by G. M. Ford
The Catholic purity-and-innocence thing reared its head again in that part of her and wished she might have suffered more, that her first experience might have merely been a prelude to better, more mature things.
That wouldn’t have been true either. From that first moment, her passion had overflowed…and Ken…Ken was possessed, like Rosemary’s Baby or something, a human dynamo, moving her this way and that for this experience and that, until he ran out of fantasies and Helen took him in hand and introduced him to a few of hers. Like Ken had said: If the sex got any better than it was, they’d need a doctor in attendance.
She lay in bed and mused on the idea that new love and its attendant throes of lust were most generally visited upon the young for a reason…because the young were the ones most able to weather the disruption of their life patterns.
Ken rolled over, facing away from her now. She started to reach for the bedside phone, resisted the urge, and smiled to herself. Whatever was going on at Harmony House would just have to take care of itself. Mrs. Forbes and Mr. Hallinan knew what they were doing. They knew where she was. They had a contact number. She pulled the sheet tight beneath her breasts and remembered something her mother used to say: “The graveyard’s full of indispensable people.” Amen, she thought to herself.
The doorbell rang. Ken sat straight up in bed and checked the clock. Ten to eight, on a Sunday morning. “Probably that Irving guy,” Ken muttered as he threw his feet over the side of the bed. He threw a mock scowl her way.
Helen laughed. “He shadowed us,” she said.
“Guy needs to get a life,” Ken grumbled.
Irving…she couldn’t remember whether it was his first or last name…the guy who bought the house across the street from Harmony House. Seemed like every time they went outside together, he was there, raking the yard, cleaning out the flower beds, coasting back and forth on the front porch swing. Any excuse to cross the street and make eyes at Helen. Although he’d never admit it, Ken was seriously jealous. For her part, Helen was mildly flattered and genuinely amused.
She watched as Ken walked to the back of the bedroom door, to the hook where his yukata hung. Big blue-and-white koi swimming all over everything. He looked like a warrior as he tied the sash around his middle and pulled open the door. He looked her way, winked, and then closed the door behind himself. She listened to the sound of his bare feet on the hardwood floor.
Helen sat up, put her feet on the floor, and looked around for her clothes. The sight of her panties told her she needed to go shopping for something more enticing…not that Ken needed any enticing, but more as a matter of personal pride.
She carried her clothes and her purse into the bathroom. From her purse she drew a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. The way she saw it, they were nowhere near the leaving-things-at-each-other’s-house stage of things, so she came prepared.
She was working up a good foam when Ken knocked on the bathroom door. She rinsed and then rerinsed before speaking.
“Yes,” she said.
“I think you better come downstairs,” he said.
39
Randy was having an out-of-body experience, sitting in Ken’s kitchen, where he’d been so many times before, only this time he was drinking coffee, shooting the breeze with Ken and Ms. Willis, and watching an hour-long CNN Special Report about himself.
After the initial round of hugs and handshakes, Ken had gone back upstairs to get dressed. Feeling a need to relieve a somewhat awkward situation, Helen Willis had snapped on the TV. By the time Ken returned, they were hooked.
The TV rehashed the whole missing-astronaut thing, how the mission had nearly been scrapped only to be salvaged at the last minute. Went into detail as to what NASA engineers believed was responsible for the tragic reentry. Showed pictures of bits and pieces of the shuttle spread all over East Texas. They ran bios of the eight-person crew, interviewed surviving family members, most of whom had seemed genuinely dumbfounded about the sudden reappearance of Adrian Hope, while yet others had been angry…angry at having it all dredged up again, angry that Hope was alive while their loved ones weren’t. On one hand, the attitude didn’t seem any too charitable. On the other hand, Randy decided he didn’t blame them a bit. That’s when the words came creeping across the bottom of the screen. BREAKING NEWS. BREAKING NEWS.
Jump cut to a street scene. “CNN correspondent Marcia Lockwood reporting from Cocoa Beach, Florida.” Randy choked on his coffee. There it was…halfway down the block…432 Water Street. Police response vans had blocked the street off at both ends. Miles of yellow incident tape wound around 432 like ribbon on a package. “…a Cocoa Beach Police Department source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, has informed CNN that both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service are investigating the disappearance of a senior NASA project manager and his family from their home in the posh Beach Commons neighborhood of Cocoa Beach, Florida.”
A photo of the guy who lived at the house was inset into the screen. “Wesley Allen Howard, thirty-nine, his wife, Isobel, and their twin ten-year-old daughters, Tracy and Nicole.” Three smaller insets beneath his picture. “Neighbors have given the local police a description of this man…” Police artist drawing. Sinister looking. His general features but pretty generic. “…seen around the neighborhood over several recent days.”
Randy was still staring at the drawing when he felt their eyes.
“Not much of a likeness,” he said.
“Were…”
The voice-over was winding up. “Recent developments surrounding missing astronaut Adrian Hope beg the question as to whether these events might be in some manner related. Citing the sensitive nature of Mr. Howard’s job as well as national security concerns, neither the FBI nor the Secret Service is prepared to comment at this time. This is Marcia Lockwood, in Cocoa Beach, Florida, for CNN.”
Cut back to the Special Report. They were working their way through the vast array of conspiracy theories surrounding his sudden disappearance. Randy turned to Ken and Ms. Willis. The question was how much to tell them.
“Okay…” he began. “Here’s what happened after I left here.” He left Acey and his mama and Chester Berry and the drugs out of it. Other than that, he told it pretty much as he remembered it, for whatever that was worth. The way he told the story, it ended when he picked up the diary in the fallout shelter.
“What did it say?” Helen Willis asked.
He got to his feet and walked over to the floor next to the back door. He carried his Nike bag into the kitchen and set it on the counter. He pulled out the diary and handed it to her. “Just read the first line,” he said.
She must have thought he meant out loud. “‘If anyone should find this diary please…My name is Isobel Howard. I have lived in this house for the past seven years with my daughters, Tracy and Nicole, and a man whose real name I do not know.”
Ken looked confused. “So the guy on the TV…”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not Wesley Allen Howard.”
“No.”
“And you’re not Wesley either.”
“No.”
Randy fanned the pages of the diary and came out with the photograph.
“This, unless I’m mistaken, is the real Wesley Allen Howard.”
On the TV, Randy had been replaced by a weather bulletin. Big storm roaring in from the Pacific. High wind warnings. Flood watch issued.
They passed the photo back and forth a couple of times. Helen compared the writing on the back with the handwriting in the diary. “Looks like her handwriting,” she announced. Randy told her he thought so, too.
“So…where’s he?” Ken asked.
“Probably dead,” Randy said.
“Why?”
“Apparently he stumbled on something he shouldn’t have stumbled on.”
“At the space center?”
“According to her, Wes went in for his orientation on the first afternoon they were in Florida and n
ever came back.”
“So what did she do?” Helen Willis asked.
“She called the space center.”
“And?”
“Didn’t she call the police?” Ken asked.
“Never got the chance,” Randy said. “About five minutes after she called the space center, three men came to her house. Two stayed inside with her; one went out into the backyard with the girls, who were just short of three years old at the time.” He took a deep breath. “They laid it out for her. Wes wasn’t coming home. No explanation…just he wasn’t coming home. She could either deal with it or die, just that simple. She and the girls could either carry on without him or they kill all three of them right then and there.”
“She should have gone to the cops,” Ken said.
“She was young and scared,” Randy said. “She was terrified for her girls.”
“Where does the guy on TV come into it?” Helen wanted to know.
“About a week later, the same three guys show up with this new guy. They tell her he’s going to be the new Wesley Howard. They can make any arrangement they want between the two of them, but as far as the outside world is concerned, they’re just one big happy family. As long as the illusion lasts, they’re alive. The minute anything goes wrong, they’re dead.”
“I can’t believe she went along with it,” Ken said.
“There’s a final twist,” Randy said. “A week passes. She’s working her way up to going to the authorities when she gets a call from her parents. They want to come down and help them move into the new house. She tries to head them off, but they’re not having any of it. They pick up on the fact that there’s something wrong and are coming anyway.”
“And?”
“And they never make it.”
“How?”
“They had a car accident on the way to the airport. The local cops investigate, think it was an accident, pure and simple, but she knows better.”
“Which means they’re listening to her phone calls and that they’re serious about killing all of them,” Ken said.
“Exactly,” Randy said. “It also means that nearly everybody who knew the real Wesley Howard well enough to gum up the works was gone. Her whole support system was gone.” He pointed at the diary. “You can read it for yourself. She figures she’ll bide her time…wait for the right moment, and then get the hell out of there.”
“But it never comes,” Helen said.
“Their keepers are all over it. They appear to know everything. By now she’s getting paranoid. She imagines there’s one of them lurking behind every bush.”
“Can you blame her?” Helen blurted.
“The new Wes is a decent enough guy. He doesn’t try to sleep with her. Treats the girls nice. Weeks turn into months. As far as the outside world is concerned, they’re just Mr. and Mrs. Clean White America.” He could see the questions in their eyes, so he kept talking. “Over the years they get a dozen calls from people they knew way back when, but she fends them off with tales of being out of town and illness and such. You know how it is, you turn people down often enough, they stop calling.”
“Why?” Ken asked. “Why the whole…” He searched for a word. “Why the whole rigmarole of a new Wes and all that?”
“That’s the question, now, isn’t it?” Randy said.
“She never finds out? It’s not in the diary?”
“Nope.”
“What about you?” Ken asked.
“I’ve thought about it,” Randy said. “Carrying off the charade removes the possibility of the kind of investigation we were just watching on the TV. That way nobody has to explain what happened to Wes.”
Ken was nodding.
“Secondly, they’ve got a guy way inside a very secretive project. Somebody who can keep them in the project loop.”
“Why would that be important to them?”
He shrugged. “All I can think of is some kind of internal power struggle maybe. Something like that.” He made serious eye contact with both of them. “I don’t want to be this Adrian Hope guy.”
“I don’t blame you,” Ken said.
“I’m not looking for that much attention.”
“You can’t…” Helen sputtered. She frowned. “Can you?”
“I think maybe you can,” he said. “I was Paul Hardy for seven years and there wasn’t a problem. I spent the past week as Randy James and that worked.” He spread his hands. “Why can’t I be whoever I want to be?”
“Every reporter in the country is looking for you,” Ken threw in.
“Exactly,” Randy said. “I mean…I wouldn’t mind being Adrian Hope. He sounds like an interesting guy…if I could go back to being an astronaut…if I could remember any of the accomplishments that got me there…but I can’t…I haven’t got a history. If I knew what the reporters want to know, I’d call a press conference and tell ’em…but I don’t…I don’t have any idea what happened on the night Wes Howard disappeared, and as long as I don’t, I’m a pariah…some kind of curiosity…some kind of…”
“The assistant district attorney,” Helen began. “The one who ran your fingerprints through the FBI system.”
He winced. “What about her?”
“She knows who you are. She knows about Paul Hardy.”
“They’re going to figure it out,” Ken said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
40
You want to call who?”
“The person who gave me the glass,” Kirsten said.
“Why?”
“Because…”—Kirsten had to think about it—“because I feel like the fingerprints were given to me in confidence.”
“How can evidence be in confidence?” Gill wanted to know
“Evidence of what? You said it yourself. There’s nothing filed or pending. There’s no crime involved here.”
“And they weren’t given to you. They were given to this office.”
“No, Bruce…they were given to me.”
“And you work for me.”
He was getting angry. Kirsten worked on staying calm. “You’ve got a press conference scheduled,” she said. “I understand you want to have a nice big juicy bone to throw the press. I understand all that. The problem is that giving you the name is going to seriously disrupt the life of the person who gave them to me. The national media is going to descend like locusts. Life as these people know it is going to be over.”
“Comes with the territory,” Gill snapped. “If this person didn’t want—”
“And what about Adrian Hope?”
“What about him?”
“What about his privacy?”
“He forfeited his privacy when he put himself in the public eye.”
“You sound like a paparazzi.”
“Make the call. You feel like you have to make the call, then make it.” He waved a finger. “…but I want the damn name and I want it now.”
“I’ll call,” Kirsten said. “But I’m not promising anything.”
Bruce Gill threw her his most baleful stare, the one he used to intimidate juries, and then turned and left the room without another word.
Kirsten sat still and rigid behind her desk as she watched him stalk down the corridor toward his office. He stopped to say a few words to Gene Connor, his private secretary, and then resumed his “I’m pissed off and you better get out of my way” stomp toward the closed door at the end of the hall.
“I SHOULD NEVER have come back here,” he said. “I just didn’t know where else to go. This is the only place I actually remember.”
“It’s all just so…bizarre,” Helen said.
“I see that stuff on TV about how I came from someplace in Wisconsin. I saw a woman this morning who said she’s my aunt. She was talking about how I went to this college and that college…none of which I remember. It all sounds like somebody else’s life to me.”
“It’s still you, isn’t it?”
“How can you feel good about something you don’t remember?”
“What choice do you have?”
“The way I see it, I can live my life as Adrian Hope, go into seclusion and live like a hermit, or I can become somebody else and lead something like a regular life.”
“Maybe it will all come back to you one of these days.”
“And maybe it won’t,” he countered. “I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting for something that may not happen.”
She put her face in her hands. “Maybe you should go back to Wisconsin, see if maybe being there doesn’t bring something up for you,” she said.
He pointed at himself. “With this face?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I’d be a freak, a curiosity. The guy who used to be…”
“Who would you like to be?” she asked.
The question stumped him. “I…I really haven’t had time to think about it. Just some Joe, I suppose. Somebody nobody ever heard of…you know…living a regular life maybe, something like that.”
The phone rang. Helen crossed the room and picked it up. She’d lost weight since the last time he’d seen her. “Yes,” she said into the receiver, and then she listened and then listened some more. “I understand,” she said finally. “Yes. Thank you for calling. No, really, I understand.” She hung up.
She turned and looked at him. The news wasn’t good. That much was plain.
“That was the assistant district attorney.”
“The one who ran the prints for you?”
“Yes. Her name is Kirsten Kane.”
“What’d she want?”
“She has a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Her boss…the district attorney…”
“Bruce Gill?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen him on TV a bunch of times. He always looks like he’s enjoying the whole thing.”
“He’s demanding she tell him where the fingerprints came from.”
“And?”
“And she’s refusing…”
“But?”
“But she’s not sure how long she can keep it up. She works for him, after all. Sooner or later she’s going to have to give it to him.”