J. Gonzalez - They

Vince looked impassive. “I had no reason to speak to you.”

“No reason to speak to me?” Brandy looked taken aback by Vince’s stoic demeanor. “My husband wanted to help you ! He kept me in the dark about what it was he was working on and all he would tell me was that something happened to you and him when the two of you were kids. Whatever it was, he was paranoid enough to set up these fake IDs for me and the kids, then move us out to the middle of goddamn nowhere—”

Vince held up his hand. “What is it you want to know?”

Brandy stopped. For a moment, she looked surprised, as if the years of stonewalling her and ignoring her inquiries had finally resulted in breaking his barrier. “I just want to know the truth,” she said. “What was he so scared of? What happened to him, what happened to you to… to make him do this?”

Vince shrugged. “I have no idea. I had a perfectly happy childhood. Frank, on the other hand… well, Frank was a troubled child. Seeing him again really brought those memories back and I’m sorry to say, whatever trouble he had only worsened in his adulthood.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was incoherent. He didn’t make any sense. He rambled on about his parents, how they were horrible to him and abused him and all that, then he claimed I had witnessed some of it and been abused myself. I was skeptical. He told me about his past, how he ran away, got hooked on dope, the whole nine yards. At first glance, I thought his story bore serious consideration, so I indulged him.”

Brandy was looking at him warily. Vince continued. He stood up from behind his desk and approached her. “We spent a few days together, driving around Orange County and he kept bringing things up about when we were kids. Try as I might, much of what he told me didn’t add up in my memory. Plus, he was using drugs again.”

“No he wasn’t,” Brandy said.

“Yes, he was,” Vince said. He nodded, then placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Granted, he was smoking pot. Claimed it relaxed him. He offered me some but I abstained. However, I’m afraid he was smoking more than pot. It had a strange scent to it. He wouldn’t tell me what else it was, and it wasn’t until later… after his accident happened, that I began asking around and doing some research when I found out what else he was smoking. It was opium.”

“Bullshit,” Brandy said. “Frank wouldn’t do that. He hadn’t touched dope in almost ten years—”

“Maybe he was relapsing then,” Vince said. “Regardless, he was using in front of me, and the longer I spent with him, the more I… well, the more I was beginning to see Frank for who he was.”

“And what’s that?”

“What did Frank tell you?” Vince asked. “About his childhood? About him and I? About him contacting me?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. Just that… what he was working on had to do with when the two of you both were kids. And how he thought that… well, how he thought he’d been abused in some way.”

“Ah, I see.” Frank took his hand off Brandy’s shoulder and strolled closer to the window, his hands behind his back. His corner office consisted of floor to ceiling windows that opened to a stunning view of Newport Beach. He turned to her. “He told me that as well. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much of the details of our childhood. I remember we played together, of course. And I told him I always had the impression that he came from a troubled home. He confided to me the abuse allegations and it made sense to me. You know what I mean?”

Brandy nodded. “Yes. He told me all that too.”

“Did he tell you about my mother?”

Brandy shook her head. He could tell she was being truthful. “Frank showed up in my life a few days after I returned home from tending to my mother’s funeral. She’d been murdered in a home invasion robbery by a guy named Steve Anderson, who was seriously disturbed.” He shrugged, looking reflective. “Steve later hung himself with his shoelace in his cell a month before he went to trial.”

“I’m sorry to hear this,” Brandy said.

“Thank you,” Vince said, nodding. Steve Anderson, in fact, had been arrested two months after Frank’s death and the pieces of evidence against him fell quickly into place. “I was still reeling from the shock of my mother’s murder when Frank came back into my life. As much as I wanted to believe that Frank and I experienced similar things in our childhood, I simply couldn’t. I went along with him anyway because, like I told you, I was going through a bad time myself.”

“The Orange County medical examiner still won’t tell me the details of Frank’s death,” Brandy said. “All they’ll tell me was that his injuries were fatal… that he’d died from severe blood loss and shock.”

“I understand the police believe Frank was killed by an unknown assailant when he was trying to buy drugs,” Vince said.

“That’s not true!”

Vince shrugged. “He was found two blocks from a neighborhood in Fountain Valley where heroin and opium was regularly sold and used at.”

“How do you know this?”

“I tried calling him a day or so after I last saw him,” Vince explained. “A police officer answered his cell phone. He’d died maybe a few hours before. I met with the investigating officers and told them all I knew. They asked me if I’d observed Frank under the influence during that time and… well, I couldn’t lie to them.”

“Frank wasn’t doing drugs!” Brandy protested again.

“Didn’t they find traces of marijuana in his system?”

“Well yes, but—”

“And traces of opiates?”

Brandy looked upset. “He’d been prescribed OxyContin a month before following minor surgery on his back. But that doesn’t mean he—”

“Backslid? Perhaps not, but the lab results tell another story. The way he disappeared sure explains things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Brandy, let’s cut to the chase. Frank Black had fallen off the wagon and was losing his mind. It was obvious to me in the few days I spent with him that he was on a wild goose chase involving his alleged abuse, that he had a major drug problem, and that he was either making shit up or hallucinating it. He obviously sent you away as part of this fantasy, but I believe he also wanted you and your kids out of the way so he could get high in peace.”

“Why… why are you saying that?” Brandy was starting to cry.

Vince sighed, put his arm around her and gently escorted her away from the desk, toward the windows overlooking the view. “I’m sorry, but if you’d heard some of the things he was saying, you’d think it was crazy.”

“Try me.” She turned to him, her eyes imploring him to tell her the truth.

Vince looked reluctant. He shook his head. “Are you sure he never told you about his childhood? About his mother, Gladys?”

“He hated his mother,” Brandy said. “He never told me why, just that she and his stepfather were horrible people.”

“He didn’t tell you that he thought his parents were Satanists? That they belonged to a secret nationwide Satanic cult that was involved in white slavery, the international drug trade, and child pornography?”

Brandy looked like she’d been slapped in the face. She gasped, her eyes widened in surprise. “N-no… he didn’t. I—are you serious?”

“Very serious.”

“He told you this?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What about… your parents? Were they part of it too?”

Vince laughed. “My mother? A Satanist? She was the most Christian woman you could ever meet. It’s mind-blowing to say the least.”

“Did Frank tell you you’re mother was involved?”