Max dialed the number and she answered on the second ring.
“Hello, Ms. Porter, it’s Max.”
“I know. How are you?” She wasn’t as excited to hear from him as before, and he knew why. He stole hope from the mother, the hope of finding her child. What could he do? Now he had to bring her some peace of mind. He needed to find out who killed her daughter. Angelica could answer this question, but it seemed that she was considering it for too long. Maybe she didn’t remember. Could it be?
“Ms. Porter.”
“Please, just call me Wilma.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to ask about the detectives who worked on Angelica’s case.”
“Max, you know, there wasn’t a case, really. The girl was gone. They told me she could have run away. They asked neighbors, Angel’s friends, and that was it. He came by a few times afterward, but he didn’t have any information.”
“I’d like to talk to him. Would you give me his contact information? If you have anything.”
Max was sure the woman would ask questions, but she only sighed.
“He probably retired already. He wasn’t young at that time.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I have his work phone number. Probably someone there will know how to contact him. He gave it to me; I don’t know where my phone book is. You wait and I’ll call you back.”
“Thank you.” Max turned the phone off and walked from corner to corner around the room, waiting for the call. Wilma called after ten minutes, and Max wrote down the phone numbers that she provided . He called the station and managed to get the detective’s new number even though he didn’t work there anymore. An older male answered Max’s call.
“Alan Walter?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
Max repeated his usual intro about being a writer and working on a book, this time adding about Angelica. He said he was writing a supernatural thriller about her.
“I heard about you,” the retired detective said. “I don’t read, no time for that, but my wife devours about two books a week. She mentioned you. I also saw you on a talk show once. I’ll try to help. What is your interest in this case? Anything concrete?”
The man’s voice changed so much from a casual conversation to business that Max thought for a second that somebody else had taken the phone. The tone of voice was clear with a shade of power.
“Who did you interview?” Max asked.
“Do you want me to go through the list of names?”
Max clenched his teeth. He wasn’t prepared for the conversation and he should have been.
“Angelica’s classmates?”
“Classmates. You know, this case has been cold for thirty plus years. I remember it only because it was my first missing persons case, and the girl was stunning. Also because she disappeared without a trace. It’s a cold case, Mr. Stevenson.”
“How can I find out the names of the people you talked to?”
“And you need this because …?”
“I want to learn what they think about her disappearance. Personally.”
“After so many years, they probably have forgotten who Angelica was, not just what they thought at that time.”
Max started to get angry. What did it matter to this detective what they told him? “I’ll try anyway,” he said. “People usually are helpful.”
“Hmm. I don’t have anything from that file,” the ex-cop said, as if he reported to his boss. “The case is in the archives and I don’t think you can get permission to go there. The circumstance must be greater than working on a book.”
“But I …
“Your book,” the man interrupted, “is not a valid reason.”
“Muffin!” Max heard in the phone. “Let’s eat!”
“My wife is calling me,” Muffin mumbled. “She’ll be out of her mind if I say I talked to you. Would you sign a book for me?” he added with servility.
“I’ll do that, sure,” Max answered through clenched teeth. “I’ll do that.”
He closed the phone and threw it on the couch, scolding himself and the cop for wasting his time. He decided to contact one of his friends and ask permission to visit the archives. He understood that it probably was even more of a time waster, but he had to do something to spot the killer. He was going to do just that, find who killed Angelica, and hold him accountable.
Max felt that the only way he could continue living was to see this through.
CHAPTER 39
Anna sat in the chair with her legs under her butt, and watched her husband walking in circles around the room and waving his hands. He talked without looking at her. Anna thought he had forgotten she was in the room, drowning in his madness. She could call it madness and nothing else. Red eyes, dark circles under them, shaking hands, sallow, sunken cheeks. When she came home from work, she noticed the food hadn’t been touched—only that the coffee bag became thinner. Max shrugged off her question, told her he ate a sandwich, and then started to talk about her. About his character. He talked like a madman, hurrying, swallowing words. Anna didn’t understand everything he said. She couldn’t understand the meaning of most of it.
Max stopped in front of her, stared at her, but didn’t see her.
“She’s not just some ghost, dictating to me the text of a book or telling me her story, which in this case is the same, as you can understand. She lives here.” Max tapped his finger on his forehead. “Here. Understand? She’s a part of me. I don’t know how it happened or what is happening. I don’t understand it.”
“Max!” Anna yelled, and closed her eyes and ears. She didn’t expect to yell, but she couldn’t stand anymore of his disconnected, crazy blubbering. When she opened her eyes, her husband stood in the same spot, with his hands on his hips and his eyes on her eyes. Finally, he saw her. “Enough.” Anna put her hands down.
“You asked Kelvin to call,” Max said with accusation in his voice.
“I didn’t. I didn’t ask him anything.”
“He called me.”
“I didn’t ask him to. I just …”
“Just what?”
Anna swallowed the lump in her throat. She had never seen her husband like this, and he was starting to scare her. He scared her. What if he didn’t have a physical disease as she assumed, but a psychological one. What if it was schizophrenia? Who knew what was really wrong with his parents? It could be hereditary.
“I wanted to say that I talked to Nadia. I told her that you work too much, that you’re tired. She probably told Kelvin.”
“Anna. Are you lying to me?”
He’s schizophrenic, Anna thought as she moved farther in her chair. This gaze couldn’t belong to a healthy person. People, who suspected conspiracies against them, looked like that. Sick people.
“I’m not.”
Max blinked and became himself. He looked around.
“It’s so strange,” he said in his normal voice, as if it wasn’t the one who had dashed around the room with his eyes bulging out from excitement. “So strange that you don’t understand me.” Max sat on the couch and put his head down.
“I’m trying, honey. I’m trying.”
“I doubt that. You think I’m losing my mind. Or have lost it already.” Max turned to Anna and looked at her with a sad smile. “I don’t think you believe me.”
“Max. Your friends call me all the time, asking why you don’t answer your phone.”
“They do call.”
“You have a TV appearance in two days, a book signing tour in three weeks.”
“Cancel them.”
“Everything?”
“I have something more important to do and you don’t understand.”
Now her husband’s eyes were clear, calm, and sad. It scared Anna even more. His mood changed too fast. Maybe she saw something that wasn’t there. It was only a book. After he finished it, everything would go away. Like a woman, turning into one irritated, capricious, impossible being during her pregnancy, and then af
ter the birth of her child, she became herself as if she freed her mind of the burden.
“I think you should see a therapist,” Anna said, and only after saying it did she realized it was a mistake. Max narrowed his eyes. “Maybe not. Don’t listen to me. I’m just an artist and I can’t understand what’s going on in the writer’s head when he works on his book.”
“You think it’s just another book?”
“I don’t know.” Anna sighed and stood. Suddenly, she was annoyed. She didn’t want to talk about his book anymore. About his book or about him. He wasn’t a child and if that sickness of his was physical, it wasn’t her duty to take him to the doctor. If it was psychological, he had to get help. She still couldn’t force him to visit a therapist unless he became aggressive and started to harm people. Nothing like that was going on and she couldn’t and didn’t want to wait for real trouble to start. She wanted a baby, but not a husband who acted like a kid. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t need her either. For him, she was a wall with ears.
“Where are you going?” Max’s voice sounded surprised.
“I need to do some work before bed.”
“Ann, we haven’t finished talking.”
“We have, Max.”
Anna slammed the door of the bedroom, turned on the laptop, stretched on the bed, and opened the file with the layout of a new cover. This morning, she received a new proposal. To create covers for a series of books for an independent writer. She read blurbs of all three books and even a few pages of the first novel during her lunch break at work. She’d even had time to do a simple sketch. She wanted to tell Max about it, brag about her success, but he didn’t let her open her mouth, jumping into his crazy monologue right after she crossed the threshold.
Of course, she couldn’t work now. She’d lost that adrenaline rush. She fell on the pillow, and despite her inner resistance, remembered what Max had told her, trying to catch a phrase that pricked her mind. It seemed random, but at the same time important, lost in a chaotic flow of words.
Investigation.
He said something about an investigation. What did it mean? Was he going to look for the hypothetical killer of a hypothetically real girl? Now, Anna wasn’t certain the girl existed in reality. It was all his fantasies, his sick imagination. Sick imagination? She’d turned into a journalist, one of those who doubted Max’s sanity. They didn’t believe a normal person could write that stuff.
“So what?” Anna stared at the gray strokes on the screen. “I guess that’s what I am. He can investigate whatever he wants.”
She opened the descriptions of the books the writer had sent her and read them again, trying to remove herself from her thoughts, grasp the meaning of the written words. After a third attempt, she partially succeeded and returned to her sketch, so she could finish the first drawing before tiredness prevailed.
CHAPTER 40
Morris climbed into the attic and peeped out the window. No writer. It seemed that Morris had seen him every time he looked outside lately, except for the last two days. Was it two days, or more? Didn’t matter. Morris wanted to know what he wanted from his neighbor, but he was afraid that if he asked about the writer again, the old prune might see more than simple curiosity in his questions.
In the beginning, when he found out about Angelica’s disappearance, when the detective had interviewed him, he visited her mother a few times. Nothing was strange about those visits. He was a neighbor and Angelica’s friend, and wanted to know if the girl had returned. This way he knew everything about the investigation, including gossip and assumptions. Some people thought the girl got pregnant and ran away. Her boyfriend had received the worst of it. He was interviewed almost every day for the first two months. Her mother didn’t believe he was involved. She told everyone that the boy loved her Angel and couldn’t have done anything bad to her.
Then he stopped his visits. The sudden wave of guilt that appeared after she cried on his shoulder was too heavy to carry. Every time he’d seen her red, swollen eyes, and deep wrinkles around her mouth, which weren’t there before her daughter vanished, he felt a strange tugging in his heart. He killed the girl and stole the mother’s only child. It looked like the woman was dying before his eyes, and he was the reason for it. Morris didn’t like that feeling. It killed him, and took the enjoyment away. It played with his mind and kept him up all night. He saw ghosts and heard voices. He woke up with Angelica’s face in front of him. She threatened to expose everything, to tell everyone. She told him they were going to find him. Fear fought with the sense of guilt for first place in his mind, driving him mad. He shuddered from every phone call or ringing of the doorbell. Every time, he was sure they had come for him. They would want to search the house and dig up his backyard. He flattened everything out, planted immortelle, but they still could find out.
Then he took out his instruments, found a good piece of wood, and started to carve a figurine. It didn’t just distract him from the thoughts that drove him mad, but he discovered a new emotion. Carving a figurine that was about the size of his two fingers, he felt as if he had embodied the soul of the girl in it, locked it inside a piece of wood. She stopped bothering him, stopped visiting him at night. His visual and vocal hallucinations ended along with the sense of guilt. He put a finished figurine in the bedroom where Angelica’s life had ended, and by doing that, he gave her a new life. For him, she was reborn in the wood, with recognizable features on a still face.
After a few months, the talk about her disappearance started to calm down, the detective didn’t show up anymore, and the fear went away. They hadn’t exposed him and didn’t suspect him. They would never expose him or suspect. With Ramona, he had that feeling back, but for a short time, and it had never returned. He knew what he was doing and he knew he was doing everything right. This time everything was going to be the way he planned, and no strange emotions or feelings were going to prevent him from his enjoyment of the days with the redhead. This time, there was some added spice. He would take revenge on that snotter, who interfered in his life and made him feel afraid.
Morris pulled the green dress from the hanger, folded it in two, and climbed down from the attic. Then he headed to the kitchen, picked up the grocery bag with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates, put his jacket on, and walked to the shed. There, he put the champagne and candies in the fridge, hung the dress from a hook on the wall, and left, locking the door behind him. He looked over the yard, powdered with snow, and returned to the house, looking back at his shoe prints. Everything was ready for his guest.
The day after tomorrow, he was going to wait for her by the building where she lived. He had found the perfect spot. She would recognize him and talk to him. Tomorrow he was going to check around her building again to make sure she returned at the same time. One more day was left. One more day. It was so difficult to wait those last few hours!
CHAPTER 41
She couldn’t move and only rolled her eyes, trying to convince herself that it was a joke. Only it was a useless attempt, and she already realized exactly what she thought had happened, had really happened. He lied to her to get her in the house to do … What? She hoped it wasn’t what she thought. It hadn’t happened for now. For now. Her head was aching horribly, her hands and legs were tied, but everything else was all right, nothing was broken at least. She lay on something soft, a bed probably. The ceiling and walls in the room were white, no window in her view. She couldn’t see more.
Somebody started to whistle a familiar melody in another room. Who was there? Who was it? Why couldn’t she remember? The whistling stopped, and she heard the floor cracking. Her heart stopped. Her breath, hot and rapid, burned her nostrils. She tried to break the ropes again, but it didn’t work. The ropes were strong, digging into her skin.
The door creaked on rusted hinges and started to open slowly.
“Max? Max! It’s okay. Do you hear me? It’s okay. Everything is fine.”
Max opened his eyes and turned his h
ead. His wife. She held her hand on his shoulder and stared at him. Scared. Terrified. Only six o’clock, the streetlight illuminated the room.
Max couldn’t stop the jagged breathing that was tearing at his throat. He was shaking. A muffled whistle sounded in his ears, the squeak of a door and the slinky sound of approaching steps. Just one more second and she would see him. He would see him. Why did she wake him up?
“What happened?” Anna asked. She moved closer and crossed her arms on her chest.
“He lured her into the house, tied her up, and locked her in the room,” Max said. White ceiling in front of his eyes, white walls.
“Who, whom, where?” Anna rubbed her eyes with her fists and touched the lamp, turning on the light. Max squinted his eyes, adjusting to the change of lighting.
“He tied Angelica and locked her in the room,” he said in a dry voice.
Anna didn’t answer. He looked at his wife and saw her studying her hands, biting her lower lip. Then she nodded. Jumped off the bed, and went toward the bedroom door.
“Where are you going?” Max called. “It’s early.”
“Bathroom.”
Max threw off the blanket and followed his wife.
“I was so close to seeing him. I almost saw him, you know? I was scared and it probably woke me up. Maybe you woke me up. Why did you wake me up?”
Anna turned to him. Her hair was disheveled and her face was pale.
“I probably screamed, but I felt everything. I felt what she felt. Fear, confusion, pain. I felt everything. I knew what he was going to do. I hated him. I was this close to seeing him. This close. The door almost opened.”
“Max, Max. Enough. This is crazy talk. You are scaring me.”
What is she talking about? Max thought. How could he scare anyone when he was scared to death himself? Did Anna understand what she was saying? He needed to change things for Angelica. He needed to edit the book. If he returned to the beginning, he would find the answer. It was there, inside. He just needed to grasp it and pull it to the surface. She forgot and he had to help her. She was going to remember. He didn’t need any archives; it was only time lost. If the detective didn’t see anything, he could have missed it too. He had to find the answer inside the book. It was there.
The land of dead flowers: (A serial killer thriller) Page 20
