofa, and helped her onto it, and once Gloria began to regain her composure, Kate handed her a tissue and drew back.

  “Where do you keep the liquor?” Kate asked.

  Gloria dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “I don’t want anything,.” She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue.

  “I meant for me,” Kate said. She smiled and Gloria let out a quick nervous laugh, but it was quickly consumed by more sobbing.

  The two women spent hours together in the living room. They emptied a bottle of wine, and they talked about Edward, Kate answering Gloria’s questions with as much detail as was necessary to satisfy her— and to cleanse her own guilty conscience— and nothing more. She offered nothing that was not asked of her, and even then, she was certain that her brother would be angry with her for sharing anything at all with Gloria. But Gloria already knew the truth. She’d known for more than a year and she’d said nothing; she'd kept his secret. Kate doubted that anything she told Gloria now would change that.

  Finally, after Kate had explained everything she thought Gloria could bear to hear, Gloria looked down at the envelope on the table. “It said in the letter that he’s married,” Gloria said.

  “It’s true,” Kate confessed.

  Gloria looked pitifully at her. “Have you met her?”

  Kate nodded.

  Gloria drew a deep breath. “What’s she like?”

  Kate was not surprised by the question. She was surprised only that Gloria hadn't asked it earlier. Still she was somehow unprepared for it. She looked at Gloria’s red eyes, and she thought about all the years of heartache she and Edward had inflicted upon her with their deception— his deception. She once thought that the discovery that Edward was dead and the period of mourning that followed would be the worst of it for Gloria. Now she could see that this was far worse for her. She’d faced not only the loss of her husband but the discovery that his death— and even a good part of his life with her— had been a lie. It was a grief that Kate could not even begin to imagine. Yet somehow, Gloria had managed to push the rage and the crippling sense of betrayal aside and rebuild her life, and Kate could see even through the veil of tears that Gloria had become a stronger person.

  James Perkins had once observed that Jean Berkhardt had a grace that Gloria only strived for but never achieved. Had he seen Gloria that day, and known how nobly she’d carried this secret—his secret— he would have seen he was mistaken.

  Kate considered all of this, and finally, she looked at Gloria compassionately. “She’s a lot like you,” she said.

  Gloria tried to smile, aware of the irony. “That figures.”

  As the afternoon passed, Kate felt a renewed connection to Gloria, knowing that Gloria knew the secret Kate had kept— even if she didn’t know Kate’s role in carrying out the deception— and had somehow forgiven her.

  Finally, they shared a long silence as all they discussed that morning seemed to wash over them. Gloria gazed pensively at Kate, one final question still pulling at her.

  “Is he happy?” Gloria finally asked. Even as she spoke the words, she realized she was uncertain if she wanted to hear the answer.

  Kate considered the question. “Up until this guy, Joe Tibbits, showed up, I think he was. But not this week.”

  “Because of this?” Gloria asked, touching the envelope.

  Kate nodded. “And supposedly, there was a second letter,” Kate told her. “To a police detective. If it’s true, he could be in a lot of trouble.”

  Gloria looked down at her coffee, slowly stirring it, seemingly entranced by the swirl of brown liquid in her cup. When she spoke, her voice was soft and vacant. “I used to wish that on him,” she said. She didn’t dare to look at Kate; she didn’t want to see the disapproval in Kate’s eyes. Had she looked, she would have found none there.

  Kate said nothing. She was still looking at the envelope on the table when Gloria finally looked up at her.

  Gloria picked up the envelope and offered it to Kate. “Take this,” she said. “I don’t want to look at it again.”

  Kate took the envelope from her. “Is it okay if I read it?” />
  Gloria nodded.

  Kate removed the letter from the envelope. It was written on a sheet of lined paper that had been torn from a spiral notebook. The handwriting was crisp and neat. Kate frowned as she read the words, scratched in a neat, rigid hand.

  Dear Gloria,

  I’m sending you this letter because I wanted to tell you about a mutual acquaintance. His name is James Perkins and he lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine with his pretty wife and his little boy. You probably know him better as Edward Moody, your not-so-late husband.

  I’m telling you this because he screwed me over just like he screwed you over. I’m sorry that you were married to such a lying son of a bitch.

  Maybe I’ll stop in to see you on my way south so we can talk some more.

  See you soon,

  Joe Tibbits

  “He gives me the creeps,” Gloria said.

  “From what Edward told me about him, he should,” Kate told her, as she folded the letter and returned it to the envelope.

  A concerned expression washed over Gloria’s face. “Do I need to worry about him showing up here?” she asked. “He obviously knows where I live?”

  Kate shook her head. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “Because he’s dead.”

  33

  The Second Letter

  The second letter took longer to find Detective Beauchampe. When the Augusta Detective learned of Joe Tibbits’ death on Monday, he drove to Bar Harbor to see for himself. Joe Tibbits had eluded him for four years; Beauchampe suspected Tibbits of at least seven rapes. He correctly believed there were several more that had gone unreported, and nearly as many assaults, mostly women, during that time. Who knows how many there were before Beauchampe started searching for him?

  He never had a good description until the Rockland townie sat with the sketch artist. They’d come up with a remarkable likeness of the man considering she was recalling him from their brief conversation in the club in Bangor, and from their even more brief encounter in the parking lot later. Two other women, seeing the sketch in the newspaper had come forward, each of them telling the authorities what he’d done to them. And all of them said that he’d told them his name was Joe; none of them could recall his last name, if he’d ever told them.

  Ernie Pike didn’t recognize Joe Tibbits when he looked at the sketch, but his wife thought he looked familiar. It took her a few days before she remembered the friendly man who’d sat down beside her on the bench the night her husband was attacked in Rockland after the Lobster Festival a year earlier. She had no reason to suspect the man she’d met as being the man who had brutally beaten her husband that evening, but the time of his appearance and the story in the newspaper gave her enough reason to mention it to the police. In her case, she couldn’t provide even a first name, but the face was familiar.

  It wasn’t until days later, when the picture and an article ran in the Lewiston Sun Journal that there was finally a break in the case. Mike Cochrane sat cursing at the sketch when his wife Jill came into the kitchen.

  “Un-fuckin-believable!” he shouted.

  “What?” Jill asked.

  “I know this fuckin’ asshole,” he said, jabbing a squat finger at the sketch of the man he’d fired a year-and-a-half-earlier.

  Jill came up behind him and, wrapping her arms around him, peered over his shoulder at the sketch on the front page of the paper. The face that stared back at her made her shudder. She gasped, causing her husband to look at her curiously.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  She studied the picture, certain it was the same man she’d met at Slick Willy’s; the man named Joe who had charmed her, danced with her, fed her multiple drinks and then raped her next to the dumpster behind the bar.

  “You know him?” she asked her husband incredulously.

  “He worked on my crew for about a month or two a while back. He was a prick and he mouthed off to me so I fuckin’ fired him.”

  “Do you remember his name?” she asked. She tensed as she waited for the answer.

  “I’ll never forget it. Joe Tibbits,” he said. “I’m not surprised he turned out to be a scumbag.” He continued to read the article, unaware that his wife had turned pale and had begun to cry. Mike Cochrane noted that the police referred to the man in the sketch as ‘Joe’, but didn’t seem to have a last name. “I’m gonna call the cops and tell ‘em his last name.” He reached for the phone and was about to lift the receiver when he felt his wife’s hand upon his. He turned and looked at her, and he saw that she was crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  Jill closed her eyes, and drew a long deep breath and let it out slowly. She looked hard at her husband, trying to summon the courage to tell him what she’d been hiding from him since that night that she danced with the stranger in Lewiston, the man named Joe whose face she'd hoped to forget but now glared back at her from the sketch in the newspaper on her kitchen table. She thought she could keep the events of that night buried forever, but she suddenly realized that she could never be completely free of Joe Tibbits until she told her husband what had happened that night. She took another long, deep breath and let it out even slower than the first.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  It was the subsequent phone call from Mike Cochrane that finally provided the police with the last name of the suspect that Detective Beauchampe had been pursuing for nearly four years. By then, having seen the sketch in the paper, Joe Tibbits had already driven to Bar Harbor to seek the help of the one man he knew who could not only make Joe Tibbits disappear for good, but could also put the events in motion so they would all stop looking for him.

  Throughout his search those past four years, Detective Beauchampe had frequently dreamed of the day he'd finally catch up with Joe Tibbits. When at last he learned his last name, he was sure he was close, and he looked forward to confronting the man and forcing him to admit what he’d done. Then, on Monday, he received a phone call he hadn’t anticipated; they’d just pulled Joe Tibbits’ body from Frenchman’s Bay. Now, as Beauchampe stood over Tibbits’ disfigured body, he was surprised at the mix of emotions he felt; he was relieved Tibbits was dead, but he felt cheated out of that confrontation he’d been imagining for nearly four years.

  He met with the local authorities in Bar Harbor, sharing what he knew of Joe Tibbits’ violent history and the women who had identified him. Afterward, he walked to the pier and looked out beyond the islands at Frenchman’s Bay where the man who had been his obsession for so long had finally met his violent end. He hoped Tibbits had seen it coming; that he’d felt the same terror his victims had felt, even if only for a few seconds. Beauchampe hoped Joe Tibbits realized in time for it to register in his mind that he was about to die.

  He spent that day and the next in Bar Harbor, and then he took a leisurely drive down the coast. He stopped in Rockland, where Joe Tibbits had spent the last year, and he found Hank Welch, who had been Joe Tibbits’ foreman and only real friend during his stay there.

  Hank had already read about his friend’s tragic death in the newspaper, and he was stunned to learn of Joe’s violent history.

  “Hard to believe,” Hank told Detective Beauchampe. “He seemed like a decent guy.”

  Beauchampe considered how many times he’d heard that exact phrase about Joe Tibbits. Even those women who had described the violence he’d leveled upon them commented that, right up until the moment he attacked them— and beaten, strangled and raped them— Joe Tibbits had seemed like a decent guy.

  It was Beauchampe’s slow ride down the coast, piecing together the last year of Joe Tibbits’ life that caused the letter to take five days to find him. When he returned to his desk on Friday morning, he found it amid a pile of other envelopes of various sizes. It was addressed to him in a neat, measured script, and although there was no return address, the Bar Harbor postmark caught his attention. It was m
ailed on the day Joe Tibbits’ body was found.

  On Saturday afternoon, James Perkins was sitting at home with William while Jean worked at the gallery. He spent the morning as he’d spent so many Saturday mornings; he saw Jean off to work, fed William his breakfast and then took his son and Max for a walk into town. Neither of his companions were remotely aware of the sadness that weighed upon him as he strolled through town. There was so much about his life that he loved, not just his wife and his son and even his dog, but all of it. He studied the bright shining storefronts on Main Street as if he were trying to memorize them. He paused and looked out over the harbor, letting the morning sun warm his face as he breathed in the familiar scent of the sea.

  On his way back, Lucky Meeks emerged from the doorway of the market with a basket of apples which he placed on the table beneath the familiar green awning that shaded the vegetables from the Maine sun, and he waved at James. Lucky disappeared inside and returned with a slice of bloody roast beef for Max, just as he’d done every time they visited for the last three years.

  He playfully poked William’s pudgy belly, making him giggle. “And you, my little friend, are getting so big!”

  They stood together on the sidewalk, Lucky sharing some of the local gossip, eventually landing on the subject of the man whose body had been found on Monday. Joe Tibbits' death, and the stories of the wake of violence he’d left behind him, was discussed on street corners all over Mount Desert Island. Like Lucky, James had seen the newspapers, and he’d read the stories of Joe Tibbits last years with a growing sense of revulsion over what the man had done and guilt for whatever role he might have had in Tibbits remaining free this last year.

  As he parted company with Lucky Meeks, he shook the grocer’s hand more firmly and held onto it a bit longer than he'd intended. He wondered if this would be his final trip through this small village that had been his home these last three years.