The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

  “Do any of these names sound familiar to you? Eugene Franklin? Daniel Schmidt? Eric Maney?”

  “No. Why?”

  He ignored her again. “Have you noticed any strange behaviors from your husband? Had he been speaking to anyone that was a stranger?”

  “No, I answered that when the police called me earlier. He couldn’t do something like this.”

  “Why was he visiting New York?”

  Julia did not blink. Nor did she answer right away. The other agent leaned forward just a hair. She looked at him. He barely seemed to notice.

  “Mrs. Swann, can you please answer my question?” Agent Bakhash said.

  “No, I can’t,” Julia said, still staring at the other man.

  The anger boiled up. Who the hell did this man think he was, coming into her house and threatening her? she thought. Julia fought the urge to get up from the table, to walk away. But she wouldn’t do that. She was tired of all of this. And she was done being treated like a criminal, and letting people treat her husband like that, too. She . . .

  “Do you know what your husband has done?” the other agent asked.

  His voice was dry like a dead leaf. It burned in her ears. It cut through her, crashing up against her anger, fueling it while at the same time peeling away what felt like years of her life.

  “How dare you—”

  He cut her off. “He killed hundreds of innocent people.”

  Her voice rose. “You don’t know that!”

  His voice remained unchanged when he said, “We know he’s involved, ma’am. We have zero doubt.”

  “Show me the proof,” she demanded. “What? That video they’re playing? So what? He was there. We all know that.”

  “We know that the bomb was in the case your husband was carrying.”

  “Show me, then. You can’t, can you? Because you’re lying!”

  The agent shook his head, slowly. “No, I’m not.”

  Julia rose to her feet. “Show me then! Goddamn it! Show ME!”

  The blood rose to Julia’s head. Her cheeks felt ready to catch fire. She hated the tears that forced themselves from her eyes. Her teeth clicked together as she kept herself from saying more. Agent Bakhash’s hand moved. It rested against the other agent’s broad shoulder. His fingernails were perfectly, unnervingly manicured.

  “Please, Mrs. Swann. Sit down. I know this has to be hard,” he said, softly. “At this point, all we are trying to do is keep innocent Americans safe. We’d appreciate your help. But I understand. I have a wife. I have children. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

  The look on his face carried more strength than his words. His dark eyes were soft and wide-open. The lines of his face, though not many, hinted at a life that was not always easy. The way his words left his lips changed the air in the room. The charge seemed to fade, and Julia just felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue. She fell back into the chair, like if she lowered her head to the tabletop it might never rise up again.

  Over the agent’s head, she saw her mother. She stood in the foyer, her back to the front door. They made eye contact and her mother gestured at something, like asking Julia a question that she didn’t understand.

  At that moment, the basement door opened. Evan, with Thomas close behind, stood on the top step. They looked frightened.

  “Mom, is everything okay?” Thomas asked.

  He sounded so young. Julia quickly wiped away the tears and stood.

  “Sweetie, it’s okay.”

  Julia’s mother swept the kids up and moved them slowly back down the stairs.

  “I’ll be down in a second,” Julia said.

  Once the door closed, she turned to Agent Bakhash.

  “I don’t believe you. You don’t know he did this!” she said, her back straight.

  He shook his head, slowly. The look in his eyes seemed to share her pain.

  “Yes, we do. We are sure of it. But there are holes, Mrs. Swann. And if we don’t fill them soon, I’m afraid more people may be hurt. So, please, let me ask you just a couple more questions.”

  Julia stared at this stranger. She refused to look at the other one. But every instinct told her that this man, Agent Bakhash, lied. At the same time, she sensed something worse. Julia was sure that this man knew without a shade of doubt that her husband was involved in the bombing. Though her heart raged against what her eyes saw, her brain faltered. She sat back down.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “I understand,” the agent said, barely louder than a whisper. “Let me ask you, had your husband recently lost his job?”

  Julia closed her eyes. But she nodded.

  Agent Bakhash asked her details about Michael’s job and his employer. He seemed to be searching for something. And Julia was not trying to be misleading by any means. Yet Bakhash eventually grew more serious. The look in his eyes changed into something different, something more intense.

  “Now, please, really think before you answer. Did your husband have any ties with DuLac Chemicals?”

  Julia’s eyebrows lowered. “The company in Wilmington? No. I mean, my father worked for them. And a neighbor’s husband. I mean, he might have been laid off.”

  Bakhash leaned forward, a hungry look in his eye. “Can I have his name?”

  Julia told him and the agent jotted it on a small notepad.

  “Your father’s name, too?”

  Julia froze. Bakhash acted like he didn’t notice, like he never asked the question.

  “Did your father and your husband ever talk about that? About the company?”

  “No, not really. I mean, I don’t think so.”

  Someone knocked. The other agent got up. Without a word, he walked to the front door. After a quiet exchange, he opened it. Two uniformed officers from the Pennsylvania State Police stood on the porch. The agent returned to the table, and Bakhash handed him the notepad. The other agent took it and returned to the front door. He and the uniformed officers continued to speak, softly. Then the agent closed the door and returned to the table again.

  “Are you sure, Mrs. Swann? This is very important.”

  She shook her head. Suddenly, she felt overwhelmingly dizzy. Everything crashed down at once. She attempted to stand, but her hand slammed to the tabletop as she tried to keep her balance.

  “Mrs. Swann, are you okay?” she heard someone say.

  “I just need water . . . I think.”

  But the truth was, Julia needed far more than that.

  10

  The high beams spread out across the empty road. The light flashed against the straight tall trunks of oaks and pines that lined the way. I stared forward, in a daze really. My thoughts, more often than not, led to dead ends. So I acted instead. I moved forward, ever forward, with little premeditation.

  I had no idea where I was going. Nothing looked even the slightest bit familiar. Oddly, I still had a sense of direction. I knew when I drove south or west or north. It just meant nothing at all in context.

  It took me miles to realize that the radio was on. Although the station played pop music, every few minutes a news report broke in. I heard my name, Michael Swann, and it drew me in. As I listened to the woman talk about the bombing, however, I quickly turned it off. A part of me needed to know what happened. Even more, I should have wanted to know why they thought I was a suspect. At the same time, though, I physically could not force myself to listen, not even for a minute. Instead, I drove aimlessly through the night, oblivious to everything but my oblivion.

  * * *

  —

  An hour or so later, I pulled into the parking lot of another gas station. What I was doing just would not work. I felt an overwhelming need to get home, back to the address on my driver’s license that might as well have belonged to someone else. I should know how to get home, I thought. Yet
I had no idea.

  I needed help. Even if I walked in and purchased a map, which was what I was planning to do, I would have no idea where I currently was, let alone where I was going. I parked the car in the farthest space from the store and killed the engine. I sat there, with my hands on the wheel. I felt no emotion, really. Not even the panic someone might expect. To be honest, I just felt confused.

  It was then that I remembered the phone. It would have a map app—all of them did. Somehow I knew it. I think. Or maybe . . . My thoughts were like water through spread fingers.

  I moaned and pressed the knuckles of my hands into my eye sockets. The pain flared, but it focused me. I reached over to the passenger seat and pulled the case onto my lap. When I opened it, I found the phone right away. When I hit the home button, I saw all the texts for the first time. Or had they been there before? I couldn’t remember.

  Slowly, carefully, I read through them. They meant nothing at all. The words seemed to hold no weight, except for one. I stared at that name.

  Julia, I thought.

  That name became the beam of a lighthouse lantern cutting through the fog inside my brain. It was my beacon, and it called to me so loudly that I thought I could hear it out in the night.

  So I turned to the only thing I had, the dream from the bus. Julia, just as she already was in my own head, became that woman in the shadows. She had the answers. I knew that. I also knew that she needed me. I could feel it in her words. Hear it in the way she called to me.

  But why did I want the phone? Why did I look for it? I had no idea. I held it, staring at the texts, unable to unlock the phone and respond, and I knew nothing at all. Looking around the parking lot, I couldn’t even remember how I got there, or whose car it was.

  Map.

  I needed a map. I needed to know where I was. That’s why I stopped. That’s why I grabbed the phone. But it would be no help. Bits and pieces cleared up. I was in trouble. I was being chased. If I went into the store and asked for help, surely someone would recognize me. At the same time, there was nothing else for me to do but drive without purpose until I ran out of gas somewhere on the side of the road. I looked at the display. The arrow was on E. I had no choice.

  Hesitantly, I got out of the car and walked into the store. Looking up, I saw a surveillance camera pointed down at me. Quickly, I lowered my face and shuffled over to a rack of road maps by the window. I grabbed the one that had the most copies. It was a map of the Mid-Atlantic. Taking a deep breath, I took it to the counter.

  “Can you help me?” I whispered, as if some microphone might hear my voice and bring the police swarming in on me.

  “Sure,” the young woman behind the counter said.

  I pulled out the money clip and read the address on my license.

  “Can you show me how to get to West Chester?”

  “New York?” she asked.

  I looked to the license again. Her eyes lowered and she saw it as well. A new expression came to her face. It was a mix of confusion and suspicion. She looked at the license and then back at my swollen face. And I knew she knew. But it was too late.

  “Please, just help me,” I said.

  “Look, I can call—”

  “No!” I snapped.

  She took a step back. The frustration grew. And a tear came to my eye and rolled down a cheek. She saw it.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “I just need to get home,” I whispered.

  She moved closer. “West Chester, Pennsylvania?”

  I nodded.

  “You could get on 322. It’s just down the road. That’ll take you across the Commodore Barry Bridge. In fact, I think it goes right to West Chester.”

  “Down the road?”

  “Yeah, go out and take a left. It’s the next intersection. You can’t miss the sign. Just go west.”

  “I think I came in that way,” I said, scratching my arm. “Where am I?”

  She laughed, but I just looked at her.

  “Really?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re in New Jersey. Hamilton Township.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I turned and walked toward the door. She called to me. “You forgot the map.” But I never turned, I just kept walking. Outside, I almost drove off without getting gas. When I pulled up to the pump, I paid for that gas with my credit card. And then I drove back off into the night.

  11

  Agent Bakhash took a call. He listened, his face like it was cast in iron. When he hung up, he looked at Julia.

  “He’s coming here,” the agent said.

  Julia felt a rush. “What do you mean?”

  Bakhash paused. When he spoke, he measured every word.

  “Your husband’s credit card was just used at a gas station in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. Police are at the scene. The woman working at the station claims that he asked for directions to West Chester.”

  “Directions? Why?”

  Bakhash shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I thought he was on a bus?”

  “Our best guess is that he misdirected our efforts to locate him by boarding a different bus. We have been monitoring his credit card, and it hasn’t been used again until now. But we do have blurry surveillance footage of him at the bus station in Atlantic City. Police stopped the bus he had allegedly boarded and were told by the driver that the suspect was in a physical altercation with another passenger and he fled on foot.

  “An hour ago, we received a report of a stolen vehicle at a different gas station just off the Atlantic City Expressway. We believe he’s driving that car somewhere on Route 322, heading in this direction.”

  “Michael stole a car?”

  The agent blinked. “Yes.”

  Julia stood up. Her feet shuffled as she rounded the counter. She found her glass of wine by the refrigerator and finished it in one long drink. Grabbing the bottle, she refilled it and walked out of the kitchen toward the living room.

  “Mrs. Swann,” Agent Bakhash said.

  “Please, I need a minute.”

  Julia moved to the window. With her free hand, she parted the curtain. Outside, flashing red and blue lights illuminated the street around her house. She could see four police cars outside, interspersed with the news vans and a few other cars and SUVs. In the surreal glow, she also saw people wandering among the chaos. One walked a dog on a leash, pulling the frightened animal closer and closer to the circus outside her house. She suddenly recognized the man as a neighbor. Some of the others, too. They haunted her yard, craning necks, trying to get a view of the freak show.

  She tore the curtain closed and grabbed her phone. Bakhash moved as if he might try to stop her. Julia ignored him. She walked into the other room, redialing her credit card company. When she reached a live person, her heart beat so hard it almost hurt.

  “What was the last transaction on the card?” she asked, her eyes closed.

  “Looks like a gas station in New Jersey . . .”

  That’s all Julia heard.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE

  Everything boiled over the night before Michael left for his interview in New York. Julia had been out running through the neighborhood. Jogging in and out of every cul-de-sac and all the way out to the entrance, she could get just over three miles. This left the kids alone for about half an hour. Although she had been hesitant about it during the school year, once summer hit, leaving the boys alone for little bits of time had sounded like a better and better idea. She could use a breather away every once in a while, a chance to have adult thoughts without having to play Uno at the same time. She decided that they loved the slices of time she was away from them, too. They felt older, more responsible, and, more importantly, nagged less, especially her preteen, Evan.

  She knew things were bad. Her first glimps
e came that night on their back porch. Since then, her husband’s disillusionment, his struggles, became more apparent the less he smiled.

  He did not seem himself anymore. At first, she barely saw him. He was working all the time, away most weekends. Even when he was home, he wasn’t home. He’d be on his computer most of the time. Every so often, she’d find him watching sports, particularly baseball, out in the family room. Julia missed him, so she thought she’d just snuggle up and watch with him. As soon as she walked in, though, he’d grab the laptop and start back up.

  As time passed, a second suspicion battled the first. Julia started to take some of his standoffish behaviors personally. During one particularly bad span, she counted the days that he hadn’t touched her, not even by accident, and that number reached fifteen. Though it angered her, she performed that test a half dozen more times over the months that followed. Each time, just as she reached her boiling point, something good would happen. They’d have a night out with friends and a glimpse of the old Michael might come out. Sure enough, though, after a few days, maybe a week, the ice would re-form.

  As she rounded the last turn that day, having come from the back side of the neighborhood, Julia thought about all of this. Twenty-four, she repeated a few times in her head. It was the longest stretch yet. She vowed she’d talk to him about it that night. She couldn’t keep going on like this.

  That’s when she saw his car in the driveway. The twist of her stomach was visceral. It could have been intuition or a product of her mind-set during the run. What popped into Julia’s head in the moment, however, was that she hadn’t told her husband that she was leaving the kids alone to run.

  When she entered the house through the garage door, she found the boys sitting on the couch. The television was off and their heads turned in synchrony. With sheepish expressions, they watched her walk slowly into the house.

  “Is Daddy home?” she asked.

  They both nodded. She stopped a couple of paces in the house, looking from her kids to the hallway leading to the kitchen.

  “Did something happen?”