I felt the blush rising in my cheeks again. "Heh. Umm…you’re right." Goddamn, she doesn't miss a trick. I thought that last answer was smooth. Fuck me, Freddy. My bottle was almost empty. I finished it, and set it down on the table.
"As I said, I had noticed you, not them. Not that I thought you’d ever talk to me other than to tell me to get lost. Still, I’d rather be told to 'get bent' by you rather than them. How’s that for nobility?"
She laughed nervously. "Umm…thank you? …I think?" She finished her drink, and set her bottle down as well. "Well, I’m glad to see you’re not the whiny little self-conscious twit you were trying to pass yourself off as."
I shrugged again. "Thank you…I think."
"So you like this music?" She waved her hand at the dance floor.
I looked up at her. "Fuck no. I told you, I was here to score free alcohol off him." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder to indicate Mike, who was trying to work his magic on another blonde. He apparently hadn't made any headway with Trish's twitty little friends.
She smiled and stood, holding out her hand and wiggling her fingers, indicating I should grasp her hand and come with her. "Good. Let’s get out of this place then. I’m hungry."
"I don’t have a car here. I came here with Mike. You know, the free booze thing."
She shrugged. "We’ll take a taxi. I don’t think either of us is in any shape to drive, anyway."
I nodded, and followed her out. Mike gave me thumbs up from the dance floor. I flipped him off. Trish caught the gesture, and smiled from the corner of her mouth, her eyes twinkling as I followed her to the front door, her hand still in mine.
I already knew I was fascinated with her.
She called for a taxi, and I stood outside and waited.
I shuffled my feet nervously for a few minutes.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes with her hand, and stared at me frankly. "What’s wrong?"
I coughed nervously, and shoved my hands in my pocket. "I live a boring life, and the last ten minutes have been the most interesting time I have had in a long time."
She smiled encouragingly, her eyes still questioning me.
"I like you, and I think you are interested in me. But you need to know up front, I am flat out nuts. Crazy. Section Eight. Been to the loony bin. Butterfly nets, strait jackets. Cuckoo. Fucked in the head."
She smiled. "So?"
I felt close to tears. "No, I really mean it Trish. I’ve been hospitalized in psychiatric wards before. I understand, well…" I shuffled my feet nervously, my hands in my pockets of my jeans. "Well, if that bothers you, but you need to know that. I wanted you to know that up front. Before this becomes…complicated."
She looked at me earnestly. "Well, you aren’t scaring me. It’s ok. You are still ‘you’, right?"
I nodded glumly.
She grabbed my hand, and held it. Her hand was warm. "It’s ok."
I told her over a late evening dinner about my first trip to the loony bin. However, it was also the start of the lie. I lied about the night eleven years prior to meeting her, the night that changed everything, the night that put me in the psych ward and made me the subject of scrutiny.
I had made a promise to myself. I would never talk about what little I could remember ever again. That would just get me locked up again. The few memories I had weren’t possible. They were the memories of a lunatic; and the other possibility loomed over me: maybe I had done atrocious and horrible things.
~~~~~~ *LP* ~~~~~~
Despite the horrific drive to work, I had made it in one piece in spite of Joe Cool and SOB’s comments from the peanut gallery inside my head. After four hours of shuffling columns in spreadsheets and ignoring my co-workers inane and pointless banter, I left for lunch.
I sat in the back corner of a run-down mom-and-pop diner a block away from work, my back to the wall as I read a book and absently pushed food around my plate in between page turns. I felt almost bizarre, reading on a non-battery powered device. I was a familiar fixture here on lunch hours. Despite the dingy grease stained décor and the relatively high age of the patrons, the food was decent and reasonably priced.
However, the air conditioning was out again, which wasn’t unusual at this joint. It was hot inside the diner, despite the doors propped open and several fans blowing on high. It was a hot and humid summer day after last night’s storm.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as a man walked in from the street and looked around the diner, confused, carrying a leather binder. I wondered for a moment what was odd about him. Joe Cool, who had been mostly silent as I read and ate, finally spoke up. "It’s his suit. It’s out of place here."
I looked around. There were a few men from the accounting firm next door, wearing ties with their sleeves rolled up, their jackets off in the heat. The two men from the funeral home nearby were also wearing ties, wearing their suit jackets, and obviously sweating. In addition, several ladies were wearing business attire, slacks, and blouses. I pointed this out to Joe Cool.
Joe Cool responded in my head. "Yeah, but those are the same cheap rumpled suits they always wear. He’s too neatly put together. It's not as if they take American Express at this joint. The jacket alone had to set him back a few hundred—never mind the gold cuff links. Nobody in any place we hang out in wears cuff links. If he belongs in Dark Harbor, he's probably looking for the Black Bay Yacht Club."
I thought JC had a good point. The out-of-place businessman wandered over to the cash register, and waited, clearly impatient. I went back to reading the book, keeping an eye on him out of curiosity.
Finally, a waitress walked up to the cash register. They talked for a few moments, and then she pointed towards me. I closed the book, making a mental note of the page number as he walked through the diner, meandering between the tables and chairs looking directly towards me. Conversations became hushed as the patrons glanced uneasily at him. Even the scattering of summer people watched him, curious, as his worked his way towards the back of the diner.
He stopped at my table, looking down at me. "Ryan Turner?"
Joe told me to be careful how I answered. I eyed his fancy leather binder, wary, before looking up at him. "What?"
He shifted, somewhat uncomfortable. "You’re Ryan Turner, aren’t you?"
I waited several moments, thinking about the pile of late notices at home. SOB laughed at me, telling me I should pay my bills. My response to SOB was simple: "Pay my bills with what, motherfucker? I’m broke. Besides, what process server do you know that wears gold cufflinks? Process serving’s a shit job. Easy enough to prove, anyway. Watch."
I looked up at the out-of-place visitor and asked, "You some kind of process server or something?"
One of the older ladies at a table nearby turned around and glared at the out of place visitor’s back for a moment. SOB cackled madly. "The direct method. How fucking subtle and smooth," Joe Cool said sarcastically.
He laughed nervously, glancing at the people who were turning to glare at him. "No, nothing like that." He shifted nervously on his feet. "Humor me for a second?"
I stared blankly at him.
He waited awkwardly for a few moments, and when it was clear I wasn't going to answer, he set his binder on the table, and pulled out a pack of playing cards. He shuffled them, and pulled up a card from the middle of the deck. "Take a guess."
I blinked, thinking of the two of diamonds. I didn’t trust him, though, and that particular little parlor trick comes and goes anyway. It also tends to creep people the fuck out, and I didn't know what Mr. Put-Together wanted. More direct to the point, why would Mr. Put-Together know to test out this stupid parlor trick? "Jack of Spades."
He flipped around the card, showing me the two of diamonds, smiling. "Not even close. Go Fish." He paused for a second, and then he pulled the next card from the deck, and looked at it long and hard. His brow creased as a fleeting frown passed across his face. I knew damned well what that card was.
Damn
it, why would he know to check the next card? Fucking good guess, asshole. Guess where I pulled the idea for the Jack of Spades guess from? That's right…next card in the deck. I was under pressure, and it was handy. As they said in Heathers, fuck me gently with a chainsaw. I nearly sighed, but he glanced back up at me, his face smooth and even again. "Can I sit down?"
I just looked at him blankly, thinking my patented psychopath stare might encourage him to move on. Instead, he apparently thought that it was an open invitation, pulled out a chair and sat down, placing his binder in front of him. He pulled out a business card and held it out for me to take.
I ignored it for several seconds, and he placed it in front of me. Thomas J. Burkes, no title. Thomas worked for the Harmon Group out of Bloomfield Hills.
"You’re a fuck of a long ways from Detroit, Mr. Burkes. What brings you to the sunset coast side of the mitten state?"
"Please, call me Tom." Tom opened his binder, and slid a piece of paper over to me. "You are Ryan Turner." A statement, not a question this time.
I looked down at the piece of paper. It was a copy of my driver’s license. SOB asked me how he had gotten that. Joe Cool made a smart-ass remark about privacy laws. I ignored both of them, and pushed the paper back over to him.
"What do you want, Tom?" I asked, and crossed my arms, leaning back in my chair.
Tom smiled. "I have just a few questions to answer for my employer, and I’d like to have your cooperation. It should be a pretty simple matter to clear up."
SOB told me, "Fuck him, and don’t give him squat." I grunted in agreement.
Tom took my grunt as an acknowledgement. "Look, Ryan, I’m sure it’s just a case of mistaken identity. If you can just clear this up for me by answering some questions, I can finish this errand, and return to Bloomfield Hills. You go back to eating you lunch, and I can be headed back to Detroit in short order and still make my five-thirty tee time. Fair enough?" Tom smiled, attempting to be pleasant.
I just watched him, my arms still crossed as I leaned back even further in the chair. Tom’s smile faltered slightly, but he regained his composure and removed another piece of paper from his expensive leather binder. I think his pen cost more than my shoes. Tom slid the paper across the table towards me. I glanced down at it, making no move to pick it up.
It was a picture of a house. Joe Cool gasped inside my head, an unusual reaction for him considering he was my rock. Fuck you, Joe…Tell that bitch to be cool! I couldn’t even get a weak chuckle out of Joe Cool with the Pulp Fiction reference. Sigh.
I remained expressionless, my face carefully neutral as I looked at the picture. The house was rundown and dilapidated, with several windows boarded up. The front door stood wide open, half off the hinges hanging askew, and the yard was overgrown. It was, however, very familiar. It was my childhood home for 17 years. SOB muttered that Tom needed to get the fuck out of here and leave us the fuck alone. Joe Cool agreed. I told those two yammering idiots to tell that bitch to be cool again, and then turned my attention back to Tommy boy.
"It’s an abandoned house," I said.
I slid the picture back over towards him, surprised at how steady my hand was.
Tom was watching me very carefully, his smile frozen on his face. "Do you recognize it?"
I shrugged. "Is it the old McGinty place out on Tyler Road?"
Tom looked perplexed as he studied me. Tom clearly had no idea where the McGinty place was. SOB muttered for me to keep to simple answers, or I might accidentally give something away. There was no need for elaborate misdirection. I knew exactly where the house in the picture was located. It was much further downstate, closer to the Indiana/Ohio borders. I wasn’t going to help old Thomas out here, though.
Joe Cool asked, "Why did Thomas know to ask you about the pictures?" He didn’t draw my name randomly from a hat. I mulled that one over for a minute. Yeah, why did he know to try to test me with the parlor trick? Someone’s feeding him some muy excelente informacione.
Tom removed the picture of the house, clearly unsatisfied. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
I shook my head ‘no’. SOB snickered. Inside my head, I told him to shut the fuck up.
"Where are your parents?" He shuffled through some papers, found what he was looking for, and stared at me expectantly.
"They passed away when I was younger." I almost added in a car wreck, since that was what I told everyone, but I decided to keep to the simplest statements just as SOB had advised earlier.
Tom nodded. "How?"
He sat poised, with a pen, waiting.
My stomach twisted lazily, no longer agreeing with the lunch I ate. I studied him carefully for a moment. "Car wreck, you insensitive dick. Thanks for asking."
He scribbled something on the piece of paper in front of him. "I’m sorry, I was told to ask. Can you give me specifics? What date, and where the wreck occurred?"
Joe Cool warned me to avoid specifics. Thomas was on the right trail, and if I gave him specifics, he’d follow up on it and find out that I was lying. There was no wreck. SOB suggested I should get upset with him, instead. I thought that was pretty fucking good idea.
I uncrossed my arms, and glared at Tom for a moment. My heart was beating rapidly. "Look, Mr. Burkes. I don’t particularly want to rehash the worst day of my life with a complete fucking stranger with a bunch of weird, unrelated questions. It’s too upsetting, and it’s none of your motherfucking business, fuck you very much."
A number of the regular patrons were openly glaring at him, and several diners were grumbling. Some of the regular men had started to get up from their seats. I was familiar to them; he was not.
Tom started to say something, and then clamped his mouth shut when he realized that he was going to be forcibly removed from the diner shortly if this didn't settle down quickly. He shuffled his papers absently for a moment, perplexed. Clearly, SOB’s trick worked. Tom was probably a low-level lackey on a fishing expedition. Joe Cool pointed out that someone had to have sent him, and we needed to know who that someone was. I agreed.
"Tom, why are you here?"
Tom shifted, uncomfortable with the question. "I just needed to rule something out."
I leaned forward. "Who sent you?"
"My employer. Look, to get directly to the point, do you know a Ryan Vischer?" He slid over another piece of paper. It was a single, small photo of me, clearly labeled as Ryan Vischer. The picture was a photocopy from my senior year high school yearbook.
I shrugged. "Kind of looks like me, but way younger. Never heard of him, though," I said and pushed the photo back towards Tom. I stood up, grabbing the bill for lunch and my book off the table. "Are we done now? I’m late. I have to get back to work."
Mr. Burkes shrugged helplessly, closed his binder, and stood up as I fished for my wallet.
I dropped the bill and ten dollars on the table, and headed for the door without looking back at Tom. Joe Cool muttered that things were falling apart fast, as I blinked against the harsh afternoon sun, turned and walked back to work.
The Past Comes Rushing In
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." ― Søren Kierkegaard
I spent the afternoon at work brooding over the lunch conversation with Tom. The past didn’t want to stay buried; suddenly, the past pestered me from every angle, and my thinly constructed cover story wasn’t going to hold up to all the undue scrutiny. I felt helpless and angry. My world was on the brink of collapse, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
After snapping at a few people after lunch, my coworkers left me the fuck alone to stew inside my cubicle. Word must have reached my boss, because he steered clear of me as well, despite the fact I was clearly wasting the afternoon being completely unproductive.
Instead of working, I tried searching the Harmon Group on the net, but didn’t find anything relevant in the search results that meant anything. I also tried tracing down Thomas Burkes, Tom Burkes, and finally gave up when t
he name seemed too common to isolate it down. I stared out the window, and wondered how the fuck Tom’s company had found me, and why they were looking.
I doubted I’d see Tom again, but there was no doubt someone would come back with more questions. The real question, as Joe Cool reiterated, was who was doing the digging? Joe Cool, SOB, and I had no answers despite the debate.
I browsed the web, moody and distracted. However, I stopped cold, heart pounding, and even Joe and SOB shut the fuck up as I looked at the lead story on the local newspaper’s website.
My little nightmare escapades weren’t exactly dreams. Late that morning, the body of Jessica Winters had been discovered in her home. A child, Sarah, was missing. The police were cooperating with an FBI task force. The FBI had released an Amber Alert.
I stared at the news article, looking for a glimmer of information that contradicted or confirmed my dream from the night before, but there was no more solid information. There was conjecture about the identity of the killer/abductor, and a rehash of the previous homicides and abductions. No one had found any of the missing children yet.
I sighed, and clicked through to the previous articles looking for some information that would ease my conscious. I felt my hands shaking, and my stomach churned as I found nothing helpful. I wracked my brain, trying to associate the dates of the previous murders and abductions with what I did that day, to see if anything stood out. The news articles were as maddeningly thin on details. One article featured a picture of the house; every article had a picture of the missing child. However, I felt no recognition, not a tickle of warning or unease from the photos, except for the one of Sarah Winters. There was no doubt she was the same girl who was tied up at the kitchen table.
I heard my grandfather ask me if I killed my mother. I looked at the article about Jessica Winters again, and kept returning to Sarah’s photo. I wondered what exactly I was capable of, and what exactly I may have done—both recently, and eleven years ago.
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