Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

“It’ll be worse if I say nothing and Roper or his sheriff find me out on their own. At the very least they could charge me with obstruction of justice, now that it’s officially a murder case.”

“And how the hell will you explain not coming forward for twenty-seven years?”

“I had a lot of reasons, some pretty complicated, but I could make them understand.”

“Try me first. I’m a lot more sympathetic.”

“Okay. For starters, from the very beginning she made me promise never to reveal our affair.”

“Jesus, Earl, give me a break!”

“Hear me out. At first I thought she wanted to avoid a scandal. Adultery is no small thing, and back then it was a very big deal. But, no, that wasn’t it. She told me later that she really didn’t give a damn what people thought, that she worried about Chaz and how he’d react if he ever found out. The possibility of losing her obsessed him, which fueled the abuse, to the point she figured not only did she have to make a clean break – disappear, change her name, and start over – but he must never know about our affair because it might enrage him even more.”

“She wouldn’t even trust you enough to tell you where she was headed?”

“Refused, but the issue wasn’t a lack of trust.”

“What then?”

“I told you it was complicated.”

“ ‘Screwy’ is the word I’d use, Earl.”

“Okay, okay! She wouldn’t tell me because she insisted she wasn’t going to ruin my life with all her baggage.”

“Her baggage?”

“Will you just listen? She knew she’d already jumped into Chaz’s arms to escape her parents. As a result, she didn’t entirely trust her feelings about me, wasn’t sure whether she loved me or was just using me to escape again. She promised to contact me if she ever figured it out and the time was right.”

“When the time was right? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“There were other issues, too. Ones that even I hadn’t thought of until she warned me.”

“Such as?”

“Such as how powerful the Braden family was at the hospital and NYCU. If Chaz ever did find out about me and Kelly, not only would he go after her, she was certain he’d get ‘Daddy’ to pull enough strings that I’d never graduate from medical school. So she remained adamant I do nothing to risk that happening, such as trying to follow her, and refused to tell me where she’d be in case I might come anyway.”

Janet mulled that over a few seconds. “But after no word from her at all, you didn’t get suspicious something had happened?”

“Of course! I was frantic. I even took my month’s vacation and went searching for her, despite the promise I made. But just like the police said, there were no leads.”

“Didn’t you ever think then she might have been killed, that her husband had gotten to her after all?”

“At the time I couldn’t think of anything else. Whenever I saw Chaz Braden in the hospital, I could barely keep myself from grabbing him by the throat and demanding to know what he did with Kelly.”

“Yet you still didn’t go to the police.”

He felt his cheeks start to burn again at the thought of how he’d floundered around like a complete wimp – so detestably opposite to the man he’d become. “No, I didn’t. I made a decision to keep quiet and save my ass.”

Janet’s eyebrows quirked.

“I’m not proud of it,” he continued, “but logically, I couldn’t see any point in doing otherwise. The police already suspected Chaz, and were investigating him big-time. Me, Jack, Melanie, and Tommy Leannis – we’d all told the cops everything we knew about her relationship to him, how possessive he could be, and verbally abusive. If I had confessed our affair, it would have taken their attention off him, maybe even shifted it to me, disgraced Kelly, and probably tanked my chances at NYCH. So I kept my mouth shut.”

“But when the police didn’t make a case against Chaz-”

“I again considered taking matters into my own hands. I even began to follow the creep, waiting for a chance to get him alone.”

“My God, Earl-”

“Don’t worry. I came to my senses before anything happened. What I saw, the way he ran around, red-faced, pestering everyone in my class, even me, to find out if we knew where she’d gone, I began to think maybe he hadn’t done anything to her and couldn’t find her either, that she had just run away after all, gotten rid of her ghosts, and didn’t see me as part of her life anymore. It took a long time, but eventually I accepted it…”

As he talked, he realized just how immature his desire to rescue Kelly had been. Yet he let himself be so stupidly vulnerable back then, enamored by a notion as old as Galahad, Lancelot, and Robin Hood – saving damsels in distress. Talk about naive. What’s more, the belief that he’d pulled it off – helped her get away clean from Chaz and freed her from her own ghosts – it was simply the way he needed to see things, the better to sustain himself while he got over her.

Had he learned from his folly? In a way. After all, he went into a career in ER, where he could rescue people from their worst physical catastrophes, after which they’d be whipped out of his department to face their personal demons in the care of others. It was a disconnect that suited him just fine to this day.

He reached for her hand. “I would have helped her differently now. I guess that’s part of what’s got me so tangled up – knowing I might’ve made a difference if I hadn’t been so clueless.”

“You still don’t believe Chaz killed her?”

He sighed deeply, as if to exhale his doubts. “I must have been wrong about him, too. His looking for her was probably a cynical act he put on to throw us off. It obviously worked.”

She slouched in her seat. Anyone looking at her would have thought she was studying the chandeliers and frowning in disapproval.

“So do I go to the police?” he said after what felt like minutes.

She looked directly into his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Earl, you expect the cops to believe a story like this? Let’s see. They couldn’t pin anything on Chaz in 1974. Now they find the body, and you pop up with your tale of being the mystery man, of having been her secret lover, and, what I predict will be their personal favorite, you didn’t tell anyone because you’ve been maintaining a noble silence all these years. They’ll fall down laughing, then have a field day twisting it all around so you look guilty as hell. As for what the press would do to you, don’t even think about it.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Talk to a lawyer.”

He lay wrapped in layer after layer of sleep, the kind that enveloped him only after he and Janet made love.

Yet a ringing drilled into his head.

He felt Janet’s leg draped over his, and opened his eyes, expecting to find himself in his own bed.

Instead, ornate swirls on the ceiling of their hotel suite spun like pinwheels in the ever-changing, neon glow from outside the window. He glanced at his watch and saw it was only 10:00 P.M.

After dinner they’d no sooner gone upstairs and closed the door to their room than Janet pulled him to her. “I want us to forget everything, at least for now,” she whispered, her lips at his ear.

His own desire had swelled to meet hers, displacing all anxiety, and he lost himself in her arms, for a while.

“Dr. Garnet here,” he said, fumbling the receiver to his ear.

“Dr. Garnet, it’s Mark Roper calling. I hope it’s not too late to disturb you, but I wanted to catch you before you left town. I think you’d be interested in seeing my father’s old medical file on Kelly.”

“What?”

“It contains a letter describing a man she met, someone she loved.”