I stand, feeling blind-sided. “The morning your husband died?”
“That’s right,” she answers.
“And you don’t know who the letter came from?”
“Are you listening? There was no return address.”
My mind races, trying to piece together this new information. I follow Alice toward the front door, but I pause in the living room, noticing a picture of a much younger Alice Gaines, holding a baby and standing next to her husband.
I pick up the picture, looking closer. “Is this your husband?”
“That’s right.”
Daniel Gaines’ driver’s license photo from Mark’s file had been too grainy to make out the differences, but in this picture I notice it immediately. Both have a mustache, a round face, and short hair. But the man in the picture has reddish hair, and green eyes, while the man who was driving the car that night had brown hair and blue eyes. A chill runs through my body. Alice Gaines’ husband was not the man driving the car the night of the accident. So who was that man? And what happened to the real Daniel Gaines?
I tell the cab driver to stop as soon as I see a phone booth. I climb out, telling him to wait, and rush through the cold evening air. Fumbling, I drop my quarter on the floor of the booth. I bend and pick it up, depositing it in the slot. Trembling fingers punch the buttons. I wait for an eternity.
“The New York Times.”
“Mark Gaffigan, please.”
“Who may I ask is calling?”
I suck in air. “James Gardner. This is important. If he’s in, I need to talk to him.”
“I’ll transfer you. Hold please.”
I close my eyes, clenching the phone in my hand. The driver who died was not the man driving the car… But what the hell did it all mean? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Or something larger? A conspiracy?
“Jim, how are you?”
“Mark, listen. I’m going to tell you something that seems crazy, but you have to hear me out.”
“My favorite phone calls always start this way.”
I close my eyes, trying to steady my voice. “The driver of the car who went missing along with Molly, I… I went to visit his wife.”
“Okay…” I can already hear the edge in his voice.
“They’ve got the wrong guy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The man that the police say died driving the car, it’s not the same man. I know who was driving our car, and it wasn’t him.”
“I’m not following. Did you see him? Was he alive?”
“No, the guy they say was driving did disappear that night. His wife and everyone else believes he died in that crash. But it wasn’t the same man.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. I pull my jacket securely around my frame. “Jim, you weren’t assigned this story. And even if you were, what evidence do you have? We can’t just go on your memory, you know that.”
“My memory is just fine,” I growl.
“How would you prove it? These guys, they get a call about a ride from their agency, right? He picked up you and your wife outside your home, then dropped you off at the mayor’s house. The valets don’t park the car. They tell the driver where to go and the driver sits in his car the whole evening until you’re ready to go home. So, can you give me a name of someone else that could substantiate your story?”
“Security cameras,” I say. “The mayor’s house is bound to have them.”
“Okay… did he get out of the car?”
I close my eyes, remembering the moment as we drove up. We hadn’t waited for him to open the door for us. And when he had come around to pick us up, Molly had jumped right in. “I don’t think so.”
“Even if I were to entertain this wild theory of yours, you would need something better to go on than your own memory. Which, if you’re being honest, cannot possibly be the most reliable thing at this moment.”
“Goddamnit, Mark. I’m not a source, I’ve been a fellow journalist and your friend for over ten years.”
“Would you trust me with the same story? Honestly, Jim. Would you?”
I let out a long sigh. “No.”
“Honestly, Jim, the only newsworthy thing about all of this is you. Hell, I’m tempted to write my own story. Listen, I got the invitation to the funeral. I’ll see you there. But after that’s over, go take a fucking vacation.”
“I’ll try.”
I hang up the phone and lean my forehead against the cold plastic of the phone booth. Mark is right. Of course he’s right. This story would be too insane for anyone to believe even if I had proof. And why the hell did I go there in the first place? Because I had a hunch, that’s why. A good-ole reporter’s hunch, and now I can’t un-know what I know. Damn, damn, damn.
December 19
“Listen, I tell you a mystery…” A light rain falls as the priest continues his homily. A misting fills the air, beading in rivulets on the collection of black coats, black hats, and black umbrellas surrounding the hilltop cemetery. After days of searching, I had decided on a cemetery in Queens. Because it’s only a few blocks from the grocery store where Molly and I had met, and because it’s impossible to bury someone in Manhattan.
“We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed…”
I turn, looking past our small gathering to the road where a group of reporters stands just outside the cemetery doors, held back by a handful of police, summoned by my request when the first reporter—some asshole from The New York Daily—had shown up that morning.
The invitations I sent out had contained express instructions to keep the time and location of both the funeral and memorial service a secret. I was already a minor public figure, and I sure as hell would not let that hinder the opportunity for Molly’s close friends and loved ones, myself included, to say our goodbyes. But here they are. Someone had tipped them off. But who?
“In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed…”
The dead will be raised, huh? I’d spent the last week dreaming that Daniel Gaines’ rotting corpse would walk right in through my living-room door. Except the corpse would shift in my dreams, from Daniel Gaines’ reddish hair to the face of the actual driver, with his grim face and dark eyes. I had called the company that handles security for the mayor, once again giving Mark’s name, and they had told me that, while they do have full security coverage of the entire grounds of the house, the tapes are recorded over on a weekly basis. If I had wanted to see them, I was already a few weeks late.
“The saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’”
I think of the death of Gregory Vance, of the bullet that killed my translator, and nearly killed me, of the driver of our car that night, and of Molly. Seems to me that death has been pretty victorious lately.
The Bible in the priest’s hands closes with a resounding thump.
“Amen,” the priest intones.
I’ve never been particularly religious; I picked a Catholic priest more out of a sense of tradition than personal piety, and I had no idea what kind of religion Molly professed. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I barely knew her at all.
Our small band of grievers begin our pilgrimage across the wet ground to the coffin. I glance back as I make my way toward the casket. Several of the funeral attendees are the same people who were at the party that night. Mayor Schueller and Congressman Boyle hadn’t come, of course, but they did both send someone from their office to extend their condolences. I see Mark Gaffigan hanging near the back of the crowd, close to the line of reporters. On the street, a station wagon with a Minnesota license plate sits idling with the window rolled halfway down. There’s an old man inside who seems to be watching me intently. How the hell have all these people learned about this damn funeral, anyway?
&nbs
p; I stop in front of the closed casket, leaning down and placing a hand on its polished surface. The inside is filled with one of her favorite dresses, a few photos of us together, and a copy of a recent edition of Renaissance Magazine with an article she’d been particularly proud of. But it all feels horribly insignificant now.
Judith Janeski, an editor from Renaissance Magazine and one of Molly’s closest friends smiles as she nears me. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.” She leans forward, putting one arm around me in a hug, and with the other she slips something into my hand: a newspaper. “Today’s copy of the Times,” she says in a whisper. “The front page.”
“Thanks,” I whisper back, slipping the paper into my inside coat pocket.
The rest of the line finishes paying their respects. One of the attendants presses a button and the electric winch spins and whirs, lowering the coffin into the ground.
I step back, turning away from the rest of the crowd, and take the paper from the inside pocket of my jacket. A picture of me and Molly takes up the entire page above the fold. The headline reads Hero Journalist Fights Madness. I unfold the article, scanning it quickly. My stomach sinks as I read. Everything is in there. The night of the accident is related in full detail, including Molly’s drunken little stint as a storyteller that led to the Congressman ending up in the koi pond. Even my wild conspiracy theories about the driver. Daniel Gaines’ wife is quoted, along with the people I had talked to at the mayor’s security company. And the crème de la crème, a small note at the bottom with the details for Molly’s funeral. Shit. I glance up, checking the byline. There’s only one person who could have had all this information. And there it is in black-and-white: Mark Fucking Gaffigan.
I spin, searching for him in the crowd. Mark sees me, and something in my eyes must be crystal-fucking-clear because he starts, and immediately begins walking down a path, farther into the cemetery and away from both me and the reporters. It takes me only a few seconds to catch up to him and throw him onto the ground.
“Jim, I came here to say I’m sorry!”
“You should never have written it.” I throw the paper onto his face in disgust.
“You’re a public figure now, Jim. Word was getting out, and if I didn’t write something then someone else would’ve.” He quiets. I tried to call you. I even stopped by your apartment.
To my left, I see the flashbulbs of a dozen journalists’ cameras going off in rapid-fire succession.
“You could’ve tried harder,” I say, spitting the words out.
Mark struggles to his feet. I pull back, readying for a punch, but he sidesteps it and knocks me to the side. I regain my balance and rush him, but Mark lands a punch to my jaw and I crumple to the ground.
“Shit!” I spit the word out.
I roll over, staring up at him, my jaw burning and my chest heaving.
“Sorry, Jim. I—”
“I told you those things in confidence,” I say between gasps.
“I didn’t print anything I couldn’t corroborate,” Mark says. “You’ve been talking to half the city about it!”
“This is my life!” I say. “You had no right.”
Mark takes a step back, looking over at the reporters who have now spilled into the cemetery, forming a loose semicircle around the two of us. He sighs and looks back down at me. “I do have a right. Sorry Jim, but you’re a public figure now, and this was news. You are news. ”
The cold beer tumbler pressed to my jaw does little to dull the pain and does nothing to take away the waves of embarrassment washing over me. I had just gotten punched out by a reporter from the Times at my wife’s funeral. That would definitely be news for the tabloids. It’s raining harder now, the raindrops painting the bar’s windows in shimmering streaks. Britney Spears plays over the sound system, warbling on about something shameful she had done, and clashing horribly with my mood. I clench my eyes shut, pressing the glass harder against my throbbing jaw as Molly’s face floats into my consciousness. Christ, when will it ever end?
“James Gardner?”
I open my eyes as an old standing over me. I recognize him immediately as the man who’d been hiding inside the station wagon during the funeral. And then it clicks. The man who called me last week… I should have guessed he was in New York. It was only a matter of time before he found me. This morning’s article from the Times would have told him the exact time and place.
“You’re Arthur Vandermeer.” I say, not as a question.
“That’s right,” he says.
Anger wells up inside of me. “This isn’t a good time.”
“It’s never going to be,” he says. “Not now, not thirty years from now. The pain will never go away.”
Something about his honesty cuts through my anger. He is tall, white-haired and wrinkled, wearing a black overcoat and a tweed jacket. He holds his hands behind his back, rocking back on his heels as he gazes softly down at me. He looks like a teacher. In fact, he looks like the friendliest teacher in the entire high school. I study his face. It’s narrow with short blonde hair and a large, Scandinavian nose. There’s nothing recognizable of her in this man, but she’d always said she had been adopted. But there is something else recognizable in him. Grief, just like my own. I sigh and lower the beer.
“You found me,” I say. “What is it you want?”
He sits, reaching into a bag and pulls out a large manila envelope. He glances up at me, and then slides it across the table to me without a word.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Pictures,” he says. “Anything I have to say would be worthless if you didn’t believe what I know to be true. That your wife is, in fact, my daughter.”
“Was,” I say.
“Well, that’s what we’re here to discuss,” he says.
I shake my head and tip over the envelope. Three pictures fall out onto the table. Two are in black and white. The third is in color. I pick up the smallest of the three pictures. It is a family photo. The man is clearly Arthur and the woman next to him is as blonde and as Norwegian as he appears to be. But the girl on their lap is tan, with a mop of curly dark hair.
“It was a different time,” Arthur says. “And adopting a child of a different race wasn’t something people did often.”
“Molly didn’t know her background,” I say.
Arthur shrugs. “Neither did we. But people could see it and they would talk.”
“She never talked about any of that.” I say, but I know inside the objection is a weak one. I never asked her much about her family, other than that she was adopted and that she didn’t like talking about it. Whenever it did come up, she said that her parents were dead and left it at that. I feel a sudden sense of loss over this young Molly that I had never bothered to get to know.
“What did she talk about?” He asks.
“Not much,” I say.
I pick up the second photo. It’s a graduation picture, and the neat handwriting in the corner of the photo tells me that this is a picture from 5th grade. The girl looks similar enough to Molly. The small wrinkles on the girl’s forehead are the same. The freckles across her cheeks are in a familiar pattern. But this girl has a wide, joyous smile and a gap between her front teeth that you could drive a car in-between.
Arthur reaches over and taps the photo. “The braces were in sixth grade. She got them off just before…” he trails off.
The last photo is of a decidedly older Molly, but still young. Probably only thirteen. She is standing on a dock wearing a modest, one-piece swimsuit. The lake behind her is a pale blue that matches her eyes. Her brown curly hair falls in wet curls across her face and the beads of water sparkle like precious stones on her skin. She's wearing a simple necklace, with what looks like a ring dangling from it. And if it were possible for a smile to actually glow, then this would be the one. Her grin is so wide it threatens to crack her face in two.
And, true to Arthur’s word, there is no gap between the teeth.
&nb
sp; It is Molly, and it isn’t. All at the same time.
I turn toward Arthur and he looks at me for the first time. His eyes are the color of the ocean at dawn. I search his face, looking for some sort of hidden motivation, but there’s nothing there. “I got a call one time from my mother. She lives in Huntington Beach and I had just started working here in New York. We lived three thousand miles apart, but she was convinced she had just seen me leaving the post office as she was walking in. My mother mistook a stranger for her own son.”
“You’re not your mother,” he says.
I nod and take in a breath. “You’re right. It does look like her. I don’t blame you for calling me and coming all this way. To lose a daughter at—what age did you say?”
“Thirteen,” he says.
A thought chills me. Isn’t that about how old she said she was when her parents died? That would be quite a coincidence. But did she say thirteen? Or am I just trying to madly fill in missing details where I want them to fit? I shake away the intruding thought.
“If she’s alive,” I say, “then she doesn’t want to be found. Why?”
I think of the bag in the back corner of her closet with an envelope of cash, a passport and a one-way plane ticket to Chicago.
Arthur nods as if this is the question he was waiting for me to ask. “She did this once before. The police called it a kidnapping. Witnesses saw her get out of a strange man’s car down near the end of Main Street. They walked into a warehouse together, but when the police searched the building, there was nothing there. We buried an empty box, just like you did this morning.”
Yet another eerie coincidence. “The Molly I know is not Molly Vandermeer. She’s Molly Smith. She did grow up in Minnesota, but her parents were Dean and Janet, and they died when she was very young.”
“Dean and Janet?” Arthur asks. He leans forward, a gleam in his eyes. “Those are the names of her aunt and uncle. They were very close.”
Incursion: Book Three of The Recursion Event Saga Page 6
