Seraphim (16 page)

All serious psychosis aside, he was now convinced that something had been set into motion. But he was still short an abstract, so what could he possibly say to Patricia—or anyone else, for that matter—without coming off as a total loon?
Hi, Patricia! Just thought I’d call and let you know what a hell of an impression you left, seeing how my ten-year-old daughter not only looks exactly like yours did at the same age, but actually believes herself to be your daughter! So, how’ve ya been?

Hell, if he approached it like that, he thought, then he might as well include the news that all Ansel Adams pictures were about to be recalled by the Department of Agriculture, having been deemed a threat to all crops, gardens, and old hippie photographers.

Pesky slugs.

He poured another shot.

No, the only way to get Patricia’s undivided attention would be to plop Amy right on her doorstep.

Still, he had to call her, to prime the situation. Regardless of her reaction, Duncan could say that she had at least been warned. And if for nothing else, he blandly thought, meeting Katherine would prepare him for what Amy would look like in eleven years.

Rachel reappeared with a toothbrush in her mouth. “I’m not real keen on this, Dunc. Besides, isn’t it just a tad early to be calling on ex-lovers?”

“It’s mid-morning on the East coast,” he reminded her.

“Well, I see you thought of everything,” she said, shoulders sagging, as if he’d personally created the time zones just to facilitate the phone call.

He glowered at her. “Look, Miss Saigon, I think we both know it’s necessary.”

Giving her toothbrush a breather, she folded her arms across her chest. “Alright, but let
me
talk to the slut.”

He rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Jesus, Rachel, that horse is deceased already.”

“Oh, hell” she said, brushing again, “they probably don’t even live there anymore.”

Duncan just stared at the phone.

Astonished, Rachel yanked the toothbrush again from her mouth. “You’ve already tracked her down, haven’t you, detective!”

“Please, it’s not like I hired Sherlock Holmes at great expense,” he said. “Information didn’t have a listing for a Patricia Bently in Rock Bay, but it did have one for her mother, Joan Pendleton. She still lives at the same address as when I’d met her, the very one Amy gave the paramedics. Patricia had only taken me there a few times, so I suppose that’s why it didn’t jump right out at me at the hospital.”

Her eyes lit up. “She took you home to meet Mom? How charming.”

Without making a face, Duncan swallowed the remark. “Anyway, back then, Mrs. Pendleton wasn’t doing so hot,” he said. “Arthritis, I think. And as I recall it, Patricia was planning to move in and take care of her. Maybe that’s why Amy gave that address, because it’s where Patricia and Katherine are living now.” His hands came off his lap and spread out, as if to catch a low-thrown basketball. “Of course, I’m just speculating.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “I mean, what reasons would I have to doubt that you would be anything but totally on the up-and-up with me.”

“Damn it, Rachel, I never lied to you,” he said. “I just…didn’t tell you.”

“Spoken like a true man,” she proclaimed. “With those kinds of scruples, you’re a shoe-in for Commander-in-Chief.”

Duncan shook his head, ashamed of himself. “Jesus, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

She emancipated a long sigh, their paranormal situation obviously winning over her feminine principles. “Okay, call her. But I want to be here when you do.”

“I have an even better idea,” he said. “When I make the call, why don’t you just pick up in the other room, then you can eavesdrop to your heart’s content.”

This proposal writhed inside Duncan, not so unlike the bag of worms Patricia would open if she felt in the mood to reminisce. Just the wrong word, the wrong phrase and Patricia could have him on his knees begging for mercy in a variety of civil and criminal poses. He quailed. Rachel now knew of his affair with Patricia Bently, but she didn’t know the whole story. Not the half of it.

“Eavesdrop,” Rachel grinned mischievously. “
Now
you’re thinking like a woman.”

“This concerns both of us, Rachel,” he reminded her, “because it concerns Amy.”

“I agree,” she said, walking toward the door. “Try her now.”

Duncan nodded, then dialed the number.

Rachel picked up on the other extension.

“One ringy-dingy,” he said, overcome with a childish urge to heckle her. “Two ringy-dingies—”

“Grow up,” Rachel said.

Please don’t be there
, he thought. But his bull’s-eye intuition told him she would be.

“Hello?” answered a lady’s voice.

Duncan paused, then: “Uh, Patricia? Patricia Bently?”

Incertitude hung in the pause. Then: “This is she.”

“Hi, Patricia, this is…is Duncan McNeil,” he confessed, the words clicking on the parched roof of his mouth.

For a moment, Duncan was sure he had only a conch pressed to his ear.

“Patricia?” he prompted.

“My God, you’re the last person I thought I’d ever hear from,” she finally, somberly, replied.

“Yeah,” Duncan said. “It’s been awhile. Geez, almost—”

“Twelve years,” she said. “Last time I saw you, you were leaving the hospital in a wheelchair.”

“I’ll never forget how the sun felt on my face,” he said. “But…I don’t recall you ever being at the hospital.”

“Your wife and police buddies were around, so Katherine and I just sort of watched you from a distance.”

He winced. “Wow. I mean, I had no idea...”

“The prefix on my caller ID indicates that you’re phoning from California. Is that right?”

“Yes, LA.”

“Uh-huh,” she said suspiciously. “My question is, why would
you
be calling from anywhere at all?”

“Well, it’s about my daughter,” he began. “Funny story. You see, she’s in the hospital and, oddly enough, she told the hospital staff that she lives at the same address that…well, you’re currently at.”

“I don’t remember you having a daughter—”

“I didn’t…not, not when I, you—”

“She’s how old then?”

“She’s ten.”

“Ten”, she said timidly, as if haunted by that number.

There was a tremendously long pause, and Duncan was almost sure she’d hung up.

Finally, Patricia cleared her throat. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Amy.”

She bounced the name back to him. Then: “Assuming that this isn’t a joke—and I’m not—that would be quite the coincidence, don’t you think, for your daughter to give my address as her place of residence?”

“Well, there’s more,” Duncan said. “At one point, Amy also believed that her…that her name was Katherine Bently.”

“This
is
a joke, you sick bastard!” Patricia snarled.

“Whoa, calm down, calm down,” Duncan softly urged. “Why would you think that?”

“You know why!”

“No, I swear, I...”

Patricia was bawling now. “Katherine’s been missing for eleven years!”

Duncan nearly fell out of his chair.
Missing for eleven years?

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Patricia, I’m so sorry—”

“Screw you, McNeil! No matter how indebted I am to you, it will never be enough for me to tolerate this…this kind of bullshit!”

Duncan stood up. “Patricia, don’t hang up! Please, there’s something else—”

“This isn’t a joke, Mrs. Bently,” Rachel interjected. “I promise you.”

“Who the hell are you?” Patricia demanded, sniffling.

“I’m Rachel, Duncan’s wife.”

She cackled. “Oh, I see. The family that tricks together sticks together.”

“Listen,” Duncan said, “I…we have a picture of you and Katherine, all dressed up in western get-up. It was found in Rock Bay—”

“So?”

“So,” Duncan said, “Katherine is approximately ten years old in the photo, and she’s the spitting image of Amy, could be her identical twin.”

Having controlled her emotions somewhat, Patricia said to Duncan, “I remember that picture. It’s on the fireplace mantel. I’m heading over to it right now, as a matter of fact. But if I remember correctly, it was taken
after
you disappeared from our lives. So how and where did you get it?”

Duncan waited for Rachel to respond.

“Well...” he started.

“The Olde Tyme Photography Studio in Rock Bay,” Rachel finally said. “I saw it on display in the window. I didn’t know about you or Katherine then, but for some reason I had to have it.”

“You know,” Patricia said, “I think you should both be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you,
hero!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call to the telephone company and request that my number be changed immediately. Goodbye.”

“No, wait!” Duncan yelled, “Please don’t hang—ahhh, shit!”

“Let her go, Dunc,” Rachel said, then disconnected.

Duncan flopped back down into his chair.
Oh my God. Katherine Bently went missing over a decade ago.

Elbows on the desk, Duncan rested his face in his hands. He was still bothered about not having immediately recognized the name Katherine Bently when he first heard it come from the guard, then the nurse, at the hospital. He supposed he could forgive himself that. He wasn’t a pup anymore. But to have still remained clueless after discovering its relationship to Rock
Bay as he read the admissions form—that should have set off all sorts of red flags and obnoxious buzzers.

The
essence
of that turbulent time had not been forgotten; yet, somehow, in a censoring sort of way, the players had been.

But now everything was so clear. The images he’d captured just yesterday were still fresh, drying on the walls of his mind. And today the ones he continued to pull from the emulsion tray radiated with a sheen that was almost supernatural. Those memories were coming back to him with such speed and startling clarity that the present seemed vague and distant in comparison.

He wasn’t so much bothered that the distance between forgotten and remembered had closed on him so quickly—as any number of stimuli can provoke lost memories, he knew—but rather by the uncanny detail the memories continued to bring. Queerly, he felt suddenly on the verge of living two different lives simultaneously, as if those memories of Patricia and Katherine Bently had snapped their demarcating tethers of time and were now floating back into the here and now of his consciousness.

In either reality or delusion, though, he was quite sure that Rachel wasn’t going to like sharing him again.

Rachel entered with a towel in her hair, the goop gone from her face. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I mean, Christ, over eleven years—”

“Look, I know where you’re heading, but I think we can dismiss reincarnation as the culprit here. Besides, missing doesn’t mean dead.”

“Is that what the cop in you believes?”

Duncan shook his head. “No, the optimist.”

Rachel laughed. “My dear man, you don’t have an optimistic bone in your body.”

“Okay,” he grudgingly agreed, “my pragmatic side, then.”

Scooting one of the director’s chairs to the front of his desk, she sat down. “Look, Duncan, Katherine’s obviously dead. We’re dealing with something here that may very well defy rational explanation. I know that’s hard for you to accept. It’s hard for me, too, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to start approaching this from a very different perspective.”

He poured himself another shot. “I already have.”

“Oh? And what might that be?” she said, then saw the answer in his eyes. “Oh no, you want to take Amy to Rock Bay, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“To see your old flame.”

“Yes again.”

She was bristling now. “And what’s that going to prove?”

“I’m not sure.”

She threw up her arms. “Well, it wouldn’t be a total loss. I mean, you could still get your dick wet!”

Although his judicious side strongly advised against it, he laughed at her. “Could you stop it for just five minutes? Could you? Just long enough to hear me out?”

Smoldering, Rachel folder her arms. “Alright. I’m listening.”

“I don’t know what will happen if I take Amy to see Patricia. But I know it has to be done, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Duncan said, “I don’t think Amy’s safe here anymore.”
Maybe none of us are
, he almost added. But even if he decided to tell her everything else, every sordid detail about his visit with the photographer, he wasn’t about to include Gamble’s restaurant recommendation. It was just too damn silly, if not downright terrifying in its implications.

Suddenly concerned, Rachel said, “Why do you think that?”

“Something the photographer told me last night. A man by the name of Gamble may have an interest in Amy.”

“Whoa!” Rachel said, pushing out her palms. “Wait a minute! You’re telling me that the same guy who took Amy’s school pictures knows another guy who has an ‘interest’ in our daughter? What
kind
of interest, Duncan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he a talent scout from Sesame Street? A pedophile? What?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

Rachel leaned forward, grabbing the edge of his desk with both hands. “I want the police notified immediately. I want this photographer guy questioned—”

“He’s dead.”

Rachel eased back into her chair, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Really?” she said, stretching out the word like it was taffy.

Duncan simply smiled. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Rachel smiled back. “You’re not telling me everything.”

“No, I’m not,” he confessed. “But if you’ll go with us, I’ll catch you up on events. We’ll get Amy, then hop the first flight available.”

“I can’t. In case you forgot, I have a commercial to shoot tomorrow morning. But you just go right on ahead keeping secrets, Captain Donut! Juanita and I will take very good care of Amy.”

“I’m taking Amy with me.”

“Oh no you’re not.”

“Don’t fight me on this, Rachel.”

She bolted up from her chair. “Tooth and nail!” she promised, then stomped away, leaving cotton balls in her wake. “P.S.” she added. “Go fuck yourself!”