by Tim Kizer
He had taken a taxi to get to the bank (a paranoid move, yes, but he didn’t care). While in the cab, Frank recalled the town name on the last sign he had seen before reaching the forest where he had buried Kelly. Fowlerville. He turned into the forest a mile or so after passing that sign. He drove half a mile deep into the woods, gotten out of the car, opened the trunk, shouldered Kelly's body, and grabbed the bag with the shovel. Kelly seemed to be light as a pillow to him at that moment; he was boiling with energy and felt as if he could move mountains. He thought of that woman who had lifted a car to save her child trapped under it and whose story had often been used to illustrate the power of adrenaline. Frank was sure he could dig a mine with his all-steel Fiskars shovel purchased with cash at Home Depot a few days earlier.
Frank remembered traveling to Fowlerville in the middle of April to familiarize himself with the route and pick a spot to bury Kelly’s body. He was glad to find out that it took only fifty minutes to get from his house to the forest when driving at night.
Fowlerville. With a population of a few hundred, this place was little more than a dot on the map. You’d probably have to stop blinking in order to spot it as you drove by. His headlights illuminated the sign with the name of the town, and a couple of minutes later he turned towards the forest. How fast was he going? If memory served him correctly, he slowed down to fifteen miles an hour because the dirt roads were too easy to miss in the dark. The dim Moon was the only source of light besides his car headlamps.
Holding Kelly’s body tight with his right arm and paying no attention to the caustic sweat running down his face, he trotted ahead through the woods. When he was three hundred feet away from his Land Cruiser, Frank looked back to check whether there were any trooper cars behind him. So far, so good: he saw no headlights or flashlights anywhere around him.
How did he manage not to get lost in the forest? He couldn’t have left the headlights on because they could attract the state troopers’ attention. So what did he do?
He would try to remember it later.
He had walked five hundred feet more before he dropped Kelly’s body on the ground and began shoveling. According to his watch, it was twenty minutes since he had gotten out of his car. It took him two hours to dig a three-foot deep hole; he was tired as hell and soaking with sweat when he finished it. After a five minute break, Frank spent half an hour filling the hole. As he buried his wife, he was wondering if the grave was deep enough.
5.
Frank headed for Marilyn’s place right after leaving the bank with the contents of the deposit box, which consisted of a fake driver’s license in the name of Michael Hogan with Frank’s picture on it and a “TrackIt” GPS tracking unit.
One more memory, guys.
He made one big mistake back then, when he was spying on Kelly and her relatives during the Rochester trip. Frank was so focused on their car that he failed to notice that he had been being followed, too. That man had shadowed Frank from Josephine’s house to Rochester and then back to Buffalo.
What happened to this man? What was his name? Was he another relative of Kelly’s?
That man was waiting for him in the car parked next to his driveway. It was past one in the morning, Frank had just dropped off the rented Nissan at Hertz and was feeling on-edge and completely exhausted; he was no in shape to pay attention to strange cars on his street.
“Frank!” The man got out of the car and called his name as Frank impatiently watched the garage door open.
That was how he had met Alex.
Chapter 14.
ALEX
1.
“I wish I could remember how I met you.” Frank fixed his eyes on Marilyn’s face. “I’ve been trying very hard, but I still get nothing.”
Marilyn flashed a soft smile and kissed Frank on the cheek.
“I think I told you that we’d met at that bar at Walden Galleria.”
“I just want to remember that day on my own.”
“It will come back to you, sooner or later. You’ve had a lot on your mind lately, haven’t you?”
Frank nodded.
He felt almost ecstatic right now as his memories poured back into his mind.
He had recalled how scared he had been when Alex had popped up in front of his window. Frank expected the stranger to pull a gun on him or try to grab him by the throat.
“Frank, please listen to me!” said Alex. “This is very important. I saw what they did, too. I know who they are.”
Alex refused Frank’s invitation to go inside and suggested that they talk in his car. He didn’t explain why he was reluctant to tell his story inside the house, but Frank later guessed that he must have been afraid of listening devices.
At first glance Alex’s theory seemed absolutely ludicrous. He believed that Josephine, Albert, Kelly, Ron, and Graham were ghouls—humans addicted to vampire blood.
“The vampire blood prevents ghouls from aging and allows them to live forever,” he explained. “They need to drink it on a regular basis to remain immortal, which is why they have to keep their vampire well fed. It’s a symbiotic relationship: they take care of the vampire and in exchange he gives them his blood.”
According to Alex, every person Josephine and the gang had kidnapped was used a source of blood for the vampire. If Frank hadn’t just witnessed Kelly and her relatives abduct four people, he would have probably scrammed once he had heard the word ‘vampire.’
When Frank asked him to go on, Alex heaved a sigh of relief and opened his laptop. That was when Frank had first seen that picture of Josephine from 1962.
“Marilyn, you know very well that those memories are not coming back.” Frank picked up the shoulder bag with the contents of the deposit box from the floor and put it on the table.
“Why?”
“They’re not coming back because they don’t exist.”
Alex had first met Josephine last September, soon after getting hired as a hairdresser at a high end beauty salon in Tonawanda. Josephine had been a long time client of the salon and dropped by every other week to primp up her hair and get her nails done. He had an unshakable feeling that he had seen Josephine’s face before. It was his second month on the job that he figured out why her face had seemed so familiar to him: he had finally remembered the 1962 picture from his great-grandmother’s photo album, which he had occasionally leafed through to find inspiration for new hairstyles.
Alex had almost no doubt the woman sitting next to his great-grandma was Josephine Buckhaus, even though the caption on the back of the photo listed her as Helen Mortimer. In order to wipe the last shadows of uncertainty, he secretly filmed Josephine with his phone during one of her visits to the salon and spent the whole night scrutinizing the images. The verdict was unequivocal—the woman on the photo was Josephine. The discovery inevitably led to a mind blowing conclusion. Since there was no obvious age difference between the two women, Josephine had to be about one hundred years old, which she surely didn’t look. He couldn’t stop thinking about it because there was no rational explanation for Josephine’s amazing youthfulness. Yes, she was loaded, but no plastic surgeon in the world could shave fifty years off of a centenarian’s face and body.
When Alex found out that, according to public records, Helen Mortimer had gone missing in 1968 and been declared dead by a court in Virginia seven years later, curiosity got the better of him and he decided to dig further.
“What do you mean, Frank? Do you think you’ve lost those memories forever?”
“You can stop pretending, Marilyn. I know that Alex is your brother. That’s what he told me when I saw you in his apartment. I remember you bringing him something to eat; I forgot what it was.”
Marilyn’s eyes widened for a moment in a short-lived shock. Then she regained control of her facial expression and cracked a smile.
“It was a chicken pie.” She sighed heavily and gave Frank a pleading look. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier.”
“Don’t worry about it. You did not hurt my feelings.”
Alex spent the next five months collecting information. After dozens of hours of stakeouts, he tracked down Kelly, Albert, and Graham, by running the license plates of their cars against the New York State DMV database. He also tailed Ron, Graham, and Albert when they went on a human hunting trip to Rochester suburbs last November.
Had Alex attempted to find scientific proof that Josephine Buckhaus was the Helen Mortimer from the photo?
Yes, he had. He had looked into the Mortimer family tree and, after determining that Helen Mortimer had no children of her own, gotten lucky to discover John Mortimer, Helen’s forty-nine-year-old grand nephew, who lived in Austin. Being short on cash, Alex postponed the visit to Texas until his financial situation drastically improved or he found someone who could bankroll the mission.
“So you have finally remembered meeting my brother?”
“Yes.”
“Have you remembered what you were working on?”
Frank nodded silently.
“Would you like to tell me what it was?”
“Let me think. I’m still wrapping my brain around it.”
Did Alex know who the vampire was?
Alex had a hunch.
“There’s a one-legged man living at Josephine’s house.” Alex started flipping through pictures on his laptop. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“Yes, I’ve met that man before. His name is Tony. He’s Josephine’s cousin.”
“I don’t have a good picture of him because he never leaves the house during the daytime.” Alex showed Frank a dark photo of two men standing on the porch of Josephine’s house. If Frank had to guess, he would have said it was Tony and Ron.
“You think Tony is the vampire?”
Alex nodded and said, “In the five months that I’ve been watching Josephine’s place, this guy has never gone outside before sunset.”
“Could there be another explanation why he stays at home during the day?” Frank had begun to dig in his memory, trying to bring back every conversation he had had with Tony since they had been introduced to each other. He had met this man no more than five or six times and never gone beyond empty small talk with him.
“There could be a dozen other explanations, but none of them can tell us why your wife’s relatives have been kidnapping people right and left.”
“Is there a way to verify that Tony is a vampire?”
Alex shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t end badly for us.”
They agreed to meet at Alex’s apartment the next day. When Frank was about to get out of the car, Alex gave him a prepaid cell-phone, which he had bought using a fake driver’s license so it couldn’t be traced to him.
“Never call or text me from your own phone,” Alex said. “When the shit hits the fan, I want them to know as little as possible.”
The phone he was going to use to communicate with Frank had been purchased with the same fake driver’s license.
“You can’t be too careful,” he said.
Frank promised him to keep things as covert as he could.
“Do you know where Alex is now?” asked Marilyn. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t remember what happened to him.” Frank paused. “How did you find me? Did Alex tell you who I was?”
“Back in March, when Alex was about to meet you for the first time, he gave me your name and contact information in case something happened to him. He didn’t explain what he meant by that, and I never asked because nothing had happened.”
“That day when you brought him the pie, was it the only time we met before I lost my memory?”
“We met one more time after that. We never spent much time talking because Alex asked me not to bother you.”
Did you meet John Mortimer, buddy? Did you check whether he actually was Josephine’s grand nephew?
Yes, they flew to Texas late last March.
According to the DNA testing center, there were a number of different kinds of samples they could use to determine if John Mortimer and Josephine Buckhaus were related. The list included a mouth swab, a Q-tip with ear wax, a toothbrush, a used bandage, a cigarette butt, a hair with a follicle—well, pretty much anything that had bodily cells or fluids on it.
Getting a sample of Josephine’s DNA was easy: Frank stole her toothbrush while visiting her house with Kelly. They had to get a bit more creative in John Mortimer’s case.
It was obvious that they would be unable to pull a hair from John Mortimer’s head, or take a swab of his mouth, or collect a few drops of his blood without getting into trouble or raising suspicions that could lead to unwanted consequences, so they focused on finding a way into his bathroom, which promised to be a tricky endeavor since the house was protected by ADT Home Security. After casing Mister Mortimer’s house for a day and a half, they came up with a simple yet effective solution that didn’t involve unlawful entry and stemmed from a good old car insurance scam.
At 6:15 am one Wednesday morning, they pulled their rental car to the curb next to John Mortimer’s driveway and began waiting for the target to show up. One hour later, the garage door lifting system came humming to life and Alex, who was dressed in a tracksuit, sneaked out of the car through the rear left door and crouched by the drivers’ door, ready to make the move. When John Mortimer’s Volkswagen reached the end of the driveway, he quickly straightened himself up and ran forward into the car’s path. Everything went like clockwork: once the left corner of the Volkswagen’s rear bumper grazed his right leg, Alex fell to the ground with a loud shout and rolled a couple of feet to the left of the car, letting the driver have a better view of him. A moment later, John hit the brakes. It took him a few seconds to shift the gear to parking and jump out of the car.
“Oh my God, are you okay?” Mortimer stretched out his hand to help Alex get up.
Alex said he was fine and asked John if he could use his bathroom. Mister Mortimer had no objections whatsoever. In fact, it was the least he could do for Alex. Later that day, they express-mailed John’s and Josephine’s toothbrushes to the DNA testing center.
“When exactly did Alex go missing?” asked Frank.
“The last time I spoke to him was the morning of April 26th, about two days after your wife disappeared.”
“Did Alex tell you what happened to my wife?”
Marilyn shook her head. “No, he didn’t.”
“My wife is dead. Did you help us dump her body?”
“Frank, I told you I don’t know what happened to her.” Marilyn rose to her feet and walked up to Frank. “I’m telling you the truth. I had no idea that your wife is dead, I swear. Do you believe me?” She was staring straight into his eyes, frowning.
“Yes, I believe you.” Frank nodded. “I don’t remember you helping us. And I doubt Alex would have ever told you what we did.”
On the last day of March they had received the DNA test results. As he opened the email from the testing center, Frank caught himself thinking that he would prefer for it to be negative. He had an idea how to deal with the good old serial rapists and murderers, but he was clueless about fighting vampires and their servants. His hopes didn’t come true: according to the test, there was an eighty four percent probability that Josephine was John Mortimer’s grandaunt.
“Have you remembered how your wife died? What does my brother have to do with all this?”
“Alex helped me hide Kelly’s body.”
“How did she die? Did somebody kill her?”
“I killed her. I had to do it. She murdered my daughter, you know.”
Yes, last November, Kelly had gotten his daughter killed. And Frank was not the only one believing that. Alex thought so, too.
“Did you ever ask yourself if your wife was involved in your daughter’s disappearance?” he asked Frank during one of their first meetings at his place.
This suspicion had been living in the back of Frank’s mind ever since
Kelly’s trip to Utica, and he was now surprised how normal—how mundane—this idea sounded to him when uttered out loud. He just had to hear this thought verbalized to finally admit to himself that Kelly had indeed had a motive to get rid of their daughter. Frank was glad to find out that he had not gone insane and there was nothing deranged about suspecting that his wife had had his little girl murdered.
“Do you think she killed our daughter to have more freedom?”
“That would be my guess. Vampire blood destroyed whatever conscience these people had. Your wife is no longer the person you knew five years ago.”
Had Frank figured out why Josephine had picked Kelly to join her team? No. Unlike Graham, who could resolve all sorts of issues just by flashing his badge, or Albert, who had access to a major source of human blood, or Ron, who paid the bills, Kelly seemed to serve no function.
“Maybe Tony likes to have someone hot around,” joked Alex.
At least they had an idea when Kelly had first drunk vampire blood: it must have happened sometime around her father’s death one and a half years earlier.
“I’m so sorry, Frank. Why did she kill her own daughter?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Do your wife’s relative know about Alex? Is it possible that they kidnapped him?”
“I don’t think so. If they had your brother, they wouldn’t have waited two weeks to get a hold of you. Do you remember any strangers asking you about Alex right after he went missing?”
Marilyn shook her head. “No. A couple of his friends called me to ask if I knew how to find him, and that was it.”
Then there was the finger cut. One Tuesday night in early April, Kelly accidentally cut her left index finger while slicing salami for sandwiches. The wound was neither deep nor bloody, and Frank didn’t pay much attention to it until the next evening when he noticed that the cut had healed. Yes, just like that—one day Kelly had a slash on her finger and the next the slash was gone.
