Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

There’s a beat of silence and then I hear Leo’s fingers, tapping the keys.

Why do you want to know?

Good choice, I think.

I’m a freer of men from the prisons of women. I’m trying to find out if you’re a man who wants to be freed.

How do you know I need to be?

I read your story. Very compelling. But there’s a big difference, a world of difference, between being trapped and wanting to be freed. It requires a decision.

What is this? A self-help deal? Are you going to tell me how to harness my inner happiness or something?

I’m just a problem-solver. Go on, humor me. Answer the question. Do you hate your ex-wife?

“Go for it,” Alan says. “But wait a few moments. Be hesitant before committing.”

Three or four seconds pass before Leo types his answer.

Yes.

Yes what?

Yes, I hate her.

Why?

You read my story. I think it’s pretty obvious.

The story is something you took time with, that you thought about before writing down. I want something more immediate. I’ve found that’s the quickest way to the truth. Let me ask again, and this time answer without thinking about it too much. Why do you hate your ex-wife?

Leo waits before responding, and then:

Because she ruined me.

“Good,” Alan encourages.

How did she do that? Explain what you mean by “ruin.”

“This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” Leo says.

“You’re doing fine,” I tell him. “Get into character and let yourself respond as Robert Long.

He begins:

Before she dumped me and killed my baby, I believed in love. It’s different now. I’ll never love freely like that again. I’ll always be suspicious. I’ll always be afraid to trust.

What was worse? Revoking her love without warning or aborting your unborn child?

Leo doesn’t hesitate.

There’s no way she could have ever really loved me and then have done what she did. You understand what I’m saying? It means that everything was a lie. Our love was a lie. That’s what hurts the most.

Thank you.

For what?

For being honest. It’s the reason I contacted you to begin with. That honesty. It resonated in the story that you posted.

I just wrote what I felt.

Let me ask you another question. Just a hypothetical. Consider it a form of fantasy.

Okay.

How would you benefit if your ex-wife was gone?

Gone? Gone how? You mean dead?

No, no. This isn’t literal. Just … gone. Aliens came down and sucked her up into a spaceship. How would you benefit from that, emotionally or otherwise?

Well … I guess I’d get our house, for one. We’re both still on the mortgage and title. That’s something.

What else?

“Take this very, very slow,” Alan cautions. “Don’t bring up the life insurance. Go to the emotional side now.”

Part of me thinks …

Leo waits a few beats, letting Dali nudge him for an answer.

What?

That I’d be relieved. Her being gone would be some kind of huge relief. We’re not together, but I know that she’s still out there, in the same city. As unlikely as it is, it’s still possible that I could run into her at the store or drive by her on the freeway. We’re not together, but I feel her presence. If she disappeared, I think a weight would come off me.

I understand. I promise you I do.

Yeah, well. That and five bucks will get me a latte at Starbucks.

You might be surprised.

By what?

By the solutions I can offer. But we’re not going to talk about all that right now. It’s too soon. Let me leave you with something small, something to show you that I’m for real and not just another lunatic on the Web.

Go ahead.

Don’t feel threatened by what I say next. I’m a friend, not an enemy, I promise.

Whatever you say, “friend.” LOL.

Here it is: I know who you are, Robert Long.

“Holy shit, that was fast,” Leo marvels. “How the hell did he do that?”

“Put that shock in writing, son, and see what jumps.”

What the fuck! Leo types: How the hell do you know who I am? I thought this was all anonymous!

It is, Robert, it is. No one else you’ve met or talked to here knows your name. I know because of who I am and what I do. Remember what I said before: I didn’t tell you this to threaten you. I offer it as proof, nothing more.

Proof of what?

Proof that, when I talk to you, I’m talking about the real world. We’re meeting in cyberspace. But when we talk in the future

The typing stalls, suddenly.

Dali?

Wait.

“What’s going on?” Alan mutters.

“Probably had to answer the phone or something,” Leo says.

I have to go. Dali finally types: Good-bye.

When can we talk again?

No reply.

Dali?

Dali’s screen name disappears.

“Damn,” Leo says. “He logged off.”

“Odd that he’d cut you off when he had you on the string,” I say.

“Maybe we caught a break,” Alan says. “Maybe one of his abductees broke out or something.”

“Interesting insight into how he cultivates his clients,” James murmurs from behind me. I jump in my chair, startled.

“Jesus, James! How long have you been watching?”

“I saw everything. He’s very smooth, very smart. You see what he was doing there? He feels out the potential client via hypotheticals. He’s careful not to talk about death or murder. It’s all just a dream, a ‘what if?’”

“Which lets him gauge where they’re at without alarming them.”

“It’s more than that. He sets himself up as the dominant personality in the relationship but in the role of a confidant. You can trust him and he has the answers. It makes it easier for him to manipulate them, later.”

“Slick,” Alan agrees. “Guy’s probably a great interrogator. He’s laying a lot of subtle groundwork.”

“Are we still worried that he reached out to me so quickly?” Leo asks.

“I don’t know,” Alan says. “Maybe he’s just trying to fill a quota. He lost Heather Hollister, so he needs some new meat, right?”

“Perhaps,” I allow. “But be careful, anyway. Let me know if he reinitiates contact.”

“You got it,” Alan says. The connection terminates.

I rotate my chair in James’s direction. “So? What do you think?”

“The profile is contradictory. A careful überpragmatist who suddenly changes what’s been a perfectly acceptable MO. He leaves us notes telling us he exists—a first—he lets Heather Hollister walk intact, possibly leaves a fingerprint on Dana Hollister’s body bag, and now jumps the gun with Leo.” He shakes his head. “Strange. It could simply be the crazy factor, but it’s troubling.”

“The crazy factor” is a term we coined locally. It refers to the inexplicable mistakes and aberrations from the expected norm that we so often see with serial offenders. There is the rapist who never fails to use a rubber until one day he doesn’t, the killer who always wears latex gloves but couldn’t keep himself from licking a victim’s thigh. Ask them why, and the answers won’t be based on anything sane. She was my first redhead , the rapist might say. All that red hair. I needed to feel it. For the murderer, perhaps something more obscure: I had to taste her to experience it fully. Smelling her just wasn’t enough of her life essence, you understand? We don’t understand, no one can. The crazy factor.

“It’s possible.”

“Let me add to your discomfort, honey-love,” Callie says from her desk.

“Great. What?”

“I ran the fingerprints recovered from the Los Angeles, Oregon, and Nevada cases against the unknown we found in the Dana Hollister case.”

“And?”

“They’re all from the same individual.”