Vincent Zandri - The remains

Michael had a point.

Why would Whalen want anything to do with me after all these years? That is, assuming he was alive in the first place. Besides, forty-two year old women weren’t his style. Adolescent girls and young women however, were a different story.

I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My mouth was dry. On the other hand, I found myself feeling something for my ex-husband that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Trust. I was placing all of my trust and emotions into his care, and I was feeling all right about it. After all, he was the author of a published detective novel, which in my mind anyway, made him a kind of amateur detective.

“How shall I proceed, Bec?” he said softly, big brown eyes piercing into my own. “It’s your call.”

By now my breathing had become so shallow I felt like I was about to pass out. At least there was a bed underneath me to catch the fall.

I looked into Michael’s face.

“Just do it.” I swallowed.

He typed the name “Joseph William Whalen” into the Child Safe Network search engine. Then he fingered ENTER.

The black and white image of a man appeared. A face. A mug shot.

The black and white face of a man who abducted me; abducted Molly. Attacked us.

The black and white face of a man who touched us and hurt us.

The man was alive.

The monster had been freed.

Michael turned back to me. He started saying something to me that I did not understand. It sounded like he was talking to me through a cardboard tube. My legs went weak and the room began to spin. I sat down hard onto the bed.

“He’s alive,” I said, mouth tasting like the dried paint at the bottom of a jar. “The monster is still alive. All this time I thought he was dead… wished him dead.”

I tried to stand, but I found it impossible to work up the strength. I began to hyperventilate.

“Take it easy,” Michael insisted. “Breathe easy.”

I looked up at my ex-husband, looked up at his eyes. At the way he was biting down on his bottom lip, his nerves betraying him. I brought my hands to my face, rubbed my eyes, patted my cheeks. Michael went into the kitchen, grabbed me a glass of tap water, and brought it back in for me.

“Take a small sip,” he said, handing me the glass.

I held the glass two-handed, took a small drink, then handed it back.

“What do we do now?” I exhaled, my breathing beginning to slow.

“I’m not sure what we can do now.” He sat back down in front of the computer, set the water glass beside the keyboard. “The good news is that Whalen is registered as a sex offender. That means he’s got a probation officer assigned to him by the state and the county. It also means he’s a part of the ViCAP data base.”

The tap water bubbled inside my stomach, made me nauseas. I tried to slow my breathing even more.

Brushing back my hair with open fingers, I said, “What’s ViCAP?

“It stands for Violent Criminals Apprehension Program. I used their data bank as part of the research for The Hounds of Heaven. By all appearances, Whalen has got himself a place of honor in the New York State ViCAP program.”

Pausing, he set his hand on my knee. But I pushed it away. I just didn’t want anyone touching me right then.

After a beat, Michael posed, “Do you know if Whalen was ever convicted in the actual murder of anyone he abducted?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know much about his history, but I don’t think he was ever convicted of actual murder. Not enough evidence or something like that. I remember Molly talking about it incessantly. Even up until the day she died. I chose to simply block him out. Except when I was drawing his face. When I was drawing his face in my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, I wanted to remember him. But then, and only then.”

My ex’s face had become a mask of intensity. In a strange way, I felt happy for him. He was working the problem- our problem-with a sense of purpose. Here was the Michael I loved and missed. I watched him finger a few more keys until the website for ViCAP replaced the Child Safety Network. Using the same two-index-finger style with which he banged out his manuscripts, he typed in Whalen’s full name in the space provided.

There it was again: Whalen’s face. Not necessarily a bad face to someone who didn’t know him. But to me it was the face of monster-a gaunt, hook-nosed monster. It was also a face I had no trouble recognizing despite the fact that it had aged thirty years.

I looked at the face and this time I did not feel like passing out. This time I stood up, looked over Michael’s shoulder, my hands pressed against the chair-back for support.

“Sure you should be standing up, Bec?”

But I didn’t answer. Instead I studied the short list of vitals that had been stacked besides Whalen’s image. Besides his name, the site included his date of birth, October 17, 1949. It also included a whole bunch of what I already knew. That he was small, white and thin. He was balding now, or bald. But his dark, brown eyes looked the same. So much so that they made my stomach sink even more than it already had.

Under the face was an image captured date. It said, March 3. I pointed to it.

“What’s this mean?”

“It means that Whalen’s image captured date is only six months ago,” he explained. Locking eyes with me from over his shoulder, he continued. “In other words, he’s only been out of the joint for six months.”

Scrolling down, he came to an area designated Probation Registry. Under the heading ‘County’ it said ‘Albany’.

“My God, Michael, he lives right in Albany.”

“It just means that he lives somewhere inside the county. That much is definite. There’s no home address listed here because even monsters like Whalen have rights. But I can be certain he resides in a halfway house. He’s probably allowed out to work, but must report back to home base soon as it’s quitting time.”

“So what do we do now?” Back to my original question.

Michael exited the page.

In a flash Whalen, or his face anyway, was gone. Somehow I felt relieved. Out of sight, out of my life. But that was just wishful thinking.

“In all honesty, Bec, I’m not sure we can do anything other than watch our backs.”

“My back, you mean.”

“Your back, yes. It’s not like we can go to the police with our concerns. You never reported anything to them. They would just think you’re some crazy lady trying to get attention.”

He was right. I never reported a thing. Why would the police care about it thirty years after the fact? Especially when I had no real proof that Whalen had approached me in the past few days. No real proof that is, other than in my dreams, my imagination.

“I find it hard to believe that after spending thirty years in a max security joint like Green Haven, Whalen would risk his parole by harassing you, or anybody else for that matter.”

“Do you really believe that, Michael?”

He cocked his head, squinted his eyes.

“It feels good to believe it,” he sighed.

My stomach was cramping up again.

Michael shook his head.

“Franny’s paintings,” he said after a time. “The dream paintings.” He was looking not at me but at the opposite wall.

“Yeah,” I said. “Where you going with this?”

“In my opinion something or someone other than Whalen has you spooked.”

“Franny,” I correctly deduced.

Nodding, Michael exclaimed, “Humans have five senses: hearing, sight, touch, taste, smell. Franny has already painted you a piece he calls ‘See’ and another he calls ‘Listen.’ It’s not unreasonable to assume that over the course of the next three days he’s going to gift you three more paintings.”