What She Saw

by Sheila Lowe

  “She’s in complete denial,” Zebediah said. He sketched out for them how Jenna had first indicated that more than two people had been in the car in her hypnotic state and had later refused to admit it.

  “So, there was someone she can’t bear to think about,” Claudia suggested. “Someone who—what?”

  “Unknown. It might take a long time for her to come to terms with whatever happened to her. I don’t want to push her too far, too fast.”

  Jovanic looked unconvinced. “That doesn’t explain the two identities, the two cell phones.”

  “It might,” Claudia said. “It looks like she’s been living two separate lives without even being aware of it.” She pointed a French tipped fingernail at a tiny dent in the ink line at the top of a letter “l,” and at a similar dent on a “b.”

  “See these dents? Those are a physiological artifact. They indicate a possible blow to the head that could be causing cognitive problems related to the amnesia.”

  Zebediah said, “She has a small scar on her head. We don’t know for sure what caused it, but we’re assuming it was a result of the auto accident she saw under hypnosis. So, darling, how does this handwriting compare to the sample you saw before, when you met her in San Diego? Any differences?”

  She cocked a brow at him. “You’re kidding, right? That was months ago and hers was one of about six hundred samples.

  The good news is, my client from the convention is going to ship them to me. I’ll let you know on Monday when I get them.”

  “Darling, I’m in your debt.”

  “You are for sure,” said Claudia. “But to answer your question without being a smartass, from what I remember, this handwriting is very different from the earlier one.”

  n i n e t e e n

  Jenna tapped the address from the Marina del Rey driver’s license into the Nissan’s GPS. The instrument calculated the distance at precisely one mile. Following the voice instructions, she drove to an apartment building on Washington Boulevard, one block east of the ocean, a large three story pink brick structure with beige trim and an external staircase.

  No apartment number was listed on the driver’s license. She did a quick check of the names on the cluster of fifty mailboxes lining the foyer wall inside the front door, but no Jenna Marcott was listed among the names printed on the boxes. Rentals in the beach town went fast. Her unit had doubtless been rented out even before she’d moved to Ventura.

  A brief spell of hanging out in the foyer produced nothing more than a generic nod from a few residents passing through. Nobody spoke to her with any recognition. She toyed with the idea of knocking on doors, but the thought of approaching a bunch of strangers and asking if they knew her made her feel sick. She left the building almost at a run. And knew nothing more than when she had arrived.

  On the way back to the Nissan, Jenna stopped at the Cow’s End for a bite of lunch. Everyone at the little neighborhood café seemed to be acquainted with each other, and as she put in her order at the counter for chicken salad and a white mocha latte, Jenna felt a rush of melancholy.

  Sitting at her solitary table waiting for her food, trying to look as though she didn’t mind being alone, she took out the Jessica Mack driver’s license and studied the address. Escondido was a little over a hundred miles south of her current location. The voice started in on her.

  You’re halfway there.

  It’s a ninety minute drive from here.

  It’s three hours from Ventura.

  The voice won.

  She found a Norah Jones CD in the glove box and slipped it into the player, ?surprising herself by singing along to Come Away With Me in a sweet, husky voice. For the first fifty miles the music took her mind off whether the drive to Escondido would be a wild goose chase, but when the CD ended she was she still had thirty miles to go and could no longer avoid the latest spate of questions:

  Why change my identity? Who is Jessica Mack? Why move from Escondido to Marina del Rey? Why go further north to Ventura? Why? Why? Why?

  She had forgotten to tell Detective Jovanic about the threat Christine Palmer had made. She dug his card out of her pocket and, keeping her eyes on the road, started to punch in his number. But before the call connected, she clicked off. She had already intruded on his weekend more than enough.

  It was close to four o’clock when she exited the freeway at Vista Way in Escondido. The address led to the Casa Blanca Apartments, a series of modern two story buildings that took up two blocks in a quiet neighborhood.

  With a nod of approval she walked up a flower-bordered pathway to the open front doors of the complex.

  After the letdown at the Marina del Rey apartments she scanned the names on the bank of mailboxes, expecting to come up short. Seeing the name “J. Mack” written on C207 was a jolt.

  Jessica Mack still lived here.

  Jenna’s fingers traced the name on the mailbox as if that might somehow explain her connection to Jessica, but it was just letters on a slip of paper. She debated whether to turn around and walk right back to her car.

  You want to know, don’t you?

  I’m not so sure.

  The second set of keys had been in her purse ever since the creepy dude from the train returned her backpack. It stood to reason that with this being the address on the Jessica Mack driver’s license, Jessica’s keys would admit her to the apartment.

  Yeah, but reason is in pretty short supply these days.

  The metal teeth bit into her palm. She had taken them from her purse without realizing it. The discomfort was an anchor to the material world, which felt very different from the surreal one in which she had been living.

  Relaxing her grip, she inserted the small silver key into the slot on the mailbox and opened the metal door. Stuffed inside the box was a week’s worth of circulars, a gas bill postmarked last Monday, and an envelope that bore the return address of the San Diego Police Department. That one made her heart race. She tossed the junk mail into a trash can next to the mailboxes slipped the gas bill and the SDPD envelope in her purse.

  The glass doors at the rear of the foyer were a metaphor for her life. On this side, though she knew precious little else, at least she knew she was Jenna Marcott. On the other side was Jessica Mack and the greater unknown.

  Through the glass she could see across a hotel-sized swimming pool and a clubhouse bordered by palm trees, to a building with a large letter “C” attached. With a quiver in her stomach, Jenna pushed open the door to Jessica’s world.

  Exiting the stairwell at the second floor of building C, she took a moment to check the number on the first door—201—before starting down the long balcony. Her heart thudded and with each number that took her closer to 207 her steps slowed.

  At 206, the door opened and a woman around her own age stepped out, pushing a jogging stroller. Firm-bodied, sun-streaked blonde ponytail, deep tan. She was the iconic California Girl dressed in a bright pink halter top and black spandex bicycle shorts.

  “Hey, Jessica! You’re back!” Big sparkling teeth showed extra white against skin the sun was tanning to leather. “You okay, hon?”

  What’s her name? She knows me, I must know her name.

  Faking a return smile, Jenna kept her eyes high and averted from the baby in the stroller. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Well, after you lit out of here like a bat out of hell? Then I didn’t see you again and now it’s a week later—hello?”

  “I had a—an emergency.”

  “No duh! I mean, come on, Jess. You may not be the most outgoing gal in the complex, but it’s not like you to totally ignore me when I say something? What happened?”

  “I’m sorry. I, er, I had to leave in a hurry.”

  What the hell is her name? Paula? Pauline? Patti?

  “I guess so! You left in such a hurry I bet you didn’t even know you left your front door hanging wide open, did you?”

  “I did?”

  P. Something with P. Pam? Penny?

&nbs
p; “Yeah, you did. That’s what I was yelling, but you just ignored me and kept on going.” She patted Jenna’s arm. “Don’t worry, hon, when you didn’t come back by eleven I closed your door and locked it for you. Brad told me I shouldn’t interfere, but anyone could have just walked in and stolen your stuff in the night, right? I didn’t want some stranger messing around next door to my family, did I? Of course not. Then you didn’t come back anyway, so it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?”

  Peyton. Her name is Peyton Butler.

  “Yes, of course it was. Thank you, Peyton, I appreciate it.”

  Peyton Butler leaned down to coo at the baby, who had begun to fuss. “It’s okay, Brandon boo boo, we’re going now.” She glanced up at Jenna with an expression of pitying condescension. “I know you don’t have kids, but you gotta know they get cranky when they want their walkies.”

  She had no way of knowing that her baby’s fussing had triggered Jenna’s nightmare and the cries of the child in her hypnotic trance were ringing in her ears. Peyton Butler was unaware that it took every scrap of willpower Jenna could mobilize not to turn and flee from the whimpering infant.

  “Okay, seeya,” Jenna mumbled, starting to move past the stroller.

  “Oh, wait, I forgot to tell you,” Peyton called after her. “A police officer came looking for you the other day.”

  Jenna wheeled around. The San Diego Police Department envelope was a dead weight in her purse. “A police officer?” she echoed faintly. “What did he want?”

  “Wait. I think it was Wednesday,” Peyton said, scrunching her face in concentration. “Yeah, Wednesday afternoon. I remember Oprah was on,

  so it had to be between three and four. She had this old guy singer, Johnny Mathis, and Josh Groban. I just love Josh. He is so...”

  Jenna thought for sure she was going to throw up up on Peyton Butler’s shoes. “What about the cop?”

  Peyton’s face registered surprise at the terse interruption. “Oh! I guess I got carried away. You know how I am. It’s my ADHD. So, anyway, he was a small guy, bald, dressed by Sears or JC Penney, nothing nicer for sure. Said he was a detective? I heard him knock at your door so I thought someone must be selling something, so when he came to my door next, I was getting ready to tell him that no soliciting is allowed in here. Then he showed me his badge and asked if I knew where you were. I had no clue, of course. I mean, I’m your neighbor, right, not your keeper?”

  Peyton lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Don’t worry, Jess, I didn’t say a word about the way you took off that night. Are you in some kind of trouble, hon?”

  “No! Everything’s fine.”

  Her neighbor shrugged, but her expression was doubting. “Okayyy. If you say so. But hey, if you need someone to talk to...”

  “There’s nothing wrong, thanks. Everything’s fine.”

  “He left a card in your door. It’s still there.”

  The small white card stuck in the door frame was embossed with a gold-leaf star and imprinted with the name of the California Highway Patrol Commissioner, Central Division, Fresno Area Office. The name ‘Sergeant Carl Galen’ was also printed on the front.

  Fresno was three hundred miles north of Escondido.

  On the reverse side of the card, Sergeant Galen had printed in bold black ink, “Please contact me ASAP.”

  Asking herself what she might have done to warrant the attention of the Kern County CHP and San Diego PD, and whether it had anything to do with her amnesia Jenna slipped the card into her purse.

  The lights were on in the apartment and the air was as musty as an old shoe. With the automated response of old habit, she dropped her purse and keys on a small table by the front door and went to open the vertical blinds and front windows to let in the fresh breeze. She switched off the floor lamp in the living room and took a look around.

  For a Twilight Zone moment Jenna was sure she had stepped into an alternate universe. On the floor beside the entry to the kitchen was a garden gnome identical to the one on her front porch in Ventura.

  It’s not the same gnome, idiot.

  The realization was a reprieve. She swept the room with her gaze, taking in the pile of laundry on the couch: a tangle of towels and undies waiting to be folded and put away. On the coffee table, a stack of paperback mystery novels. A coffee-stained mug rested on the cover of a crossword puzzle magazine.

  There were several unopened envelopes with the same return address as the business card: California Highway Patrol, Fresno Area Office. Fresno. The postmarks indicated that some of them had been there a long time: March. April. May. June. July.

  Her stomach flipped. The stretch of road she had seen in her hypnotic trance had been in the Fresno area.

  She plopped down on the couch and added the new gas bill to the pile, then poked at the CHP envelopes with her finger as gingerly as if they contained ricin.

  She pushed them out of her line of sight, but there was still the San Diego Police Department envelope.

  Her fingers felt as thick as sausages as she opened the envelope and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. The printed form notified Jessica Mack that a 2011 Honda Accord registered to her had been towed from the Solana Beach Amtrak Station last Monday. Ms. Mack would be required to pay a hefty fee to the City of San Diego to have the vehicle released to her.

  The air suddenly felt dense, as if she were trying to breathe at the bottom of a swimming pool. What had sent her rocketing out of here, according to Peyton Butler like “a bat out of hell,” to take a train from Solana Beach to Ventura, leaving behind a car to get towed? Why was she renting two apartments? Using two names? And the biggest goddamned question of all: Why did she have no memory of any of it?

  The CHP envelopes on the table invaded the corner of her vision.

  Open them.

  No freaking way.

  It’s got to be something important.

  No!

  Jenna—or Jessica—pushed off the couch and moved over to the kitchenette, where a cereal bowl sat in the sink, a mush of granola on the bottom, soaking in rancid milk as thick as yogurt. A two-thirds full bottle of pinot noir stood on the counter, the cork next to it smudging the white worktop purple. The trash can under the sink was in need of emptying.

  Jessica’s not a neat freak like Jenna.

  Across the living room, she could see through the bedroom door to the foot of an unmade bed. Her heart did a funny little bump. Was this where she would find the blood and gore she had been so sure she was waiting for her in the Ventura apartment?

  A simple box spring and mattress had been pushed against the wall to make room for a computer desk not unlike the one in Ventura. Again, no blood stained the rumpled sheets, no brain matter splattered the walls.

  But there were fragments of a wine glass on the keyboard of a laptop computer, a mouthful of drying red wine pooled in the broken bowl.

  First the smashed picture frame, now this. Sweeping up broken glass was becoming a habit in the life of Jenna Marcott.

  Or Jessica Mack, depending on which apartment you’re in.

  Carefully lifting the larger pieces of glass off the keyboard, she dumped them into a wastebasket under the desk. Then she fetched a hand towel from the bathroom and tipped the smaller fragments off the keyboard, using a light touch to brush off what debris she could.

  Dark splash marks warned that the wine had dribbled through to the motherboard. With mentally crossed fingers, she pressed the on/off button.

  The power light came on and the hard drive gave a faint whir, but the screen remained dark and silent. Removing the battery pack with a sinking feeling, she counted to twenty and slipped it back into the slot. It had to work. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

  If Peyton Butler were to be believed—and there was ample evidence to support her tale—the person known as Jessica Mack had bolted out of here on Friday night a week ago, upset enough to leave the door wide open late in the evening.

  Upset enough to lob a glass at her laptop
and leave it marinating in red wine?

  Or had there been a physical confrontation and she’d dropped the glass while defending herself?

  What the hell happened here?

  Jenna forced herself to look at what was before her and sift out the facts as she knew them.

  The bottle of wine in the kitchen was more than half full. One wine glass was in evidence—the broken one that she had just cleaned up. From what she had gleaned from her neighbor, it sounded as though she had been alone at the time. So, not a physical confrontation.

  A phone call? Had she been talking with Simon Lawrie?

  As if on cue, a land line phone rang, startling her out of her wits. Following the sound to the kitchen counter she picked up the handset and read the caller ID: Anonymous. A blocked number. Just before the fourth ring she picked it up and said a tentative, “Hello?”

  “Ms. Mack?” A deep male voice with a slight Texas twang.

  “Who is this?”

  “Detective Carl Galen here. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  Oh hell.

  “I—I just got here.”

  “You haven’t answered any of my letters or returned my phone calls, so I stopped by your place the other day. Seems I missed you again.”

  Just “stopped by” three hundred miles south of Fresno?

  “I’ve been out of town.”

  “Well, isn’t it fortuitous that I found you just now. When would you be available for an interview, ma’am? I’ll drive on back down there.”

  If he was prepared to make another six-hundred mile round trip to see her, it had to be serious.

  Maybe he was coming to arrest her.

  For what?

  The silence filled up and spilled over. She cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded high and nervous. “Can’t we just talk on the phone?”

  Now it was her turn to wait for him to fill the void. In the end, he said, “I do believe it would be better if we do this in person, ma’am. We need to talk about your husband.”