The remains Read online

  “You never told me,” he whispered. “All the years, months we were together. The three years we were married. You never said a single word about it.”

  For an instant I thought he might try and hold me. Comfort me. But I was glad somehow when he didn’t. Instead he fisted his now warm bottle of beer, drank the whole thing down in one swift chug.

  “What exactly do Franny’s paintings have to do with Whalen’s attack on you and your sister?”

  I stood up from the armrest. I went to the paintings, repositioned them side by side against the bookcase so that they could be viewed together beneath the light from the stand-up lamp.

  “At first I didn’t make the connection. It just seemed strange to me that I could clearly see the word ‘Listen’ in the center of the first canvas and other people-even Robyn-had to be coaxed into seeing it.”

  “But the design is an abstract Pollack sort of thing.” He wiped his eyes again.

  “Not abstract enough for me to see through the abstraction,” I explained.

  Michael perked up his eyebrows. “In the same way a colorblind person can pick out certain words in a pattern that a person without colorblindness cannot,” he suggested. “Or vice-versa. Are you colorblind, Rebecca?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not that I’m aware of. But then I don’t think what’s happening has anything to do with colors and how they’re put together to make an image.”

  “So what do you think?”

  I swallowed a deep breath, exhaled it.

  “I think Francis Scaramuzzi is trying to connect directly with my mind.”

  Chapter 17

  It was a bold statement, admittedly. And I’m not sure Michael knew how to react to it. He stood stone stiff, eyes wide open, unblinking. He’d gone silent.

  “Let me get this straight. You think an autistic guy like Franny is trying to send you subliminal messages through his work.”

  “Except there’s nothing sublime about them. I can read them just like I can read a stop sign. Even you can read them when pushed.”

  “Let me ask you a question,” he jumped in. “When was the last time you had a conversation with Franny that lasted more than a few sentences?”

  “That would be never.”

  “But he has the ability to paint secret messages or at least words inside his design of his paintings.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Is Franny purposely putting words into those scenes? And if he is, how can he be sure I’ll recognize them?”

  Michael cocked his head.

  “Maybe it’s something he feels compelled to do. You know, like instinct.”

  I grabbed my beer and, like Michael before me, took a very long drink. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I said, “This is what I believe: come Friday it’ll be thirty years since Molly and I were abducted. Maybe thirty years bears some larger significance than say, twenty-nine years for instance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because for weeks now I’ve been having these vivid dreams about Molly, Whalen, the attack in the woods, the events leading up to it.”

  “Vivid dreams.” Michael nodded. I got the feeling I was losing him.

  “Yes, vivid dreams. And I also think that somehow Franny, despite his autism, has somehow found a way to turn his emotional disconnectedness around. Whether he’s aware of it or not.”

  “So what are you saying, Bec?”

  “I guess what I’m saying is that Franny knows something I don’t. He’s somehow perceived something. The future maybe. Now the only way he can warn me about it is through these paintings.”

  Michael shook his head.

  “Franny has a sixth sense?” Yet another question.

  “From what little I know about savants, I know that they use their brains differently than you and me. They’re able to tap far deeper into certain wells of talent and yet not at all in others. Thus his unusually gifted talent for painting, for creating images, for putting together colors.”

  Retrieving his empty beer bottle, Michael went back into the kitchen. He got a Pepsi, popped the top, and came back out into the living room with it. The difference between the new Michael and the old Michael was that now he could stop drinking after one beer.

  Scratching his head, he said, “How can you be sure about any of this, Bec? Sounds like science fiction to me. Isaac Asimov Magazine.”

  I pointed to the first painting on the left. “Listen.”

  “Only a few hours after he gave me this painting, I dreamed of a field with a thick wood on its far side. Molly was walking ahead of me, leading us into the woods that my father forbade us to enter.”

  “That’s no dream,” Michael said. “That really happened.”

  “I was woken up from that dream to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I also thought I heard a voice.”

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “It was his voice. I swear it was Whalen’s voice.”

  “Do you remember Whalen’s voice?”

  I shook my head.

  “No. But I knew it belonged to him.”

  “You must have been dreaming. He’s dead after all. Isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I was dreaming. But my eyes were open. I couldn’t move. I felt like I was glued to the bed.”

  Now pointing his index finger at me to further stress his point, he said, “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t dreaming?”

  “I agree. It’s not unusual to have your eyes open and be caught up in a dream state.”

  “So who was calling you at that hour?”

  “In the morning I checked the phone. There was no record of anyone having called.”

  Michael smiled. But I knew he wasn’t happy about anything. “Then it all must have been a bad dream.”

  “True, but…” My voice trailed off, as if it had a mind of its own.

  “But what, Bec?”

  “Then this afternoon Franny gives me another painting. This one matches precisely the scene of my dream-the landscape-almost precisely. He calls it ‘See’ of all things as if he wants me to see what’s about to happen.”

  “Yesterday he wanted you to listen. The squiggly Sharpie lines. Maybe they represent sound waves.” He said it half joking, half serious.

  I giggled. But it was a nervous giggle. Sound Waves… Listen… Michael had a point. He crossed his arms, rolled his eyes. I was freaking him out.

  “What else, Bec?” he pushed. “I know you’re not done.”

  “And tonight, in the parking garage as I was heading for home, I saw the shadow of a man.”

  “Becca.”

  I wasn’t talking now so much as ranting. Michael was staring at me, shaking his head. Not like he didn’t believe me. More like things were moving too fast for him.

  My lungs were working overtime, my heart was pounding and there was a buzzing inside my skull.

  “There’s one more thing,” I said. “Over the past few months I’ve received more than a few odd texts.”

  “How odd?”

  “Some contained only my name. Rebecca. More recently I started getting the word, ‘remember.’”

  “Who forwarded them?”

  “When I try to find out the sender’s information, all I get is ‘Unknown Caller.’”

  “Then whoever is doing this knows how to block it. Did you know that if we had a number, we could cross-reference it on the web for a home address?”

  I told him I had no idea. But then, what difference did it make? At least Michael knew everything now. At least I had finally been able to free the secret.

  Silence draped over us for what seemed forever. Until my ex-husband escaped into the bathroom and washed his face. When he returned to the living room, some of the color had returned to his cheeks.

  “I thought you told me Whalen was dead?” he said. “Isn’t that exactly what you told me a few minutes ago when you revealed the secret?”

  “I’ve always assumed he was dead. That he died an old man in prison.”<
br />
  “So Whalen didn’t just disappear,” he posed. “He was arrested and put in lock up?”

  “Arrested and convicted in the abduction and attempted rape of an Albany woman if I remember correctly. Happened not six months after his attack on me and my twin sister. They put him away forever. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. When you’re twelve years old, thirty years sounds like a lifetime. Or in this case, a death sentence.”

  Michael exhaled and once more crossed his arms.

  “It’s been thirty years, Rebecca,” he said. “The lifetime is over, death sentence commuted.”

  I felt a brick lodge itself in my stomach. The brick turned into nausea.

  “You think it’s possible Whalen has been released from prison?” I said, voice trembling. “Michael, do you believe he could be alive? That maybe he’s stalking me? Texting me? Do you think Franny’s hyper-sensitive brain has somehow picked up on it, and the only way he knows how to warn me is through his paintings?”

  He never said a word. Because just like Franny, I believe he already knew the answer.

  Chapter 18

  “There’s one quick method to find out if Whalen is still alive,” Michael said. “Google search.”

  We were standing inside my bedroom just off the kitchen. My heart was pumping wildly. It also felt entirely odd doing something like this with my ex. Doing something this important, this life altering. In a word, this messed up.

  While on one hand, I felt about fifty pounds lighter, having been able to talk out the events of thirty years ago, I also felt as though the wood floor was about to be pulled out from under me. In just a minute or two I would find out if the man who attacked me and my sister was still alive. If he had been released from prison.

  Michael sat at the computer desk in my bedroom with both hands positioned on the keyboard. I watched over his shoulder while he typed in the URL for Google. When it came up he entered the word “Sexual Predators, New York State” into the empty search box. Fingering the ENTER key the search came up with several pages of sites and URLs that would list the registry of documented sexual predators, deviants and offenders, the most prominent of which was a site called www.childsafenetwork.com.

  Michael clicked onto the site, brought it up.

  It was then I took an instinctive step back, sat down on the edge of the bed. My heart was thumping so fast I thought I might have a heart attack. I was having trouble breathing, swallowing.

  Turning to me in alarm, Michael said, “We can stop if you want, Rebecca. If you’re not ready.”

  I put my head in my hands, rubbed the feeling back into my face. “What if it’s true?” I said. “What if after all these years we find out Whalen is alive? What if he’s out of prison?”

  “Then at least we know what we’re up against,” Michael said. “We can defend ourselves if we know what’s out there. I can defend you. If we choose to ignore it, it might come back to haunt you.”

  My hands were shaking. Adrenalin was pouring into my brain so rapidly, it sounded like a brass band warming up inside my head. Michael turned back to the computer screen, then back to me again. I could tell by the look on his face that he was brainstorming.

  “You never told a soul about what happened in the woods.”

  I nodded.

  “If we find Whalen’s name on this list… if we find out he’s alive, it won’t matter.”

  Swallowing, I looked in his eyes.

  “How can it not matter?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, wrong choice of words. What I’m trying to say is this: finding his name on the state registry doesn’t mean you’re in any kind of danger. You never ratted him out, so to speak. You weren’t directly responsible for sending him to prison. If you’re worried about the revenge factor, there’s no reason for Whalen to seek you out.”

  Michael had a point.

  Why would Whalen want anything to do with me after all these years? That is, assuming he was alive in the first place. Besides, forty-two year old women weren’t his style. Adolescent girls and young women however, were a different story.

  I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My mouth was dry. On the other hand, I found myself feeling something for my ex-husband that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Trust. I was placing all of my trust and emotions into his care, and I was feeling all right about it. After all, he was the author of a published detective novel, which in my mind anyway, made him a kind of amateur detective.

  “How shall I proceed, Bec?” he said softly, big brown eyes piercing into my own. “It’s your call.”

  By now my breathing had become so shallow I felt like I was about to pass out. At least there was a bed underneath me to catch the fall.

  I looked into Michael’s face.

  “Just do it.” I swallowed.

  He typed the name “Joseph William Whalen” into the Child Safe Network search engine. Then he fingered ENTER.

  Chapter 19

  The black and white image of a man appeared. A face. A mug shot.

  The black and white face of a man who abducted me; abducted Molly. Attacked us.

  The black and white face of a man who touched us and hurt us.

  The man was alive.

  The monster had been freed.

  Michael turned back to me. He started saying something to me that I did not understand. It sounded like he was talking to me through a cardboard tube. My legs went weak and the room began to spin. I sat down hard onto the bed.

  “He’s alive,” I said, mouth tasting like the dried paint at the bottom of a jar. “The monster is still alive. All this time I thought he was dead… wished him dead.”

  I tried to stand, but I found it impossible to work up the strength. I began to hyperventilate.

  “Take it easy,” Michael insisted. “Breathe easy.”

  I looked up at my ex-husband, looked up at his eyes. At the way he was biting down on his bottom lip, his nerves betraying him. I brought my hands to my face, rubbed my eyes, patted my cheeks. Michael went into the kitchen, grabbed me a glass of tap water, and brought it back in for me.

  “Take a small sip,” he said, handing me the glass.

  I held the glass two-handed, took a small drink, then handed it back.

  “What do we do now?” I exhaled, my breathing beginning to slow.

  “I’m not sure what we can do now.” He sat back down in front of the computer, set the water glass beside the keyboard. “The good news is that Whalen is registered as a sex offender. That means he’s got a probation officer assigned to him by the state and the county. It also means he’s a part of the ViCAP data base.”

  The tap water bubbled inside my stomach, made me nauseas. I tried to slow my breathing even more.

  Brushing back my hair with open fingers, I said, “What’s ViCAP?

  “It stands for Violent Criminals Apprehension Program. I used their data bank as part of the research for The Hounds of Heaven. By all appearances, Whalen has got himself a place of honor in the New York State ViCAP program.”

  Pausing, he set his hand on my knee. But I pushed it away. I just didn’t want anyone touching me right then.

  After a beat, Michael posed, “Do you know if Whalen was ever convicted in the actual murder of anyone he abducted?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know much about his history, but I don’t think he was ever convicted of actual murder. Not enough evidence or something like that. I remember Molly talking about it incessantly. Even up until the day she died. I chose to simply block him out. Except when I was drawing his face. When I was drawing his face in my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, I wanted to remember him. But then, and only then.”

  My ex’s face had become a mask of intensity. In a strange way, I felt happy for him. He was working the problem- our problem-with a sense of purpose. Here was the Michael I loved and missed. I watched him finger a few more keys until the website for ViCAP replaced the Child Safety Network. Using the same tw
o-index-finger style with which he banged out his manuscripts, he typed in Whalen’s full name in the space provided.

  There it was again: Whalen’s face. Not necessarily a bad face to someone who didn’t know him. But to me it was the face of monster-a gaunt, hook-nosed monster. It was also a face I had no trouble recognizing despite the fact that it had aged thirty years.

  I looked at the face and this time I did not feel like passing out. This time I stood up, looked over Michael’s shoulder, my hands pressed against the chair-back for support.

  “Sure you should be standing up, Bec?”

  But I didn’t answer. Instead I studied the short list of vitals that had been stacked besides Whalen’s image. Besides his name, the site included his date of birth, October 17, 1949. It also included a whole bunch of what I already knew. That he was small, white and thin. He was balding now, or bald. But his dark, brown eyes looked the same. So much so that they made my stomach sink even more than it already had.

  Under the face was an image captured date. It said, March 3. I pointed to it.

  “What’s this mean?”

  “It means that Whalen’s image captured date is only six months ago,” he explained. Locking eyes with me from over his shoulder, he continued. “In other words, he’s only been out of the joint for six months.”

  Scrolling down, he came to an area designated Probation Registry. Under the heading ‘County’ it said ‘Albany’.

  “My God, Michael, he lives right in Albany.”

  “It just means that he lives somewhere inside the county. That much is definite. There’s no home address listed here because even monsters like Whalen have rights. But I can be certain he resides in a halfway house. He’s probably allowed out to work, but must report back to home base soon as it’s quitting time.”

  “So what do we do now?” Back to my original question.

  Michael exited the page.

  In a flash Whalen, or his face anyway, was gone. Somehow I felt relieved. Out of sight, out of my life. But that was just wishful thinking.