The cops left me alone after that, only coming back a couple of times over the next couple of days to see if I’d remembered anything yet. I talked up the case sometimes, telling them that it helped me feel connected, that maybe I’d been a news junkie or something. They were more than happy to oblige, giving me tidbits about possible sightings, which were still coming in, evidently. Overall, though, the trail appeared to have gone cold. I hoped it would stay that way.
Naturally, it didn’t.
Chapter 20
On the fifth day of my awakening, I met someone new. Someone I’d already spoken to several times before, but hoped I’d never have to meet face to face.
He stuck out his hand to me, and I held out my bandaged palm. “Detective Bryce Rogan,” he said.
“Nice to meet you. I’m… someone.”
“Heard about your amnesia. Any progress on that?” He took a seat across from me. I wondered why he was here, visiting a patient in the hospital.
I shook my head. “Nothing yet. I get fuzzy images, sometimes. It’s kinda like having a word on the tip of your tongue, and just not being able to connect it.”
He smiled sympathetically. “I’ve heard it can be like that. Terrible thing.”
“How many others are still here?”
“Still a few. None of them were as badly burned as you. You must’ve been pretty close to the blast.”
I held up my arms. “Explains this.”
“Yeah. Odd thing, too. You’re the only one with amnesia.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I just think it’s odd.” He smiled disarmingly.
“Huh.”
“I talked to your doctor. They did a scan when you came in. Didn’t say anything about head trauma.”
“He told me it was fairly common. A defense mechanism. The mind’s way of shutting out the pain.”
“Mmm. You got things you need to shut out?”
“Guess so.”
He shifted in his chair. “Another odd thing. We ain’t heard hide nor hare of Gerrold Smith since the incident on the bridge. Going on seven weeks of nothing. That seem strange to you?” I shrugged. He said, “Man that determined would probably have taken steps to get his kids back by now, don’tcha think?”
“Okay.”
“It’s got me to thinking. What if ain’t made a move ‘cause he can’t? What if he ain’t holed up somewhere like we thought; what if he’s laid up somewhere?”
“You mean, like in a hospital?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“You think I’m Gerrold Smith?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Why would I steal my own wallet?”
“That’s the thing.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Gerrold Smith didn’t have a wallet. I have his wallet.” He drew it out and held it up so I could see. Yep. It was my wallet all right. “It was confiscated from him when he was incarcerated during his trial,” he explained. “Now, if I look at his driver’s license, it says here that he has brown eyes, brown hair, stands five foot eleven, and weighs a hundred and eighty five pounds. Says he was born in 1977. You wouldn’t happen to remember your birthday, would ya?”
I shook my head.
“Still, you look like you could be about thirty-five years old or so. And you’ve got brown eyes, brown hair—what’s left of it, anyway. And you’re five foot eleven, a hundred and eighty pounds or so.”
I stared at him. Was he going to arrest me now?
“Awful big coincidence, don’t you think?”
After a moment, I said, “I wouldn’t know.”
“No idea, huh?” He rose from his chair and dropped the wallet on my chest. I stared at it. “No fingerprints. No way to make a positive ID. Just an awful lot of coincidence.”
Finally I whispered, “What if I am him?” I picked up the wallet and opened it, studying the credit cards and license inside.
Detective Rogan stroked his mustache. “Sure would make my job a helluva lot easier.”
“I bet.” I closed the wallet and handed it to him.
“Anything?”
I shook my head. “What about the kids?”
“What about them?”
“Well, if I am him and I’m supposed to be trying to get them back like your buddies said, maybe seeing them would trigger something.”
“You know what you’re asking, right? If you remember them, or if they can ID you, you’ll be arrested on the spot. You’ll be facing multiple murder charges. New York doesn’t enforce its death penalty right now, but I can’t imagine you’ll ever get out of prison. Life without parole. You sure you want to face that?”
I heaved a breath. “Anything is better than this. If I did all those things—then I guess I deserve whatever sentence I get. But I’d rather know than not know. Wouldn’t you?”
He nodded once. “I’ll make some calls,” he said, and left.
***
After Rogan was gone, I had the nurse close the door, complaining that I was tired. I might’ve been tired, but sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. My heart pounded in my chest, and I heard the pulses on the monitor increasing. I blinked hard, forcing myself to take even, long breaths, concentrating on a calm memory—the time I took Mary on a picnic for our anniversary, driving to a lodge I’d rented without her knowledge in the Catskills, complete with a hot tub, spa, and a fantastic view of the valley below in autumn. Eventually, the intervals between tones lengthened, and my heart began pumping normally again.
I sat up in bed and pulled the blanket off. I unhooked the monitor from the wall, stood and wandered over to the bathroom. I put my hands against the sink and studied myself in the mirror. A bandaged face stared back at me, looking much like The Invisible Man from the old black and white classic film.
Who was I? What sort of man did the things that I’ve done—killed the people I’d killed? Maybe the cops were right after all, and I was some kind of nut job terrorist—a danger to my children and to everyone else. No matter what I claimed as justifying my actions, my choices—the whole thing had still snowballed far out of control. Otherwise I wouldn’t be the stranger who now stared at himself in a mirror, not recognizing his own face with or without the bandages.
I know I’d been lying to Rogan and the cops—hell, the entire hospital—for several days now, saying I didn’t remember who I was. But it was also true. I didn’t remember who I was. I didn’t recognize what I’d become. Is this what desperation did to people? Is this how people go crazy?
“Am I losing my mind?” I asked the mirror. The mask staring back at me remained virtually expressionless but for the eyes. They told everything.
Maybe madness is nothing more than getting mad and staying that way, and letting that anger define who you are, determine every choice you make. Was I mad? Hell yes. Still, in fact. Even despite everything that had happened, I could still feel the dark, oily rage bubbling inside me, somewhere just below the surface. There was a deep sense of having been wronged, but it was now overlaid by the overwhelming guilt of having done wrong myself.
I’d stared too long at the monster and become one myself. I don’t suppose I knew which one was worse anymore—a tyrant or a terrorist. Nor could I tell you the difference, beside the fact that the tyrant had power and the terrorist didn’t.
Whatever had happened, I wasn’t the same man who sat by his wife’s bedside and watched her succumb to stage four kidney cancer. And I wasn’t the man who spent hours searching the internet for a cure to his son’s illness. Those actions were motivated by passionate and sacrificial love. I didn’t feel love anymore.
I didn’t feel much of anything except fear and self-loathing.
And a cold anger based on the notion that somehow this wasn’t all my fault, that I’d been pushed over the edge by forces far beyond my control and then punished for falling down the rabbit hole.
The real question was this: would my children even recognize me for the man I’d become?
And if they did, would they still love me as I am?
I closed my eyes, reached up, and took hold of the bandages, unraveling them from my face. First slowly, and then faster and faster. I had to see who was underneath, what was left of the man I’d once been.
When the last of the wrappings finally landed in the sink I opened my eyes again, staring in stunned silence at the thing I’d become.
A monster stared back.
Chapter 21
Detective Rogan came through as promised, and my kids were up to see me by the beginning of the following week. It was a Monday afternoon, and I was pretty sure they were still supposed to be in school, but I wasn’t about to tell them that.
The doctor and nurses had all given me holy hell for taking my bandages off too soon, and spent a considerable amount of time fussing over me as they applied new ones. I continued my ruse of amnesia, and in talking with the doctor and the psych consult he insisted visit with me, I explained to them everything that Rogan had said to me, and why I had to look and see the man in the mirror that the cops thought I was. The whole thing remained dangerously close to the truth, but that only made me easily believed. In fact, the only lie in the mix was the fact that I’d never lost my memory to begin with. That I’d lost my identity in all this felt, to me at least, like an established fact.
Regardless, Detective Rogan showed up at my door around one o’clock, and, with a great deal of feigned compassion, I thought, asked me if I was ready to do this. Truthfully, I told him I wasn’t sure.
I was about to give the performance of my life. I was trusting in the fact that I would look scary and different enough that my own kids wouldn’t recognize me. Of course, there was no way that I wouldn’t know them. That, I was sure, was impossible. I’d held them too many nights when they were teething or sick with fever or just not sleeping right to ever forget them. I’d cheered them on at school plays and baseball games, always picking them out of the crowd from several hundred feet away. I’d held them when they cried for their mother, comforting them and telling them it was going to be all right, that we were a family still, and nothing was going to change that ever. I’d promised them that I’d never leave them. And now I was going to deny that I knew who they even were.
It was the only way to save them.
Rogan marched them in to stand just behind the curtain, and I asked the doctor to take off the bandages. I tried to disguise my accent as best I could, and in my worst scratchy voice, I spoke to them from the other side of the divider.
“I don’t know if you’ll know who I am. Maybe we’ve never met before today. I guess I’m hoping we’ll know each other, ‘cause I sorta lost my memory. Thing is, I don’t even know my own name no more. Before you come around that corner, there’s something you gotta know. I don’t look good. In fact, I sorta resemble a monster. I got burned up pretty bad by a fire, and my face is a mess. But don’t be scared, okay? Because I’m not a monster. I’m just a normal person, okay?”
I heard them shuffling on the other side. Sara sniffled, whining a bit, and sounding like she was starting to cry. I grimaced and shoved the urge to get up and run to her and throw my arms around her as far back into the recesses of my mind as I could. It took everything in me not go to her, though. Matt sounded a little more mature. My little man. He told Rogan, “You think that guy’s my Dad?”
“Well,” said Rogan, “we don’t know.”
“How bad is he?”
Rogan straightened and looked at me, smiling apologetically. He put his hand on the divider, ready to move it back for them. “His face is messed up.”
“It’s sorta melted off,” I said.
“Whoa.”
“Y’know, if you don’t want to do this,” I suggested, “you don’t have to. Detective Rogan, I don’t know if I want to force these poor kids into this. I mean, they been through a lot already, ain’t they, what with what their Dad has done and all that?”
“My Daddy didn’t do those things!” Matt’s voice shot around the curtain.
“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just what I was told. I didn’t mean to—”
“Rogan tell you that?”
“Easy Matt,” growled Rogan.
“Well—” I said, but Matt ignored me.
“Shut up, Rogan. You’re just a liar like everyone else around here. My Dad is not a terrorist. He would never do that stuff.”
I tried again. “I-I’m sorry ‘bout your Dad, kid. Really I am.”
“Go to hell. You too, Rogan. Come on, Sara. We’re outta here.”
Rogan shook his head. “Matthew, Sara? Wait. Just—don’t let them get away.” He must’ve been speaking to an officer or CPS worker. He came around the curtain, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Guess that didn’t go so hot, did it?” I said.
“You recognize them at all?”
“I don’t know. I guess one kid sounds like another. Is he anything like his Dad?”
He put his hand on my arm, patting it lightly. “Don’t worry about it. It was worth a shot.”
“Will ya tell him I’m sorry? He seemed pretty upset.”
“I got it covered.”
As he left I called, “Thanks,” after him, and then turned to the doctor. “Now what do I do?”
The doctor nodded. “Time. That’s all it’s gonna take, now.”
“When can I leave?”
“Well, assuming the police have no objection—we still need to schedule your consult and surgery for the reconstruction, of course, but there’s no need for you to stay here.”
“I think I’d like to get out.”
“I’ll speak to your case worker about it. I’m sure we can make arrangements.” And then he left. I lay my head back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling tiles.
My own son just told me to go to hell. Denied everything that I’d done for him. My daughter couldn’t even bear to look at me. I knew who they were, but they didn’t know me any more. Even if I hadn’t been burned by the fire, they wouldn’t know me.
The man who’d held them, changed them, cuddled them, and cried with them—he was gone, replaced by this new person who killed people and blew stuff up without any regard for whom it hurt.
I’d spent all this effort in fighting to get my kids back, and instead, I’d become the one person they didn’t want to believe existed. No amount of talking, no measure of explaining would ever make it right. How could it?
There was nothing left for me. I might as well slit my wrists and die.
I lay there for long hours, watching the sun drift downward toward the horizon from my bedroom window, turning the whole world a brilliant gold. As beautiful as it was, I wished I didn’t see it.
I turned from the window, and my eyes fell on the phone by my bedside. There was just one person to blame for all this—one who’d pushed me since this had began, enforcing his will against my own and calling it justice. This was the same guy that brought my kids to me, but kept them behind a curtain and wouldn’t let me see them. Tried to use them like bargaining chips, bastard that he was.
I picked up the phone and dialed the police.
“Ontica Police Department.”
“I’d like to speak to Detective Rogan, please.”
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
I hesitated, unsure what to say. After a moment, I realized the switchboard operator was still on the other line, asking the same question.
“I’m sorry. Umm, tell him it’s an old friend—someone he really wants to hear from.”
I wasn’t sure if this was true or not, and I doubted Rogan wanted me to call him a friend, but I couldn’t think of any other way to bring it up. Surely Rogan would want to hear from me himself, rather than let some rank and file peon take the call.
The operator finally said, “Hold please,” and connected me through to Rogan’s line.
“Rogan here.”
I spoke clearly and quietly. “Hello Detective.” I honestly hoped that would be enough, that I wou
ldn’t have to say what I needed to say. I should’ve known better.
“Who’s speaking?”
“Sure you don’t recognize me?”
“No. What sort of game is this?”
I don’t know if I felt disappointment or annoyance. Why didn’t he know who I was? He’d only spent the past several weeks looking for me, let alone speaking to me here in this damn hospital.
“Let me give you a hint—”
“I don’t have time for games—”
“—you brought my kids to the hospital today. Took them to see a burn victim.”
His voice dropped to a low growl. “Gerrold.”
“That’s right. To tell you the truth, I’d begun to think you’d given up on me.”
“Not remotely.”
“I’m glad to see you can take my kids where you want when you see the need. Last time we talked, you were trying to convince me it was an impossible task. Now I see that it was nothing of the sort.”
“What do you want, you son of a—”
“You know what I want!” I felt my heart grow hot. Just speaking to this man infuriated me. “The same thing I’ve always wanted. The only question is whether or not you’re going to give it to me peacefully this time, or if we have to go through the whole thing all over again.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment, and then he said, “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you need to bring my kids back to the hospital, and then you need to turn them over to me.”
“So you’re at the hospital, huh?”
“You know damn well where I am. You’ve probably had a trace on this number the moment I called. And if it’s been successful at all, you’ll even know what room I’m calling from. Come to think of it, I bet you can even guess why.”
Spilled Milk, no. 1 Page 12
