by W.H. Harrod
Howard’s journey to the front door halted momentarily as he stopped to turn on the interior lights, revealing a pathway through the messy living room to the front hallway. A shudder ran up his spine as his hand reached forward to open the door to the same strange man who had approached him at the grave site hours earlier. Words escaped him as he confronted the casually attired, middle-aged, Caucasian male standing before him under the glaring front porch light, so he simply stood silently waiting, his despair apparent to the world.
The stranger spoke first, “Thank you for taking the time to see me during what must be for you a terribly painful experience. I promise not to keep you any longer than is necessary. May I come in?”
Howard moved aside to allow the stranger passage into his home. Not knowing the man’s intentions, he wondered if he erred in allowing him inside. Maybe the stranger intended to perform some mischief. But, it matter little. Howard didn’t care anyway—nothing could make him feel worse than he did right then.
The stranger walked into the center of the living room and took a seat on one of the two soft leather couches facing each other across a glass-topped coffee table. He didn’t bother to look back to see if Howard followed along behind. The stranger’s nervousness apparent, he sat with arms on his knees, clasping and rubbing his hands together. Howard’s barely functioning senses detected the man’s agitation as he came over to the couch across from the stranger and sat down.
Neither party seemed inclined to talk as they glanced furtively towards each other. The stranger broke the silence. “You don’t know me, and I’m not going to tell you my name. You will know why soon enough. I’m not from around here, and when I leave, you will never see me again. However, there are things I feel you need to know. I’ve told myself a hundred times on my way here to mind my own business and keep quiet about what I know. But in the end, I couldn’t. Whitney deserves better.”
Howard sat quietly unwilling to commit any of his dwindling emotional reserves to some strange man’s story. Yet, he nurtured hope that somehow this person might bring some sense to this craziness.
“Whitney was my dear friend. I came to know her soon after she left here and came to Dallas. She moved into the same condo complex I lived in,” said the stranger. “I—”
Howard came to life. “Dallas! Dallas? She was in Dallas all this time?” Even coming so late, it gave him relief to know where she’d been during all those painful months.
“Yes, Dallas,” answered the stranger. “I got to know her very well during that time.” He hesitated for a moment to regain his composure. “In fact, I may well have been her only friend during that entire period.”
Howard tried to make a comment, but the stranger cut him off.
“Please, let me finish my story first before you ask me anything. I know what needs to be told, and I don’t want to leave anything out. So please, be patient and bear with me.” The stranger collected his thoughts and started again. “The Whitney who arrived, hurt and outraged, in Dallas two and a half years ago wasn’t the same Whitney who took her own life last Monday night. Many things changed while she lived there, as many things happened. One thing, though, never changed. She loved you just as much the day she died as when she arrived there. I know this for a fact; she told me this only the week before she killed herself.”
Howard, upon hearing this, exhaled as if the last vestiges of life within him escaped his pounding chest.
The stranger again paused. “I never really knew what was going on until much later, and for that matter, neither did she. This is, I sincerely hope, the last time I’ll ever have to relate to another human being the details of such a sick and disturbing affair.” Having said this, the stranger sat back.
“This is going to take awhile, but there’s no short version of it. You and Whitney were the victims of an evil, self-serving bastard’s sordid scheme to destroy your relationship to serve his own purpose. As this story progresses, I believe you will begin to see the light. Many things that most likely confused you will become painfully clear.”
“Unless you’re a complete fraud, which I seriously doubt based on what Whitney told me about you, I’m sure you remember the brief affair you had with the beautiful young girl in Cancun in 1978. Right?”
Howard looked stunned. Color returned to his pallid skin tone. He had felt certain no one else knew about that.
The stranger nodded. “Good, I can see that you do. Well, you were set up from the start. You went to Cancun by yourself supposedly to gather information on property your company might be interested in purchasing in the future. While there, a beautiful young lady approached you, made your acquaintance, and then plied you with booze and proved that you weren’t a paragon of morality after all. She played you like a rube. Without your permission, she arranged for photographs to be taken of you two together sunning on the beach. I saw the pictures, by the way. You looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Later, you purchased the photographs and destroyed them, thinking that ended it, but it didn’t. Copies were saved for later use.”
All the color, plus more, returned to Howard’s face. His eyes glared as things started to come together.
“And later turned out to be November 1, 1978. You, no doubt, remember it as the day Whitney disappeared. She received copies of those photographs in the mail that day. That’s right. A large envelope from the resort where they were originally taken, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Douglas, contained an invitation for the happy couple in the photographs to return to this scene of connubial bliss for another exciting and romantic vacation during the coming winter months,” he said before pausing again. “Whitney later told me she actually fainted from the shock of seeing the photographs.”
“The worst was yet to come,” continued the stranger. “By an amazing coincidence, someone you’re very familiar with showed up at the door under the pretext of needing a company file you maintained at home. Finding Whitney experiencing a complete emotional breakdown, he offered to help in anyway he could. At first he insisted there must be some mistake, but after awhile conceded that even if the photographs couldn’t lie, she needed to give you another chance. He insisted that you were really a good person inside, and surely this, hopefully, single incident wouldn’t ruin your happy relationship.”
“By the way,” said the stranger as he halted his exposé, “if you doubt any part of this story, maybe this will convince you that I know what I’m talking about.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought forth two items. First, he produced a photograph showing Howard and the scantily clad young woman on the beach in Cancun. Then he handed Howard another photograph of the stranger and Whitney sitting together on a park bench. Although Whitney displayed a warm smile, Howard saw immediately that the spark typifying her zest for life was missing. Written on the photograph in Whitney’s unmistakable neat style was a message, “Thanks for being such a wonderful friend. Whitney.”
The stranger rested a moment as Howard stared at the photographs. “But,” he continued, “Whitney was inconsolable by this time. She felt violated. Nothing in her life made sense any longer. You, the one true source of love, trust, and loyalty in her life, turned out to be a fraud. She started ranting about running far away and never coming back. She never wanted to see you again, ever. She couldn’t possibly stay here any longer after what you did. She needed to go somewhere, anywhere.”
At this point, the stranger shook his head from side to side and displayed a look of incredulity. “And wouldn’t you know it. Guess who just happened to have a comfortable condo located in a large southern city totally furnished and available for her exclusive use at no charge for as long as she needed it? Why, he couldn’t bear the thought of such a good friend being driven out into this cold, lonely, and very dangerous world, if he could help it.”
The stranger sat back into the folds of the soft leather sofa and stared at Howard for the first time. “Pretty slick, huh? Send you away on business. Concoct some scheme to expose you as being a lying scumbag
. Show up just in the nick of time to help the innocent victim. Stash her, most willingly, in a comfortable nest in a big city hundreds of miles away, and then take his time getting down to the business of developing a very, and I mean very, close personal relationship with this totally disoriented, disillusioned, and most importantly, indebted young woman whose entire world had just collapsed around her.”
Howard’s face displayed an even deeper sense of anguish. The words crawling upward from the depth of his throat sounded more like a growl. “Richard? Richard? Of course, Richard! That greedy, weaseling little bastard would do something like that. Of course, he would; he has the ethics and morals of a pig. That son-of-a—”
“You may want to restrain yourself for a while longer because I’m not done by any means,” interrupted the stranger before Howard had time to get a good rant started. “Let me finish my story first. That was only the beginning. It gets even sicker. I’ll start with the fact that I know the company you work for is up to its ears in criminal activity. Your boss, Richard, and the companies he supposedly owns are nothing more than fronts for a powerful Mexican cartel that uses him and those companies to launder millions of dollars of drug, prostitution, and gambling profits. You spend most of your time finding business opportunities that will allow your employer to stash and later launder even more dirty money.”
“To your credit, you didn’t always know what you were involved with. In the beginning, they enticed you with a large salary, one much too large for a young man right out of graduate school with no experience in much of anything. And the perks: cars, expense account, country club, vacations, mixing with political high-rollers, you name it and it’s yours if you want it. They deceived you, but, eventually, you figured it out. Though by then, you knew too much. They couldn’t let you simply walk away. If you leave, you die. These people have no regard for human life. That’s what they deal in. So there you are, working for a scumbag crook who fronts for international criminals, and there you’re going to stay forever.”
“But how could you know this?” asked Howard before the stranger could begin again. “I mean, Richard wouldn’t have told you this, and how else could you have known it?”
“That brings us to the last part of my story,” said the stranger, “and very possibly, the saddest part. You’re right, Richard didn’t tell me this. As a matter of fact, I don’t think Richard is aware of who I am, at least I hope he isn’t. Whitney insisted that it be that way. But he did, over time, reveal some of his activities to Whitney, and she felt obligated to do as he requested and help him at times to at least partly repay him for maintaining her so comfortably in Dallas. She found out you were stuck here forever; she eventually found out everything. And knowing everything put her in the exact same fix that you were in. She couldn’t leave either. Not ever.”
After another lull, the stranger started again, but this time in a more subdued manner. “Although troubled, given her mentally depressed state, Richard’s activities really didn’t bother Whitney that much until she found out the worst. She learned he set you both up. She discovered how he contrived for her to find out about your brief affair by having the same woman he hired to get you drunk and entice you into her bed send photographs to your home using letterheads and envelopes stolen from the resort. She eventually learned everything. Richard, she discovered, was a liar and a crook and involved with the Mexican cartel.”
“You weren’t the only one who got set up like that. There were others. After Whitney accidentally discovered the relationship between Richard and a mysterious young lady in Cancun, she hired a private detective to go there and find out the truth. Then, when she learned that both of you were victims of Richard’s treachery and your lives forever ruined, she lost it. She became more and more despondent. She hated herself; she hated her life, and especially, her relationship with Richard. Even worse, she hated not being able to do anything about it, except, what she finally did. She waited until an entire continent separated her from the person she detested most in this world and until her only friend would be out of town for a couple of days, then she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, laid down on her bed, and waited for the pain to go away.”
The stranger sat back, signaling the end to his story and looking as if he expected Howard to go off on a screaming diatribe. But nothing happened. Neither man moved; rather, they sat quietly staring at one another without saying a word. Howard appeared to be entering into a state of shock. He couldn’t believe it; he now felt more pain than before. A stronger emotion fought its way to the surface—anger. So intense, he could taste the bile rising up from his churning stomach.
“Well, I’ve done what I needed to come here and do, and although I do regret that what I’ve told you makes your pain worse, somebody besides me needed to know the real reason for what happened to this sweet lady whom I’m certain never did anything to harm another person in her entire life. She deserved better than this, and even though I’m not normally a vindictive person, I figure that if there is anyone alive who has the responsibility to do something about this, it’s you. So, there it is. I’ve said what I needed to say, so I best get out of here and leave you to your business. As I said earlier, you’re never going to see or hear from me again, and for the record, I won’t be going back to Dallas.”
With that, the stranger rose from the couch and without waiting for a reply from Howard, headed for the door. Still in shock, Howard was unaware of the stranger’s sudden absence. When he recovered, he turned in time to see the back of the stranger come to a halt, only steps from the front door. The stranger mumbled something unintelligible, reached into his vest pocket, pulled out an envelope, and then turned and walked back to where Howard sat. Once there, he raised his hand holding an envelope and extended it towards Howard, saying, “If you should somehow manage to live through all this, which I seriously doubt, you should know about this. I salvaged it from the files I saw Richard attempting to destroy. I know in her heart this troubled Whitney for you not to know.” Then the stranger left, leaving Howard alone with his growing rage.
CHAPTER THREE