You Say Goodbye

by Keith Steinbaum

  Despite the closed door, Sean noticed the bright lights through the overhead window as he neared the room. With a simultaneous knocking and turning of the knob, he peeked his head through the partial opening. Seeing nobody to his left, he opened the door enough to lean in and look toward his right. Sitting at the desk near the chairs and music stands, Stan held a deck of cards, appearing to work on a trick of some kind. Scattered on the desk was a large red scarf, a box of long stick matches, a watch with a shiny gold band, a brown paper bag, and a cell phone.

  “Hi, Sean,” he said, glancing up.

  “How ya doin’, Stan?” Sean lowered his guitar case to the floor by the nearest music stand. “Did Elliot tell you I’ll need this room at five?”

  “Yeah, no problem,” he replied, shuffling the deck and turning the top card over. “Whoa!” Stan tilted his head and his eyebrows furrowed. “Something’s wrong.” Tossing the cards on the table in a rapid one by one sequence, he started nodding his head as the last few remained in his hand. “I knew it!”

  “What’s wrong?” Sean asked, approaching the desk.

  “The deck’s short a card,” he mumbled, continuing to stare at the cards. “I’m lucky. Better to have happened now than when I’m performing a trick.”

  Sean spotted the identifiable Bicycle design on the back of the cards. His thoughts raced back to the day he found one on the floor when he packed Merissa’s clothes--a card he recalled as similar to, if not the same as, the ones he was looking at now. As for which one it was, it had been too long, but for some reason he had a recollection of a familiar connection to something, or, perhaps, someone.

  “Do you always need a full deck to do tricks?”

  “No, but I do a number of them where I’ll ask you to think of any card.” He looked at Sean, standing to his right. “I wouldn’t look very good if you chose the one that’s missing.”

  Pulling a trash can out from underneath the desk, Stan scooped the cards in one clean sweep, his gold USC ring catching Sean’s eye as the long fingers gripped the deck like a spider devouring his prey. “No use to me now.”

  Sean watched them disappear in an instant, culminating in a loud thudding sound.

  “You work with Adam McBride, right?” Stan asked.

  The question startled Sean, as that now made two different people at the Directional Center talking about Adam within the last few days. “Yeah...yeah, well...I used to. He works at the other dealership now. Why?”

  “Because he’s the reason that deck is fifty-two minus one.”

  “Adam?” Sean asked, squinting his eyes in confusion. “How the hell did that happen?”

  Stan turned his upper body to the right and angled back in the chair to look at Sean. “Quick backstory,” he said, “but it involves Merissa. Is that all right?”

  Sean nodded his acceptance.

  “Adam and I attend the same church. That night when I went to Merissa’s house, I recognized him and we talked for a while.” Stan chuckled. “I remember thinking Roger was this Sean guy she used to talk about because it seemed he was next to her the whole time.”

  “No surprise,” Sean muttered. “So you and Roger are on a first name basis, too?”

  “One of the things I do is teach private lessons,” he said, “so after I handed out my business cards Adam and Roger both approached me about it. To save money, they take group lessons here at the Center with Elliot. It’s just basic sleight of hand stuff but it makes them think they’re the next Houdini.”

  “So you gave Adam that deck of cards to take home?”

  “Yep,” Stan answered, turning back again. “And you know why?” Rolling his eyes, he shook his head and looked away for moment before returning his attention to Sean. “You’re not going to believe this. He tells me his wife doesn’t allow cards in the house because they represent the whole evil gambling thing, so he wanted to practice during his lunch hour until he got good enough to entertain her. Then she’d see it was all in good fun.”

  “Oh, I believe it,” Sean said, “not surprised at all. But why didn’t he just go out and buy his own damn deck?”

  Stan snorted an air of apparent disgust. “Logical question, Sean, but we’re not dealing with a normal situation here. Adam flat out refused to buy his own cards until he felt he was ready. All right, fine, but now that I know he lost one of the cards without saying anything, it pisses me off. This is my profession, and it could have been very embarrassing if I was unaware the deck didn’t have a full fifty-two.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.”

  Stan stroked his chin, his eyes zeroing in on Sean. “I don’t obey the teachings of everything I’m taught on Sundays, but taking responsibility for one’s own actions is something I definitely believe in. It was up to him to know.” Rubbing his forehead with his fingertips, he looked down at the trashcan. “It just never crossed my mind the deck was short. I put it in my drawer with the other ones a few months ago and didn’t use it again until today.”

  Stan rose from his chair and nudged the trash can back under the desk with his foot. Sean heard his chuckle before noticing how Stan’s serious expression from the previous moment transformed into an amused one. “If you ask me,” he said, “and please excuse the pun, sometimes Adam seems like he isn’t always playing with a full deck.”

  Nodding in acknowledgment at the remark, Sean smiled and pointed to the other items remaining on the desk. “Are those part of your act for Kayleigh and her family?”

  “Yes,” Stan answered, reaching for the scarf. “Just a few basic ‘how did he do that’ tricks to entertain that poor little girl.” Waving the scarf in the air, he snapped his wrist and suddenly held a red rose in his hand instead.

  Sean responded with three soft hand claps. “Very nice!”

  Stan followed with an extended half bow. “Thank you,” he said. “I learned that one back in my early days, but it still has its moments.”

  When Stan’s cell phone rang, Sean meandered over to admire a Carlos Santana concert poster on the back wall, recalling a time he saw him kick ass as the opening act for Bob Dylan at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland many years before. Unable to avoid overhearing the conversation within the modest confines of the room, his attention toward every spoken word from Stan soon heightened into full-blown concentration. Although Jenny’s name hadn’t yet been mentioned, Sean realized she was the one who called.

  And thanks to the Santana poster, a sudden, clear recollection of the forgotten blue Bicycle playing card created an image in his mind as large as the poster itself. Now he needed to get to that trash can.

  “That’s right, when the clock strikes eight, I’ll be finished here and should arrive at your place in about twenty to thirty minutes, depending on traffic...Yeah, it’s going to be fun...Don’t worry, you’ll do fine...Hey, if you’re going to be my lovely assistant and know what to do, you’ll have to learn how I perform the tricks.” After another pause, he laughed. “Exactly,” he told her. “All right, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Hi, Sean.”

  Through a sticky breakaway from his eavesdropping state, Sean turned and recognized Leticia, one of the singers for the show.

  “Um, hi, Leticia,” he said, needing to clear his throat. “Go ahead and sit down, I’ll be right with you.”

  Stan glanced at his watch before rising from his chair to gather his materials. “Good luck,” he said, smiling at the girl on his way to the door. Turning back to Sean, he nodded and winked. “Good luck to you, too, my man. Nice talking with you.”

  When the door closed, Sean held his hand up toward Leticia. “Hang on a minute,” he told her. Sliding out the trash can from under the desk, he gathered the cards and started to review each one.

  With a few more remaining, Stan reentered the room without looking at Sean, walking toward the left to retrieve his jacket from a hook on the wall. As he turned back to leave, he spotted Sean holding the cards.

  “What are you doing with those?”

&nbs
p; “The Jack of Hearts,” Sean said, speaking in a precise and deliberate manner. “That’s the missing card.”

  Stan’s eyes opened wide as he stood there, motionless and silent. After an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders, he smiled and nodded several times. “Well, well,” he said, “now you know. For whatever good it does you, now you know.”

  Sean watched him leave, continuing to stare at the closed door. You’re right, Stan, he thought, I know about the Jack of Hearts, but what I don’t know about is if Jenny’s in danger.

  Chapter 22

  Sean didn’t believe in that overrated, overused, “things happen for a reason” nonsense, but, nonetheless, his chance meeting with Stan couldn’t be discounted. Could the deck of cards he now held in his hand offer a link to Merissa’s murder? He hadn’t mentioned the Jack of Hearts discovery to Detective Maldonado, but now a connection seemed possible. As soon as he finished this final rehearsal with Leticia, Darryl, and Gabriella, he’d call him.

  ***

  The Anderson Club and Banquet Hall shared the same large parcel of land as The Mid-Valley Youth and Family Directional Center. Each time Elliot held a fundraiser, the club donated its facility for a bargain rate. Another benefit from this arrangement centered on the parking, providing everyone with easy access to the additional spaces. By arriving two hours early, Sean and the Michaels family received their prime pick of locations, choosing to park in areas directly between the doors to both buildings. Sean returned to his car at six-ten to talk privately with Detective Maldonado, providing a clear view of the occupants of the first car turning in from the street--Adam and Eleanor McBride.

  Hoping they wouldn’t notice him, he waited to make the call, but Adam’s lingering expression of recognition as he spotted the vehicle preceded a big smile and wave of his hand before turning to say something to Eleanor. Moments later, Sean lowered his window as they both approached. “My, my,” Sean said, working up a smile as he shook their hands. “Who is this beautiful couple? Look out for the paparazzi!”

  Eleanor laughed as she clutched the collar of her sweater to ward off a sudden breeze. “Paparazzi don’t seek out simple, God-fearing folks like us, Sean.”

  “Want us to wait for you?” Adam asked, holding his hair down with his hand.

  Sean raised his cell phone in the air. “I’ve got to make a call first,” he told them. “I’ll see you inside.”

  Detective Maldonado sounded either tired, frustrated, or pissed off when he answered, making Sean question whether now was a good time to play Robin to his Batman.

  “I was going to call you,” he said.

  “Why’s that?”

  Maldonado didn’t say anything for several moments. “The Beatles’ Song Murderer,” he answered, his voice trailing off on the last word. “He struck again.”

  Sean’s eyes slammed shut as his body collapsed against the seat. The tears returned from their hiatus as the world around him disappeared in a shroud of pain and sadness. He missed Merissa so much. And now another woman underwent the same torture. Another...Merissa.

  “When? Where...where this time?” he asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

  “Tuesday night in Simi Valley,” Maldonado answered, identifying the city located about thirty miles northwest. “A residential street with apartments up and down the block. You’d hope there’d be some kind of lead, some kind of witness coming forward, but nothing so far.”

  Sean exhaled hard enough to blow out candles on a cake.

  “No prints, no evidence, nothing...again!”

  A few seconds of silence followed.

  “Listen to me, Sean. You’re not the only person I’ve spent time with whose life was torn apart from this guy, who got swallowed up by the immense grief that you did. It absolutely cuts me up inside. So trust me when I tell you that I want to catch this sick asshole as much as any of you. But in all my years chasing down scum like this, the most important thing I’ve learned is what I call ‘minding your p’s.’”

  “And that means?”

  “Patience plus persistence equals payoff. Believe me, okay? From the time I graduated from the academy, I got handed a badge and a gun, but nobody gave me the ability to read minds. The best quarterbacks complete their passes against all the schemes the defense throws at them by studying the playbook and being prepared. That’s why we need every piece of evidence we can get, and why we need to figure out whatever clues may be out there for us to solve. So that when the opportunity strikes, we’ll be ready to strike. Just don’t give up hope.”

  Sean stared at the ground outside his window, his thoughts suspended by a fatigue of helplessness. “Thanks, Ray,” he said. “The football analogy took me by surprise, but in this case, I found it appropriate.”

  “For whatever it’s worth, we did find one thing at the crime scene that I’ll mention--a bloody sliver of gray duct tape on the victim’s tongue. We’re speculating that she tried to remove it from her mouth with her teeth and bit the back of her lip in the process. The matching DNA proves the blood is hers, but other than that, it’s the same residual markings from the tape across her mouth, and the red coloration and bruising on her wrists from the handcuffs.”

  Sean pictured Merissa in the same predicament--her mouth taped shut and her hands bound as she suffered. More teardrops advanced from behind closed lids.

  “Duct tape on her tongue?” Sean repeated, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Does that help? Does it mean anything?”

  “It tells us he used duct tape,” Maldonado said. “Common, store-bought duct tape.”

  “What about security cameras?”

  “Oh yeah, they had ’em all right,” he told him. “Modern ones, too. But anybody who showed up in those frames during the approximate hours leading up to and after her death has been checked out and cleared. Ms. Franklin’s place only had a couple of older cameras for the garage and pool areas, and nothing of consequence there, either. This guy apparently understands how to avoid detection. He knows when and where and how to strike.” Maldonado exhaled a loud, extended breath, followed by a muted cough. “So why’d you call, Sean?”

  His parched throat felt like an esophageal concrete passageway as he swallowed. He wiped his cheeks again and sat up, gazing out his windshield at the guests walking toward the banquet hall past the swaying trees in the lawn. “I never told you about finding that Jack of Hearts, did I?”

  Silence.

  “No, but you’re about to.”

  Sean described the scene when he packed Merissa’s clothes for the donation center. He explained how he’d waited until the end to deal with the final thing he wanted to rid himself of—his sweatshirt that she apparently had on that night. Sean explained how he put it on before the police arrived, not thinking about it as any piece of evidence but simply as the last thing Merissa wore. But after disposing of the memories represented by her belongings, the grief and anger overtook him, and he swung the sweatshirt repeatedly like a baseball bat, knocking over anything in the way.

  “Sometime after that, I fell back into my chair and just stared into space for a while. That’s when I noticed the card. What I’m thinking is that it must have been in one of the pockets and came out when I swung the sweatshirt around.”

  Another period of quiet followed, leading a frustrated Sean to wonder if he’d lost the connection. “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Jesus,” Maldonado muttered, “we search the whole freakin’ room for clues and you don’t tell us you’re wearing what might have had the biggest goddamn clue of all?” A loud exhaling sound preceded Maldonado’s next comment. “I’m pissed off, Sean, but berating someone who was out of his head with shock and grief would be wrong. The problem now is it may be too late to get any fingerprints.”

  “Because they may have faded away?”

  “A good chance of that, yeah,” Maldonado answered. “But like I said, it may be too late. The good thing about playing cards when it comes to prints is that they’re one of the
better surfaces for print detection. That type of plastic retains film from sweat or oil longer than some other surfaces, so maybe we’ll still be able to detect a discernible image.”

  Sean realized Maldonado expected him to still have the card.

  “The length of time leaves everything up in the air at this point, not to mention how many different prints might be on that card. In addition to the killer’s, we’ve got yours, for sure, and very possibly Ms. Franklin’s.” Maldonado made several tongue-clicking sounds. “Are you home, now? I’ll send someone to go get it.”

  Sean squeezed the phone and scrunched his mouth, preparing to confess something he knew wouldn’t be well received. “I don’t know where it is,” he told him. “It was months ago, and back then it didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe I even tossed it.”

  “Shit,” Maldonado muttered. “Shit!”

  “I’m sorry Ray, I--”

  “Well you better make goddamn sure, okay? We need all the help we can get right now.”

  “I will,” he said, “but the reason I asked you the Jack of Hearts question is because something happened here a little while ago that may have shown me where that card came from. I didn’t believe it at first, but you may be right when you told me The Beatles’ Song Murderer could be someone I know.”

  “Slow down, Sean, slow down,” Maldonado said. “First off, what do you mean, ‘something happened here’? Where are you?”

  “A fundraising event at the Valley Center that Elliot Hayden operates. It’s the same place where Merissa did volunteer work, remember?”

  “Of course, I remember.”

  “There’s a guy here who used to work with Merissa. ‘A great person who I was honored to call my friend,’ is how he put it. And get this--he’s the magician that came to her house one night and taught tricks to everyone.”

  “Stan, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get his last name?”

  “No, sorry,” Sean answered. “I have his business card, but it only says, ‘Amazing Stan the Magic Man.’”