The Vanishing

by Bentley Little

  And the fact was, she’d gotten worse since he’d left there.

  Part of it was the religion. Church so dominated his mother’s life now that every single thought and opinion was refracted through that lens. But whose fault was that? He was down here in Los Angeles, his sister was in San Diego, his dad . . .

  Where was his dad?

  That was one of the things that gnawed at him. Brian had accepted almost immediately the idea that his father had written the letter, but where had he written it? The paper had been delivered by hand, so he had to have come to the house. That meant he was either staying in Bakersfield or living there. Of course, there was no guarantee that he was still around. He could have dropped the message off and continued on his merry way. But somehow Brian didn’t think that was the case. As a reporter, he was supposed to base his opinions on facts not intuition, but more than one reporter’s hunch had led directly to a Pulitzer prize, and right now his hunch was telling him that his dad was sticking close to the old house.

  Was his mom in danger?

  That was another thought that was never far from his mind, and it was a question for which he had no answer. For all he knew, his dad had been living only a few blocks away for the past twenty years and it was only chance that had kept his parents from meeting up again at the supermarket or the gas station. He didn’t think so, though. He had the feeling that his father had been gone for all this time, that he’d been far away . . . and that he’d changed.

  Changed how? Brian had no idea. But the idea that his dad had returned in order to deliver that letter and its indecipherable message seemed more than a little threatening.

  He remembered what Dr. LaMunyon had said.

  I’m afraid of that language.

  He went over to his desk and opened the folder containinghis father’s letter, looking at the dirty, wrinkled page. It was scary. He didn’t know how he could have missed that before. And, as always, those smudged—

  bloody?

  —fingerprints jumped out at him, this time making him wonder if violence wasn’t behind their presence. In his mind’s eye, he saw his dad, dressed all in rags now instead of a business suit, killing another raggedy man, then grabbing a piece of charcoal and paper and writing this message.

  He wanted to phone Jillian and talk about it, tell her what had happened today with Dr. LaMunyon, but it was definitely too late to call. She’d forbidden anyone to phone the house after nine unless it was an emergency. She didn’t want her daughter woken, for one thing, and as she explained, late-night calls scared the hell out of her; she always assumed that someone had died.

  He looked at the paper for a moment longer, handling it softly, carefully, running a finger over the wrinkled ridges as though he might learn something about it through the sense of touch. He did this each time he picked up the letter, although he did not know why and an anal, logical part of his brain told him he was destroying evidence.

  He put the letter away and turned on the television. It was on in the background, white noise, as he popped a Lean Cuisine into the microwave and sorted through today’s mail. He ate in the kitchen while he scanned through both the Times and the Register, reading the articles of friends and colleagues to take his mind off his dad, his mom and the letter. After dumping the remains of his dinner in the garbage can and breaking out another can of beer, he walked out to the living room, where he switched the channel to a local station with ten o’clock news.

  ‘‘. . . Devine, founder and CEO of Oklatex Oil, had recently agreed to a merger with British Petroleum—’’

  Fumbling with the remote, Brian turned up the volume. In a small square to the right of the news anchor’s head was a file photo of Bill Devine.

  ‘‘. . . His body was found in his office by an employee, and though sources say the billionaire apparently died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the investigation remains open and police have not ruled out foul play.’’

  In an interview clip from last year, Devine was shown giving a speech to Oklatex shareholders. Brian recognized the deep intonation of the man, and the sound of it sent a chill through his bones. In his mind, he heard it on Wilson’s answering machine, speaking those inexplicable words in a slow, carefully modulated voice.

  My erection will not stop. Oh no, it will not stop . . .

  ‘‘So?’’ Brian asked. ‘‘Does this qualify as an epidemic?’’ He and Wilson were looking over the wire-service photos of the Stewart murders.

  ‘‘The tabloids will say so.’’

  ‘‘What say we?’’

  ‘‘It is strange,’’ Wilson admitted. ‘‘Two wealthy businessmen on opposite sides of the country go on murderous rampages? It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence.’’

  Ted Sprague walked by. ‘‘I hear Stephen Stewart made a killing in New York.’’ He chuckled.

  Brian hated puns. And he hated people who made puns. He remembered his uncle Frank, who’d always had a book called People are Pun-ny sitting in his bathroom next to the toilet. Uncle Frank had been an asshole. Just like Ted Sprague.

  ‘‘You know,’’ Wilson said, ignoring the entertainment reporter, ‘‘there are rumors that a couple other Fortune 500 heavy hitters may have a proclivity for violence. There’ve been situations that have been hushed up before—nothing to this extent, of course—but a couple of times the victims supposedly landed in the hospital.’’

  ‘‘Where’d you hear this?’’

  ‘‘Finance is my beat.’’

  ‘‘Do you think it’s true?’’

  ‘‘Maybe. I’m pretty sure at least one of them is. I talked to the woman involved, after the fact, and while she wouldn’t name names, everyone knew who she was seeing.’’

  ‘‘Would I know who he was?’’

  ‘‘Yes, you would.’’

  They looked again at the photos, most of them far too graphic ever to appear in a mainstream publication. The one Brian found most disturbing was of Arlene Stewart, the billionaire’s wife. She’d been stomped to death after a host of other atrocities had been performed on her, and only her head remained intact, the open eyes making her face seem eerily alive above the shattered, bloody mess of the body below it.

  Brian looked away. ‘‘And Stephen Stewart is still at large.’’

  ‘‘Apparently so, although I don’t see how that’s possible. Someone so visible and publicly known . . .’’

  ‘‘Come on. With all the resources at his disposal, you don’t think he could arrange to ‘disappear’ for a while?’’

  ‘‘Yes, I suppose so, but this isn’t tax fraud or stock market manipulation. This is the biggest murder case in the United States right now. Every man, woman and child in this country has seen his face plastered all over TV, newspapers, magazines, the Internet. Unless he was able to smuggle himself offshore to a desert island, someone somewhere’s bound to see him and call it in. I’m just amazed it hasn’t happened already.’’

  ‘‘If his son ever comes out of his coma, he might be able to shed some light on what happened.’’

  There was a pause.

  ‘‘What about Devine?’’ Brian asked.

  Wilson sighed. ‘‘I knew you were going to bring that up. And, yes, before you ask, I was going to bring it up, too.’’

  ‘‘So you think they’re connected.’’

  Wilson nodded.

  ‘‘Any theories?’’ Brian asked.

  ‘‘America’s economic upper crust has become so inbred that they’re producing homicidal maniacs.’’

  ‘‘Are you serious?’’

  Wilson smiled grimly. ‘‘No, of course not. But it just goes to show how difficult, if not downright impossible, it is to connect the dots in any meaningful way on a situation such as this. You do know how Bill Devine died, don’t you?’’

  ‘‘Self-inflicted gunshot wound.’’

  ‘‘Wounds. Plural. Do you know where they were?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘He shot himself in the le
ft leg. Then he shot himself in the right leg. Then he shot a hole in his left hand. Then he shot himself in the stomach. Finally, he shot himself in the head, putting the gun in his mouth and pointing upward, so the entire top half of his cranium was obliterated.’’

  ‘‘Jesus.’’

  ‘‘Now the question is: How could he do such a thing? How could he physically accomplish a suicide of that nature?’’

  ‘‘You don’t think it was suicide?’’

  ‘‘I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is: How did he continue on after the first bullet and the second and the third? How did he stand the pain? And after he shot himself in the stomach . . . well, that should have finished him off. All the blood loss and organ damage. He should have been too weak to do anything but slump to the floor. And yet he still had both the strength and the presence of mind to shoot himself in the head.’’ He paused. ‘‘That’s why I think there’s some sort of connection to the other killings. The extent of the carnage, whether directed inward or outward, seems to me to be of a kind. Combined with the similarities of the killers’ backgrounds . . .’’ Wilson sighed. ‘‘It reminds me of a bad science fiction movie, where a virus that makes people commit violent acts is somehow transmitted from one person to another.’’

  Brian was tempted to tell the other reporter about his father’s letter, but instead he said, ‘‘Inbreeding doesn’t sound that far-fetched after all, does it?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ Wilson admitted. He pointed to one of the wire service photos, a shot not of the bodies but the crime scene itself: the Stewarts’ bedroom. His finger traced the edge of the photograph, which seemed to be deliberately ringed by lushly growing houseplants. ‘‘I contributed to Devine’s obit—background information, financial dealings, things of that nature—but McElvoy actually wrote the piece. Somehow he was able to get a statement from Devine’s widow, to talk to her, not just recycle some prepared PR from the family publicist, and he told me that she said something strange. He didn’t use it because it didn’t make any sense and she was probably speaking from shock, but she said something about the plants growing wild and she couldn’t stop them. The only reason that set off alarm bells was because when we went to see Devine at Oklatex, I noticed the plants in his office. Did you? They were huge.’’

  Brian hadn’t noticed, but now that he thought back on it, the office had had a lot of foliage. In fact, with all of the open space and skylights, it seemed purposely designed with such an environment in mind.

  ‘‘Now look at this picture.’’

  Brian glanced at the picture of the Stewarts’ bedroom. Indeed, whether it was an artistic decision to frame the picture in such a manner or not, there was no arguing that the bedroom looked like a jungle.

  ‘‘Tom Lowry’s entire estate was overgrown with exotic plants.’’

  ‘‘Is that supposed to mean something?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Wilson admitted. ‘‘But if we’re looking for things these situations have in common, we have to look at everything.’’

  ‘‘But plants . . . ?’’

  ‘‘None of this makes any rational sense.’’

  ‘‘Yet we still believe it.’’

  Wilson nodded.

  Ted Sprague walked past again. ‘‘Give it up, you two. Get to work.’’

  ‘‘How’s the Charlie Brown poll going?’’ Wilson asked.

  Scowling, Ted held up a middle finger. Brian laughed.

  Wilson walked over to his desk, motioning for Brian to follow. ‘‘There’s a videotape,’’ he said after a pause.

  ‘‘Of the murders?’’

  ‘‘No. Not exactly. But . . .’’ Wilson trailed off. The expression on his face was one of uneasiness and apprehension. He withdrew a black unmarked VHS cassette from within a drawer. ‘‘It was Devine’s. From his office. Someone at Oklatex slipped it to me. I’m not supposed to have it—’’

  ‘‘Who gave it to you? That secretary?’’

  ‘‘I’m not going to say. But I want you to look at it and tell me what you think. Take it into the conference room. There’s a TV with a VCR already set up.’’

  ‘‘What does—’’

  ‘‘Just watch it,’’ Wilson said.

  Apprehensive yet intrigued, Brian followed the other reporter’s instruction. Closing and locking the conference room door behind him, he turned on the TV, popped the tape in the VCR and sat down to watch.

  The video was in black and white. THIS IS WHERE IT BEGINS, read a title card, and then the screen went dark. The camera pulled back, and the darkness was revealed to be the interior of a wound in the center of a dead man’s chest. Although Brian was not exactly sure that it was a man. The figure’s head and feet were blurred— only the midsection was in focus—and the shape of the head seemed grotesquely misshapen, too big and too irregular to be that of a human being. Then the scene switched, and he was looking at what at first appeared to be a forest but was soon revealed to be a bug’s-eye view of an ordinary lawn. As the camera moved through the grass, the stalks came to look less like trees and more like people, although as far as he could tell there was no CGI trickery or special effects involved, merely a subtle shift in the viewing angle and the lighting. In the center of the screen, the stem of a plant swayed seductively, looking more like a woman than seemed possible, its reediness undulating like the body of an exotic dancer.

  There was a split-second shot of a real exotic dancer. She was moving too fast to be clearly seen, go-going on some dark, grimy stage, but her blurred head seemed way too big, and there was something wrong with her arms.

  Brian felt cold. The camera panned down the outside of a building, showing part of a neon sign on a concrete wall above a generic doorway, and then the screen was filled with a shiny black puddle that could have been oil, could have been blood. The final shot was a singularly unerotic close-up of a vaginal opening that somehow resembled the chest wound of the man at the beginning.

  The video was silent, and, throughout, the only noise in the room was his own ragged breathing, the faint hiss of the air conditioner and the barely audible sound of the running VCR. The fact that there was no soundtrack to the horrific images creeped him out and somehow made the whole thing seem more real, as though the depicted events had not been intentionally staged for the camera’s benefit but had merely been captured by someone in the right place at the right time.

  Or wrong place at the wrong time.

  For there was something so fundamentally disturbing about the video that Brian still remained in his seat, staring at the snowy screen even after it ended. He emerged from the conference room moments later, more shaken than he wanted to admit, and placed the cassette on Wilson’s desk.

  ‘‘Whoever made that,’’ Brian said, ‘‘is one sick fuck.’’

  Wilson stopped typing and looked up. ‘‘You’ll get no argument from me.’’

  ‘‘That building in there. I recognized that place,’’ Brian said. ‘‘It’s in Orange County. Santa Ana. A guy I know works there. He used to be a night custodian at the Register.’’

  ‘‘It doesn’t seem to have any importance—’’

  ‘‘It’s the only recognizable location in the video.’’

  ‘‘You want to call your friend and ask him if he knows anything about it?’’

  Brian glanced at the clock. ‘‘They’re not even open yet, I don’t think. I’ll stop by on my way home and see if I can talk to him. Or see if anyone else there knows anything about it.’’

  Wilson took a deep breath. ‘‘What are we doing?’’ he asked.

  Brian looked at him. ‘‘What do you mean?’’

  He motioned toward his computer. ‘‘I have actual articles on which I’m supposed to be working. I’m assuming you do as well.’’

  ‘‘So?’’

  ‘‘So why are we involved here at all?’’

  ‘‘Because Bill Devine got you involved by leaving that message.’’ Brian said nothing about his father’s
letter and his own involvement.

  ‘‘At some point, we’re going to have to tell the reporters who are really working on these stories what we’re doing. And we should probably check in with an editor.’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Brian agreed.

  Wilson paused. His voice, when he spoke again, was pensive. ‘‘It’s not just that this is a potentially great story. There’s something else here. At least there is for me. It’s like an itch in the back of my brain. I could try to say it’s my reporter’s instinct, but it’s more personal than that. The truth is, I don’t really care about writing the story. I just want to find out what is going on here. It seems . . . important somehow.’’

  That was Brian’s thought exactly, although he hadn’t been able to put it into words.

  ‘‘And,’’ Wilson continued, ‘‘I’m not even sure that either of us could write an article about what’s really going on here. Not unless we start getting into areas where we really don’t want to go.’’

  Brian nodded. He, too, had the nagging sense that ‘‘areas where we really don’t want to go’’ was exactly where they had to go. There was no simple, rational explanation for everything that was going on. These killing sprees weren’t crimes of passion or mob hits, Devine’s suicide was not the result of depression over his love life or business, and his dad . . .

  Where did his dad fit into all of this?

  Brian thought of the video, the gaping wound in the dead—thing’s—chest. He was frightened. He felt like Pandora, in a way, afraid to open the box but needing to know. This was deep, whatever it was, and there was no way for it to turn out any way but bad. Still, Wilson was right. It was like an itch. They had to press on.

  ‘‘I have to get back to work,’’ Brian said. ‘‘You’re right. I do have articles to write.’’

  ‘‘I’ll make a copy of that tape for you,’’ Wilson told him.

  ‘‘And I’ll stop by and see Manny on my way home.’’

  Although he’d put in fifteen years sweeping up at the Register, Manny Ramirez was now one of the floor managers at Razzamatazz—what used to be called a strip joint but was now referred to as a ‘‘gentleman’s club.’’ Such businesses had gained legitimacy over the past decade, and instead of dateless trench-coated losers, their clientele now included hip twentysomething couples and groups of middle-aged professional men. It was why Manny said he’d had no qualms about taking this job. Hell, he told Brian, these days it was more of an embarrassment to work for a newspaper than a gentleman’s club. And the pay here was better, too.