Vanishing Act (23 page)

Z
sa Zsa was snoring. If I wasn't careful, I was going to join her soon. I rubbed my eyes. They felt as if tiny pieces of grit had lodged themselves under my eyelids. I was falling asleep sitting on the sofa and it was only ten o'clock at night. I looked my coffee table again. Every square inch was strewn with paper. I had the newspaper articles on Jill and Melissa spread out. I had the three sheets of paper detailing everyone's whereabouts during the day Melissa had disappeared lying on top of them. Nearby were my notes, which were lying next to Melissa's book on moral responsibility. I'd even copied the two poems Melissa had written and the quote I'd found in the book on separate pieces of paper.

On the second piece of paper I'd written:

On the third piece of paper I'd written, “Our responsibility to the dead defines our lives. Without it, our lives are meaningless.”

Meaningless.
I underlined the word.

I was hoping the answer to what had happened to Melissa was here somewhere.

I poured myself another shot of Black Label and gulped it down.

A lot of the evidence pointed in Bryan's direction. The gun was a big one. All the lies he told. His history of violence. The fact that Bryan was the last person to see Melissa before she disappeared was another biggie. Then there was the fact that there was only Bryan's word that his sister had arrived at the dorm at all. He could just as easily have driven her somewhere else, dumped her body, and driven back. Which would fit in with his overreaction when Melissa was a half hour late for their appointment. His insistence that she wouldn't turn up. As Professor Fell said, guilt is a powerful emotion.

No. Mrs. Hayes was right to be worried.

If I were in her position, I would be too.

I ran my finger around the rim of my glass and let my eyes linger on the TV. I had the cartoon channel on. Tom was chasing Jerry across the screen. I felt a little like Tom. Always chasing my mouse, never catching it. I leaned my head back on the sofa and closed my eyes.

Of course, there
was
Tommy West. There was a history of fights between him and Melissa. She was supposed to have been free with her fists around him. Eventually, someone who is hit enough can turn around and hit the other person. And what about his reaction to Melissa with Beth? As George had said, male vanity is a powerful force. And then there was the relationship between Tommy's father and Mrs. Hayes, not to mention Mr. West's reaction to my questioning of his son.

Every time I went near the kid, West went nuts. Tasering me put him over the line. Why was he so protective? Did he know something about Melissa and Tommy? Or was this about the hit-and-run? But even if my suspicions about the hit-and-run were right, even if Michael West's son was involved in it, did that mean he'd killed Melissa as well to get rid of the last remaining witness? It was a shaky construct, and I really didn't believe it myself.

I lifted my hands and began massaging my forehead. I would have gotten up and taken some Advil for my headache if I'd had the energy, but somehow it just seemed like too much trouble.

I tried to focus through the throbbing in my temples. All right. Taking a different tack. What about Melissa? What did I know about her?

Not as much as I would have liked. For one thing, Melissa had felt responsible for her roommate's death, though from all available evidence she shouldn't have. The two poems Melissa had written and the quote she'd inscribed in her textbook had made that clear. But then, Melissa was used to taking responsibility for things. After all, she'd kept the house while her mother had gone out and worked ever since she'd been a young child. And she had a strong religious upbringing, an upbringing she'd recently become disenchanted with, but that still wouldn't have alleviated the sense of responsibility that had been instilled in her.

The problem was Jill Evans's death, like the hit-and-run accident, had occurred almost a year before. How did that tie in with her disappearance? Had she been brooding about it for a year? Even if she had, what did that have to do with anything?

What else did I know about Melissa? She jogged. She wasn't afraid of guns. She had a boyfriend. She wanted to marry him. Yet she was also maintaining a relationship with her roommate. Had she and Jill Evans had something going on as well? Marks seemed to think so. But again, what relevance did that have to her disappearance? I couldn't see any.

I sat back up and opened my eyes. Tom was still chasing Jerry. Only this time they were in a barn.

This is what I did know about Melissa for sure. She didn't confide in people. This was borne out through my conversations with everyone who knew her. She, like her brother, seemed to have trouble controlling her emotions—witness her fights with Tommy West. She didn't let go of things easily—again, witness her reaction when Tommy's father had stopped the wedding. She could have acceded to the delay instead of wanting to call him up and argue about it. Last but not least, she liked to target-shoot, a pastime I found odd in a college coed, but maybe I was just out of date. Or maybe Bryan was lying about that as well, something that wouldn't surprise me, since he'd lied about everything else that he told me.

The bottom line was I still didn't know what happened to Melissa—though I strongly suspected the only way anyone would hear from her again was with the aid of a planchette and a Ouija board.

I reread my notes. Tommy, Bryan, Beth, Chris, Holland, and Brandy all had alibis for the alleged time of Melissa's disappearance. But I could have poured a pot of spaghetti through their alibis. They were all as porous as a strainer with a hole in its mesh.

I took a deep breath and let it out.

All that said, though, as much as I didn't want to come to the conclusion I was rapidly approaching, Bryan still looked like the most likely suspect in Melissa's disappearance. The gun, his history, the fact that he was the last person to have seen her, were hard to overlook.

A fact I did not want to relay to Mrs. Hayes.

Anyway, all I had were suspicions.

Despite what Mrs. Hayes had said about wanting to know, I didn't believe her.

What people say they want and what they really want are usually two different things.

What she had wanted me to do was exonerate her son and tell her her daughter was all right, two things I couldn't do. I poured myself another shot of Black Label, took a sip, and set the glass back on the table. It didn't help much.

I still felt just as shitty.

I was supposed to talk to Mrs. Hayes the following day. I thought of her lying in her hospital bed, and took another drink.

How do you tell someone you think their son has murdered his sister?

I realized I was biting my nails, and stopped. I didn't have proof. Not even a shred.

If I didn't have proof, it was probably better not to say anything at all.

What would be the point?

I could give Mrs. Hayes back the money Bryan had given me and tell her I was sorry I couldn't help.

I rubbed my eyes. God, I didn't know what to do.

Damn George for throwing this case in my lap.

If he were here, I'd kill him.

I clicked off the TV and stood up. I couldn't stand this anymore. It was time to go to sleep.

Only I couldn't. Naturally. I couldn't get comfortable. I was too hot and then I was too cold. The sheet scratched. Finally, about three
A.M.
I dozed off, only to wake up at four. I lay in bed, staring at the cedars outside my bedroom window, listening to the noises my house was making. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get Melissa Hayes out of my mind.

Maybe I was thinking about this the wrong way. I seemed to be constructing a building out of rumor, conflicting statements, and speculation. I should be able to do better.

Twenty minutes later I put on a flannel shirt and a pair of sweat pants and trudged back down the stairs. Zsa Zsa, eyes heavy with sleep, trailed behind me.

I turned on the TV and settled in with the Smurfs. I watched Papa Smurf and Smurfette picking smurf berries for a few minutes, unaware of the doom that was awaiting them, as I idly leafed through Melissa's book on moral responsibility. The table of contents reminded me of some of the pamphlets we'd gotten in grade school. What we owe ourselves. What we owe our family. What we owe our country. A commerical came on and I reached for the remote and channel-surfed. I zapped through a program on exercise, another on the role of the B-52 bomber, a preacher talking about Jesus, a builder talking about the problems involved in digging a building foundation in limestone.

I put the remote down.

I had another idea. I started to smile as I considered people's tendencies to take advantage of geographical proximity. “You know,” I said to Zsa Zsa, “this just might work.”

Zsa Zsa kept right on sleeping. A little snore escaped her lips. What I was thinking was a real long shot, but even if it didn't pan out, it was worth a try.

What I wanted to know wouldn't take very long to find out. As an added benefit, that meant I could put off my day of reckoning with Mrs. Hayes just that much longer.

I yawned. Suddenly I was feeling tired. I lay down next to Zsa Zsa and stroked her back. Her hind legs moved in her sleep. The nails on her paws scraped my belly. She growled. I told her it was all right. The rabbit she was chasing was gone. Then I went to sleep too.

 

 

My feet kicked up little puffs of dust as I hurried up the path toward the construction site. It was almost four, and from what I could see, everyone was laying down their tools and going home. I'd wanted to get up to the computer center first thing in the morning, but a leak in one of the aquariums had prevented that, so here I was, a minute late and a dollar short—or however that expression goes.

I buttonholed a couple of guys and asked my question, but they both pointed me toward the small trailer off to one side and told me to go inside and talk to the foreman.

He was standing in front of his desk, pondering a blueprint, when I walked in.

“When did we pour the foundation?” he asked in response to my question. He craned his neck and scratched his Adam's apple. “Sure I can check. But why do you want to know?”

I told him.

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then gave a disgusted snort. “First the lousy weather, and now something like this. Great. And they'll probably hold me responsible.”

“Probably.”

“You got that right.” He began pawing through the papers on his desk. “I don't know why I took this job in the first place. I was better off when I was a mason. If a tornado touched down and blew the friggin building away, they'd want to know why I didn't see the friggin' thing coming. Okay. Here we go.” He pulled a couple of sheets of paper out from the bottom of the pile and ran one of his fingers down the page as he read. “We started digging the first week in November and we did two pourings. One was the twentieth of November and the second was the twenty-first. It was damp, so the concrete took longer than normal to set up.” He looked up. “Is that what you want to know?”

“That's it.” I thanked him and left.

When I got back in my cab I used my cell phone to call Marks. He wasn't in. I left a message on his machine asking him to ring me at the store later in the day. I told him I had a thought I wanted to share with him, a thought he might find interesting.

He didn't call though.

He dropped by Noah's Ark instead.

I
was in a good mood when I came home that evening. My talk with Mrs. Hayes had gone well, at least as well as could be expected given the situation. Telling her that Marks was going to follow through on my idea had seemed to offer Mrs. Hayes some solace. Or perhaps she was merely relieved that I hadn't gone there to tell her what I was originally going to: that I thought Bryan was responsible for her daughter's disappearance.

It didn't matter. She was smiling and saying her rosary when I left. I found myself smiling too as I walked down the hospital corridor. Waiting for the elevator, I realized it was the first time I'd moved the edges of my mouth up in over two weeks.

Another thing that was contributing to my good mood was the call I'd gotten from George earlier in the day. He'd phoned to let me know that even though Raymond hadn't thanked him he seemed a little more subdued. He'd even allowed as how a few of the girls around here weren't bad. Maybe things were on an upswing after all.

I was looking forward to an early night by myself. I was going to bake myself a potato and throw a steak in the broiler. Then I'd take a long soak in the tub and finally start in on the book I'd picked up at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks earlier. Everything was going to be quiet and peaceful. So when the doorbell rang, I wasn't pleased.

I love George, but I just wasn't in the mood to talk to him. Actually, I wasn't really in the mood to talk to anyone. Which is why I'd turned the ringer on both my telephone and my answering machine off. I just wanted a little downtime.

But when I opened the door and saw who it was, I wished it had been George. At least him I could have told to go home.

Fell was standing on the porch. “Why couldn't you have left things alone?” he asked sadly.

I started to close the door, but I was too slow. Before I could, Fell raised the gun he was carrying, the one I hadn't seen, pointed it at me, took a step inside, and kicked the front door shut behind him.

His clothes were rumpled, his hair was sticking out in clownlike tufts, and his glasses were slanting downward, with the left corner being higher than the right one. He looked befuddled, a fatter caricature of Albert Einstein, someone you'd never expect to hold a gun in his hand, until, that is, you noticed the gleam in his eye.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I told him, raising my voice to be heard over the ruckus Zsa Zsa was creating.

“I saw you talking to the foreman at the contruction site today.”

“What does that have to do with you? Maybe I had a question about dump trucks I wanted answered.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“All right, you're correct. You should also know that I've already informed the police.”

“I don't care.”

A chill worked its way down my back.

Fell waved his gun in the direction of the Zsa Zsa. It was a nine-millimeter Glock pistol. I nodded toward it.

“Did you get that from Melissa?”

“Get your dog to stop barking.”

“Somehow I can't see you going out to buy one of those on your own.”

Fell's voice rose slightly. “I'm the one in charge here, and I'm telling you to keep that animal quiet.”

I scooped up Zsa Zsa and told her to hush. Zsa Zsa kept on yapping.

“You'd better control her,” Fell said. “The noise is getting on my nerves.”

“I'll put her away.”

“Fine.”

Fell followed along behind me as I deposited Zsa Zsa in the downstairs bathroom and closed the door. At least her barks were muffled.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now we go into the living room.”

Fell sat on one end of the sofa, I sat on the other. I noticed his hand was trembling slightly, which, given the circumstances, was not an encouraging sign. Nervousness is not something you want to see in a man holding a gun on you. He pointed to the bottle of Black Label on the coffee table with his chin. “Pour me a shot,” he ordered.

“I'll get you a clean glass.” I started to get up.

He raised the Glock slightly. “Stay right there. That one will do fine.”

“I might have something really bad.”

“In the circumstances, I don't think it matters. Pour.”

I did as I was told.

“Now push the glass toward me.”

I did that too. Fell reached over with his free hand and picked it up without taking his eyes off me.

“You realize you've ruined my life,” he said after he'd taken a sip. “You've made it impossible for me to do the only thing I like—teach.”

“You mean if you did research you wouldn't be sitting here?”

Fell put the glass down. “I don't think you're in any position to make smart-ass remarks.”

“You're right,” I said. “I'm not.”

“This wasn't my fault,” he continued.

“Then whose was it? Melissa's?”

“Yes.” Fell shrugged off the tweed overcoat he was wearing, switching the gun from his right to his left hand and back again in the process. “Actually it was. She came at me with this gun.”

“I know. She was having a bad day and she said why don't I go attack my psych professor. Sorry,” I quickly said as the hand with the Glock came up a little. “I forgot myself.”

Fell waved his hand around. I found I couldn't take my eyes off the gun. “See. This is the reason I put her where I did. I knew no one would believe me.”

“What wouldn't they believe?” I asked as I wondered if I could make it across the couch and grab the gun before Fell shot me.

“That she attacked me.”

I did the math and decided I couldn't chance it. Fell might be distracted, but he wasn't that distracted, and even if he were, he wasn't close enough and I wasn't fast enough. “She attacked you?” I raised an eyebrow. “Now, why should she do that?”

“She blamed me for her friend's death.”

“I take it you were the guy seeing Jill Evans.”

Fell wiped his forehead with the palm of his free hand. “It wasn't my fault,” he repeated, trying to convince himself more than me. “I didn't know she was a borderline personality.”

“It must be nice to have a name for everything.”

“I warned you before about being sarcastic,” Fell snarled.

“What if I told you I was being sympathetic?”

“I wouldn't believe you.” Fell took another sip of Scotch. “She came on to me. I knew I shouldn't get involved with her. I knew it. I kept telling myself I shouldn't. But it didn't help. I kept saying one thing and doing something else. All of a sudden, there I was. And when I realized how many problems she had ...”

“You tried to break it off.”

“I did. Yes.” Fell nodded emphatically. “Which was when she told me she was going to kill herself. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to help.”

“By giving her Prozac?”

“It was just a couple of months worth. I figured it would get her over the hump.”

“Melissa said it made her worse.”

“She said that to me too.”

“But you didn't listen.”

“I did stop giving it to her.” Fell swallowed. He wiped his forehead again with the back of his hand. Even though it was cool in my house—the thermostat was set to sixty-five degrees—Fell's face was beaded with sweat. “Then I told Jill I really wasn't going to see her anymore, that this time I meant it. And I didn't.”

“But you kept calling.”

“I was concerned. I wanted to make sure she was all right.”

“Or maybe it was that you got off seeing this girl fall to pieces every time you got done with her.”

Fell's eyes blazed. “You sound like Melissa now. I made a mistake. I admit it. I should never have gotten involved with her. But that doesn't mean I should have to give up my career, something I worked for for twenty years, because some girl is unstable. Jill Evans was a catastrophe waiting to happen. What happened to her could have occurred at any time. I was just the one who was unlucky enough to trigger it.”

“Why didn't you try to get her some help?”

“I did!” Fell's tone was anguished. “I pleaded with her to get counseling. She didn't want to. She didn't want to do anything to help herself. That's why I kept calling.” Fell took another sip of Scotch. “I was trying to help.”

“But Melissa didn't see it that way.”

“I tried to explain. At first I thought she understood. She said she did. But she just wouldn't let go of the topic. She wanted me to go to the dean and tell him what had happened. She kept on telling me I had to confess.”

“Why didn't she go herself?”

“Because she didn't have any proof. Jill hadn't talked about me to anyone but her.”

“Lack of proof hasn't stopped anyone lately.”

Fell shrugged. “She didn't think she'd be believed.”

“A belief, no doubt, you encouraged her in.”

“I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. Was that so wrong?”

“It turned out that way.”

Fell looked confused.

“Three people dead.”

“Three? How do you get three?”

“Jill Evans. Melissa. Myself.”

“You?” Fell wrinkled his brow. “Why you?”

“Because when you shoot me with that gun, I'll be dead.”

“Shootyou?” Fell laughed shrilly. “Is that what you think? That's a good one.” He slapped his knee with his hand.

“I didn't think it was that funny.”

“Oh, but it is. I thought you'd realized. I came here to kill myself.”

“Kill yourself?” I asked stupidly.

“I want you to see what you've done.” And Fell put his gun to his head.

He was starting to pull the trigger, when someone knocked on the door.