The Remains (9 page)

“THERE’S ONE QUICK METHOD to find out if
Whalen is still alive,” Michael said. “Google search.”

We were standing inside my bedroom just off
the kitchen. My heart was pumping wildly. It also felt entirely odd
doing something like this with my ex. Doing something this
important, this life altering. In a word, this messed up.

While on one hand, I felt about fifty pounds
lighter, having been able to talk out the events of thirty years
ago, I also felt as though the wood floor was about to be pulled
out from under me. In just a minute or two I would find out if the
man who attacked me and my sister was still alive. If he had been
released from prison.

Michael
sat at the computer desk in my bedroom with both hands positioned
on the keyboard. I watched over his shoulder while he typed in the
URL for Google. When it came up he entered the word “Sexual
Predators, New York State” into the empty search box. Fingering the
ENTER key the search came up with several pages of sites and URLs
that would list the registry of documented sexual predators,
deviants and offenders, the most prominent of which was a site
called
www.childsafenetwork.com
.

Michael clicked onto the site, brought it
up.

It was then I took an instinctive step back,
sat down on the edge of the bed. My heart was thumping so fast I
thought I might have a heart attack. I was having trouble
breathing, swallowing.

Turning to me in alarm, Michael said, “We can
stop if you want, Rebecca. If you’re not ready.”

I put my head in my hands, rubbed the feeling
back into my face. “What if it’s true?” I said. “What if after all
these years we find out Whalen is alive? What if he’s out of
prison?”

“
Then at
least we know what we’re up against,” Michael said. “We can defend
ourselves if we know what’s out there.
I
can defend you. If we choose to ignore it, it might come
back to haunt you.”

My hands were shaking. Adrenalin was pouring
into my brain so rapidly, it sounded like a brass band warming up
inside my head. Michael turned back to the computer screen, then
back to me again. I could tell by the look on his face that he was
brainstorming.

“You never told a soul about what happened in
the woods.”

I nodded.

“If we find Whalen’s name on this list… if we
find out he’s alive, it won’t matter.”

Swallowing, I looked in his eyes.

“How can it not matter?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, wrong choice of words. What I’m trying
to say is this: finding his name on the state registry doesn’t mean
you’re in any kind of danger. You never ratted him out, so to
speak. You weren’t directly responsible for sending him to prison.
If you’re worried about the revenge factor, there’s no reason for
Whalen to seek you out.”

Michael had a point.

Why would Whalen want anything to do with me after all
these years?
That is,
assuming he was alive in the first place. Besides, forty-two year
old women weren’t his style. Adolescent girls and young women
however, were a different story.

I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My mouth
was dry. On the other hand, I found myself feeling something for my
ex-husband that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Trust. I was
placing all of my trust and emotions into his care, and I was
feeling all right about it. After all, he was the author of a
published detective novel, which in my mind anyway, made him a kind
of amateur detective.

“How shall I proceed, Bec?” he said softly,
big brown eyes piercing into my own. “It’s your call.”

By now my breathing had become so shallow I
felt like I was about to pass out. At least there was a bed
underneath me to catch the fall.

I looked into Michael’s face.

“Just do it.” I swallowed.

He typed the name “Joseph William Whalen”
into the Child Safe Network search engine. Then he fingered
ENTER.

THE BLACK AND WHITE image of a man appeared.
A face. A mug shot.

The black and white face of a man who
abducted me; abducted Molly. Attacked us.

The black and white face of a man who touched
us and hurt us.

The man was alive.

The monster had been freed.

Michael turned back to me. He started saying
something to me that I did not understand. It sounded like he was
talking to me through a cardboard tube. My legs went weak and the
room began to spin. I sat down hard onto the bed.

“
He’s
alive,” I said, mouth tasting like the dried paint at the bottom of
a jar. “The monster is still alive. All this time I thought he was
dead…
wished
him
dead.”

I tried to stand, but I found it impossible
to work up the strength. I began to hyperventilate.

“Take it easy,” Michael insisted. “Breathe
easy.”

I looked up at my ex-husband, looked up at
his eyes. At the way he was biting down on his bottom lip, his
nerves betraying him. I brought my hands to my face, rubbed my
eyes, patted my cheeks. Michael went into the kitchen, grabbed me a
glass of tap water, and brought it back in for me.

“Take a small sip,” he said, handing me the
glass.

I held the glass two-handed, took a small
drink, then handed it back.

“What do we do now?” I exhaled, my breathing
beginning to slow.

“I’m not sure what we can do now.” He sat
back down in front of the computer, set the water glass beside the
keyboard. “The good news is that Whalen is registered as a sex
offender. That means he’s got a probation officer assigned to him
by the state and the county. It also means he’s a part of the ViCAP
data base.”

The tap water bubbled inside my stomach, made
me nauseas. I tried to slow my breathing even more.

Brushing back my hair with open fingers, I
said, “What’s ViCAP?

“
It
stands for Violent Criminals Apprehension Program. I used their
data bank as part of the research for
The Hounds of Heaven.
By all appearances, Whalen has
got himself a place of honor in the New York State ViCAP
program.”

Pausing, he set his hand on my knee. But I
pushed it away. I just didn’t want anyone touching me right
then.

After a beat, Michael posed, “Do you know if
Whalen was ever convicted in the actual murder of anyone he
abducted?”

I shook my head.

“
I don’t
know much about his history, but I don’t think he was ever
convicted of actual murder. Not enough evidence or something like
that. I remember Molly talking about it incessantly. Even up until
the day she died. I chose to simply block him out. Except when I
was drawing his face. When I was drawing his face in my copy
of
To Kill a
Mockingbird
, I wanted to
remember him. But then, and only then.”

My ex’s
face had become a mask of intensity. In a strange way, I felt happy
for him. He was working the problem—
our
problem—with a sense of purpose. Here was the Michael I
loved and missed. I watched him finger a few more keys until the
website for ViCAP replaced the Child Safety Network. Using the same
two-index-finger style with which he banged out his manuscripts, he
typed in Whalen’s full name in the space provided.

There it was again: Whalen’s face. Not
necessarily a bad face to someone who didn’t know him. But to me it
was the face of monster—a gaunt, hook-nosed monster. It was also a
face I had no trouble recognizing despite the fact that it had aged
thirty years.

I looked at the face and this time I did not
feel like passing out. This time I stood up, looked over Michael’s
shoulder, my hands pressed against the chair-back for support.

“Sure you should be standing up, Bec?”

But I didn’t answer. Instead I studied the
short list of vitals that had been stacked besides Whalen’s image.
Besides his name, the site included his date of birth, October 17,
1949. It also included a whole bunch of what I already knew. That
he was small, white and thin. He was balding now, or bald. But his
dark, brown eyes looked the same. So much so that they made my
stomach sink even more than it already had.

Under the face was an image captured date. It
said, March 3. I pointed to it.

“What’s this mean?”

“It means that Whalen’s image captured date
is only six months ago,” he explained. Locking eyes with me from
over his shoulder, he continued. “In other words, he’s only been
out of the joint for six months.”

Scrolling down, he came to an area designated
Probation Registry. Under the heading ‘County’ it said
‘Albany’.

“My God, Michael, he lives right in
Albany.”

“It just means that he lives somewhere inside
the county. That much is definite. There’s no home address listed
here because even monsters like Whalen have rights. But I can be
certain he resides in a halfway house. He’s probably allowed out to
work, but must report back to home base soon as it’s quitting
time.”

“So what do we do now?” Back to my original
question.

Michael exited the page.

In a flash Whalen, or his face anyway, was
gone. Somehow I felt relieved. Out of sight, out of my life. But
that was just wishful thinking.

“In all honesty, Bec, I’m not sure we can do
anything other than watch our backs.”

“My back, you mean.”

“Your back, yes. It’s not like we can go to
the police with our concerns. You never reported anything to them.
They would just think you’re some crazy lady trying to get
attention.”

He was right. I never reported a thing. Why
would the police care about it thirty years after the fact?
Especially when I had no real proof that Whalen had approached me
in the past few days. No real proof that is, other than in my
dreams, my imagination.

“I find it hard to believe that after
spending thirty years in a max security joint like Green Haven,
Whalen would risk his parole by harassing you, or anybody else for
that matter.”

“Do you really believe that, Michael?”

He cocked his head, squinted his eyes.

“It feels good to believe it,” he sighed.

My stomach was cramping up again.

Michael shook his head.

“Franny’s paintings,” he said after a time.
“The dream paintings.” He was looking not at me but at the opposite
wall.

“Yeah,” I said. “Where you going with
this?”

“In my opinion something or someone other
than Whalen has you spooked.”

“Franny,” I correctly deduced.

Nodding, Michael exclaimed, “Humans have five
senses: hearing, sight, touch, taste, smell. Franny has already
painted you a piece he calls ‘See’ and another he calls ‘Listen.’
It’s not unreasonable to assume that over the course of the next
three days he’s going to gift you three more paintings.”

I caught my reflection in the body-length
dressing mirror that stood on the opposite side of the room. Even
to me my face looked pale, my eyes painted with worry.

Three more days; three more paintings.

One thing was for certain, if the paintings
were Franny’s idea of a joke, it wasn’t very funny. But this was no
joke because although Franny possessed a keen sense of humor, I
felt that he was incapable of doing anything cruel to anyone or
anything. Which in the end meant one thing and one thing only.

“My hunch was correct,” I said. “Franny is
trying to communicate with me through his art.”

“He’s warning you, giving you a heads
up.”

“And to be in tune with the five senses is to
be aware of everything happening around you. That includes imminent
danger, right?”

“That would be the idea.” Shrugging his
shoulders; smiling. “Let’s see if he brings you another
ten-thousand dollar gift tomorrow.”

Three more days; three more paintings; three
more senses; three more warnings.

“You think Franny knows Whalen’s out of
jail?”

“You might ask him, or his mother anyway. Or
maybe he just senses that Whalen is out of jail.”

“I wasn’t aware that he even knew of
Whalen.”

“It’s quite possible he knew about him,
considering all three of you lived within a few miles from one
another.”

This situation was getting more bizarre and
disturbing the more educated I became; the more Michael speculated.
I decided not to think about it for a while. If that was at all
possible. I simply needed to get away from it.

“Can I make you something to eat, Michael?” I
said after a beat.

Michael approached me, reached out to me with
his hands, gently set them onto my shoulders. He didn’t have to say
a word for me to know what was happening.

“Date?” I surmised.

“
Sort
of,” he said, as if it were possible to have a
sort of
date.

“Same love interest I presume?”

“Giving it a second round,” he said. “But I
certainly would not call it love. Not by a long shot.” He pursed
his lips. “I’ve known real love only once in my life and this is
not it.”

I felt my eyebrows rise up at attention at
the remark.

Leaving the bedroom, he grabbed his jacket
and beret. When he came back in, he said, “Maybe I’d better cancel.
I can stay… on the couch.”

I shook my head.

“It’s not nice to cancel out on a girl,” I
said. “You just can’t do that.”

He stared down at the beret and the worn
black leather jacket gripped in his hands.

“I’ll check in on you later?”

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Now that I know
where I stand.”

He nodded, shifted his gaze back down to his
hands. For a moment, I thought he might start to cry.