You Say Goodbye

by Keith Steinbaum

  Dino placed his scissors on the counter and turned back in silence, resting his hand on Sean’s shoulder. Leaning close, he swiped a tear away. “I’ve thought about you a lot, Sean--how you’re doing, what you must be thinking, if you’re going to be all right.” He pressed his lips together and gazed into his eyes. “I want to tell you something. I loved Merissa, she was such a sweet human being, and knowing I was probably the last friend she was with, well...it made me lose my mind for a while. I just needed to get away from here, from the reminders. This mirror that showed her reflection, this chair that held her body, it was all too much for me.”

  Sean nodded in small, almost undetectable movements. “I understand,” he replied in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”

  Dino’s eyes widened as he tilted his head in apparent puzzlement. “Oh my God, Sean,” he exclaimed, “you’re asking if I’m okay?” His eyes narrowed as he proffered a hint of a smile. “No matter what I went through, I should be asking you that question, don’t you think?” His eyes watered again as he clutched the back of Sean’s neck and kissed his forehead. “But thanks for asking,” he said. “It’s just that every time I think about Merissa, I can’t stop wondering why I wound up being one of the last people to ever see her, and talk with her.” His voice caught as he choked back a sob. “Merissa called me on a whim that morning and told me what she wanted to do. We looked through magazine photos she saved, and the wonderful world of Dino took it from there.” Looking down in silence as if reliving the moment, he lifted his head and broke into a broad, teary-eyed smile. “She looked awesome, baby. Sexy as hell. I don’t know if she was more excited or nervous about what you’d think. She just wanted to go home, have a glass of wine, and wait it out until you got back.”

  ***

  Sean remained at the beach until late afternoon, spending most of the time gazing at the horizon as memories of Merissa inhabited his thoughts. Four months had passed since that night, and although he’d overcome the struggle to endure whatever life now presented, emotional barriers frustrated, and, at times, dominated his waking hours. As long as The Beatles’ Song Murderer continued to walk the streets, Sean’s soul remained confined behind the iron bars of that reality. He yearned for that elusive role reversal, where his release occurred in synchronicity with the killer’s imprisonment, and the ongoing nightmare dissipated into a new light of day.

  Chapter 29

  Entering his garage, Sean turned off the motor before reaching in the glove compartment for his cell phone. Staring at the device in his hand, he reflected on the days of yore before Apple and Blackberry descended upon the world like a technological heroin, engulfing us in their role as indispensable pusher to ours as their dependent junkie. Cell phones offered so many services nowadays that it seemed as much a human appendage as the hand itself, but outside the workplace, Sean rarely used his phone to call anybody anymore, comfortable in his continuing hibernation from much of society following Merissa’s death.

  He still appreciated the occasional phone conversation with his sister, Rebecca, and catching up on her stories from New York, but when the topic of conversation reverted to him, her tendency to traverse into a tone of pity and cautiousness turned good intentions into awkwardness and despondency. His brother, David, approached the omnipresent cloud of Merissa’s death by avoiding any talk of it at all, preferring to remain in his comfort zone of business and family matters. His father never called him, but on those times when Sean phoned their house, his father asked the same two questions each time, first wanting to know how things were at work before the obligatory “How are you doing?” question. He meant well, but it seemed that his lack of outward emotion represented most of his male, World War II generation.

  And then there was his mother, who believed she knew him better than anybody, understood what was best for him, and often left him wondering if he’d ever desire to talk with her again. Her obsessive desire to find his future wife had become tiresome to the point of resentment, and his gratitude for the invention of caller ID multiplied exponentially whenever she called and the phone went unanswered.

  As for friends, the lack of names in his list of contacts reflected his reclusive personality and lack of desire to change. Merissa had reached inside of him, helping to open that sealed box of a persona and expose him to the sunlight of interaction. Joining the bowling team exemplified her influence, but after her death, without her prodding, he eventually reverted to his comfort zone of privacy, even with the occasional league match appearance.

  Of the few names in his contact list, however, one called that afternoon, so when he turned the power on, and listened to the voice mail message from Detective Maldonado asking him to return the call, it reminded him that his cell phone still played a necessary part in his life.

  “Sean, it’s Ray Maldonado. We made a discovery about Adam McBride that you should know. Call me.”

  After rushing through his greeting of a bouncing Hendrix and feeding him dinner, Sean turned on the table lamp by the couch and called Maldonado. The final stubborn vestiges of sunlight lingered in a late summer, want-to-stay-up-here-a-little-longer defiance as he stared out his window and waited for Ray to answer. This time, however, Sean left a message, and when Hendrix scurried over to jump onto his lap, tongue dangling in goofy contentment, the curiosity about Maldonado’s phone call vanished for the moment.

  As one hand scratched his dog’s head, now flattened against his chest, Sean held his phone with the other, viewing the upcoming week’s agenda on his calendar--another recognized convenience from the gods of Silicon Valley. He had Mrs. Saginowski scheduled to return with her husband on Monday at ten o’clock to discuss the financing options for the Esquire she desired. Carl Stephenson wanted to take the Mustang for another test drive during his lunch hour at twelve-thirty, and a Mr. Kevin Nguyen made a four o’clock appointment to look at possible purchase for his son.

  On Tuesday, other than a seven-thirty breakfast meeting at the I-Hop across the street, the rest of the workday remained blank. At five o’clock, however, having received permission to leave work early, he scheduled a meeting at his house with Martin. The electrical part he ordered several weeks ago finally arrived.

  On Wednesday at ten o’clock, Sean had Jamaal Jackson scheduled to return with his wife. Unlike the previous Fords he owned, the man voiced complaints about his current one, but like congressmen whose low approval ratings don’t seem to prevent successful reelections, the man’s loyalty to the brand remained steadfast. At two o’clock, he made an appointment with Dayla Cunningham, a feisty elderly woman who impressed him with her knowledge of cars and engines during their brief conversation at the dealership. Scrolling to Thursday, he’d stopped reading when his phone rang.

  “Hello, Ray.”

  “Are you still in touch with Adam McBride?” he asked, bypassing any greeting.

  Sean lifted Hendrix off his chest and placed him on the floor. “Not much anymore,” he said. Rising to his feet, he walked to the window and stared past a streetlamp at a girl, seemingly high school aged, getting out of the back seat of a car with a boy about the same age. The recollection of his past sped through his mind, when grand possibilities and optimism reigned, and sex dominated his thoughts. Closing the curtain, he asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Do you remember me telling you about the last Beatles’ Song Murderer victim, the woman from Simi Valley?”

  Returning to the couch, Sean ignored the rush of hip pain as he sat on the edge of the cushion, his right leg jiggling up and down.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Her name was Jacquelyn Hastings, and about two months before she was raped and killed on July twenty-second, she purchased a new car, a Ford Fusion, from your father’s Van Nuys dealership.”

  Sean closed his eyes as he tried to settle his breathing. His heart raced in sudden awareness of the reason for the call. In a slow, hesitant manner, he finished the sentence for Maldonado.

  “And Adam sold
her the car.”

  “On Sunday, May eighteenth. It was an oversight on our part, something we should have caught sooner.”

  Sean didn’t respond, listening to Maldonado’s muted cough before continuing where he left off. “Some people wait months before they put the license plates on their new car, and some people are like Jacquelyn Hastings. It usually takes about six weeks to get the registration, right? She wasted no time getting those plates back on, and that disguised how new the car was. It took a while, but the link was made, and now I wanted to talk to you about it. You told me he’d been transferred for a sexual harassment claim. Do you know if he’s still working there?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, before realizing his knee-jerk response couldn’t be verified at that moment. “I mean, I haven’t heard anything, so I think so.”

  “You said you’re not in touch with him, but what about that bowling thing you guys are in? You still doing that?”

  Staring at the floor, Sean leaned forward, both his legs frozen in place. “I still am,” he said. “We took September off and we started up again this month, but he was a no show both times.” Sean rubbed his hand across his face, staring at the reflection of the streetlamp through the curtain. While part of him didn’t want to believe in Adam’s guilt, he wanted justice for Merissa more than anything, and if that meant marching that religious wacko away in his goddamn handcuffs, then let him rot in hell. “What do you think, Ray?” he asked, his tired voice leaking through an exhale. “Is it Adam? Is he the one?”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Maldonado answered. “As far as we know, he’s the first suspect that has ties to Miss Franklin and Jacquelyn Hastings, so that means something. I also find it interesting that he lied to you when he said he was home that night. According to my notes, you told me his wife said he didn’t come home until after midnight, that he got some food and just sat in his car. Is that a lie, too? Maybe he’s deceiving his wife. Maybe he’s deceiving you.”

  “Can’t you bring him in for questioning?” Sean asked. “I mean, if he’s the one, why not make sure you capture him before he rapes and kills again?”

  “Suspicion without hard evidence doesn’t do us a damn bit of good,” Maldonado answered. “The last thing I want is for this guy to slip through the cracks again knowing we’re watching him. If he’s the one, the web is closing in, and from this point on, we’ll keep a very close watch on Mr. McBride. But you can also help.”

  Sean rubbed his hand down the back of his head, looking at the darkening shadows in the far corner of the room. “I don’t know what I can do,” he told him. “Like I said before, I’m out of touch with the guy.”

  “Well, get back in touch, okay?” Maldonado said, the level of his voice escalating for the first time. “See what he’s been up to lately, if anything’s changed. How’s his marriage? Does he do activities with his kids? How’s his job? Does he sell more cars to men or women? Whatever the answer, why does he think that is? What’s he do after he leaves work? Does he go straight home? Any hobbies? Has he done any traveling? Anything you find out might be useful.”

  Sean tightened his lips, rolling them inward upon each other, and stared at the ground as he pondered the task ahead. “I’m not the kind of guy who goes around asking a lot of questions of people I know,” he said. “What if I’m too obvious and he becomes suspicious? What if he asks me why I’m suddenly so interested in all these things? What do I say to him?”

  “Tell him you’re working on the new you, that your therapist is encouraging you to be more interactive with people you know.”

  Sean uttered a percussive one-beat laugh. “Shit, Ray,” he said, a chuckle spilling forth. “That stupid therapist line is some clever bullshit. Where’d you come up with that one?”

  A momentary silence followed.

  “My therapist.”

  Chapter 30

  The next morning, October twenty-seventh, per his usual ritual, Sean headed from his bed to the shower before heading for the kitchen to prepare coffee. Reminded by the yellow post-it note he placed on the refrigerator, he called Boyd’s Electronics and left a message for Martin about a persistent garage light issue before selecting a jazz compilation CD to accompany his first cup.

  As he started humming along to Wes Montgomery’s classic “Bumpin’ on Sunset,” the doorbell rang. Annoyed at first by the interruption, he opened the door right away after looking through the peephole. With a slight, tight-lipped smile conveying concern rather than any kind of joy, Jenny stood facing him with her arm lowered around the slump-shouldered body of a teary-eyed Kayleigh, wearing the number fourteen Lakers jersey and wiping both eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I hope we’re not disturbing you, Sean,” Jenny said, “but Kayleigh wanted to tell you something she just found out, and it seems it couldn’t wait.”

  From the brief recognition of how good Jenny looked in her pair of tight-fitting jeans, and her soft brown hair sprawled over the shoulders of her caramel-colored cashmere sweater, his attention shifted toward his sad, little friend. Kayleigh stared with a distant look of distress, her eyes gazing straight ahead, level with Sean’s thigh. Clutching the folds of his robe, he lowered himself to his knees and brought his face close to hers.

  “What’s the matter, Kayleigh?” he asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Glancing up at Jenny in confusion, he looked back at Kayleigh and waited through the alternating moments of sniffles and silence. Her lips quivered and the watery eyes made him feel terrible, even though he remained clueless over her sorrow and the surprise visit.

  “It’s...it’s Coby,” she said, her voice low and weepy.

  Sean tilted his head, conjecturing about the cause for such grief and the need to come see him. A sudden troubling thought struck him, tightening his stomach in fear over the possible devastating repercussions to Kayleigh’s psyche if the man’s cancer returned, or worse, if he died.

  “What happened to him?”

  Kayleigh took a deep breath before wiping her nose with her arm.

  “He’s not a Laker anymore,” she muttered, seconds before the tears resumed.

  “I guess they didn’t sign him to play again this year,” Jenny explained. “Kayleigh went on their website this morning and found out.”

  In a small, cracking voice she said, “I wanted you to know, Mr. Music.” Glancing into his eyes for a moment, she lowered her gaze to the ground again.

  Sean looked up at Jenny. “Did she tell her parents?”

  “They’re in Santa Barbara for their anniversary, so I doubt they know,” she said, stroking Kayleigh’s patchy tufts. “I’m staying with the kids. When I heard her crying, I rushed to her room, fearing something awful. But after she told me what it was, and my heartbeat returned to normal, she insisted on seeing you right away.”

  “It is awful!” Kayleigh cried.

  Sean smiled at Kayleigh and gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “You know something?” he asked. “I once felt the same kind of sadness about another Laker who played before you were even born. And he was my favorite Laker ever.”

  “Really?” she replied. “What was his name?”

  “Have you ever heard of Magic Johnson?”

  Kayleigh squinted as she thought about it, and then nodded her head. “Yeah, I think so,” she said. “That’s a funny name for somebody.”

  Sean glanced up at Jenny, their smiles joining together.

  “It’s just a nickname,” he told her. “His real name is Earvin, but he was like a magician with all the amazing things he did on the court. Just when you thought he couldn’t do more stuff, he always seemed to have another trick up his sleeve. So when somebody started calling him Magic Johnson, that’s how he got to be known to everybody.”

  “Why did he make you so sad?”

  “Well, he got real sick and had to stop playing. And it didn’t just make all of Los Angeles sad, but the whole country, and even lots of basketball fans around the world.”

  “Wow,” she whis
pered.

  “So when you tell me about Coby, and I tell you about Magic, you know what they say about two people being sad about the same thing?”

  Kayleigh shook her head.

  “They say it makes it easier to take because both of them know the same kind of hurt inside. So instead of feeling alone about it, you know you have somebody else who understands how you feel because they went through the same kind of thing. And when you share something together, even something that makes you cry, it’s nice to know you have company, right?”

  Kayleigh nodded.

  “Hey,” he said, “what are you going to be for Halloween?”

  The corners of Kayleigh’s mouth tightened into a thin-lipped smile and, in less time than it took for the final moments of a twenty-four second clock to expire, the tears formed and fell again. “Coby Karl!”

  Sean looked up into Jenny’s misty eyes before reaching out to embrace Kayleigh, her weak sobs now joined in sorrowful harmony with the subtle shaking of her frail body. When he pulled away, he held her arms and smiled. “Tell you what,” he said, “when your parents come back, tell them that Sean wants to invite you over for some pizza. And make sure to bring your guitar, okay?”

  “Okay,” she whimpered, her voice a raspy whisper.

  Rising to his feet, he caught Jenny smiling at him while a tear broke loose and descended her cheek. He wished more time remained to talk with her, but work beckoned.

  He hoped to find that time.

  Chapter 31

  Slogging through a molasses morning of mental fog and ineffective cups of coffee, Sean stared into the nothingness of his round, glass covered kitchen table, feeling drained from a restless night of regret and expectations of challenge for what awaited him today--Merissa’s forty-third birthday.

  Almost eight years older, he used to joke with her about respecting her elders, but Merissa’s intelligence far exceeded his. A college graduate, unlike him, an avid reader, also unlike him, and an activist for helping women and children in abusive relationships, his admiration ran deep. The eternal, unanswerable question of why bad things happened to good people stuck to his thoughts like a shadow, but never to the degree as what this day, October thirtieth, represented, and what he planned to do about it.