by Tim Kizer
“Al, it’s been four days. She and Tony would never have left for four days without telling us,” objected Ron. “When someone is missing for that long, it’s time to worry.”
“Time to worry? I know her very well,” Albert said. “She loves having a good time. And Tony likes to hang out with her, you know that. If you want to find Kelly, let’s check Cancun first.”
“Why didn't she tell us she was leaving?” asked Graham. “Why didn't she tell her husband?”
“She doesn't give a shit about Frank. And it seems like she doesn’t give a shit about us, either. Maybe she’s bipolar. Who knows?”
They didn’t listen to him. They wanted to worry and began doing just that with gusto. Josephine, with her penchant for voodoo crap, claimed she had actually sensed Kelly getting murdered the day she had gone missing.
“I still have a headache when I think of her. It has to mean something,” she said. “Her life must be in danger.”
“Come on, people!” Albert said. “I’m sure she'll be back pretty soon, stop being such worrywarts.”
“I’m very worried,” said Josephine. And then Graham suggested a theory that caused Albert to laugh. Graham thought that Kelly could have been murdered by Frank. Yes, that Frank, her husband.
After hearing Graham blame Frank—a chickenshit who was afraid of his own shadow—for Kelly’s disappearance, Albert almost fell from the chair.
“You’ve watched too much Law and Order,” he told Graham. “Guys like Frank don’t run around killing women. You, of all people, should know that.”
“Men kill their wives all the time,” remarked Josephine. “Jealousy, life insurance, stuff like that.”
“I’ve met this moron,” Albert said. “He’s a coward. He won't hurt a fly.”
“How do you know this?” asked Graham. “When a woman goes missing, the first person the police suspect is usually her husband. I don’t see how this case is different.”
“Call it a hunch.”
No, they didn't listen to him. And he couldn’t help laughing: Frank had murdered Kelly? This mild-mannered paper pusher who wouldn’t dare stand up to a pair of twelve-year-old muggers had taken a human life? You’ve got to be kidding.
No, Frank wouldn’t have run the risk of going to jail; this guy was too used to comfort to have committed murder. Frank would piss his pants at the mere idea of killing a human being. He probably wouldn’t even have the balls to skin a rabbit.
However, if it turned out Frank had indeed murdered Kelly—such a possibility still existed after all—he’d have to pray that he was dead by the time they laid their hands on him.
Chapter 9.
CATALYST
1.
Frank stood in front of the misted mirror over the sink and started wiping it lazily with his right hand until he was able to see the reflection of his face.
Last night he had called Josephine and asked her to come over his house the next morning.
“Sure, Frank,” Josephine replied in an enthusiastic voice. “What are we going to do?”
Frank thought of saying, ‘Let’s get naked and party,’ but quickly discarded this idea.
“I need your help, Josephine,” he said instead. “I want you to help me remember Kelly.”
He was lying, of course. His real intention was to try and get in the good graces with Josephine, who had to be pissed off by his reluctance to see a psychiatrist: Frank had told her that he needed more time to make up his mind. This little tête-à-tête was an attempt to humor his sister-in-law.
He had to stun her with his dedication to the cause. Psychiatrist was out of the question; Frank didn’t feel like having mind tricks played on him. No psychiatrists. But in order to please Josephine, he was going to suggest the next best thing. Only, he had a very vague idea what it would be.
What could substitute him going into therapy? What was persuasive and didn't take too much time? He had decided to invite Josephine to his place and give her a chance to become instrumental in his memory recovery. She was supposed to see he cared about her sister, right? It meant he’d have to waste a whole hour or two, but he was fine with that. Josephine would get ecstatic; she would apologize for harassing him; she would see that he loved Kelly more than life and was doing his best to find her. Frank was going to make her an active participant in his quest for lost memories. No doubt it would please her a lot.
“I'll do whatever I can,” replied Josephine.
“It looks like I started remembering.” He gave her another reason to be proud of him.
“What did you remember? Did you remember Kelly?”
“I remembered meeting Kelly for the first time. It happened in Saint Pete Beach four and a half years ago.”
“I’m so glad your memories are coming back to you! Yes, you did meet in Saint Pete Beach. Did you remember anything else?”
“We were both on vacation when we met. It was late August.”
“Excellent! What else?”
“I remembered your father. George Frey.”
“Anything else?” Frank could hear satisfaction in Josephine’s voice.
“Our wedding.”
“Wonderful! Is that all?”
Damn, Josephine was insatiable! Did she even realize what a breakthrough he’d had in his battle with amnesia?
“Yes, that’s all so far.”
“I’m so proud of you, Frank. You’re doing a great job.”
They had agreed to meet at noon, an hour from now.
Frank winked to his reflection. He had recently admitted to himself that his situation did have a bright side. On the one hand, amnesia wasn’t something he enjoyed, but on the other hand, it helped him delete six years worth of bad and useless memories from his mind. For instance, he had forgotten his wife, whom he had evidently stopped loving a while ago; otherwise, he wouldn’t have started seeing Marilyn, right? Frank was not surprised that the love had died; judging by her family, he had made a mistake when he had married her.
Yes, it was perfectly fine that he’d forgotten Kelly and liberated himself from the dead weight that she was. Millions of men and women would pay big bucks to undergo the same memory purging as he had, so he could consider himself lucky in this regard.
Leaving the bathroom, Frank thought about Marilyn, who had visited him last night to check how he was doing. They didn’t have sex since Frank felt mentally exhausted so they just watched TV, drank wine, and chatted. He asked her if they had discussed Kelly before he’d lost his memory.
“You didn’t really like talking about her,” replied Marilyn.
“Did I say I hated her?”
Marilyn shook her head.
“I don’t think you ever used the word “hate.” You were tired of her. You also said that her relatives were out of their minds.”
Frank nodded and said, “Yeah, her older sister seems wacky. What else did I say about Kelly?”
“Well, you said that she sickened you.”
“Sickened me? What else?”
Frank was somewhat surprised that Marilyn didn’t use this opportunity to paint a more dismal picture of his marriage and exaggerate a few details here and there. She could have said virtually anything she pleased, and he would have had to take her word for it.
Marilyn shrugged her shoulders.
“Honestly, I don't remember much of what you told me about her. I didn’t try to memorize it all back then. All I know is that you weren’t very fond of her and that you didn’t trust her relatives.”
“Did I say I was going to divorce her?”
“You mentioned divorce a couple of times, but we never dwelled on it.”
“Was I happy that she had gone missing?”
“You felt relieved. That’s what you told me.”
Yep, he had learned a few more important bits of information about his forgotten life last night. And he had been grateful to Marilyn for not attempting to manipulate him.
As he walked upstairs, Frank realized how profound his
disgust with Josephine and her gang was at this moment.
Who the hell gave them the right to intrude into his life?
These morons. They must be insane if they had actually made Albert move to his neighborhood to spy on him. Now every time he went grocery shopping or took a relaxing walk around the block, he would risk bumping into Albert, who would nod at him and smile enigmatically. And it wasn’t an empty worry: he had actually seen him and Graham last night, when they had stopped by his place to ask if he had had any plans for the evening. Graham was driving his police Ford Crown Victoria, and Albert sat in the front passenger seat, with a stupid smile on his face. They probably thought it was so cool to show up in a police car at the house of their dead sister’s husband. They had invited him to hang out with them whenever he wanted, and he had promised to think about it. Then, to his joy, they had zoomed away. The whole encounter appeared a bit weird; it was as if they had wanted to show him that they were watching him.
By the way, Josephine still had the keys to his house. He had been planning to change the locks since the day he had returned home from the hospital but for some reason kept forgetting to do it. Perhaps he hadn’t perceived it as something urgent. So dumb of him: this whole time he had been exposed to the danger of being killed by Josephine and her gang in his own house. He would change the locks today; no delays anymore.
Frank took his cell-phone and went to the living room, where he had left his laptop, to search for local locksmiths’ phone numbers. As he stared at the notebook screen, with his hands frozen on the keyboard, he asked himself another question that had been lingering in the background the last couple of days: what the hell had he bought that large safe for? What had he put in it? And how significant was the fact the safe was big enough to fit a person?
A person? He’d rather not go there, okay?
The mystery of the human-seized safe had caused him to come dangerously close to making a fool out of himself this morning. He had dropped by the office to sign a couple of documents and spent an hour going through the files on his desk computer and sending emails. That was when he stumbled upon the name ‘Alex Hernandez,’ which turned out to belong to a senior associate working in the same department as Frank did. He got lucky: Alex Hernandez was in the office at the moment and had a few minutes to chat.
“I wanted to ask you a question that could seem a bit strange to you,” Frank told Alex in a low voice, bending slightly towards him to add more intimacy to their conversation. “It has to do with something I am trying to remember.”
Alex, who was familiar with Frank’s situation, said that he could ask any questions he wanted.
Making sure to look as serious as possible, Frank asked, “Have you bought a safe in the last couple of months? A big used safe?”
Alex shook his head and replied, “No, Frank, I haven’t. I can’t imagine what I would need one for.” He looked neither puzzled nor disturbed by the question, which was good news because Frank would have hated to gain a reputation of an oddball among his coworkers.
“Did you help me get one? Do you remember hearing from me that I bought a safe?”
Alex shook his head again and said that he had never heard Frank talk about safes before.
On his way home, Frank had asked himself if Hernandez could have lied to him. And if he had, what could the reason be? There was no law against buying a safe, was there?
2.
“So, how can I help you, Frank?” asked Josephine. She was wearing a colorless outfit—black skirt, gray blouse, and black jacket—and reminded of a stereotypical schoolmarm who’d had no sex in a decade.
Why the hell had she dressed as if it were a funeral?
“I'm going to record everything you’ll tell me,” Frank said, switching on the digital voice recorder.
“What do you want me to tell you?” Josephine did not sound snarky or antagonistic, which, for some reason, made Frank feel relieved. “I’m not sure if I know anything useful.”
“You know much more than you think,” replied Frank, shaking his head. He stretched himself on the sofa and glanced at Josephine to check whether she was fine with his lying in her presence. Josephine did not look offended; she was observing him with calm curiosity and a glimmer of hope that she hadn’t wasted her time coming here.
When Frank pushed the record button, he suddenly realized there was this weird urge in his mind to tell Josephine about the stains in the bathroom. It was similar to that inexplicable desire to jump which many people feel while standing on a cliff, or the roof of a tall building, or anywhere high above the ground.
Well, you’ll just have to fight this urge, my friend, won’t you?
“I spoke to my friend recently.” Frank made a pause. “He is a psychiatrist. I asked him what I could do to speed up the memory recovery, and he said that I need a mental push, that everything I’ve forgotten hasn’t disappeared and is still in my head, very deep in subconsciousness.”
He was silent for a short while, formulating his next phrase.
The subconsciousness and the mental push were good stuff that would undoubtedly impress Josephine. And the imaginary psychiatrist friend should convince her that he was not blowing smoke up her ass, that there was a scientific basis under his words.
“He said those memories are buried very deep in my subconsciousness,” Frank said finally. “And it may take a mental push to get them flowing back up. That’s where you can help me.”
What if you did tell her about those blood stains? What do you think would happen?
She would rip him to shreds, that’s what would happen. And she’d be able to do it all by herself, too, without her crazy family’s help. This bitch had to be working out. She looked strong, you know.
“How?” asked Josephine, sincerely puzzled. “How does this push thing work?”
Frank nodded, showing he’d expected this question.
“We’re going to talk about Kelly. You’ll tell me everything you know about her disappearance. Even a tiny detail, something you think is unimportant could be that push. A catalyst.” He paused after the word “catalyst” so that Josephine could notice that Frank had used a scientific term, which would prove that he’d really spoken to a specialist.
“Do you know what a catalyst is?” asked Frank.
Without wasting a second on racking her brain, Josephine shook her head.
“A catalyst is a substance that accelerates a chemical reaction,” explained Frank. “Certain reactions can't even begin without it. And my memories need a catalyst, too.”
So far so good. Josephine might not give a rat’s ass about what you’ve been saying to her, but at least she’s pretending to eat it up.
“I’d like to hear everything you remember about the events shortly before and after Kelly went missing. Tell me all you know about her as a person. Tell me whatever comes to your mind when you think about Kelly.”
“Okay, Frank. I’ll do my best, if it can really help you with your amnesia.” Josephine fell to thinking.
What if she consults with a real psychiatrist and he tells her there is no such thing as a mental push method? Have you considered this possibility, buddy?
Let her consult all she wanted. No matter what the real psychiatrist told her, yours truly would claim that there were several schools of thought in psychiatry and that his friend believed that the push method was one of the most effective in his situation. As a matter of fact, there could very well exist a mental push method. He was too busy—or too lazy—to look it up on the internet.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know a whole lot about Kelly’s disappearance,” said Josephine, gazing at the recorder with an emotionless face.
Wait a minute. It looked like another bunch of memories had broken out of the cage.
His daughter Kathy. Kathy was born eleven months after their wedding. Frank recalled that his brother Andrew had said to him, “You finally made me an uncle! You’re paying for the drinks.”
What do you do when y
ou become an uncle? Well, there's nothing complicated about it. You visit your nephews, try to keep them away from fragile objects when they are at your place, go fishing with them, or take them to amusement parks and whatnot.
Kathy was lucky to have a whole bunch of people to go fishing with. Besides Uncle Andrew, there was Uncle Albert. And the unforgettable Aunt Josephine. And Kelly's cousin Graham, whose last name was still languishing under the tectonic plate of amnesia. What was Graham's relation to Kathy? A cousin once removed? Then there was Uncle Ron, Josephine's hubby. Two more aunties: Albert's and Graham's wives. And finally Aunt Tina, Andrew's wife. A wonderful crowd. Well, not entirely.
“Do you mind if I lie down on the couch?” asked Frank in a slightly weary voice. “It helps me concentrate.”
“Not at all. I want you to feel as comfortable as possible.” She fell to thinking for a few seconds and then continued, “I’ve already told you that she had gone missing on the twenty fourth of April.”
“Is it okay if I close my eyes? It will help me focus on your voice.”
“Sure. Close them if you need to.” Josephine was absorbed in her thoughts. “I know that the police found Kelly’s car abandoned in Lackawanna. It was full of empty beer cans and alcohol bottles, cigarette butts, and other garbage. They said that some kids must have stolen it for a joyride.”
When did he first meet Kelly’s relatives? And he had the same question about Marilyn: he still hadn’t recalled how they had gotten introduced to each other. Moreover, the memories of sex with her remained missing as well, which was sad.
Josephine. She was Kelly's stepsister, which meant they had either different fathers or different mothers. Most likely, different mothers because Jane Frey, as far as he remembered, looked a bit too young to be Josephine's biological mother, unless she had given birth to her at the age of fifteen.
So Jane was Kelly's mother but not Josephine’s. George Frey might have incidentally mentioned Josephine’s biological mother’s name. For example, he could have said, “I married Jane ten years after such-and-such had died.”