The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  Whoever hit me has a key to the place.

  Whoever hit me doesn’t want me dead. He wants to antagonize me. Torture me. Prove to me that he has power over me.

  Whoever hit me is holding Grace captive.

  Whoever hit me wears a long brown overcoat, black eyes, and he is following my every move.

  Why?

  I have no idea, other than he is not satisfied with simply abducting Grace. He wants something more. But what exactly does he want?

  Without a note or a phone call or an email detailing a list of demands, I haven’t the slightest clue. But there’s one thing I do know. I have no idea if my eyesight is going to last. Best that I take advantage of the sight I’ve got for now.

  I start by checking the cell phone to see if I received any incoming calls while I’d been knocked out. But there’s nothing. I speed-dial Grace’s number and get the usual song and dance. Setting the phone back onto the table, I slip out of bed, turn on the bedside lamp, and in the dull glow of the lamplight, see something extraordinary. The furniture of the studio apartment has been put back in its rightful place. The couch and the harvest table take up the center of the room, the length of the table pressed up against the back of the couch. All the plates, cups, bowls, spoons, knives and forks have been returned to the cupboards, the boxes and jars of food replaced on the shelves. Grace’s unfinished painting remains undisturbed and ready for more brushwork, should she ever return to it.

  I stare out the open French doors and feel the cool, fish-tainted air seeping in. In the distance I can make out the occasional electric light, but no voices or purring motors or footsteps. No Grace.

  Stepping around the table and couch, I slide past the easel-mounted painting and I close the doors. Then I decide to take some aspirin and make some coffee. When it’s done I take it to the couch and try to figure out exactly what happened when I arrived home yesterday afternoon. Did the overcoat man hit me over the head, then leave? Or did he clean up the place, and if so, why the hell bother? Why didn’t I wake up on the floor or on the couch? How did I get to my bed? Or maybe I woke up on the floor and then, in a sleepwalking somnambulant state, cleaned up the studio and got in bed, fully clothed, and fell into a deep, dreaming sleep.

  I think about finding the card of Santa Lucia on the floor yesterday morning.

  If it hadn’t been placed there by the overcoat man, then how did it get there?

  Maybe it had been inside the apartment all along, care of the previous tenant. Maybe when I discovered it, I immediately interpreted it as a clue. Maybe the overcoat man simply followed me to the church of Santa Lucia instead of the other way around: Me following him.

  My mind is spinning with questions but I have no answers. Why am I not calling the police right now about being attacked in my own place? The police…the detective…they don’t trust me. They’ll think I’m lying. At the very least, they’ll use the attack to detain me inside a cell. For my own protection, they’ll insist. Grace is still out there somewhere, at the mercy of the overcoat man. I can’t allow myself to be locked away. I can’t risk it.

  I sip my coffee and wait for the onset of dawn.

  The coffee is hot but the unanswerable questions that buzz around my brain like flies around the dead fill me with an ice cold dread.

  The coffee cup nearly slips from my fingers when the phone rings. I set the cup down, sprint to the wall phone, pick it up. I don’t utter a word. I just listen. The earpiece is filled with a near silent static. Like air blowing in through the line. Then I hear the voice.

  “I. See.”

  “What do you see?” I respond, as if at this point, I’m going to get an answer. “Tell me what you see.”

  “I. See.”

  His refusal to say anything but those two words are my cue to begin rattling off the obvious questions. Questions I know have no chance in hell of being answered.

  “Do you have Grace? Do you wear a brown overcoat? Did you follow me to the Church of Santa Lucia? Have you been up in my apartment? Did you hit me over the head? For Christ’s sake, please answer me.”

  “I. See.” is all he says. And then the line goes dead.

  Goes. Dead.

  Chapter 43

  I SLAM THE PHONE into the wall-mounted cradle, wondering if the police have tracked the call, and if there is anything they can do about it at this point. I run my hand behind my head, feel for the bruise. Just touching the tender skin and flesh sends shockwaves of pain throughout my head. The smart thing to do would be to get myself to a hospital. But that would only prevent me from doing something about finding Grace.

  Outside the French doors, past Grace’s painting, I make out the first rays of the sun exploding over the horizon. Soon it will be first light, and the second full day of Grace gone missing. I feel my eyes drifting to the bed and the baggage stacked beside it. I see my computer bag. It’s gone untouched since I arrived more than a week ago now.

  For the moment, I can see.

  Maybe it’s time to go online and do a little detecting of my own.

  I set the laptop on the harvest table, boot it up, wait for an internet connection. When it arrives I bring up Google search and CNN world news. I scour the headlines for the latest events.. Another suicide bomber in Kabul. The military withdrawal from Iraq. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Myanmar. Or what we all used to know as Burma. I check all the stories and see nothing. Until I decide to type in, “US woman missing in Italy.”

  And there it is.

  A small side-bar story of just a few paragraphs. It’s not accompanied by a photo.

  The piece, written by a woman named Alessandra Betti, simply states that a woman, a US citizen, by the name of Grace Blunt, an artist from Troy, New York, was reported “missing” yesterday by authorities in Venice, Italy. “Having traveled to Italy with her fiancée, a Captain Nick Angel of the US National Guard, Blunt is said to have disappeared from a popular tourist café in Piazza San Marco. While it’s still too early to tell if her disappearance was the result of her own decision to leave what un-named witnesses describe as a ‘troubled relationship,’ or the result of foul play, the detective in charge of the matter, Detective Paulo Carbone, has reported that Blunt’s passport was located floating in the Grand Canal. While the US Embassy states that no US officials have yet committed to the search for the American, they do not rule out the possibility.”

  That’s it.

  No mention of my temporary blindness. No mention of the overcoat man. No mention of the strange “I. See.” phone calls. No mention of the overcoat man having followed me to Santa Lucia yesterday morning. Nothing.

  My heart races and my brain buzzes with adrenalin. Why didn’t the reporter contact me for my side of the story? And who fed her the not–entirely-accurate information about Grace and I having a troubled relationship?

  I click on Alessandra Betti’s by-line.

  The link offers up her bio. No contact info. Not even an email address.

  Maybe it would interest her to know that I have an opinion on the matter of my missing fiancée. But then, how will it be possible for me to contact her? I see a place where I am invited to comment on the above article.

  Perfect.

  Chapter 44

  HERE’S WHAT I WRITE: “The woman you are writing about, Grace Blunt, is my fiancée. She was taken from me while we were having lunch at a café across from the cathedral in San Marco. I have been suffering a recurring, temporary blindness since my participation in the war in Afghanistan and had no way of seeing her being taken, nor the individual who did the taking. But only moments prior to her disappearance, Grace had been complaining of a man in a long brown overcoat who was staring at her. He was a man with a cropped beard, black hair, and black eyes hidden behind sunglasses. It turns out he’s been following us all week. He approached our table, which upset Grace. Within seconds, she was gone. Please contact me here as soon as you see this. I am desperate.”

  I click send and wait for a reply.
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  It comes to me almost two hours later.

  “Dear Sir, please contact me with your phone number to this email address ABetti@gmail.com as soon as possible.”

  I do it. I email her with my cell phone number.

  When the phone rings with a number I do not recognize, but that most certainly originates from Italy, I know it must be her. Holding Grace’s engagement ring in one hand, I answer the cell phone with the other. For the first time in two days, my heart begins to fill with hope.

  “Pronto,” I say.

  “Is this Captain Angel?” the voice asks. Italian accented, soft but low toned, the English perfectly spoken without hesitation.

  “It is. Thank you for calling.”

  She’s not alone. Nor is she in a quiet place like her home or an office. Coming from over the phone, the sounds of a busy, congested place. Some people shouting in the distance. Laughing. Voices coming from over speakers, announcing arrivals, and departures. An airport more than likely.

  “I’m at De Gaulle in Paris,” she explains. “I’m about to board a plane for Venice now.”

  I glance at the article on the computer. It came out only last night. How could she write about Grace if she’s in Paris? It’s precisely what I pose to her.

  “Welcome to the internet age, Captain. I can write about anything from anywhere so long as I’ve access to the proper information.”

  “In this case, you don’t have all the information, Ms. Betti.”

  “Can you meet me this afternoon?”

  “I can try,” I say. “If my eyes hold up.”

  “Where are you located in Venice?”

  I tell her.

  “I’ll come to you,” she says. “Three o’clock.”

  “That will work,” I tell her. But she hangs up before I get to the word, “work.”

  * * *

  I sit in silence for the better part of an hour, stealing occasional drinks of whiskey to calm my nerves. But the alcohol doesn’t prevent me from nearly jumping through the roof when my cell phone rings. I fumble for the phone on the harvest table, thumb Send.

  “Hello!”

  “Nick,” the woman says. “Nick, is this you?”

  A wave of confusion sweeps over my body. A man’s voice. I’ve heard the voice before, that much is for sure. But I can’t recall where or when. Until it comes to me like a slap across the face. It’s Grace’s ex, Andrew, calling from New York.

  “Andrew,” I say. “How did you get this number?”

  “Grace goes missing and you don’t call me?”

  I don’t have his number. Nor would I have called him anyway. I’m guessing Grace gave him my number. In case of emergency.

  Emergency.

  I swallow something cold and bitter tasting, then clear my throat.

  “The police asked me not to call anyone just yet. They didn’t want me to alarm anyone unnecessarily.”

  “What a load of crap. I had to find out about it on CNN, online. The bloody internet for God’s sakes, Nick.”

  Andrew is panicked. Or still in love with my fiancée. Probably both. Flashing through my brain: the image of them both lying in bed together. Naked. Pressed up against one another. I try and remove the image from my head. But it’s like pulling a molar from out of my mouth with a pair of rusty pliers.

  “Calm down, Andrew. The police tell me it’s very likely she will show up in a day or two.”

  “You two have a fight?”

  “Not really,” I say, recalling our afternoon at the café, arguing. “Nothing like that.”

  “Then maybe she got smart and left you for good. Maybe she got sick of waiting around while you play cowboys and Indians in some desolate country we’ve unjustly invaded.”

  “I’m a soldier. It’s what I do. And maybe it’s time you got used to the fact that I’m with Grace now. Not you.”

  “Thought you were supposed to be a writer.”

  “I am a writer.”

  “So that’s what this is all about then,” he pushes. “A fight. I bet you’ve been fighting and now Grace is seeing the light.”

  “No, she saw the light a long time ago, Professor.”

  I could tell him about the overcoat man, about Grace going missing at the café in San Marco. But then he’d be on the next flight over here and then the detective would have no choice but to put me in jail after I beat the professor to a pulp with my bare hands.

  “Tell me the truth, Nick.”

  “Yes, we’ve been fighting a little. It’s been hard since I got back from the war. My eyesight comes and goes. Grace has been under a lot of pressure…taking care of me, the marriage, our future. She feels like hell about what happened with you while I was away. It’s all a lot to take in.”

  I hear him exhale over the phone.

  “So you think she took off to be alone?”

  “It’s entirely possibly if not probable.”

  “And what exactly are you doing about it?”

  I picture the long-haired, brown-eyed man with the phone pressed against his ear with one hand and with the other, fingering the keys on his laptop inside his Columbia University faculty office.

  “I’m working with the police and being patient. I’m told to be patient.”

  “Patient. Isn’t that what you asked of my wife when you decided to go off and be John Wayne once again?” An electric hum fills the connection before Andrew adds, “Call me back when you know something.” And then he hangs up.

  Setting down the phone, I lay myself out on the couch, my open eyes staring at a ceiling that looks much better when I’m blind.

  “She’s not your wife anymore,” I say. But there’s no one around to hear me.

  Chapter 45

  BY THREE O’CLOCK THAT afternoon, I have heard neither from Grace, which is as expected, nor from the police, which comes as an unexpected surprise. What is also unexpected is that my eyesight has lasted all day without interruption. The buzzer goes off at exactly two minutes after three. I go to the intercom, depress the speak button.

  “Yes,” I say into the unit.

  “Buonasera, Captain. It is Alessandra Betti.”

  Unlocking the front door, I tell her to come up.

  A minute later the journalist is standing inside my studio. She is an attractive thirty-something woman, with shoulder length black hair, deep brown eyes and an inquisitive expression on her face. She’s dressed in a short black skirt, black tights and knee-high black leather boots like most of the women in Italy wear this time of year. For a top, she sports a thin black turtleneck under a leather jacket.

  She’s also carrying her travel bag which I assume carries her computer. It also tells me she came here straight from the airport. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a notepad and a pen.

  “You don’t mind if I take a note or two,” she poses. But she says it more like she’s telling, not asking.

  I shake my head. Of course she can take notes.

  “Would you like a coffee?” I ask.

  “Please,” she says.

  Happy that I have something to occupy myself with while she’s asking me questions, I head the few steps to the kitchenette and fill the pot with tap water.

  “Now,” she exhales. “I would like you to start from the beginning.”

  “From my time here in Venice?” I ask, filling the pot receptacle with espresso blend coffee. “Or prior to that? Grace and I have had many beginnings.”

  The studio goes silent while she thinks.

  “Tell me about the war, Captain,” she says. “And how it took away your eyesight.”

  “That beginning,” I say. I set the pot onto the stove, turn on the gas burner, and turn to face her. “There was a village way up north,” I tell her, surprised at how my voice chokes. “I called in the airstrike that destroyed it…”

  I tell her some things about my war in Afghanistan. But I do not tell her everything. I tell her about the village that was filled with Taliban who would raid our encampment night aft
er night causing multiple casualties. I tell her about the airstrike I called in. I even tell her about the little boy who got killed when the air-to-ground missiles impacted the earth beneath his feet. But I do not tell her about what happened afterwards. I do not tell her about the senseless slaughter.

  I tell her about how the blindness began almost immediately after the incident in the village, and how I was medivacked to Kabul, and from there Frankfurt where the psychologists went to work on me once it was determined from numerous MRIs that there was nothing visibly wrong with my brain. Then I tell her about the surprise arrival of Grace in Germany and how the military thought it a good idea to send us here for a month for some rest and relaxation. It would be a chance for me to not only regain my eyesight, but also for my fiancée and I to get to know one another again, since it had been more than a year that we’d last been in one another’s presence.

  By the time I’m done telling the writer my story, we’ve gone through two pots of espresso, and my eyes are getting tired and beginning to lose their focus. Maybe it’s exhaustion that triggers the blindness.

  Alessandra stares down at her notes, bites the non-business end of her pen with her teeth.

  She says, “Please allow me to get my facts straight. You went to the café in San Marco for an early lunch. While you were there, Grace was bothered by a man who kept staring at her. A man wearing a long brown overcoat. He approached your table, and then she was gone. You did not see anything because you were blinded.”

  “Nobody else saw anything either,” I stress. “At least, no one has come forward who might have seen anything. That’s why it’s been so difficult getting the police to believe my story.”

  “But the waiter at the café…this Giovanni… he believes you. Yet he did not see Grace being kidnapped.” It’s a question.

  “But he has seen the overcoat man on two or three different occasions. A couple of times outside his café and yesterday inside the church of Santa Lucia.”

  “And you believe that this overcoat man has been calling your apartment phone, leaving only a message of ‘I. See.’ And that it is possible he has entered your apartment in the night while you are asleep, as if he owns a key to the place. You also believe he attacked you here in the apartment last night?”