The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  “What now?”

  “Records show Leiter owned a Jaguar. Owns one, I mean. It was missing from his garage.”

  “So police are looking for that, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “They want you to come look at his diary, again. See if you can come up with any clues.”

  “Finally,” Val breathed, half to herself.

  “What?” said Greg.

  “Did Frank Melendez pay a ransom?”

  “They’re not saying. You’ll have to sign a nondisclosure agreement before you’ll be told, too.”

  “Meaning they paid.”

  “Or they didn’t,” Greg added, cryptically.

  Val closed her phone, and steered out of the parking lot, beeping her horn at the slow poke in front of her, just like a harried soccer mom in an SUV.

  ~ * ~

  Ten minutes after her arrival at police headquarters, Val was finally let in to see Detective Trent. Upon entering Trent's office, she was waved into an uncomfortable metal chair opposite his desk.

  “Hello, Valerie,” Trent greeted her, his tone neutral.

  “Ms. Lott,” she corrected him sternly, in return.

  He looked at her quietly for a moment. Sitting there, he seemed to study her face for clues to his approach. Finding evidence both of desperation and disdain, he obviously chose not to adopt the world weary construction his own face usually displayed. “Miss Lott, I have to tell you I'm sorry that I--”

  “Can’t tell me anything?” she completed his sentence. She paused, noting his unwillingness to deal from the top of the deck. “Okay, then, just give me David's journal. If you don't mind, please."

  “Of course.” The detective opened a drawer, and produced the familiar Mead notebook.

  Val took it lightly, hesitating a moment as a way to deliver her own nonverbal message. She held the notebook motionless over his desk before she finally settled back onto her hard seat.

  “You were right,” Trent admitted unexpectedly, glancing up. “I guess you could say I'm paid to be suspicious and cynical.”

  She stared at him for a moment in surprise. “Thank you.”

  “Do you mind if I ask. . .if you love him?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What does he mean to you, exactly?”

  “Nothing. He doesn’t mean anything. He is. He’s not a thing, detective.”

  “I see. Has this. . .thing. . . happened to you before?”

  She paused, deciding if and how to answer, unclear of his motive in asking. Or whether she even knew the answer. In the end, by her silence, she didn’t need to say anything at all.

  “How does it feel?” Trent asked, softly.

  She looked down at her hand and smiled. Imagined a ring there. Flashed on a conjured ceremony--a church, flowers, rice, limousine, island lei. Then the cliché images dissolved, as something more real than all of it took its place: an image of David’s gentle face, as he sat next to her under a gazebo.

  Trent nodded, thoughtfully. After a moment he said, “Oh, and may I suggest that you start reading at the place in the notebook after where he gives up dating his entries?"

  Their eyes met, and held. “Why is that?”

  “We haven't much time to find your. . .friend. Statistically speaking.”

  “So you really don't think he's an accomplice?”

  “Anything is possible, but it's unlikely. I mean, considering the stolen vehicles, and what's written in that notebook.”

  Val nodded toward the large electric clock on the wall. “Time is running out?”

  “I don't think David would put it that way, but yes, I think it is. If it hasn't run out already. Of course time is an illusion, isn't it?”

  She stared at his face for expected derision. To her surprise, she found a hint of envy, instead. As if Trent secretly wished he’d conversed with David himself, as well.

  What was it David had written?

  She looked down at the notebook, running her hand down the cover, half fearful of the secrets she might find inside. But she had to know. Had to see in order to understand.

  Resolutely, she opened the cover. Quickly, then, she turned the pages to the unnumbered entries that Trent had suggested. And she began to read.

  A train whistle accompanies freight cars that clatter past old warehouses in the night. Is the rise and fall of such a whistle lonely by nature? If not, why do I feel it in my soul? What is the soul of a man? No one knows. I'm alone with only myself. But who is that? It's whom I'm writing these thoughts to, certainly. I say my name. I say "David." It sounds strange to say aloud, because I know I am not David. The word is only a symbol, like a sign pointing toward a cloud. So "David" writes to "Melissa," and asks what has been the reason for his life. His looking at the stars. This world, which is supposed to be home, has become foreign to him since her passing. It is no longer the same place. He doesn't recognize it anymore. Who is this person he sees in the mirror? Of course there is a pulse. There is a growing beard, and scraggly hair. What animates him, though, and for what purpose? He tries to make sense of it by writing things down, as he once did as a teen in the night, propelled by sudden insight, from solitude. He listens to people talking, too, but their voices now seem to claim substance like a plea. Meanwhile, days turn relentlessly toward a seasonless season. Objects become relics, and faces have no connection to names.

  ----------

  A strange thing has happened. Yesterday afternoon I was putting away my shirt in the closet when I noticed that one of Melissa's shoes had been mixed with the things I'd moved out of the house. I sat beside it, and then I couldn't get back up. The prospect of living alone in this trailer, again, which I’ve moved here, listening for sounds that prove to be only whispers of air. . . I just sat there in mute terror. What am I to do, if I can’t live in the house or here? I thought. But then, after a time, when it started to get dark, I saw the light dimming, and a new vision came to me, then. I imagined my sunset as someone else's sunrise. Someone just like me was sitting on a wooden floor in India, or in a shack in the rainforest in Bali, and this person, who could have been me as much as I him, was afraid to face the truth, too. Although his world was different, it was also the same, due to his loss. A statue of the Buddha was there with him, and the picture of a smiling little boy, dressed in bright blue silk. When this man held up the photo to show me, to my surprise I saw that it was a child I remembered from the grocery store, years ago, his eyes so full of excitement at the concept of strawberry ice cream that when I asked his mother if I could buy him the treat, Mom, gauging our intent, saw the same thing in my eyes as in her son's. And then, because she saw her child in this new light, she said, "I surrender." Remembering this, I felt relief somehow. My friend in India or Bali did too, and so we both fell asleep on the floor.

  ----------

  What's truly valuable? I need to know. Is it the soaring stock that can be tracked online? Is it a diamond or a house on an island? The clean leather smell of a new luxury car? Or is it rather just the sunlight on the sidewalk. Or is it toasting the day with a friend, even if the glass is half empty and the drink water? Or holding a child's hand crossing the street. . . massaging a lover's neck while sitting in a bus stop cubical in the rain. . . the wind in the chimney, playing out of tune pipes. . . the rustle of leaves high up toward the crescent moon? Is it being powerful and in control, or is just laying in scented grass and watching the rays of sunset focus on distant clouds that you know hover over someone else’s head?

  ----------

  A history lesson. The Spartans in the age of ancient Greece reveled in war, sacrificed their young in barbaric tests of strength. They enslaved their neighbors, plundered and murdered women and children, while all the time believing in the survival and glory of the fittest, and in future nirvana, just as Hitler and Stalin believed. And what happened to them and their madness? All of those who thought this way? Ask Ozymandias.

  Tre
nt's phone rang, interrupting Val’s reading of David's journal. She lowered the journal and waited, only to witness a disturbing transformation overtake Trent’s face and demeanor. Holding the receiver lightly, the detective first casually asked the caller, “Where?” Then some new revelation came, which seemed to perturb his innate detachment. His tone dismissed the subtle promise of resolution as he asked, “When?” Finally, he gripped the phone, his voice becoming almost bleak as he said, “Okay, I'll be right there.”

  “What is it?” Val asked.

  Hanging up, Trent nodding slightly to himself, as though considering his options. He bit at his lower lip, breathed deeply, then ran a hand through his hair. Finally, he opened his mouth several times in aborted attempts to speak, before announcing, “They’ve discovered Leiter's car, Ms. Lott. I mean Valerie. Plates didn't match, but the VIN number did. They also have a man in custody. And I'm afraid it's not David.”

  Val started to speak, but now found that she couldn't. She could tell that this wasn't the only news Trent dreaded to reveal. There was something more. Something worse. She could see it in his eyes.

  “Who . . ?” she mouthed.

  Trent looked at the wall to her left, as if a spider crawled there.

  Val followed the direction of his gaze, but there was no spider, only a slight indentation---fist sized---in the pale gray plaster.

  “I'm sorry,” the detective said quietly, almost as an afterthought, “but they found a blood stain in the trunk as well.”

  19

  In a moment of terrible lucidity, Val watched as ten long seconds drained the color from her face in the restroom mirror. She dropped both of her palms down onto either side of the white porcelain sink, and next felt her knees give way until her forehead lay against the cold enamel. Unable to join Trent in confronting the suspect, she now felt the weight of loss pull her down and down, past the environs of measured grief, toward a more chaotic unknown. She resisted the pull, forcing strength into her weakened legs, yet fierce tears still blurred her vision as she set her jaw to the effort.

  The inequity of it. The injustice.

  Rising to see her reflection again, she hated the stranger she saw in the mirror. The woman who had betrayed her own heart so often it had become second nature to accept the vanity of others. Hated with ardent revulsion ever doubting her instincts, her spirit, her very life. With bitter anguish, she struck the image in the mirror with her fist. Again and again she punched the glass until the face there shattered into a mosaic---a broken jigsaw of her fractured self.

  When a large slab of jagged glass slipped from the bent frame, she whipped her hand up in reaction, and a deep gash sliced into her forearm, as though from a razor. Then the pane tumbled to the floor, and a small explosion of tinkling shards reverberated from the blue tile as she stared down at the gushing cut near her wrist in disbelief.

  Oh God. . .

  She felt faint at the sight. Her breathing and heartbeat became shallow and rapid. When another explosion followed, it seemed distant and unreal. The uniformed cop that had burst through the door saw her holding her wounded wrist over the sink. Saw her slip half conscious to the floor. Then she had the numbed sensation of falling forever toward an event horizon of infinite darkness below. Toward a tunnel that rushed up to funnel her tighter and tighter into a place where time and space itself shut down.

  But it was not the end of sensation. Not the mindless dark she feared at all. Instead, she emerged from the tunnel into a bright, empty house. A house that held no furniture but a card table and folding chair. Devoid of life except for her own presence, the space resonated such complete focus that even a painting, mirror or plant would have seemed a violation.

  Not knowing what to do, Val sat in the chair, looking out the window at her new neighbors. Next door, a family could be seen washing their van, the dad spraying mom and their two kids, all of them laughing and playing on the glistening grass. Dad wore a baseball cap, blue tee shirt, and blue jeans. Mom wore green shorts like the kids, and a denim shirt with rolled up sleeves. A tiny Terrier dog appeared, jumping and yipping excitedly in circles, but Val couldn’t watch them long. She looked back at the bare wall opposite her, instead.

  Then down.

  On the table before her, now, was a notebook. A blank Mead notebook, like the kind kids used at school. A notebook with a black cover also dotted by stars. It was apparently all she owned, besides her immaculate, empty house, and a journal in which to record her thoughts about that. But the house itself was a trap, she knew. A big, empty box. There was no furniture coming. No moving van on the way.

  As if on cue, her dream house suddenly echoed with the laughter of her neighbors. Wanting the sunlight and solace, she rushed in a panic to the front door, only to see that it was locked with a double-keyed deadbolt, and that the key was missing. She began to cry out, beating at the door, but then she heard something that riveted her.

  A phone ringing.

  A phone in another room.

  She ran through the house, looking frantically from right to left. In the center of the master bedroom floor she found an ancient black rotary phone. She knew who was calling even before she knelt and lifted the heavy receiver. Knew indeed she was dreaming, too, because of what the phone was missing.

  A cord.

  “Hello? David?”

  A barely perceptible sound, like a breeze rustling leaves. Then a slow and rhythmic inhalation and exhalation of breath. With unbearable patience, her gentleman caller was definitely breathing. But could he speak?

  “David?” she repeated, her question less uncertain, and directed at his hesitation.

  Still the caller waited, as her expectations fell and then rose again when suddenly she realized that David never waited, except to teach her some lesson or trick she hadn't yet been able to mimic.

  “David,” she said, needing to break this silence, and to test the truth, “I feel like my life doesn't matter anymore. Not even to me.”

  “But it could,” replied a distant yet familiar voice at last, calm as a whisper. “Do you want to know how?”

  “David! Is it really you? You know that I do. Tell me, please!”

  A pause, and then, “Are you listening now?”

  "Yes, David, I'm listening."

  As she waited, the line went dead. She looked down at the phone in disbelief. Found herself listening to utter silence. Listening for the children next door, but hearing nothing. She rushed to the window, to see that the lawn next door was empty, like they were never there. Listening to the voice in her head, wanting it to tell her what to do, she watched as the house faded.

  And then the phone rang again.

  She placed it quickly to her ear once more. "Tell me," she said. "Tell me the secret."

  "There is no secret," David replied, slowly. "This is the secret that is hidden when you resist. When you don't pay attention."

  "Attention to what?"

  "To the only thing that matters."

  She shook her head doubtfully. "But. . . I don't know what that is."

  "Because you still believe that time is real. You believe that you own it. While, if anything, it owns you.”

  “But how can it own me if it's not real?” she asked, reflexively.

  “Look around you, and consider how a conception or obsession can possess your mind, when it's not real, either.”

  Not real. She knew that much was true, at least. No, it was not real at all. None of it. She was dreaming. David was dead. Not here. Not really. Nor was she!

  Impulsively, she knelt, and hung up the phone.

  She stared down at it, then, waiting for it to disappear. Willing herself to awaken. But it rang once more, all the same, and she had to answer because she had another question.

  “Who are you,” she demanded, "really?"

  She closed her eyes against the vision of the empty dream house that surrounded her, created by her own desire and fear, and listened for the answer from a presence she could not explain.


  “I am you,” David's voice replied, “and you are me. Yet you act as if we're disconnected and alone. You must act otherwise to know the truth.”

  “I must act,” she said, “as though this is not all a mystery to me?”

  “It is no mystery who you are. Nor I. We are not what we do, for we could do anything. Or nothing at all. You could even sit and stare at the wall, waiting to nightfall, or for work, or for nothing at all. But is that who you are?”

  “I've done that already,” she confessed. “It's called depression.”

  “Name it what you will,” whispered the voice, “it is still a resistance to see, to live, to be. Not a choice, but a habit. An enslavement.”

  “Enslavement?”

  “You do not choose pain instead of love. Instead, you believe that pain is real. That it is what you deserve. That it is who you are. And this has the same effect as choosing. But it is not you that is wrong in this misconception. It is your master. Your mind.”

  “My mind,” she affirmed.

  “You are not alone in this. Many cling to their illusions, with only hope as reward. Never insight. They trust ambition, follow fashion, crave luck. Yet they never believe that life is fair to them, and so they never really see or enjoy the one thing that they do possess.”

  “And what is that,” she wondered aloud, “if not time and space?”

  “Space is not real, either. You know this, too. Just look around you. Or imagine what a wise man once said, to imagine two points in outer space, with nothing but a vast vacuum between them. Imagine that you are one of these points, and I am the other. What is it, now, that determines the distance between you and I?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “But you do. It is your mind that does not know. That won't let you know. Your scientific mind, a tool that is inadequate for the job. Because when you move toward me in empty space, or away from me, through what are you moving?”

  “Nothing,” she replied, quickly.