“So you know where his real house is? You know where he lives?”
They looked at each other again.
I came out and said it: “Okay, why are you here? What do you want?”
Neither of them answered.
“I haven’t seen you since I was a kid. Now you track me down where I work and show up and tell me you’re here about Frank? So tell me what you came to tell me, or ask me what you came to ask me, because I have work to do.”
“Stop,” George said.
“Stop?”
“Stop ‘investigating’ Frank.”
“Why should I?”
“Frank wants you to.”
“Why?” I asked. A thought occurred to me. “Is he afraid?”
“Yes,” George said without hesitation. Betsy shot him a look that made it clear she thought he’d given away more than he should.
“So he sent you two all the way out here—”
It was Betsy who went off script this time. “We didn’t want to come here. We don’t want to do…a lot of things. But there are tradeoffs. And Frank has a way of…” She trailed off, and beneath that hard exterior, I saw for the first time a trace of vulnerability—and fear.
George nodded.
Betsy stood, clasping her purse, and George quickly followed her lead. “We’ve said what we’ve come to say,” she said. “The rest is up to you.”
They’d come to threaten me, and despite my show of defiance, I was rattled. Frank had kept George and Betsy—not to mention himself—from aging. And he’d forced them to come and deliver his message.
His threat carried weight. He’d made inroads into my life already, doing work for Teri’s sister.
I decided to drop my tough guy act. “I’m out,” I said. “I’d stopped even before you came here. I told the police everything I know, but that’s it. I’m done.”
Betsy leaned forward. “No, you’re not,” she said. There was both fear and sadness in her tone. “And you never will be.”
I knew she was speaking as much about herself as she was of me.
The two of them turned and, without another word, strode through the office, past the other desks, and out the door. I thought of following them, but a client walked in at that moment, one of my clients, and I was forced to greet her as George and Betsy walked down the sidewalk and disappeared beyond my line of sight.
Why should I want to follow them anyway? I was out of it.
Wasn’t I?
Billy.
Billy.
While I might not want to be directly involved, might want to protect the people close to me, I still wanted to see Frank caught and punished, wanted him to pay for what he’d done.
Betsy was right. I never would be free of Frank, and after my client left, I called Evan. I had both of the writers’ phone numbers, but Evan was the more talkative of the two and seemed to be the leader of the team. I told him what had happened, letting him know that I had some additional information about Frank. “He was supposedly born and raised in Plutarch, Texas. Maybe that’ll help you find something out about him.”
“We’ll keep looking,” he promised. “And if there is a show in this, would you be willing to be on camera if—”
“No,” I told him.
“Just checking.”
I walked over to the coffeepot and poured myself a cup. I noticed May watching me. There was a strange expression on her face, and she glanced quickly away when our eyes met. I stirred some sugar into my coffee and walked over to her desk, where she was pretending to be engrossed in a flyer from a rival realtor.
“So what’s with you?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“May…”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What?”
She took a deep breath. “I heard you talking. When those old people were here. They mentioned Vietnam.”
I didn’t know what to say. I never knew how to react when that subject came up. I knew May’s family had fled the country after the fall of Saigon and had come to the U.S. as refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I knew also that her mother was dead, although I didn’t know any details. Mike had speculated once that her mom had committed suicide, since she had died here in the United States and to May any mention of her mom seemed to be taboo.
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to go into detail. “A friend of theirs, someone I met when I was a kid, was over there.”
She nodded. “Oh,” she said, as if that explained it all.
I sat down in the empty chair on the side of her desk. “You’ve been acting weird for the past week,” I told her. “What is it? What’s wrong? And don’t give me that ‘nothing’ B.S.”
“We hired someone to tear down that storage shed and fix the garage wall, so we could put in a flower garden.” May was silent for a moment. “The contractor was in the war. And he keeps trying to talk to me about it. I wasn’t even born then, you know? It’s just…uncomfortable. And weird.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Of course. But he’s a chatty guy. I try not to even talk to him, but sometimes Van isn’t home, and there’s only me, and I need to deal with him…”
“Can’t you just change the subject?”
“I do. But I guess I’ve been acting weird because he reminded me of things. Things I’d forgotten I even knew. Things I haven’t thought about since my mother…” She broke off, wiped away a tear.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
Mike had come back into the office halfway through the conversation. “You should report him to his supervisor.”
“He’s an independent contractor.” She looked sheepish. “He’s not even licensed.”
Alarm bells went off in my head.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to know the answer, but I had to ask the question: “What’s his name?”
“Walters. Frank Walters. Why?”
No.
My mind did some quick calculations. It couldn’t be. Frank had been over in Ramona with Teri’s sister when work started on May’s project. Then again, Ramona was only two or three hours from Chino Hills. Conceivably, he could have traveled between them during the course of a normal workday.
Frank Walters.
As much as I might want to believe it was coincidence, I knew it wasn’t. He was targeting the people around me, warning me that he could easily do more.
Maybe I should have followed George and Betsy.
“Do you know him?” May asked.
I shook my head.
“You shouldn’t use someone who’s unlicensed,” Mike said. “You oughta know that.”
“We were trying to save money. It’s just a teardown job anyway.” Her defensiveness with Mike was automatic, but it disappeared almost instantly. “You’re right, though. If we’d used a real contractor, I wouldn’t’ve had to listen to…” She swallowed audibly, wiped her moistening eyes.
“Is he still there?” I asked. “At your house?”
“No, he’s done.” May smiled slightly. “It does look better. We’ll definitely fetch a higher price.”
“Do you have a business card or something? A phone number where he can be reached?”
“A phone number. Somewhere. But it’s no big deal. I’m probably just oversensitive.”
“Can you get me the number?”
“He’s gone, it’s done, I don’t want you stirring things up.”
“I need some work done,” I told her.
She sensed the lie, and held my gaze for a moment before giving in and nodding tiredly. “I’ll find it.”
May did find the number when she went home that evening, and she texted it to me, but when I called, the number was out of service. He’d probably used a disposable phone, I reasoned. A burner.
I told Teri what had happened with May, as well as describing my visit from George and Betsy, and her reaction was reliably sensible: call the police. I did just that, informing the Randall PD in Arizona that the two of them had been spotted in Orange, California; calling the Orange PD and explaining that the couple was wanted in the questioning of a possible cold case murder in Arizona. In what was beginning to seem like standard operating procedure, neither department seemed particularly interested in what I had to say, but out of duty or politeness, they listened, assuring me that they were taking everything down.
I wanted all of this to end. The events of my childhood—
Billy
—had affected everything in my life, but it had all remained in the background until recently, until I’d sold the Big Bear cabin to Brad and Connie and gotten drawn into this nightmare. I wanted it to be that way again. I was sorry I’d ever started looking into the history of Frank, and right now I wanted to just forget it all and move on.
No, that wasn’t true. I wanted revenge for what Frank had done. I wanted vengeance.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted.
I dreamed that night that Teri had hired Frank to renovate our bedroom, and I returned from the office to find that the floor and ceiling were plywood, the walls were cardboard and everything was painted black. Frank had already gone, and Teri told me to get undressed because we were having a housewarming party. We both stripped down to our underwear and went out to let in our first guests, who, I suddenly realized, had been ringing the doorbell for quite some time. Teri pulled her thong tighter, opened the door, and George and Betsy were standing there. “Grandma!” Teri cried. “Grandpa! Welcome to our home!”
The next day, I received a call from Detective Johnson of the Ramona Police Department. I was meeting Teri for lunch, having just shown a condo in Anaheim, when the call came in, and the news could not have been more surprising. “I just wanted to let you know that we have Frank Wharton in custody,” the detective told me after a brief introduction. He said that they’d sent in the suspect’s prints to both the FBI and the Randall Sheriff’s Office to check whether “Frank Wharton” and “Frank Watkins” were the same man. “You’ve seen this Watkins,” Johnson said. “I was wondering if you could come down and make a preliminary ID, help us get a head start on this.”
“I’ll be there in an hour or two,” I said.
Teri’s phone had rung while I was talking. It was Julie. She, too, had been informed of Frank’s capture and had been asked to come down to the station to identify him, to see if he was the handyman who had cheated her and her husband. It didn’t seem right that she would have to do that for what was essentially a small claims case, Julie said, but Teri assured her that the police were just trying to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. He’d conned other people as well, she told her sister.
Teri made no mention of the fact that he might be connected to a 30-year-old murder.
I’d hung up by this time. Listening in, it was clear that Julie was hesitant about going to the police station to identify the man, so I told Teri to let her sister know that we were speeding down to Ramona and would go in with her and her husband.
My mind was spinning as we raced down the Santa Ana Freeway. Frank was caught? It seemed unreal. It seemed anti-climactic. I was glad he was locked up and hoped he would spend the rest of his life in jail, but at the same time, this outcome seemed too easy. Contradictory feelings wound together in a Gordian knot inside me.
Julie and Ron met us in the parking lot of the police station. Teri had called her sister and brother-in-law to let them know when we were almost to Ramona, and they were standing in front of their van waiting for us as we pulled in.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Julie said. Her voice was shaky. “What if I identify him and he doesn’t get convicted? He could come back and—”
“And what?” Ron asked roughly. “Install another toilet incorrectly? He’s a con artist not a murderer. Don’t worry about it. We’re not ID-ing a mob boss here.”
Teri shot me a glance, warning me to keep my mouth shut, and though my feelings were closer to Julie’s than her husband’s, I remained silent as the four of us walked into the station.
Detective Johnson stood up from a gray metal desk as we were escorted through the squad room by a uniformed officer. Introductions were made. Johnson explained that the man had been picked up breaking into the house of a couple whose garage he had been painting. Both the husband and wife had been at work, and the attempted break-in had been called in, as was so often the case, by a nosy neighbor. Although the suspect had no form of identification on him, when asked by the arresting officer, he admitted that his name was “Frank Wharton.”
Teri had gone to great lengths to make sure I didn’t share any details about Frank with her sister, but Johnson was under no such restrictions. The detective explained to us all that in addition to cheating local residents, Frank was also wanted for questioning in Arizona regarding a 30-year-old murder. Glancing at Julie out of the corner of my eye, I saw her face turn pale.
“I…I’m not sure I can do this,” she said nervously.
Johnson smiled reassuringly. “Of course you can. And you and your husband can make the ID together if that’ll be easier for you.”
I frowned. “Shouldn’t they do that separately?”
“We have five more couples coming in to identify him,” Johnson said. “We won’t have any problem.” He turned back toward Julie. “So, Mrs. Coburn, are you ready to go in and see if we got the right man?”
She nodded hesitantly.
“Wait here,” he told me. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
It was quicker than that, and when he returned with Julie and Ron in tow, Julie was sobbing. “That’s the man!” she said with a hiccupping snuffle. Her face was drained of color, and I could see the fear in her wet eyes. “Oh my God, we had a murderer in our house! He might’ve… He could’ve…” She broke off, crying. Ron held her so tightly he seemed to be holding her up.
Sheepishly, Johnson rubbed the back of his neck. “Kinda screwed up here,” he admitted. “I should have kept you all separated until after you made your independent IDs. Sorry about that. This isn’t going to influence you is it?” he asked me. “Contaminate the results?”
I wasn’t so sure the detective had made a mistake. I had the feeling he knew exactly what he was doing and was attempting to reinforce my positive identification. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I can’t be influenced. Either I recognize him or I don’t.”
Moron, I thought. Now even a halfway decent lawyer will be able to get these IDs thrown out in court.
“Good,” he said, clapping me on the back. “Step right this way.”
I followed him out of the squad room through a back door. I was expecting one of those situations like I’d seen on TV, where there’d be a lineup against a wall, and I’d be looking through one-way glass. But I was brought into a short hallway and told to look through a small mesh-reinforced window in the center of a green steel door.
Where a bearded man who was definitely not Frank sat on a cot against the wall of the small room.
The anxious anticipation I’d been feeling disappeared instantly, my hopes crashing to earth.
“It’s not him,” I said.
“Look carefully. Take your time.”
“It’s not him.”
Johnson shrugged. “Well, we have one positive ID so far. He might not be your Frank Wharton, but it seems pretty clear he’s the guy who’s been rooking our local populace.”
We walked back into the squad room. Seeing Teri’s expectant look, I shook my head. Nodding, she turned to Julie, holding her sister’s shoulders and speaking directly into her face, no doubt telling her that the handyman who’d cheated them was not a murderer, just a con artist. I could see the relief flood Julie’
s face.
So her Frank wasn’t my Frank.
Maybe none of the Franks were connected, I thought. Maybe all this time I’d been seeing links where there were none, chasing chimeras across the Southwest in a quixotic search that had more to do with me than Frank.
But, no. I’d seen the man. I’d been to his house.
A house where time didn’t work? Where I’d lost six days in ten minutes? After encountering his wife’s ghost at a bed-and-breakfast in Texas?
Maybe none of it had happened. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe I’d imagined everything.
I glanced over at Teri, wanting to talk about this with her, needing to know what she thought, but she was nodding at something her sister was saying, not looking at me, the expression on her face unreadable.
We drove back to Orange County in silence.
PART TWO
Incidents
ONE
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1979
He saw her in the line outside the theater.
Cheryl Hinson.
Steve Fisk shifted position to hide behind Roland. He, Roland and their other friend Brian had been looking forward to seeing Alien for months, since they’d first read in Starlog that the monster was designed by the same artist who’d done the cover for ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery. But why in the world was Cheryl here? She didn’t even like these kinds of movies. Was she doing this just to torture him?
No. She was here with someone. Another boy. On a date. Steve looked over Roland’s shoulder and saw a guy he didn’t recognize. A surfer-looking dude. Tall, tan, with an OP shirt and Shaun Cassidy hair, he had his arm around Cheryl’s shoulder, and both of them were laughing easily at something one of them had said.
Steve felt as though he’d been kicked in the stomach. He had spent most of the past two weeks in his room, lying on his bed, listening to depressing music and running through an endless series of what-if scenarios in his head, wondering what he could have done to keep her. Ever since Cheryl had broken up with him, he’d been lost; even his school work had been affected.
She, apparently, was fine.
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