Now is the Time of Monsters, page 11
Behind the counter, with a smile threatening to break free of the confines of her face, Tina kicked off a round of applause.
Mortified, Hannah lowered her gaze and shielded her burning cheeks with her hands. She skirted awkwardly between tables of clapping customers and made a beeline to Tina.
“You’re awful, Tee!” she whispered. “You know that? I told you how much I hate this stuff.”
Tina replied by wrapping her arms around Hannah’s waist. Kissing her, she laughed with genuine mirth while squeezing her tight. “I know. I’m such a little dickens.”
“Such a little dick, more like.”
To this Tina feigned outrage and disbelief, covering her mouth wide with surprise. Taking a step back, she fanned herself with an invisible hand fan, now the demure southern belle whose sensibilities had just been injured. “I dare say, child. The mouth you have on you. And in mixed company, no less. Tsk tsk tsk.”
“God, some days I just really hate you.”
“I know. Hate you too, babe.” Tina kissed the soft part of her cheek, just in front of her ear, and Hannah shivered.
Wasn’t Jerry supposed to be the one giving her the feel-good goosebumps?
“Thank you, Tee. So much. Seriously. You have no idea how much you’ve turned my whole day around.”
“Oh, I think I have some idea.”
“Uh-hem.” From behind, a man cleared his throat.
Jerry.
It had to be.
It all made sense now, the way he’d acted so normal. Like he didn’t even know it was her birthday. No good wishes. No kiss. Certainly, no gift. Even going so far as to give her a chore.
See! He didn’t forget. He organized…all of this. A surprise party. My first ever.
With any lingering bashfulness gone, the many eyes upon her became invisible and Hannah saw only her husband.
“Jerry! Thank you so mu—”
She swung around to find herself facing Holden, hands behind his back, his eyes glimmering clearest cerulean. “Any chance a cat like me can get in on this action?”
She hadn’t even noticed Holden in the crowd. But then again, had she really been aware of anyone? Battling every impulse to just turn tail and skedaddle the moment the place had erupted into cheers, it was all she could do to pick her way through the crowd of swimming faces.
Thank God they hadn’t burst into song—that godawful song—or she might’ve legged it.
From behind Holden’s back, a decorated cake magically appeared. Ablaze with burning candles, wisps of smoke rose from a few that sizzled and popped. Their radiant heat became a gossamer veil before Holden’s face, causing it to waver the way the road ahead appears malleable, almost liquid, on a blazing summer day. And for just a moment, Hannah saw someone else in Holden’s features. Someone she didn’t know.
Someone—something—frightening.
The effect was fleeting. Just like that road, which was always solid as a rock, the face was again unmistakably Holden’s: handsome, warm and unerringly steadfast. He cleared his throat…
…and began to sing.
Supporting him, the entire diner became his backup singers: “Happy birthday, to you. Happy birth—”
Heat flushed Hannah’s face and she cringed, smiled, laughed, cringed some more until the last note had been sung. She clapped, hands high in the air, applauding every one of them for making her feel so special…and awkward. The perfect combination for any birthday. “Aw, thank you. Thank you so much. Everybody! This really means so much to me. I love all of ya!”
Choruses of, ‘Love you too, Hannah!’ erupted from various pockets around the restaurant until the clamor of conversations and cutlery against ceramic plates slowly returned.
Hannah twisted back to Tina and Holden. “Oh, you two…!” She palmed her cheeks, still warm and rosy. “Thank you for doing this. Both of you. So sweet!”
“Don’t blame me, kid.” Tina shrugged; pointed toward Holden. “Your friend here is the culprit.”
“Holden? How incredibly thoughtful.” She lifted up on her toes and gave him an innocent peck, anyone watching be damned. Holden was now a friend, and a good one at that. And Hannah wasn’t about to let idle gossip stop her from thanking a friend. “How did you even know?”
He winked at Tina. “Let’s just say a little bird told me.”
“Well, thank you again. And thank you too, little bird.”
“Oh, and this is for you.” Again something seemed to magically appear from behind his back. “That same little bird may have said something about you being into this scene.”
He handed Hannah a flat, square gift wrapped in silver paper with black satin lace tied beautifully around it, a bow sitting proud at its center.
“Oh, Holden. You shouldn’t have! Seems like that little bird’s been rather chatty…” Carefully preserving the ribbon and bow, she stripped the paper away to reveal the record album, Shades of Deep Purple. “Oh my God. I love it! Thank you! Don’t you just dig their single, ‘Hush’?”
“It’s the best. That howling wolf at the beginning? So cool.”
“Then you should drop by sometime. We could listen to it together—” She’d presented the invitation before she realized it. Delayed apprehension now swept across her face. “Oh. Holden, look I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You know I can’t—”
“Sure, I’d like that,” he cut in, not allowing her the opportunity to retract the invitation. “I think that’d be a real gas, y’know?”
Hannah cast her eyes down. She stared at her feet, noting how one pointed inward toward the other when she was nervous.
“You know I’m married, Holden. I can’t just have men around…” She paused, weighing if she should add the rest which was already on the tip of her tongue. She decided she would. “…No matter how handsome and, well, just far out perfect they are.”
“Hmmmm.”
“I mean, what would Jerry say?”
“Why would he say anything?”
“About me inviting a man over to listen to music? I really don’t think that would be his cup of tea. Jerry’s not into music like you and me are.” Hannah swallowed, the taste of her next words bitter and thick. “And he just wouldn’t be, well, happy about me inviting you over, that’s all. He can be the jealous type, and I’d be afraid he’d ruin our friendship.”
“Well, who said your husband has to be there? Doesn’t Jerry—” Holden hated saying that name. He vowed there and then to never speak it again. “Doesn’t…he…go to work? All the way across the bridge, in the city somewhere?”
) (
It was one week later when the doorbell tolled the beginning of Hannah’s brutal and barbaric end. She had just pulled the album from its paper sleeve, taking great care not to taint the vinyl’s grooves with the oil from her hands. Holding it between her palms, she threaded the record onto the turntable’s spindle and lowered the needle to the wide outside groove.
First came the faraway sounds of wolves crying. Then four powerful, orchestrated chords that were the unmistakable intro to the single, ‘Hush.’ Deep Purple weren’t yet through their first verse before Hannah’s doorbell rang.
With a smile as natural and genuine as the young woman herself, Hannah Wilson danced a bright step across the living room to answer it.
) (
It wasn’t who she expected…
13
FRIDAY AFTERNOON / AUGUST 22 • Brewster’s Café
JESUS, CASSIE, YOU really saw all of that?” Patty was slack-jawed, an unlit Virginia Slims clinging to her bottom lip. Cassie replied by only nodding. “Please tell me you did not tell Meredith Harper you saw her daughter attacked like that? Good God, Cass, you can’t have told her mother that.”
Cassie barely shook her head no.
“Christ, girl. Thank God. I mean, what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong.”
She almost considered reminding Patty that it was she who always claimed Cassie had a gift; she who insisted her dreams were psychic visions; she who had persuaded her to do readings here at Brewster’s.
“Well, what do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything, Trish.”
Once again, and quite unconsciously, she’d truncated the last part of Patricia’s name instead of the first. The only person to ever call her Trish, and only when she was under duress, they’d often joked that if she were ever kidnapped, Patty would know it was her if the abductors were to put her on the phone and she called her Trish. The fact that she was addressing her that way now told Patty that she was taking this harder than she might be letting on.
Stepping away to pull another espresso, she lit her third cigarette in ten minutes. As the burr grinder turned rich Kona Arabica beans into sand-like grains, the habitually pleasant fragrance of the café warmed and brightened further. “Did you see his face?”
Cassie indicated that she hadn’t. “Just a blur. Sorta fuzzy. I mean, he had a face. But to me it was devoid of any features. Same as the man who comes for me in my own dreams.”
At the counter, Patty forced steaming hot water through the portafilter, and the machine gurgled and spluttered until two dark and broken streams of espresso solidified into caramel-colored ribbons. It was almost hypnotic until the phone rang, its jangling peel amplified as it rebounded from the breezeblock walls of the empty café.
Cassie jolted in her chair, while Patty seemed to not hear it at all. Focused only upon the details of her friend’s vision, she was lost in thought.
“Like one of those clothes mannequins, Cass? You know, like the creepy ones over at the Emporium that only have bright white material for a face, almost like a bleached football...?”
“Yes!” Cassie snapped her fingers and touched the tip of her nose as if they were playing charades and Patty just guessed the first word correctly. “Exactly like that. Only dark instead of light like that. See? How can I possibly go to the police again? What on earth would I tell them this time?”
The phone kept ringing.
“Without cementing your identity as a whack-job, you mean?” The question was genuine, Patty refraining from the sarcasm she would typically employ right about now.
“Yes.”
“Nothing, babe. You can’t say a damned thing. You stay far away from there and that Detective Douchebag.”
Cassie laughed, a sharp little snort. “You mean Detective Ressler, I think.”
“Isn’t that what I said?’ Anyway, the last thing you need is to insert yourself into a second investigation. Seriously.”
Persistent, the caller hung up. But then immediately called back. The phone rang twice as Patty’s edict hung in the air. A third time. A fourth, as Patty walked back to the table, latte in hand. A fifth. Then nothing but the fading echoes of someone’s query left unattended.
) (
Patty turned the sign on the door to read CLOSED a good two hours earlier than usual. She and Cassie sat alone at a table at one of the two bay windows. After the jarring bell of the telephone, the silence lay heavy.
Cassie was the first to break it.
“I can’t, can I?” she finally responded, “Say anything, I mean.”
“No babe. You can’t. They’ll either commit you or incarcerate you this time. No joke. Can you imagine how that convo would go? ‘Remember me? Great! This time I’d like to share some very specific info about a sadistic murder I happened to witness.’” Here Patty paused, nodding as she played out listening to the response from an imaginary phone comprised of her thumb and pinky fingers outstretched as if they were the receiver’s ear and mouth pieces. “’Yes, I was sitting in a café, miles away from where it happened. Oh, and this was a week later. Uh-huhm. Oh, well let me explain: I saw the whole event in another psychic vision. Like the last one I reported. Only this one ran backwards through time.’” She paused again, nodding as a grin started to creep onto her face. “’Yes. Uh-huh…Well, you see, I was about to give a tarot reading—’” She nodded again, “’Of course I can come right on down there, Detective Douchebag. And bring a change of clothes for the next ten-to-twenty, you say? Right-oh.’”
“Okay, Patty. I get it. And I agree with you. But you don’t hafta be such a C-U-Next-Tuesday about it.”
Patty laughed hard and sudden and real, a coffee mist spraying from her lips. Cassie found herself chuckling right along.
Until reality set right back in moments later.
“Oh, Patty. What do I do? That girl’s mother believes her daughter is still alive and out there somewhere. How do I tell her that she’ll never see Hannah again?”
What a strange thing to contemplate, wanting to actually remove someone’s hope instead of bolstering it. But hope, that wonderful thing that buoys us in times of hardship, can also be the most cruel thing. Sometimes it prevents us from finding the truth. From accepting. From—eventually—moving on.
“What did you say to her before she left?”
“I certainly didn’t tell her what I saw. I told her she should go to the police again.
“And what did Mrs. Harper—Meredith —say to that?”
“She said she already did. Of course. The very next morning. As soon as Jerry told them Hannah still hadn’t come home.” Though speaking to Patty, Cassie’s gaze was to the side and far away. “She said a couple of deputies came within the hour. Asked Hannah’s husband, Jerry, some basic questions. Looked around. Checked out the drops and dried splotches of blood.”
“And?”
“Insisted it was nothing more than you might find in any house if you looked hard enough. Especially if the person did a lot of cooking, or maybe worked on fixing the place up. You know, using knives or saws, that kind of stuff.”
“So, now they think she’s Julia Child?” Patty asked.
“Or Ms. Ace Hardware.”
Patty drew on her cigarette, the tip glowing as the sound of the burning tobacco quietly crackled and hissed. “You gonna see her again?”
“I said she should check for a Deep Purple album on Hannah’s record player. If there is one, it would validate a few things I was seeing. You know, basically ensuring that I’m not wrong…”
“But you’re not wrong.”
“No, I’m not.” Cassie took a deep breath. “I’m sure of it, Trish. Like, really sure. Just like I was—still am—about Lyndsey Roe and her mother Veronica.”
“Have there been any updates on that poor little girl, by the way?” She watched Cassie squirm. “Oh, come on, girl. I know you checked in about it. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”
“I called and asked to speak to Detective Younger, the nice one.”
“And did anything you tell them help their case?”
Cassie lowered her eyes, barely shaking her head. She spoke in a whisper. “He said they found no record of a Janice Wynn in the San Francisco tax registry.”
“Okay, so maybe she’s not from here.”
“That’s what I said, too. Of course they already thought of that. I mean, this is what they do. Hey, can I get a drag of a cig?”
Patty’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Cassie nodded. “Just a little puff. I really need it.”
She accepted the filtered end of the freshly lit Virgina Slim and pinched it between her lips, inhaling hard. The heat of the smoke hit her lungs and came right back out in a hacking plume.
Patty chuckled and took the burning cigarette from her fingers as Cassie intermittently gasped and coughed. It was a minute before she got it under control, the tears gathered in her red eyes.
“Better?” Patty asked and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.
“God, how do you handle those things without hawking up a lung?” She downed half a glass of water, clearing her throat one more time. “Mr. Younger said they checked the records of every county in California. No Janice Wynn. Anywhere. Which was at least nice of him to tell me, because he probably shouldn’t have. I think it was his way of telling me, as sweetly as possible, that I’m a little bit far out, so to speak, and should maybe keep my distance from here on out.”
Patty stubbed out the cigarette. Its bent carcass sizzled and continued to ooze wisps of smoke as she talked, focusing only on Janice Wynn. “So, she doesn’t exist? Or she’s not from Cali.”
“Right. And yet I know what I saw, Patty. I know what I felt. How else would I know her name, not to mention the names of Lyndsey and Veronica?”
Patty picked up a copy of that day’s San Francisco Ledger. “Maybe from this?”
“Are you saying I made it up?” Cassie stiffened, sitting upright and crossing her arms.
“No babe. I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here. What if you saw a headline about them being missing and didn’t realize it? Or maybe heard a news report and it just didn’t register until your vision that night. Is that possible?”
Cassie frowned. She shook her head slowly once, and Patty tossed the broadsheet paper back down on the adjacent table.
“Look, Cass. I believe you, hun. I’m just trying to help you figure out what to do here. Because if it’s real—and I do believe you’re really seeing these things—then we have to find a way to use it to help these people…without the cops having you committed or something.”
“That’s why I need to have this vision validated. If that Deep Purple record is on the turntable in Hannah’s home, then I know I’m right.”
“And if it’s not?”
“I don’t know how to answer that, Patty. If there’s no album like I said, then I got it all wrong. Which means Hannah wasn’t attacked. And that would mean there really is no Janice Wynn, either.” Cassie considered this for a minute. “But it would also mean that I’m crazy.”
Patricia said nothing more, crushing the smoldering cigarette butt against the inside of her demitasse cup. The embers sizzled in the loam of the dark Arabica.
