The Vanished

by Tim Kizer

  David relayed the question to Kemper, and Kemper said, “Eight o’clock this morning.”

  David translated Kemper’s answer, and Doctor Olivas said, “Very good. Now ask Roger what medications he’s taken in the last twenty-four hours.”

  After David translated Roger’s answer, the doctor nodded and asked if Kemper had ever had a liver biopsy. Kemper said that he had.

  “Since you’re familiar with the procedure, I don’t need to explain it to you.” Doctor Olivas stood up. “Please follow me, gentlemen.”

  He took Kemper and David to the exam room and instructed Kemper to change into a hospital gown.

  “When are you going to get the test results?” Kemper asked David after the doctor stepped out of the room.

  “In a couple of days.”

  When Kemper finished changing into a hospital gown, a nurse escorted them to the biopsy room, where Doctor Olivas was busy preparing the equipment.

  The doctor gestured at the exam table, which stood by a bulky machine with a monitor, and said, “I need Roger to lie down.”

  Kemper climbed onto the table, lay down on his back, and put his right hand under his head. Doctor Olivas opened a white plastic bottle, which had “Sonic Gel” printed on it, and said, pointing at the machine, “This is an ultrasound machine. You must have seen one before. That’s what they use to determine a baby’s sex.”

  The doctor applied a small amount of the clear gel from the bottle to Kemper’s upper right abdomen and then spent a few minutes moving the scanning device over the lubricated area.

  “Can you see the liver?” Doctor Olivas asked David, nodding at the ultrasound machine monitor.

  Although he couldn’t make out Kemper’s liver on the screen, David said yes.

  The doctor placed the scanner in the holder, wiped the gel off Kemper’s abdomen, and cleaned the area over the liver with an iodine swab. Then the nurse covered Kemper’s upper body with a blue drape, which had a large round hole in it. She positioned the hole over the biopsy site.

  “Now I’m going to inject some anesthetic.” Doctor Olivas filled two syringes with the anesthetic and emptied them into the area over Kemper’s liver.

  Kemper, who was blankly staring at the ceiling, showed no reaction to the needles penetrating his skin. Perhaps he was preoccupied with plotting his escape.

  After a minute or two, the nurse put the ultrasound scanner on Kemper’s abdomen about three inches below his nipple, and the doctor said, “We’re almost done.”

  He made a tiny incision in Kemper’s side with a scalpel, and a thin trickle of blood began to seep from it. As he dabbed at the blood with a gauze pad, Doctor Olivas said, “I need Roger to hold very still now.”

  David translated his instructions to Kemper.

  The doctor picked up a syringe with a terrifyingly long needle, which contained a small amount of clear liquid. “I want Roger to take a deep breath, exhale, and hold his breath for fifteen seconds.”

  While Kemper was holding his breath, Doctor Olivas carefully inserted the needle into the incision, drew back the plunger, and pushed the needle all the way in. A second later, he pulled the needle out.

  “You can breathe now,” the doctor said in English, rolling the R.

  As the nurse pressed a gauze pad to the biopsy site to stop the bleeding, Doctor Olivas squeezed the contents of the syringe into a small plastic specimen cup, which was half full of clear liquid. Then he screwed the lid on the cup and showed it to David.

  “Can you see it?” The doctor shook the cup, stirring up the thin and short pieces of Kemper’s liver inside it. The liquid in the cup was now pink because of the blood.

  “Yeah.” David nodded.

  Doctor Olivas placed the specimen cup in a plastic zipper bag, sealed the bag, and handed it to David. “Put it in a sturdy container with a secure lid when you mail it.” He turned to Kemper and asked in English, “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.” Kemper smiled.

  To David, the doctor said in Spanish, “He should refrain from driving a car for at least eight hours. No vigorous physical activity for at least twenty-four hours. If he feels pain, he may take paracetamol, which is the same as Tylenol.”

  He wished Kemper and David a good day and left the room. When the nurse finished bandaging the biopsy incision, she led Kemper and David to the recovery room. She gave Kemper a sheet with post-biopsy instructions in English and said that he needed to stay under observation for two hours.

  4

  On the way to the El Rey hotel, David called Carol and instructed her to take Annie’s hair to a DNA testing lab and ask them to create a DNA profile for Annie.

  “What do you need it for?” Carol asked. “Did you find… something?”

  She probably thought he had found Annie’s body parts.

  “No. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Phoenix.” He checked his watch. It was 4:16. “I need you to do it today.”

  “Okay.”

  When David hung up, Vincent asked him where he wanted to do a DNA test of Kemper’s liver sample.

  “Laredo,” David said. “They must have at least one DNA testing lab there. Can you deliver the sample to the lab?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t trust Mexican DNA labs?” asked Kemper, who sat in the backseat with David.

  David supposed Mexican DNA labs were as reliable as the labs in America; however, doing the test in the States was going to give him the peace of mind.

  After the front desk clerk at the El Rey hotel gave him the keycard to their hotel room, David asked if the hotel had room service.

  “Yes, it does,” the clerk said.

  Shortly after they entered the room, David cuffed Kemper’s hands behind his back and tied his feet together with a rope. He found that, in addition to the rope, Vincent had purchased a roll of duct tape.

  “Maybe we should tie him to a chair?” David said, looking around the room. He was worried Kemper might escape while he was asleep.

  “Please don’t do it, guys,” Kemper pleaded. “I’m not going to run away,”

  Vincent hung a No Molestar—Do Not Disturb—sign on the outside doorknob and said, “I have an idea.”

  He cut a length of rope, walked up to the bed closest to the window, lifted the corner of the mattress, and then asked David to hold it. While David was holding the mattress, Vincent squatted down and tied the rope to the side rail of the bed frame.

  “You can put it down,” he said, standing up.

  They laid Kemper on the bed, and Vincent tied the other end of the rope to the rope that bound Kemper’s feet, giving him a four-foot-long tether. He cut off the excess rope and said to Kemper, “Do we have to tape your mouth, pal?”

  “I’ll be quiet, I promise,” Kemper said. “What if I vomit and choke to death?”

  Vincent pointed his index finger at him and said, “If you scream, I’m going to hurt you bad. You understand?”

  “Yes. I’ll be very quiet.” Kemper tried to lift his upper body up, then fell back. “Can you help me sit up, please?”

  Vincent propped the pillows against the headboard, then grabbed Kemper by the upper arm and tugged him into a sitting position with his back against the pillows.

  David switched on Vincent’s laptop and went online to find a DNA testing lab in Laredo. It turned out there were half a dozen companies in Laredo that offered DNA testing services. David picked Laredo Testing Center, which promised to provide testing results within twenty-four hours. He scheduled an appointment for tomorrow at nine o’clock in the morning.

  David told Vincent about the appointment, and Vincent said that he would leave for Laredo now. David thought it was a good idea: he preferred that the private investigator not drive at night. Before he set out, Vincent reserved a hotel room in Laredo. Kemper asked Vincent not to lose the liver sample as he headed for the door.

  5

  David lined up Kemper’s medication
bottles on the table and asked if it was time for Kemper to take his pills.

  “What time is it?” Kemper said.

  “Almost six.”

  “I take them at eight.” Kemper sighed. “I’m hungry.”

  Although he hadn’t eaten in nine hours, David wasn’t hungry, thanks to the adrenaline rush.

  David picked up the receiver and asked, “Are you a vegetarian?”

  “No.”

  David called room service and ordered two chicken breasts with mashed potatoes, four cheese enchiladas, four beef fajitas, and eight bottles of water. He was going to eat half of the food himself in an hour or two.

  “Do you like chicken?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  “How am I going to piss and take a shit?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  It took David less than a minute to find a solution to the bathroom problem: Roger was going to urinate in a glass and defecate in a wastebasket.

  “Can you turn on the TV?” Kemper asked.

  David switched on the TV and lay down on the bed, holding the remote in his hand. A movie with Richard Gere was on. After he watched the movie for a few seconds, David remembered that he had seen it before: it was about a lawyer who defended a murderer with a split personality. Richard Gere played the lawyer. David didn’t remember the title of the movie.

  He wondered if he was being too accommodating to Kemper by turning on the TV.

  Well, letting Kemper watch Spanish-dubbed movies was not a big deal.

  His room service order arrived half an hour after he placed it. His stomach growled at the sight of food, but he still didn’t feel like eating. When David placed the tray on the table, the phone on the nightstand rang. David lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?”

  “It’s Vincent. Carol just called me and said that she went to the testing lab and gave them Annie’s hair. The DNA profile will be ready tomorrow at five.”

  “Great. Thanks for the call, Vince.”

  6

  Forty-five minutes after David fed him (he had a chicken breast and two enchiladas), Kemper announced that he wanted to take a shit. David put a wastebasket by Kemper’s bed, then pulled Kemper’s sweatpants and underwear down to his ankles and helped him sit down on the wastebasket. While Kemper was relieving himself, David stood behind him, holding him by the shoulders to prevent him from falling from the wastebasket.

  This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done, David thought as he listened to Kemper’s grunts.

  Grimacing with disgust, breathing through his mouth, David took the wastebasket to the bathroom, carefully pulled the trash bag out of it, and dumped Kemper’s feces and urine in the toilet. After he flushed, he dropped the trash bag in the bathroom wastebasket.

  At ten o’clock Vincent called and informed David that he had arrived at his hotel in Laredo. David told him that Kemper was behaving himself. After hanging up the phone, he grabbed a beef fajita and ate it. Then he ate the remaining chicken breast.

  As he looked at Kemper, David was surprised by how calm and relaxed the guy was. Was it because Kemper was innocent, or because he was a psychopath?

  David opened a bottle, took a sip of water, and said, “Just tell me the truth, Roger. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tell me you took her liver. Tell me where she is now.”

  “I didn’t take Annie’s liver. I didn’t kidnap her. When you get the test results, you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

  David rose to his feet, stepped up to Kemper’s bed, and said, “If it turns out that you took Annie’s liver, I will…” He was going to say “kill you” but changed his mind. “Punish you.”

  “Why do you think it’s me, anyway? Maybe she was kidnapped for ransom. You’re rich, aren’t you?”

  “If it was about money, they would already have called us.”

  Kemper rubbed the back of his head against the wall, and said, “I haven’t thought of Annie in years. I guess you don’t approve of that.”

  “Did you know she has epilepsy?”

  “Epilepsy? Wow. That’s really bad. No, I didn’t know that. Did you report the kidnapping to the police?”

  David sat down on the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Who do you think kidnapped her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she’s alive?”

  “Yes, I think she’s alive.”

  It was pure speculation, of course, but it still made David feel encouraged.

  Twenty minutes later, David helped Kemper take a piss. He had to monitor Kemper’s penis throughout the whole process to make sure the urine didn’t get on his hand.

  Shortly after one o’clock David began to feel a little drowsy. He got up from the bed and did a few sit-ups and push-ups to reinvigorate his brain.

  Kemper seemed to be wide awake.

  When he was done exercising, David called room service and ordered two pots of coffee. He didn’t plan to stay up all night—although he would if he could—but he didn’t want to fall asleep before Kemper did. After he drank his first cup of coffee, David said, “I want to tell you something, Roger. I’m a light sleeper, so don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  “Okay.” Kemper nodded.

  “If you call for help, I’ll tape your mouth and let you choke on your vomit.”

  “I understand. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

  As David poured coffee into his cup, Kemper asked, “Are you going to stay up until Vincent comes back?”

  “Yes, I am.” David set down the coffee pot. “By the way, when did you have the surgery?”

  “Last Saturday.”

  “When are you going home?”

  “Next Wednesday. You know what bothers me? The five-year survival rate for people with liver transplants is seventy-five percent. They say it’s a high rate, but I’m not impressed. There’s a twenty-five percent chance I’ll die in five years. It’s a pretty high chance.”

  David found it hard to sympathize with Kemper.

  David drifted off around three, soon after Kemper had fallen asleep. He awoke at 8:24 in the morning when he felt someone squeeze his throat. He sat up, flailing his arms, and saw that no one was trying to strangle him. Kemper lay asleep on his bed, his legs still tied.

  David took a shower and then ate two beef fajitas, which he washed down with cold coffee. At half past nine Vincent reported that he had dropped off Kemper’s liver sample at the lab.

  “When Carol calls, please ask her to email Annie’s DNA profile to you,” David said.

  Kemper woke up half an hour after Vincent’s phone call. He asked David to order some food, and David obliged. At five-thirty in the afternoon, while they were watching a Matt Damon movie called We Bought a Zoo, Vincent called and said that Carol had emailed him Annie’s DNA profile.

  “Excellent,” David replied.

  He could hardly wait to find out if Kemper was telling the truth. If Kemper proved to be the kidnapper, they would have to move him to a place where no one could hear him scream. When he went to bed, David thought about the fact that they would no longer have a suspect if the DNA comparison showed that Kemper’s new liver had come from someone other than Annie. What was Vincent’s plan?

  Did the investigator have a plan?

  7

  He awoke at eight o’clock in the morning. He looked at his watch every five minutes, waiting for Vincent to call. When the phone finally rang, his palms broke out in a sweat. He glanced at Kemper, who was watching TV, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, this is Vincent. I’m at Laredo Testing Center. I want you to talk to Mitchell. He did the profile comparison for me.”

  “Okay.”

  David sat bolt upright, staring at the phone.

  “Hello, David, this is Mitchell.”

  “Hello.”

  “I looked at the DNA profiles Vincent gav
e me. They don’t match. The sample that we processed belongs to a male, and the other one to a female.”

  “Are they related?”

  “No. The profiles are completely different.”

  David breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thank you, Mitchell.”

  “No problem.”

  A moment later he heard Vincent’s voice: “I should be back in Monterrey by four.”

  “Can you bring me ten thousand dollars? I’ll pay you back when we return to the States.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.”

  David put the receiver into its cradle.

  “What did he say?” Kemper asked, his gray eyes fixed on David intently.

  “He said it’s not Annie’s liver.” David stood up, fished the handcuff key out of his pocket, and took the cuffs off Kemper’s wrists.

  “So we’re cool now?” Kemper said, rubbing his wrists.

  “Yes, we are.” David cut the ropes off Kemper’s legs. “I’m very sorry for all the inconvenience we caused you. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars tonight.”

  “For pain and suffering?” Kemper got off the bed and began to walk around the room.

  “Yes. For pain and suffering. If something goes wrong with your liver, call me.”

  David put the battery back in Kemper’s cell and gave the phone to Kemper. Then he handed Kemper his hotel room keycard and a twenty-dollar bill, and offered to call a cab for him. Kemper said that he wanted to take a shower before heading for the hospital.

  “I stink like a pig,” he said.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Kemper asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to go back to the States.”

  “I mean your daughter. Do you have any other leads?”

  “No.”

  8

  Vincent returned from Laredo at 3:50 pm. He handed David a pack of hundred-dollar bills and said, “Here’s the ten grand you asked for.”

  David pocketed the cash. “It’s for Roger.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s back in the hospital.”

  Vincent reached into his jacket pocket and took out an American passport. “Here’s your new passport.” He gave the document to David.