The Drowning Game

by LS Hawker

  “Where’s Dekker?”

  “The other guy you came in with? He’s in the next room,” the cop said. He pulled the faxed papers from the backpack. “Are you Michael and Marianne Rhones’s daughter? Anne Marie Rhones?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Well, I was. My dad changed our names.”

  “You’ve been missing a long time.”

  “Eighteen years,” I said. “Wait. How do you know I’ve been missing?”

  “Your mom’s case was big news in this state,” he said. “Then when you and your dad disappeared, it made headlines again. Your family raised money and offered a reward. They searched for you and your dad for a long time. Three years ago there was even fifteenth anniversary local media coverage.”

  “There was?”

  “You can look it up online.”

  This astounding news had a strange effect on me. I pictured the quarter-­mile radius of my former life—­the tiny bubble of my existence—­expanding to encompass Dekker’s family, and the family I’d never known I had, and this cop and the whole state of Colorado.

  “You up to giving me a statement?”

  I was, and I did. It was the second time in two weeks I’d been interrogated by police. This time, though, I had a lot more to tell.

  The cop scratched his balding head.

  “So you’re the one who beat the sh—­the crap out of Mr. Bellandini?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “Dekker was in restraints, so he wasn’t able to assist much.”

  The cop shook his head. “Mr. Bellandini is not a small man.”

  “No sir,” I said.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. He set it on a tray next to my bed. “If you think of any other details, please give me a call.”

  I took the card. “You’ve got to go up to the tailings pond at the Black Star mine. It’s full of sulfuric acid,” I said. “We think that’s where Mitch disposed of Randy’s body. And probably my mom’s.”

  “Already done,” he said.

  I was breathless. “Did you . . . find him?” I knew they wouldn’t find her, not after all this time.

  The cop nodded. I started to cry. Randy was a bad guy. But I didn’t wish him dead. Everything that had happened welled up in my eyes and ran over.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  He left the room and I let myself cry about everything. I didn’t quit until I was done, spent and exhausted.

  A nurse named Sally came in the room and checked my blood pressure. “How are your feet?” She lifted the blanket and took a look.

  “They feel like they’re against hot coals.”

  “First-­degree frostbite,” she said. “You’re not going to lose any toes, but they’re going to hurt for a while. You’re also suffering from mild hypothermia and dehydration.”

  “I also pulled my left calf muscle pretty severely.”

  “Yup. It was very swollen, so we wrapped it up. When you get home you may want to visit an orthopedist.”

  Home. That word. What did it mean now?

  Sally walked around to the left side of my bed and touched the bandage I hadn’t noticed on my arm where I’d dug out the microchip. “We had to give you a few sutures here.”

  I nodded. “Is Dekker okay?”

  “He’s going to be fine.” She held up a little yellow piece of paper with a phone number written on it. “He said you’re to call this number.”

  She dialed it for me and handed me the receiver.

  After two rings, a professional-­sounding voice answered. “George Engle.”

  “This is Petty Moshen.”

  “Hi, Petty,” he said, his voice more friendly now. “How are you doing? How’s Dekker?”

  “We’re both going to be okay,” I said.

  “Good,” George said. “I’m not going to take up too much of your time right now, but I wanted to ask you a ­couple of questions.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What exactly did you take from Keith Dooley’s office?” He said the name with some contempt, and it made me smile.

  It all seemed so long ago, another lifetime, although only a week had passed.

  “I didn’t take anything that belongs to Mr. Dooley. I took my dad’s laptop, a photo album with pictures of my family, some letters, my mom’s necklace, and an envelope with what I think is a psychiatric evaluation in it.”

  “Is that the envelope you left at Curt’s?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Curt opened it. I told him he wasn’t supposed to, but he did anyway. It wasn’t a psych eval. It was ten blank sheets of paper. It was a bluff.”

  I should have been angry but I wasn’t. I was relieved. Dad was just trying to keep me safe, I knew that now. I believed it. I was grateful for it.

  “Curt said you also took all the firearms out of your house. Everything in the house is part of the trust, so legally speaking, none of that is your property. But I’m confident I can persuade old Dooley to drop the theft charge because of the conflict of interest in regards to Randy King. Getting the will overturned is a formality.”

  “What about the—­” I turned my face away from the nurse and cupped my hand over the phone receiver. “—­murder charge?”

  “The what?”

  “Randy told me there’s a warrant out for my arrest for murdering my dad. He said the autopsy showed someone held a pillow over his face and suffocated him.”

  George gave a bark of a laugh. “Rest in peace and all that, but I grew up in Niobe and I knew Randy when he was a little kid. He was always a bully, and that sounds like something he would do. I’ve got your dad’s autopsy report right here. Cause of death: myocardial infarction.”

  “Heart attack,” I said. “Randy had me halfway convinced that I’d killed my own dad.” Relief mixed with sadness washed over me.

  “Yup. Tox screen came back negative, of course. Randy was trying to scare you.”

  “It worked,” I said.

  “In any case,” he said, “you should have a check from the insurance company within the month. Curt and Rita are on their way, and they said you can come back to Kansas with them.”

  I had the same feeling I imagined regular ­people would have knowing their parents were coming to get them.

  “Mr. Engle?”

  “It’s George.”

  “Mitch Bellandini is going to say he was defending Dekker when he shot Randy, but he wasn’t. He hit Dekker with his car. He was going to kill Dekker. And he attempted to sexually assault me. I’m afraid he’s going to get away with it, just like he got away with killing my mom.” I swallowed. “Is he?”

  “Since he tried to dissolve Randy’s body, he’ll probably be charged with depraved indifference, which is a second-­degree murder charge. You and Dekker will have to testify against him, unless he pleads guilty and there’s no trial.”

  “Because if he doesn’t go to prison,” I said, “I’m going to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

  “He’ll probably get eight to twenty-­four years for the second-­degree murder charge, four to twelve each for the assault and attempted murder, and six to eighteen months for the attempted rape, so he’s looking at a minimum of sixteen years in prison, potentially out in eight. But there are so many variables—­depends on the judge, whether they’ll consider his past criminal behavior, etcetera.”

  My heart sank. Only eight years?

  “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. He’s in custody, so you can rest easy for now. When you get back to Kansas, we’ll get together and sign paperwork and so forth. I hear you kicked this guy’s ass. Good work. What exactly happened?”

  It took me fifteen minutes to tell him the whole story.

  THE NEXT TIME I opened my eyes a different nurse was standing at the
end of my bed and the sky outside was light.

  “How you feeling?” she asked while taking my blood pressure.

  “Okay,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s about one-­thirty.” The nurse took my temperature. “I was told to let your uncle and aunt know when you woke up. Do you want me to bring them in?”

  “Sure,” I said, not bothering to correct her. I figured that Curt and Rita had said they were family so they could visit. I wished I had time to take a shower, because I was pretty sure I didn’t smell too good, but they’d probably understand.

  “They’re out in the waiting room,” the nurse said. “I’ll go get them.” She vanished from the doorway, and I fidgeted while I waited.

  I heard a knock on my door as it swung inward.

  And there stood my father.

  Chapter 32

  IT WAS SURREAL.

  “Dad?”

  Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t him. But it could have been.

  The man who looked uncannily like Michael Rhones—­only better-­fed and not haunted—­came meekly into the room as if he were entering the cage of a Bengal tiger.

  “Anne Marie?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’m your dad’s oldest brother, Scott.”

  A woman followed him in.

  “And this is your Aunt Gwen.”

  They stood side by side, staring at me, their mouths open. Scott’s eyes were shiny with tears.

  “My God,” he said. “You look just like your mother.”

  “I know,” I said. “And you look just like my dad.”

  Scott’s tears ran down his face. Gwen wrapped her arms around him, crying herself.

  She and Scott pulled chairs close to my bed and sat. Scott asked me where I’d been all these years, and I told him about my life in Kansas, and then about the past week.

  “How did you know I was here?” I said.

  “One of the police officers recognized your name,” Gwen said. “He called the Jefferson County Police to tell them you’d been found, and they contacted us.”

  “I have so many questions,” I said.

  “I’ll try to answer them,” Scott said, wiping his eyes. His facial expressions, his mannerisms, were so like Dad’s, if I squinted my eyes, I could pretend it was him, but in another, better life.

  “What exactly happened with my mom and Mitch Bellandini?” I steeled myself for the answer.

  Gwen pulled two tissues out of the box on the tray by my bed, handed one to her husband and blew her nose with the other.

  “Before your folks dated,” Scott said, “your mom went out with Mitch Bellandini one time. Once.” He held up his index finger. “That was all. He proposed to her on that first date, said he knew they were meant to be together.” He spat the words out, his disgust evident. “She tried to be nice and let him down easy, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, wouldn’t leave her alone. Not after she and Michael started dating, not when they got engaged. Not even when they got married.”

  “Grandma Davis said Mom invited Mitch to the wedding,” I said. “Is that true?”

  “No,” Aunt Gwen said. “He just showed up and made a total scene. He acted out The Graduate, screaming her name in the church.”

  I pictured the photo of Mom and Dad at the altar and Mitch crashing through that happy scene, ruining it for everyone.

  “He seemed so normal when we first met him,” I said, but I didn’t think that was really true. I’d just wanted him to be. Looking back now, I could see all the red flags I’d chosen to ignore.

  “That’s what your mom said,” Scott said. “He was fired from the company where the three of them worked because his behavior became so crazy they couldn’t ignore it anymore. He followed her everywhere. He tampered with your dad’s car—­loosened the lug nuts on his wheels. One tire came off on I-­25. He wasn’t hurt, but he knew who’d done it. They went to the cops lots of times, went to court, got a restraining order. He kept breaking it, paying fines, spending time in jail. But he would not stop.”

  An orderly came in with a tray of food and set it on the little adjustable table by my bed.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He smiled at all of us and then left the room again.

  “How am I supposed to eat this?” I said, holding up my bandaged hands.

  Gwen clucked and stood, removing the cover to the tray. “I’ll help you,” she said.

  I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to refuse this motherly attention. She picked up a big plastic mug and turned the straw toward me and held it to my lips. I drank gratefully.

  “So Mitch wouldn’t stop,” I said.

  Gwen cut up some colorless meat on the plate and held up a forkful. I obediently ate it.

  “Right,” she said. “The cops’ advice to your parents was to move away.”

  “And then, Bellandini totally lost it when your mom got pregnant with you,” Scott said.

  I nodded. Dekker had read about the freak-­out in Mitch’s letter to my mom. “Why didn’t they move away?”

  “Your dad couldn’t find another job,” Scott said. “He tried. Your folks were so stressed out, but they did their best to keep up a good front for you. They loved you so much.” He began crying again, and Gwen had to stop feeding me to wipe away more of her own tears.

  This stoked my loathing of Mitch even further. The things he’d done had affected not just me and my little world, but these ­people and my other relatives too. Who knew how wide the ripples went?

  “So how old was I when Mom disappeared?” I said. “I read one of the newspaper articles about it.”

  “You were two and a half,” Gwen said, gently wiping my lips with a napkin. “Michael came home from work and found you wandering the house alone, naked with wet hair. Marianne had vanished. You kept saying ‘game.’ ”

  I gasped.

  “You don’t remember any of this, do you?” Scott said, incredulous.

  “I actually remember Mitch holding me under the water in the bathtub.”

  Scott and Gwen looked at each other.

  “Really,” I said. “I think that’s how he got Mom to go with him.”

  “I’m sure that’s right,” Gwen said. “The trial was about a year later, and after Bellandini was acquitted, your dad bought all kinds of guns and put bars over the windows and dead bolts on each door, but still he didn’t feel safe.”

  Scott rose and walked to the window, looking out into the gray sky. “The last time I saw my brother, he showed me a letter he’d received in the mail with no return address. It said something like, ‘No matter where you try to hide, I will find Anne Marie, and I will take her from you the way you took Marianne from me.’ ” He turned away from the window. “Michael took it to the police, but they couldn’t prove it was from Bellandini.”

  “I can’t eat any more,” I said to Gwen. “Thank you.”

  She put the cover on the plate then hesitated before reaching out to smooth the hair beside my bandage. Tears clung to her lashes. “Your mom,” she said, “was my best friend.” Her chin quivered and she turned away to fuss over the food tray some more. My mom’s best friend.

  Gwen wiped her eyes, and sat down again. Scott came away from the window and sat next to her, holding her hand.

  “So the cops started to treat your dad like some kind of conspiracy-­theorist crackpot,” she said. “He felt like no one could help him.”

  The day nurse came in and took my vitals while pretending not to listen.

  “Not long after that,” Scott said, “I called your house, but the phone had been disconnected. Tried your dad’s cell phone. No such number. Went to the house. It was all unlocked. No forced entry. Not a single thing was missing. None of his or your clothes. His wallet and driver’s license were on his dresser. Both cars in the
garage. Your favorite toy in your crib. It was as if the two of you had been raptured right out of the house.”

  “We figured the two of you had finally gone into hiding,” Gwen said.

  Scott’s eyes got shiny and he said, “I miss your dad so much.”

  He broke down crying again. I felt terrible for him. I now knew that ­people liked to be touched when they felt bad, so I reached out and took his hand as best I could with my gauze-­wrapped one.

  “He changed our names,” I said. “His was an anagram of Michael Rhones—­Charlie Moshen. And he called me Petty.”

  Gwen and Scott looked at each other and laughed and cried.

  “Petty,” Scott said, shaking his head.

  “That was what your mom wanted to name you when you were born,” Gwen said, wiping her eyes again. “Because she was a huge Tom Petty fan, and your dad loved Richard Petty the race car driver. But your dad decided it was too weird. No offense.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, and I meant it. He’d chosen my name to honor my mom. Anne Marie Rhones had disappeared forever the day that we had—­eighteen years ago.

  I was and would always be Petty Moshen.

  Epilogue

  Nine weeks later

  “HELLO, PETTY!” MRS. Krantz, the retirement facility director said when I walked into the lobby. “I just left a message for you at your Uncle Scott’s house.”

  I must have looked concerned, because she smiled and said, “Just wanted to find out when you were coming in. Jeannie’s been asking for you all morning. She’s getting her hair done now though, so you can wait for her down in the game room.”

  I held up a bag. “I brought her some candy,” I said. “Make sure she shares it with you all.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “See you later.” I waved and walked down the hall.

  I sat at a table in the game room, pulled out my new iPhone and dialed Dekker’s number.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I passed,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice. “Drove myself to Grandma’s today. It was terrifying.”