Lucidity Page 18

  “What if she never knows who I am?” Mia asked.

  “I know it’s troubling, but it’s not something to be worrying about right now. The important thing is that she was able to see you and say something to you. What school do you go to?”

  “P.S. 87.”

  “You’re what, in fifth grade?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I went to public school. I bet they don’t have a lot of Escalades in front of P.S. 87 in the morning, do they?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really.”

  “Don’t laugh, but that’s how my wife rates a school,” Bernstein said. “She counts the number of Escalades out in front in the morning. That’s pretty silly, isn’t it?”

  She smiled, exposing her braces. “One of my friends on the soccer team has a driver. Sometimes I get a ride to practice with her.”

  “You know Max’s son Jamie? He’s a little older than you.”

  Her eyes brightened hearing the name. She said she’d met him before. He was a year older. Or maybe it was two years, she forgot.

  “Well, he’s downstairs waiting for us,” Bernstein said. “I’ve got to get something to eat. You guys want to come down with me and say hello?” he asked Anna. “I think it’d be good for both of you to get out of here for a bit. It can get oppressive. I know Jamie would like to see you.”

  Fremmer wasn’t sure about that, but he didn’t say anything, especially since Mia seemed to think it was a good idea. She and Anna went back into the ICU to collect their bags, and when they did, Bernstein turned to him and said:

  “I’m going to leave you with a nurse I know. You go in there and see if she’s responsive to you at all. Just talk softly. I’ll check on her later. They may put her back in a coma, but you didn’t hear that from me. It’s a good sign she woke up, though. I wasn’t lying to the kid.”

  Fremmer nodded. Bernstein handed him off to one of the ICU nurses, a young Asian woman, who took him into the ICU. Only about half the beds appeared to be filled, and other than the beeps of the machines, the room was quiet.

  Candace was sleeping. Fremmer studied her face for a moment. Aside from the fresh bandages covering part of her head and face, she didn’t look any different from when he’d seen her the other day.

  “Hey, kid,” he said quietly. “I heard you woke up.”

  With that her eyes fluttered open. She looked at him.

  “Remember me? I’m the guy who helps publish your e-books. Max Fremmer.”

  She stared at him. He didn’t seem to register.

  “They’re all bestsellers now,” he said. “All four of them. You’re my first author to have a bestseller.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted saying them. He was glad no else had witnessed his idiocy.

  “Max,” he said a little louder. “Frem-mer.” He carefully enunciated his last name, as if that would help. “Do you know who I am?”

  She shook her head ever so slightly. She seemed to have no idea who he was.

  “Well, I’m a friend. I’m a friend who’s here to help.”

  God, that sounded stupid, he thought. But what was he supposed to say?

  “You were hit by a car,” he went on. “I’m sure they’ve told you that. It was bad. Very bad. You’re in a hospital. Do you know what hospital you’re in?”

  “Stanford?” she whispered.

  Stanford? Is that what she said? She’d spoken so quietly that he barely heard her over the beeps. But that was what he thought he heard. There was a town upstate in Duchess County called Stanford. Maybe she’d spent some time there. He knew people who rented summer houses there—or near there. But a hospital?

  “Did you say Stanford?” he asked.

  A slight nod. He decided to go with it.

  “Is that where you live? In Stanford?”

  “Menlo Park,” she said.

  “Menlo Park? Menlo Park, California or Menlo Park, New Jersey?”

  Edison had invented the light bulb in Menlo Park, New Jersey. A lot of people thought the one in California was named for Edison’s Menlo Park but the opposite was true. Now probably wasn’t the time for him to point that out to her, but it did cross his mind.

  “California,” she said.

  “You live in Menlo Park, California?”

  She exhaled hard. It took some effort for her to speak.

  “My husband tried to kill me,” she said.

  “Your husband? Who’s your husband?”

  “Ross,” she said.

  “He pushed you in front of a car? You remember that?”

  “No. No. He tried to choke me.”

  She grimaced. None of this made sense. For a few fleeting seconds, he thought they may have made a mistake and had somehow got the identity of the victim wrong, that this wasn’t Candace after all. “Your husband Ross tried to choke you? What’s your name?”

  Her eyes locked on him. He could see fear.

  “Who are you? Are you a cop? Where am I?”

  “You’re in St. Luke’s Hospital,” he said. “You’ve been hit by a car.”

  “Go away,” she whispered.

  “I’m a friend. I’m here to help. I publish your books. I’m a book doctor.”

  “I don’t write books. Please …”

  She then let out a noise that was a mixture of a groan and a scream, the noise a wounded animal makes. Not ear-piercingly loud, but loud enough for everybody on the ward to hear her.

  “Go away,” she said again.

  Soon there were two nurses and a doctor in the room with him, pushing him out of the way.

  “What did you say?” the Asian nurse who’d brought him in asked.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I told her who I was and that she’d been hit by a car.”

  “You better go out now,” she said.

  He went to smooth his hair back with his hand—it was a nervous tic.

  “Is she going to be alright?” he asked.

  When he reached up to fix his hair, his sleeve came down a bit and she noticed he still had his patient wristband on.

  “Sir, are you a patient here?”

  He looked at the band. He’d forgotten to cut it off.

  “No. I was. Not anymore, though. They thought I tried to kill myself but I didn’t.”

  Now she was looking at him with fear.

  “I’m going,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m going.”

  PART 3

  23/ Kevin Spacey Calling

  A MONTH AFTER BENDER POSTED THE ARTICLE MADDEN WAS BACK IN the hardware store, doing his usual Tuesday shift. He was in the middle of helping a customer find a drill bit that penetrated stainless steel when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Text message alert. It could wait.

  “I’d go with titanium,” Madden told the customer. “The cobalt is good, but you might as well go with the titanium.”

  After the man walked away with the titanium bit, Madden took his phone out and looked at the text. It was from Pastorini. Madden couldn’t quite believe what he saw.

  “Kevin Spacey called,” the message read. “Call him back. He’s been trying to reach you.”

  A phone number followed the message. Kevin Spacey was trying to reach him? The area code wasn’t from the Bay Area but it seemed familiar. And then he realized why. It was the same 347 number he’d seen a few days earlier. Someone had left two messages with Billings at the Menlo Park police department. In both cases, whoever had called had left a number but no name. Madden hadn’t called back.

  “The actor Kevin Spacey?” he texted Pastorini.

  He had to wait a little while for a response. “Yes,” the reply came back.

  Something felt off. He decided to call him. He owed him a call anyway.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said. “Kevin Spacey? Are you sure about that? You spoke to Kevin Spacey?”

  “I spoke to his assistant. A guy named Drew Masters.” Pastorini’s speech was getting better but wasn’t perfect. He still sounded a touch dr
unk, with some slurring of his words—he had a hard time with the letter “s”—and he spoke more slowly than he used to.

  Was is it possible? Kevin Spacey?

  “Why did the assistant call you?”

  “The MPPD wouldn’t give out your number,” Pastorini said. “I’m listed.”

  “Did he say why he was calling?”

  “No. I’m watching a movie. I’m not your secretary. Call me later.”

  Madden took the phone away from his ear and looked at the time. It was 11:12 AM, 2:12 PM in New York. Spacey might be at lunch, but Madden could always leave a message with the assistant.

  Fremmer had just stepped out of the Pacific Aquarium and Pet shop on Delancey Street, where he’d been inquiring about Rochelle, when he saw the 650 area come up on his phone. He’d used an app called Burner to create a temporary number that couldn’t be traced to him. He could delete the number at any time and create a new one. It’s gotta be Madden, he thought, this is it.

  “This is Hank Madden,” the caller said. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Drew Masters,” Fremmer said. “I called you about setting up a meeting with Mr. Spacey.”

  “Yes, I got the message.”

  “Well, hear me out for a minute. My name isn’t really Drew Masters and I’m not Kevin Spacey’s assistant.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, I apologize for deceiving you. I only said that because I knew you wouldn’t return my calls. You’re not so easy to reach. But here’s the deal, Mr. Madden. I found Stacey Walker.”

  Silence.

  “To be clear, this is not a crank call,” Fremmer went on. “No one’s trying to punk you. I assure you I’m totally on the level here.”

  “If you’re not Drew Masters then who are you?” Madden asked.

  “I can’t tell you that right now. But call me Drew for now. I need to know if you have some sort of contract with Hal Shelby? I read one story that said you had a six-month window to find Stacey Walker. Was there some sort of legal document involved?”

  “Yes. But I haven’t been actively working for him for the last month.”

  Fremmer pumped his fist victoriously. Houston, we have a contract.

  “Yes, from some of your later quotes you didn’t seem so happy with how things had played out,” he replied calmly. “But the contract stipulates six months, right? There’s a date on the contract that says if you find her within such and such a time frame you get the bonus?”

  “There is,” Madden said. “I have a signed legal document. Why are you asking me this?”

  “Because I want half that bonus, Mr. Madden. And I want half the bonus if we find her husband Ross. Basically, I want half of everything. And I need you to get on a plane and come to New York tomorrow so we can get to work on this.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, by my count we only have a few weeks to get this done.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “One hundred percent,” Fremmer said. “I’ll give you specific instructions on where to go later today. You pay the airfare and I’ll reimburse you for your hotel after we sit down and sign our own contract. Don’t bother trying to trace this number because I’ve taken steps to remain anonymous. After we get something down on paper I will tell you exactly who am I. But for now I need to remain anonymous to protect my interests. I haven’t said a word about this to anyone. Do we have an understanding?”

  “We do. But I still don’t believe you. You know where she’s buried?”

  “Yes. I can tell you exactly where when you get here. Have you ever been to New York?”

  “Only the airport.”

  “Well, May’s a good time to come,” Fremmer said. “Not too hot, not too cold, not too many tourists. I look forward to meeting you. I’ve read a lot about you.”

  “I can reach you at this number?”

  “For now.”

  “Well, let me think about it and I’ll call you back later.”

  “There is no thinking about it, Mr. Madden. You’re getting on a plane. Otherwise, I’m going to have to try to make my own deal with Hal Shelby and I don’t want to do that. I’m going for the whole kit and caboodle. And that means you are, too.”

  24/ A Gramme is Better Than a Damn

  FREMMER WASN’T LYING TO MADDEN WHEN HE SAID THAT HE HADN’T told anybody about his discovery. After his conversation with Candace in the ICU, he did the first thing a lot of people would do under the circumstances: he Googled. He input the words “Menlo Park” “Ross” “husband” “choked” and “killed” into the search bar on his phone. The search results confounded and amazed him.

  The first item was Bender’s story on onedumbidea.com, posted almost a month earlier. It was about a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur that hired a well-known, retired local detective in Menlo Park to help solve a twenty-year-old cold case involving a man named Ross Walker and his missing wife, Stacey. The entrepreneur said he’d offered to pay the detective a huge bonus if he found Stacey or Ross Walker. Sounded like seven figures.

  Could the Ross that Candace was talking about be the Ross in the article? And if so, didn’t that make her Stacey?

  As soon as Fremmer got home, he dug up a picture of her on his computer that he’d taken of her at an Apple store a couple of years ago. He’d wanted to use the shot as her author photo on Amazon, but in the end she hadn’t let him. He realized there were almost no photos of her online, just the small one posted on her LinkedIn page that the media had been using.

  He compared his photo to the pictures of Stacey Walker from twenty years ago. Her initial thought was that it wasn’t the same woman. The young Stacey had blond, straight hair. Candace Epstein had dark curly hair.

  He kept looking, studying the features. Pretty soon he started to see the resemblance. It was in the eyes. A little in the nose, too, though it looked like Candace had some work done. The cheekbones seemed a little higher, the nose a little smaller. It was her. Had to be.

  Making that connection didn’t send a shiver up his spine, that came a few minutes later. He clicked through more articles about the case, and read one about the discovery in Vietnam of Ross’s partial remains along with some personal effects including his passport. Fremmer soon realized that by “partial remains” they were talking about multiple bones, and those multiple bones added up to one hand, a wrist, and a forearm. One arm up to the elbow.

  Fremmer read every article he could find on the subject of Ross. Over the years people had become divided over whether he was really dead. Some thought he’d chopped his arm off to fake his own death. Others thought that was crazy. Fremmer was in the middle of a piece when one line stopped him cold. It was a quote from Pete Pastorini, the lead detective in the case.

  “Do I think there’s a guy walking around somewhere with one arm who got away with murder? Sure, it’s possible, but the more likely scenario is Ross Walker is dead.”

  And then it hit him: Braden. He had one arm. The guy had one fucking arm. Staph infection? Yeah, right. The bastard chopped his own arm off. It’s him. Has to be.

  Suddenly, it all began to make sense. Or at least he thought it did. When Candace told him she knew someone who’d done something very bad, the kind of thing that put a person in prison for a long time, she’d been referring to her previous life. Who was the someone? Braden? Maybe. But if she were Stacey and Braden were Ross, then no one was murdered. Could they both still be alive? Had it all been an elaborate scheme? And if so, to what end?

  And what about Ronald? Was he connected to her past? And the alleged manuscript Candace was supposed to deliver, was there something in there implicating Braden in, well, something? And Madden’s investigation, what was the timeline there? Could she have been pushed because of some fact or event he’d uncovered?

  Fremmer’s brief ah-ha moment suddenly morphed into a dizzying array of unanswerable questions and conjectures. He wanted to speak to someone about his recent discoveries, but that little piece about the bonus k
ept gnawing at him. There might be real money there, he thought. It could go straight into Jamie’s college fund. And he’d be able to give something to Morton. Make it worth his while for taking on Ronald, who was scheduled to be back in court that week.

  He needed Madden. First, he’d have to get him to agree to split the reward, then convince him to come to New York to see if he could identify Braden as Ross and take a DNA sample from Candace.

  And what about Rochelle? He wondered if she knew who her boss really was. Or if Rochelle were her real name. A day after he got out of the hospital he’d received a get-well card from her with the odd inscription, “Remember, a gramme is better than a damn. ’Til we meet again, Rochelle.”

  The phrase sounded familiar. She spelled gramme the British way, so it had to be a literary quote. Google, the great curator of quotes, solved that part of the puzzle in less than half a second. Huxley. Rochelle had sent him a get-well card with a quote from Brave New World, a reference to one of the novel’s many hypnopædic slogans promoting the utopian use of soma. Narcotics for the greater good.

  God that was hot, he thought. But he didn’t get the tone. What did she mean, “’Til we meet again?” Was she threatening or flirting? After all she’d already put him through were they just going to let him off the hook? That made no sense. Then again, maybe she’d gotten into his computer and lifted whatever file she was looking for. But what was it? What was she looking for?

  What was her real name? Where did she live? He had to find her. The simplest way to do that would be to stake out the Lucidity Center, wait for her to show up, and then try to follow her back to her apartment. Except that he didn’t have time for stakeouts.

  Then he remembered that she’d said she once worked at an aquarium shop. That could have been a lie. But it was worth a shot. There were only a couple of dedicated aquarium stores in the city and only one downtown. It was on Delancey Street, not too far from the courthouse, where he had to go anyway for Ronald’s mental competency hearing.