The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  After lunch, he sat on the sofa with William at his side and Max dozing nearby when the doorbell rang. He didn’t need to open the door to know who it was.

  The man who greeted him wasn’t at all what James had been expecting. He was a short, stocky man with curly brown hair that was thinning on top, and his paunch protruded slightly over his belt, but not so far that it concealed the buckle. He was dressed in dark slacks and a white button-down shirt which was covered by an ill-fitting dark blue sport coat. He peered up at James Perkins assessing him without emotion.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the man said. “Are you James Perkins?”

  “Yes,” James said.

  The man reached into his pocket and removed his badge, holding it out for James to see. “I’m Detective Martin Beauchampe from Augusta,” the man said. “I wonder if we might have a word.”

  If James had held out any last fleeting hope that Joe Tibbits had been bluffing about the letter to Beauchampe, that hope evaporated in an instant. These last days of worry and grief over what he was about to lose had come down to this. His brief happy life in Southwest Harbor was about to come to an end, and he felt helpless to prevent it.

  He was surprised to find that with the moment having finally arrived— with the outcome inevitable— that all of his choices became clear. He’d wondered all week what he would say to the detective when he arrived. He considered all his options. But suddenly he knew; he would tell him the truth. He would tell him everything, not because he thought it might save him, but because he was, quite simply, tired of keeping the secret. He’d done what was necessary to protect his family— to protect everyone— from Joe Tibbits. Now, he would take whatever punishment came his way, even if it meant losing everything.

  James invited Beauchampe inside, and the two men returned to the living room where William was laying on the sofa, fussing a bit and resisting sleep. James pointed to the armchair at the near end of the sofa and asked the detective to have a seat. James sat on the sofa and gently placed his hand on William’s back. Under the touch of James’s hand, William relented and closed his eyes.

  Beauchampe smiled. “Handsome boy,” he said as he sat down.

  “Do you have kids?” James asked him.

  “Two,” Beauchampe said. “A boy and a girl. Both grown.”

  James touched his son’s hair, the sadness evident on his face.

  “Mr. Perkins,” the detective began. “I wonder if you’ve ever heard of a man named Joe Tibbits.”

  James regarded his guest calmly. “Everyone on the island has heard of him,” he replied.

  Detective Beauchampe waited, studying James’s expression, waiting for it to change. “Of course,” he conceded. “But did you know him personally?”

  James looked down at his sleeping son. “Yes,” he said. “We worked together a couple summers back in Gardner. Construction. Just for a couple months.”

  “Were you friends?” the detective asked.

  James shook his head. “No,” he said. He made an expression like the thought of it was distasteful. “Just on the same crew. As far as I could tell, he didn’t have any friends.”

  Detective Beauchampe observed him again. He allowed James’s answers to linger for a bit each time he spoke, an old habit; the guilty ones often rattled on. James didn't. “When was the last time you saw him?” he asked, fully expecting James to lie.

  The moment had arrived, James thought. “Saturday night,” he admitted.

  Beauchampe was surprised by the admission. He’d expected James Perkins to deny knowing Joe Tibbits, or at the very least, to be evasive. “Can you tell me about that visit?”

  “He came to see me earlier in the day to ask for my help with something,” James began. “I went to see him in Bar Harbor on Saturday night to tell him ‘no’.”

  “What did he want you to help him with?” Beauchampe asked.

  “He wanted me to help him get out of some trouble.”

  “And you told him ‘no’?”

  James was unaware that he was slowly stroking his son’s hair, but Beauchampe watched his hand. His touch was light, relaxed; not that of a man who had something to hide.

  “Not at first,” James said. “But when I went to see him on Saturday night, I told him I wouldn’t help him.”

  “You said you two weren’t friends,” Beauchampe said.

  “That’s right.”

  “So why would he drive all the way up here from Rockland to ask you for help if you weren’t friends?”

  It was a reasonable question, James thought. “He thought he could bully me,” he said.

  “And why would he think that?”

  James and Detective Beauchampe looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. James was prepared to tell him everything, but there was one thing he needed to know first. “Can I see the letter?” he asked.

  Beauchampe hadn't mentioned the letter. He wondered how James knew of it. It had the hint of an admission of guilt. Still, the detective found himself considering the request. His forearms rested on the arms of his chair; they didn’t move. “I’d like to know why he felt he could bully you,” he said.

  “I’m pretty sure the answer’s in the letter,” James said. “May I see it?”

  Beauchampe weighed the decision for a full minute. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t consider disclosing the contents of the letter— not yet, anyway. He would have let Perkins squirm a while, incriminate himself, or catch him in an outright lie. Then he’d spring it on him. But there was nothing ordinary about this case, and there was something in James Perkins’ manner that led Beauchampe to ignore what was customary and trust his instincts.

  He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and removed an envelope. He held it for a moment, regarding the man across from him, still weighing his decision, then he tossed the letter onto the coffee table between them.

  James picked up the envelope and removed the letter. He unfolded it and drew a deep breath as he read Joe Tibbits’ final written words.

  Dear Beauchampe, you frog piece of shit!

  In Southwest Harbor you’ll find a man named James Perkins. If you’re reading this, it means he fucked me over, so I’m giving him to you as a gift.

  Back in 1990, a guy from Rhode Island named Edward Moody fell off his boat and they never found his body. That’s because Edward Moody and James Perkins are the same guy.

  I hope you fuck him over good!

  Your old friend,

  Joe Tibbits

  James read the letter twice. As Joe had promised, the letter to Detective Beauchampe left no doubt that James Perkins was really Edward Moody, but he was relieved that it made no mention of Joe’s visit to Bar Harbor the previous year, when he’d blackmailed James into explaining how to go about creating the new identity that Joe Tibbits would adopt. It seemed a small victory, but given that a detective who knew of his deception was sitting across from him in his living room, small victories were more than he could possibly expect.

  James slowly folded the letter and inserted it back into the envelope, placing it back on the coffee table between them. The two men stared at each other without speaking for a long time.

  “It’s an interesting letter,” Beauchampe finally said.

  James nodded.

  “Is it true that you’re Edward Moody?” Detective Beauchampe asked him.

  “Yes,” James said. “That’s true.” He pointed to the letter resting on the coffee table. “And now you know why he assumed he could bully me.”

  During the long drive from Augusta to Southwest Harbor, he’d imagined asking that question, and he’d become prepared for an elaborate lie. But to the detective’s great surprise, James Perkins appeared to be calmly telling him the truth about what he knew. He found himself liking the man.

  “He threatened to expose you,” Beauchampe said.

  “When we worked together in Gardiner, he figured out who I was, and what I did.
He came to see me on Saturday and he asked me to help him pull off the same thing. He said he wanted to disappear.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He didn’t have to,” James said. “That sketch was in all the papers. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was him. When he showed up a couple days later and asked me to help him disappear, I knew for sure.”

  “Did you originally agree to help him?” Beauchampe asked.

  “At first,” James said. “I needed to buy some time to figure out what to do. But if any of what was in the papers was true, there was no way I could help him.” He looked down at his sleeping son; the sound of his slow breathing calmed him. “When I went to see him on Saturday night, I told him I couldn’t help him, and that’s when he told me that he put that letter in a mailbox somewhere on the island, and that if I didn’t go through with helping him escape, the letter would go out to you and my life would basically be over.”

  “How were you supposed to help him?” the detective asked.

  “He told me he was going to rent a kayak on Sunday afternoon. He wanted me to pick him up after dark in Frenchman’s Bay and bring him to shore. When they found his kayak the next day, everyone would assume he drowned, and he’d leave the state and live under another name.”

  “Just like you did.”

  James nodded.

  “Were you driving the boat that ran him down?” the detective asked.

  “No,” James answered truthfully.

  Again, Beauchampe studied him for a long time. He looked again at James’s hand lightly stroking his son’s hair. “Can you account for your whereabouts at that time?”

  “What time?” James asked.

  “Where were you on Sunday night?”

  “I had dinner at Francisco’s with my wife and my boss, Peter Langston, and his wife, Annie."

  “Until when?”

  “About ten o’clock or so.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we went home,” James said.

  “You and your wife?”

  “That’s right.” James frowned at the detective. “You think I ran him down?”

  “You have to admit, it seems damned convenient,” Beauchampe said.

  James shook his head slowly. “Hardly.”

  For the first time, Detective Beauchampe appeared surprised. “You don’t think it’s awfully convenient that Joe Tibbits threatened to expose your secret and then he turns up dead?”

  “As I said, he already put the letter in a mailbox somewhere. I looked but I couldn’t find it. If he wasn’t bluffing, and we know now that he wasn’t, that means that the only chance I had of keeping my secret was if I got that letter back. I either had to help him, which I wasn’t about to do, or try to talk him into telling me where the letter was.”

  Detective Beauchampe considered the story carefully. “He would have been pretty angry after you stood him up. Do you really think you could have talked him into giving you the letter?”

  James looked down at the letter on the coffee table and shook his head. “I doubt it, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t live with myself if I helped him get away so he could hurt more people. I finally decided to just let things happen and see how they played out.”

  Detective Beauchampe had been on the force for twenty-seven years. He’d been a detective for more than half of that, and during that time he’d sat face-to-face with dozens of people who desperately tried to convince him of their version of the truth. Most of them failed, mainly because he always assumed the person sitting across from him was guilty, and given enough time, and enough questions, they would usually stumble and prove him right.

  In Beauchampe's opinion, James Perkins had already stumbled. If he'd truly wanted to reason with Joe Tibbits, he would have met him out on the water. He wouldn't have enjoyed a leisurely dinner with friends while Tibbits drifted in a kayak on Frenchman's Bay, growing more agitated by the minute. To the detective, that was the action of a man establishing an alibi, knowing that Joe Tibbits' fate was already a foregone conclusion.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Moody,” he finally said. “Why did you fake your death?”

  James shrugged. “That’s a much longer story,” he said.

  “I’ve got nowhere I have to be,” Beauchampe assured him.

  For the next thirty minutes, James explained his life leading up to his disappearance; how he’d felt hopeless and trapped in a life he didn't want. He explained how he’d initially conceived of the idea of walking away from his old life and starting a new life somewhere else under a new name. What had seemed like a romantic notion at the time had come to consume him until he decided to go ahead with it.

  He described exactly how he’d established his new identity, and how he’d carried out his ‘escape’, as he called it.

  “So you had help,” Beauchampe said.

  James paused, but decided to disregard his question; he wasn’t about to incriminate Kate, and he didn’t want to lie. Instead, he continued with his story. He told Beauchampe about his first weeks and months after leaving Rhode Island, and his old life, behind. He described the day Joe Tibbits came to sit down beside him on a work site with a newspaper, which turned out to be several weeks old, and how Joe had tried to bait him into a discussion about Edward Moody’s disappearance. And he talked about leaving that job to go to work for Peter Langston in Bar Harbor.

  He told the detective everything about his new life; his relationship with Ruth Kennedy, who had been like a mother to him, and his love for Jean Berkhardt and for his son, who was still sleeping at his side.

  When he finally finished, he drew a deep breath and looked off into the distance. At first he focused on nothing at all, and then his eyes fell on the framed photographs of Jean and Christina that Del Miller had taken at his studio. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but barely two and a half years had passed. A faint smile appeared on his face, but it vanished as quickly as it had come as he realized that this life he’d come to treasure had come to an end. He’d confessed everything. There was nothing left to say.

  Detective Beauchampe followed James’s gaze and he stood up and crossed the room to get a closer look at the photographs. In addition to those from Del Miller’s studio were several pictures of William. There were a few studio portraits of William alone, but most of the pictures were of Jean and James with their son. There was even one photograph that included Christina, all four of them gathered in front of the fireplace on Christmas Eve, smiling joyfully amid the colored lights and the decorations. It was taken just a few short hours before James had come upon Christina in William’s room, when she confessed that she was going away. He discovered that night how much pain she was concealing from them, none of which was visible in her bright and beautiful face in the photograph.

  “This is a beautiful family,” Beauchampe remarked as he looked at that picture. When he finally turned around, he saw the sadness in James Perkin’s face.

  At that moment, William began to stir, and James lifted him into his lap and leaned forward and kissed him on top of his head, lingering a moment to breathe in the scent of the boy’s hair.

  Detective Beauchampe crossed the room and stood across from James, peering down at him without betraying the thoughts that were going through his mind.

  The time had come, James thought. “So what happens now?” he asked, believing he knew. He swallowed hard.

  The detective considered the question for an excruciatingly long time, as if he was still wrestling with a decision. “I need to go fill out a report,” Beauchampe finally said.

  James frowned, suddenly confused.

  There was another long pause as the detective considered what he was about to do. “Mr. Perkins,” Beauchampe said. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. He waited until he was sure he had James's attention. "Are you listening to me?"

  James nodded. "Yes," he said, but the word made barely a sound.

  "Good," Beauchamp
e said. He glanced again at James's hand upon his son, and then looked back at James and drew a long, deep breath, a look of resignation washing over his face. “Let me start by telling you that, as far as I’m concerned, this conversation never happened.” He looked hard at James. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure,” James said.

  “We never had this conversation,” Beauchampe repeated. “I was never here.”

  James nodded but didn’t speak.

  “And because I was never here and we never had this conversation, you understand that what I’m about to say to you didn’t happen either.” He waited for James to acknowledge him this time.

  “Okay.”

  “Good,” Beauchampe said. “First thing is that I don’t approve of what you did, and as a police officer, I’m obligated to arrest you.”

  Again, James swallowed hard. He felt his heart begin to pound so hard in his chest that he was certain both Beauchampe and William, even in his state of half-sleep, could hear it.

  “Funny thing about that, though,” Beauchampe continued. “Every time I think about doing that, I think about that letter." He glanced quickly at the envelope on the coffee table and back at James's face. "Tibbits was a ruthless piece of filth that hurt a lot of people, and I wanted more than anything in the world to catch him and make him suffer for what he did. I met several of the women he attacked, and I listened to them tell me what he did to them, and I’m here to tell you that there’s no way he could have ever suffered enough.”

  James heard the detective’s voice shake as he recalled his conversations with those damaged women.

  “I’m a pretty good judge of people, Mr. Perkins. In my line of work, I have to be. I’ve learned to trust my instincts, and my gut tells me that you’re being honest with me.” He tipped his head as if he was reconsidering that last thought. “For the most part,” he added. “I don’t think you were driving the boat that carved up ol’ Joe Tibbits, but I'm fairly certain you know who did.” Before James could speak, Beauchampe put up his hand to stop him. “I’d rather you didn’t say any more about that,” he said.