by A J Grayson
I’m not sure how long I’ve been lying here, in the calculated comfort of the hotel decor, contemplating this unknown man David has shown himself to be. Long enough that the physical headache has gradually started to wear off, though the mental one is only growing. I don’t know what that translates to in real time: maybe a few hours. Maybe many more.
Long enough to know I don’t want to lie here any longer. This mulling over impossibilities isn’t going to bring me any relief, and it’s certainly not going to bring me answers. The facts of the past twenty-four hours leave me with only one option.
Nothing is going to make any sense until I can find out who my husband really is.
Somehow, by a force in me that exceeded the strength I expect of myself, I managed to stay in motion after my discovery in our bedroom yesterday. Wobbling into collapse and staying that way for the remainder of the day would have been understandable, but I kept myself upright after finding the knife, managed to plant one foot in front of the other and get myself out of the apartment. I’d started out intending to pack a supply of clothes, but in the end took nothing with me except my handbag, snatched off the kitchen table as I rushed by. It meant I had the usual stash of things I kept there: my laptop, wallet, pills, keys and the like. That was it. I walked out of my home, and my life, with nothing more than the contents of my purse.
In the car, all I could see was that knife and the bloody shirt, hidden away in the yellow duffel. Everywhere I looked, they were square in my vision. I don’t know how I finally managed to force them to disappear, to get about the physical tasks of driving, but somehow I made it away from home. The familiar lanes of Highway 101, and then the winding, two-lane ascent into the hills to cut across into the Valley, flash through my memory. How I managed to drive those forested bends is a complete mystery.
I was pulling into the Comfort Inn in central Calistoga before I’d consciously thought much else. My only stop was at an ATM somewhere en route, and I’m only really certain of that because I paid for this room in cash, and there’s still a pile of it on the desk. Once checked in, I stumbled my way to this room and collapsed. I don’t recall the time, I don’t remember any conversation with the front desk clerk on my arrival. Just a keycard in a digital lock, tossing my handbag onto the overly bleached white of the hotel bed coverings, and flinging my body onto it afterwards.
Then this morning. Waking. The textured ceiling.
Suddenly, I think of my phone. I haven’t thought to look at it till now, which is another oddity, I suppose. I ruffle a hand through my bag until I feel its familiar little shape. A second later I’m holding it above my face.
Fourteen missed calls.
I blink. The phone wasn’t muted – I’ve never seen the point of having a cell phone if you’re going to silence the thing – and the extent of the calls I hadn’t heard ringing surprises me. One is from a central San Francisco number I don’t recognize; but, unsurprisingly, all the rest are from David. I realize, with an unhappy certainty, that the last thing I’m ready to do is call him back.
Not until I have the faintest idea what I could possibly say.
The first time in our relationship, I didn’t know how to speak to the man I love.
And it’s not just that. I’m becoming aware that I don’t want David to know my whereabouts, either; not until I’ve got a better grip on things. That means I can’t be going into work this morning, as the bookshop is the first place he’ll think to look.
A quick phone call to Chloe, invoking the unique power of the ‘best friend super swear’, reassures me that my boss will be told I’m ‘feeling a little unwell,’ and that if David rings to ask after me he’ll be told that I’m ‘out on a supplier relations visit for the day’. Just that. Though however things play out, this is going to cost me. After pledging her to keep my whereabouts concealed from my husband, there’s no way Chloe will ever believe I’m not having an affair.
So no office, no home. They’re firm decisions, and though they don’t exactly bring me comfort, they do at least give me a sense of resolve. I force myself to continue in that determined vein, stepping into the Plexiglas-stalled shower as an act of necessity rather than desire. Perhaps the water will wash away the remainder of my non-hangover headache away. It’s something to hope for. But as soon as I’m under the hot running water, I’m happy I’m there, for more than just practical reasons. The shrink-wrapped soap smells of lemon and lavender and the mini-bottle shampoo foams up more nicely than I’d have expected. The scents, the warmth – there’s something rejuvenating about them all. I linger under the water. When finally I emerge, pat myself down and face the fact that I have no other clothes to put on than those I’d taken off, I’m nevertheless refreshed. There’s the littlest spark of gusto that’s somehow found its way back into my psyche.
Last night I was crushed; but right now I don’t feel completely powerless. I have my laptop and my phone with me, and with a WiFi connection live in the hotel room, it’s really all a person needs. It’s time I take reality into my own two hands.
My first thought is to return to the two victims. In David, if in nothing else, the two are connected. He’d hidden Sadie’s leash, of the same type that was used to kill Emma Fairfax, and the knife in our duffel bag at the flat definitively connects him to the man found yesterday. In this context I’m well past entertaining coincidences. Besides, it’s not like a bloody knife in a closet ever has a good explanation.
It’s hard to bring myself to acknowledge, even internally, what this really implies. How has my husband gone from perfect man, whose greatest fault is that he makes shit breakfast drinks, to two-time killer in the span of under a week?
I choose not to try to answer that directly. Focus on the victims. I gather together everything I can about them, drawn into parallel.
Emma, female; man – obvious. Emma, my age plus a year or two; man, significantly older. Emma, retail worker; man, successful enough to be wealthy. Emma, strangled at a river; man, stabbed.
What could have drawn David to these two people? To these acts?
That knife, coated in blood. Christ, it was like I’d been drawn to it. Like David’s acts were beckoning me, calling me to discover what he, what he …
I’d reached that can’t-quite-bring-myself-to-say-it point again. Not of the man who brings me flowers and takes me for walking holidays on the coast.
But if he’s done this, then obviously he’s been hiding a hell of a lot from me. Concealing so much of himself. I am ashamed with myself for having been so blind. There’s a guilt that comes with being gullible.
But it doesn’t help me to understand. Maybe, though, others have seen more. Maybe some of David’s friends have noticed something different about him. Something that might offer me a clue. It’s a prompt. A call to action.
I have to talk to his friends.
And it’s following that, that I realize I know of only one. Chad Markiez, David’s friend who works over in the Sacramento Police. Only now, in this moment, does it strike me is so terribly strange, that after years of marriage, I can name only one of his friends.
A man I’ve never even met.
The Sacramento Police Department’s number is publicly listed on the Internet, and with a few keystrokes I have the non-emergency contact listing on my laptop, and a few finger presses after that I have a number dialled into my cell phone. I’m determined to find this friend I’ve never known, and discover what he can tell me.
‘Sac Police, District Three Central, how can I help?’ A man’s voice answers, businesslike and efficient. By the sound I would place him in his late thirties or early forties.
‘Good morning,’ I say in response, trying to sound equally professional and not like a crazed woman convinced her husband is an emerging serial killer. ‘I’m not sure who I should talk to. I’m trying to get in touch with one of your investigators there.’
‘Which department?’
‘Homicide.’
‘Just a sec.’
There’s typing on a computer near the telephone, and a moment later the man’s voice returns. ‘Okay, I’ve got the directory up here, ma’am, though I trained up in homicide myself, so can probably help you directly. What’s the officer’s name?’
‘Chad Markiez,’ I answer. ‘Not entirely sure of the spelling.’
There is a brief pause. Only a touch longer than I would expect. Then the typing resumes. The man’s voice, when it returns, is less solid.
‘I just wanted to check to be sure, but it’s as I thought. We don’t have anyone in homicide by that name.’
I try to swallow, but can’t.
‘That, that can’t be right,’ I fumble. ‘He’s been one of your homicide investigators for several years. He’s a close friend of my husband. He’s mentioned him to me several times.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you, ma’am. There’s no one here by—’
‘Maybe try a different spelling? An “s” instead of a “z” in the surname?’
‘I can try if you like, but I can already tell you what the result will be.’
‘Please, just do it.’ And there’s typing again, the clicks echoing over the line. The wait is a little longer this time.
‘None,’ the man finally says, ‘and before you ask, I just searched the whole database. We don’t have a Chad Markiez, or Markies, or a Chad anything-at-all, anywhere in the Sacramento Police Department. And we never have.’
The only friend of David’s whose identity I can name, doesn’t exist. He’s a myth, a puff of air, and nothing more.
Rather, it seems, like reality itself.
44
Amber
I’ve been staring at the wall since my phone call with the desk agent at the Sacramento Police Department ended, I don’t know how many minutes ago. Ten? Fifteen? Outside my hotel room, the sun shining through the blinds is of the midday sort, rather than morning. So maybe it’s been hours, then, gazing at the commercial-grade paint, wondering what part of my world isn’t collapsing.
Why would David lie to me about his closest friend? What’s there to be gained by it? I have no connections in Sacramento, I’ve never even toured the Capitol. Why such a deception?
But lies and deception are all I seem to be discovering about David, and this latest one only urges me on in my desire to talk to someone, anyone, who might know more about what’s been going on in his head lately.
Perhaps not just lately. He told me about his friend Chad shortly after we met. The math isn’t hard to work out. That was more than two years ago.
A long time to be lying about a friend that doesn’t exist.
I shake off a sudden chill. I can’t lose my resolve. If it’s not going to be possible to speak to David’s friend, then I can try one of his colleagues. If anyone is liable to have seen a change in his behaviour, something that might account for whatever the hell is going on, or at least help explain it, it would be his co-workers at the pharmacy. He’s there at least nine hours a day. They spend almost more time with him than I do.
I pick up my phone once again and scroll through my contacts, and it’s then that I become aware of another fact that, until this moment, had never struck me as particularly odd. I don’t have a work number for David. Just his mobile. It’s never seemed necessary that I should have anything else, since he’s never without his phone.
Today, the fact seems suspicious.
But this is a problem easily enough solved. I wake up my laptop and return to the browser, readying myself to type calmly. I just need to pop in the name of the pharmacy and—
My fingers freeze, hovering over the keyboard. David’s worked at the pharmacy since we met. Down in the city.
But I can’t remember its name.
Baycrest? Bayview? Something to do with the bay, I remember that much. He told me the name, once, but it was years ago. Since then it’s always just ‘the pharmacy’ or ‘work’. Shit. I remember he told me it was some little place, tucked away in a residential neighbourhood. Near the sea.
Which describes most of San Francisco.
Then I remember my pills. In my purse, in one of the side pockets – the three prescriptions David brings for me each month, two for my blood pressure and one for my thyroid. Little bottles, orange with white lids. And labels.
I race from the hotel desk to the bed and grab my handbag. Within seconds it is overturned, contents spilling out over the bed’s surface. I reach inside the now vacant space and unzip the side pocket, then give it another shake. The three pill bottles fall to the bed.
I grab the nearest one, my head in a rush, and then freeze. It’s my prescription of course, but the label is from CVS Pharmacy, one of the largest chains in the country. And David doesn’t work for CVS.
I grab the second bottle, and then the third, but the logos on the labels are copies of the first. All from CVS, and I cannot for the life of me understand why David would get my prescriptions filled at a chain store when he works in a pharmacy and could simply pick them up from his own counter. It makes no sense.
I stop myself. David’s behaviour isn’t normal, but no, I can’t actually say it doesn’t make any sense. Not in this instance. It does make sense, if what you’re trying to do is keep your wife from knowing where you actually work.
My heart is racing again. Why would he hide something so basic from me?
I collapse back into the desk chair. I can feel my will deflating. It seems I don’t even have the most basic of information about my husband. What can I find online, or anywhere else, when in reality I know so little?
But then, there is one thing that I do know. A second later, my fingers are dancing on the keys. It’s about the only option I have left.
I’ve never logged into our Wells Fargo account on the web before. David always takes care of the banking. This presents me with a certain problem, since in this moment the screen in front of me is asking for a username and password, and I don’t know either. But I have said before, and I remind myself again now, David is a witty man, and caring, but not necessarily clever.
It takes me only two attempts to guess the right combination. The numerical passcode is my birthday again, just as the code to his briefcase had been, and the username he’s chosen for online access wasn’t the dog’s name, as I guessed first, but ‘TheHowells’. David always takes such delight in referring to us by our collective name.
I start to scroll through our accounts online. We have two with the bank: a savings and a checking, and the former has almost no activity except a few deposits scattered over the past months. I switch to the checking account, which has, as makes perfect sense to me, a great deal more activity recorded in the register. But as I scroll through the entries, I don’t see anything unusual. Nothing in the lengthy listing looks suspicious or out of the ordinary.
What, really, did I expect to find here? What secrets is a bank account really going to hold?
As I scroll through the list, less and less interested in what I am seeing, I come across three consecutive payments to CVS Pharmacy. The amounts match what I would guess my prescriptions cost, but otherwise provide little insight.
I am just about to close down the window when a line at the bottom of the screen catches my eye. Another payment, and the ‘Category’ field is marked ‘Medical / Healthcare’ just as my three prescription payments had been. Only this one isn’t made out to CVS.
The ‘Payee’ field reads, in boldface font, ‘Bayside Inland Pharmacy’.
Bayside Inland. That’s it. I remember it coming off David’s lips now, years ago. A conversation that had once been and never repeated. I remember. I remember.
Heart thumping, I open another browser tab and type ‘Bayside Inland’ into Google Maps. A second later, its pin is on the map in front of me. A small shop, in a residential neighbourhood, in a part of San Francisco only a few blocks from Ocean Beach.
It’s the place. I’m sure of it. And its listing has a telephone number.
I can’t punch the numbers
into my stupid phone fast enough. The San Francisco number goes through when I hit Call, and the line seems to ring forever before someone finally answers.
‘Bayside Inland,’ a female voice says. She doesn’t exactly sound bored, but from her tone of voice I’d say it’s a safe bet she doesn’t find answering the telephone to be the greatest thrill of her life. ‘How can I help?’
In this instant I realize that I haven’t actually thought through what I’m going to ask of David’s colleagues. My attention has been too absorbed in simply trying to find out where he actually works.
‘Could you connect me to the pharmacy desk, please?’ I ask. ‘To anyone other than Mr Howell.’
Shit, that’s not exactly a customary kind of request. But it’s out there. I can’t suck it back in.
The woman seems puzzled, if only by her silence, but a moment later the line clicks, clicks again, and then a man’s voice replaces hers. I tense at the first breath of it, terrified it will be David, but force my shoulders to relax when I realize the voice isn’t his.
‘Pharmacy,’ the man says simply and efficiently.
‘Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ I begin, commanding timidity out of my voice, ‘but I’m really stuck here. I hope you can help.’
‘If I can help, miss, I will.’ His voice becomes a shade friendlier.
‘This is Amber Howell. It’s about my husband, David. He … he hasn’t been himself lately, and I’m getting concerned. I’m wondering whether you might be able to give me any information. About his behaviour. His mood.’
The pause that follows is long. I can sense the man’s discomfort through the line.
‘Sorry, miss, but I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘I mean,’ I sit forward, trying to make my thoughts take a more concrete shape, ‘he hasn’t been acting like himself. His mannerisms. Turns of phrase. They’re not … usual.’ That’s going to have to be enough. I’m sure as hell not going to tell his colleague about the wet leash or the bloody knife.