‘Yes.’
‘Now, we’re finally on the right track.’ It took the daemonic voice just a minute to explain the rules. ‘Simple, isn’t it? And don’t even think about calling the police. I can assure you that they’ll never make it here in time.’
Mr. J’s mouth went desert-dry.
‘So listen up, John, because your wife’s life depends on it.’
An overly tense pause followed.
‘Where was Cassandra born?’
Mr. J squinted at the small screen. Had he heard it right? Was this psycho for real? What sort of life-depending, dumbass question was that?
‘Is this a fucking joke?’ he asked, his blood boiling in his veins.
‘You have five seconds.’ There was no play in the digitally altered voice.
Though Cassandra wasn’t able to move at all, including her facial expressions, the look in her eyes mutated just as much as the one in her husband’s. First, from terror to confusion.
‘What? Is that the question? This can’t be real. What the hell is going on? This has to be some sort of sick joke.’
Then from confusion to hope. Mr. J had been to the city where she was born so many times its name was probably etched in his brain. There was no way he could get this wrong.
‘... four... three...’
‘Cassandra was born in Santa Ana,’ Mr. J replied. ‘Orange County, California... what the fuck is this?’
The look in Cassandra’s eyes softened as new tears welled up in them. This time, they were tears of joy.
‘That is correct, John. Congratulations. See? Not that hard after all, was it? Now, all you need to do is give me just one more correct answer and you and your wife can go back to being a couple again, though I have a feeling that you’ll have quite a lot of explaining to do.’ A new short pause. ‘But let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. One more correct answer.’
All the while, Mr. J’s eyes never broke away from Cassandra’s. The hope in hers now joined by apprehension. The anger in his by disbelief.
‘Your wedding anniversary, John,’ the voice said. ‘When is it?’
On hearing the question, the look in Cassandra’s eyes mutated yet again. This time from apprehension to total panic.
Despite how much he adored her, for the last seven years, Mr. J had completely forgotten about their wedding anniversary. Cassandra had reminded him three times, but when he didn’t remember it for the fourth year running, she didn’t see the point in reminding him anymore. She never really blamed him, though. She knew that his memory lapse only began once she’d entered her depression phase, a phase he knew nothing about, as she had always gone to great lengths to keep it all from him and everyone else. As Cassandra, guided by her condition, distanced herself from Mr. J, he did the same, but in his own way. Forgetting their wedding anniversary had been a simple consequence of it.
The despair in Cassandra’s stare was mirrored in Mr. J’s entire demeanor. For the first time since his wife’s face had filled the small screen on his cellphone, he broke eye contact with her. As if searching the air around him, he first looked left, then right.
‘You have five seconds... four...’
Mr. J looked up at the ceiling. He knew the date. Of course he knew the date of his own wedding. He just had to search his memory.
‘Three...’
He breathed in a lot more anxiously than he thought he had.
‘Two...’
His eyes returned to the screen just in time to see that tears were once again cascading down his wife’s face. There was no joy in them.
‘One...’
‘Seventh of March,’ Mr. J finally blurted out. ‘We got married on the seventh of March. The year was nineteen ninety-six.’
Thirty-Four
Sitting inside interview room number two at Rampart Police Station on West Sixth Street, Dr. Gwen Barnes had the last of her stale coffee. As she swallowed the bitter liquid down, it made her stomach churn inside her.
‘This is it,’ she whispered, placing the now empty paper cup back on the large metal table in front of her and readily pushing it away. Even if it had been the most amazing gourmet coffee in the world, after five cups, there was no way she could stomach another one. What she really needed was a large glass of wine. No, scrap that. A whole bottle was a lot more like it.
‘C’mon, this is way past ridiculous now,’ she said, turning to look at the large, window-like mirror to her right. This wasn’t the first time Dr. Barnes had been inside a police interrogation room. She knew very well that what she was looking at was in fact a two-way mirror, but this wasn’t an interrogation. No one would be at the other side of it, observing her, though she wished someone were. Maybe someone was listening in.
‘This has got to be a joke,’ she said, loud enough for her voice to be picked up by the multidirectional microphone at the center of the table. ‘A detective must’ve come back by now. C’mon.’
As she finished her sentence, she turned, looked at the heavy door a few feet behind her and waited, urging it to be pushed open.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty seconds went by.
No luck.
Dr. Barnes took a deep breath and sat back in the uncomfortable metal chair.
Laid out on the table in front of her she had her cellphone, her car keys, the envelope that had been left stuck to the windshield of her Toyota Camry, and the note she had found inside it. Every time she looked at it, her heart skipped a beat inside her chest.
After reading the note down at the underground parking lot of the building where she had her psychotherapy practice, Dr. Barnes had laughed out loud, quickly discarding it as a ‘ridiculous, humorless joke’. But then she found what had been left inside the envelope for her, something that gave everything a lot more meaning, and the laughter immediately turned into desperate panic. Twenty-five minutes later, she had stormed into the police station on Venice Boulevard.
An officer had spoken to her and taken down all her details, but Dr. Barnes had demanded to speak with a detective. She didn’t want this brushed under a carpet.
The officer had explained that no detectives were available at that time and that she had two options. One: She was more than welcome to wait for one if she really felt the need to. Two: She could go home and a detective would either call her or drop by at a more convenient time.
The last thing Dr. Barnes wanted at that particular moment was to go home alone, so wait she did, for a very long time, but still, no detective came to meet her. After almost two hours, four horrible cups of coffee, and five increasingly angry trips to the reception window, the officer finally told her that he had managed to talk to one of their detectives over the phone, and he was on his way back. The officer, who could clearly understand Dr. Barnes’ frustration, had asked her if she wouldn’t prefer to wait in one of their interrogation rooms, away from the noise and the mess of the station’s reception lobby. Dr. Barnes happily accepted it. She was getting a little freaked out by the looks she was getting from the tattoo-covered, burly man, sitting across the hall from her.
That had been almost an hour ago.
Thirty-Five
Mr. J blinked once... twice.
Cassandra held her husband’s stare for a split second longer before squeezing her eyes tight.
Seventh of March, he thought. That’s correct, isn’t it? It’s got to be. Why else would the date have popped into my head the way it did? Cassandra and I got married twenty-one years ago, on the seventh of March, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles.