The Man From Primrose Lane Part 8

"So," he agreed.

"Don't you have a tape recorder or a notebook or something?"

"Nah. Whatever I don't remember, I just make up."

She smiled thinly.

"If I decide to use any of this, I'll call you up and get it on the record. I'm still fishing around on this. Not actively reporting yet."

"Sounds like a clever way to make me feel comfortable."

"You should have been a reporter."

"I could've," she said. "Ask away, Woodward."

"Did you know the Man from Primrose Lane? Ever met him?"

"Don't think so. But the detectives tell me I must have crossed paths with him a few times. Except ... they showed me some of the man's biography or whatever on me. And there's a couple things in there that he couldn't have known. I mean, no way was he there. Like, for instance, there's details in there about a summer camp I went to out on Kelleys Island one summer. A 4-H thing. It was a small deal. Twenty kids. Five counselors. I know them all. I can tell you, he was not there. And there are details-what I ate, s.h.i.t like that-from a vacation I took to Florida when I was eight. We stayed at my aunt's house on Perdido Key. It was the off-season. We were the only ones around. He could not have known that stuff. The detectives believe he followed me around my whole life, observing almost everything I did. I can't explain it, how he knows all that stuff, but I'm almost positive he wasn't following me. He couldn't have been. He doesn't even look familiar."

"What else did the detectives ask you?"

"They just wanted to know if I ever remembered seeing him. They showed me a photo of him. But he didn't look like anyone I remember. But maybe I did see him when I was really young. I don't know what I've forgotten, you know? But he's not someone who I saw enough of that I would recognize him. They even hypnotized me."

"Did that do anything?"

Katy pantomimed jerking off. The mushrooms arrived and she helped herself to the biggest, blowing away the heat with those cupid lips.

"Have you come up with any theories?"

"I've thought about it," she said. "A lot. It's weird thinking there was some stranger out there who knew everything about me. It's like I have no secrets with him. Like we shared some relationship I didn't choose. I think he must know the worst things I've ever done, the stuff I meant to keep to myself. Like, he probably even saw stuff like what I did with Mr. Murphy behind the track utility shed when I was fourteen. And yet, I guess he was in love with me in spite of these things. Creepy. To the max. But theories? The best I can do is that somehow it's all just a big coincidence, that he was writing about some imaginary girl who just happened to have done everything I did in real life. Or maybe we were psychically linked or something. It's ... ineffable, right? I always liked that word. Funny word. What about you? Have you figured it out yet?"

"No clue," he said. "But it's pretty cool."

"Not really."

He leaned back, rubbing his fingers through his too-gray hair. How old do I look to her? he wondered. "Other than this, what's the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you?"

She laughed. "In Cleveland Heights? Nothing weird happens in the Heights. It's the safest, most boring suburb of the city, haven't you heard? Maybe once some mother forgot to pack her princess a snack for lunch, but that's about it. Haven't you been there? I left to find weirdness. My life was sooooo boring. Until this. Be careful what you wish for, right?"

"No strange encounters when you were alone? No one peeping in your windows? No one being too aggressive?"

Katy reached out and grabbed his arm with both of her hands. They were warm. Clammy. He could feel her sweat on him and it excited him. "Oh, f.u.c.k," she said.

"What?"

"David."

She'd said his name. It was like an incantation, a seal closing, somewhere in his mind.

"David," she said. "I think I might have seen him. Once. Holy s.h.i.t. How could I have forgotten? Yes. Yes, it might have been him."

"Who might have been him?"

"This guy. When I was ten. Or eleven. I was waiting for my mom to come pick me up in front of Big Fun in Coventry. You know, that cool toy store with the old lunch boxes and s.h.i.t? I was twirling around this lamppost out front. And I look up and there's this guy walking toward me like he knows me. He has khakis and a windbreaker-one of those Members Only jackets. It was April. I must have been ten. I see him cross the street and walk past a couple other kids and come straight at me, watching me the whole time. And he opens his mouth to say something and I remember thinking, Who does this guy think I am? Maybe he thinks I'm his niece or something, because he looks like he knows me and wants to talk to me but I don't know him."

"He was the Man from Primrose Lane?"

"No. Shut up a second. No, he wasn't. What I was going to say was that this guy was almost to me and all of a sudden this old man comes running over at top speed out of nowhere and slams into the guy. Wham! Knocks the man right into the brick wall outside Big Fun. Scared the s.h.i.t out of me. I ran inside and when I finally looked out again, the old man was chasing the guy across the street. At the time, all I could think was that maybe he owed the guy some money. But that old man. I think that was him. It could have been. He at least sort of looked like the Man from Primrose Lane as far as I can remember." She slowly let go her grip on his arm. "Sorry," she said. "I got freaked out a little. Goose b.u.mps."

His mind buzzed with possibilities. Was this the reason Sackett was also interested in Elaine's cold case? Had the detective found other threads linking Katy to Elaine's abduction? "Did you fill out a police report?" he asked.

"No. I mean, I didn't even tell my parents. What would I have said? That I saw two men fighting in Coventry?"

"Don't you think it's possible that the man in the Members Only jacket wanted to harm you? And that the old man intervened?"

"Really? Looked like the guy remembered me. He probably thought I was someone he knew."

"So why did the old man attack him?"

"How the f.u.c.k should I know? I was ten. If the other man wanted to molest me or something, why didn't the old man come back and tell me so after he chased him away? Why didn't the old man go to the police?"

"I'm just thinking out loud here."

"I know," she said. "Right?" She drank her beer and looked at the photographs on the wall again. They were not amateur, after all, she noticed distantly. The lighting was too crisp and they shared the same fluffy cloud background. People were weird. Maybe that was the simple message here. "Why do you think Members Only wanted to hurt me?"

"Because it's a story I've heard before," he said.

"Shut the front door."

David nodded. "My wife. Her twin sister was abducted when they were ten. The man would have gotten my wife, too, if some strange guy hadn't shown up in a car and chased him away. No one ever saw the kidnapper or the strange man again."

"Is that why ... s.h.i.t. Sorry. None of my business."

"Is that why she committed suicide?" he asked. He saw the Cavalier bearing down on the Dollar General at seventy miles an hour, Elizabeth staring forward in a trance-or had she been smiling? "Postpartum depression was likely the trigger. But yes, I think so. Elaine's abduction ... it was like..."

A Rube. The ball clunked into a lever that set a domino tumbling forward and over a ledge.

"... it set off a chain reaction of events that inevitably led to my wife committing suicide. It was always in the cards. Just a matter of when, really."

"You miss her?"

"Every second of every day," he said. "At night I can still feel her lying next to me. And I don't mean I can 'feel' her lying next to me. I mean, I can feel her skin against mine. It's like an amputated limb, I guess. That ghost sensation that takes up the missing s.p.a.ce of what was there before. She was cold. She was unkind at times. And she'd rather flip someone the bird than get to know them. But beneath all that was this warm being, this beautiful girl only I knew was there. And that's why I miss her. Because I've never met anyone else quite like that."

"I wonder if we crossed paths. Was she anywhere near the Cleveland Heights/Coventry area when this abduction happened?" Katy asked.

"No," he said.

"What else do you know about your wife's case?"

"Nothing. I never looked into it."

Katy laughed. "What? Why? I mean, that's what you do."

"Because," he said. "Because. Because. Because."

Katy let it drop. She was, in her own way, beginning to understand a little about him, too. This was an occupational hazard David did not love-the intimate bond that forms between a victim of circ.u.mstance and the interviewer. Frankly, it made him feel a little like a prost.i.tute sometimes, all this trading of emotion for words, words, words.

"There's one big difference between my story and hers," she said.

"What's that?"

"Members Only didn't abduct anyone that day."

"Because the Man from Primrose Lane interrupted him," said David.

"It was so random, though. Why didn't he just go around the corner and get the next girl?"

"I don't believe it was random."

"I'm missing something, I think. You lost me," she said, laughing nervously.

Instead of answering, David pulled out his wallet. Inside was a picture of his wife on a rocking chair in their apartment, reading a Christopher Pike book.

"Oh, wow. Uncanny, right? If I just borrowed my mom's preppy clothes and cut my hair an inch and, you know, didn't wear makeup ... maybe you wouldn't mistake me for your wife, but I bet other people would. It's the cheeks that make us look different."

"And the lips."

"There's some serious psychological s.h.i.t going down here, David," said Katy. "Some f.u.c.king creepy-a.s.s s.h.i.t. Me and you. You and me. This cannot happen. Seriously. And not just because I have a fiance. It's like if Hayley Mills drowned at that summer camp and her boyfriend shacked up with her twin when she came home. Have you even realized yet that, if you're right, about me being connected to this other abduction, you and the kidnapper have the same taste in women?"

"I was nine when Elaine was abducted."

"I'm not implying, I'm just saying. It's f.u.c.king weird."

"Yeah."

"You convinced me," she said. "There's a connection there, somewhere. So, what? The old man was this creep's partner and he had second thoughts at the last moment?"

"Both times?" asked David. He shook his head and shrugged. "I've got no explanation."

"Makes your job easier now."

"How's that?"

"All you have to do is figure out who knows me and your wife. Figure out where we crossed paths. The guy had to know us both. That has to narrow down your list of suspects."

"Good point. a.s.suming they are connected. It is possible it's a coincidence."

Katy waved her hand at him as if swatting away the notion of coincidence as a whole. This was a girl who still believed in fate. "Where and when was your wife's sister abducted?" she asked.

"Lakewood, 1989."

"Hmmm. West side versus east side. How many people frequent both ends? Not many. Delivery guys, taxicab drivers, reporters. So, what, after Elaine, this guy in the Members Only jacket was hanging around, waiting for another opportunity, for ten years, before he tried to take me?"

"Unless there are other missing redheads around here," he said. "Or maybe he was in prison."

"And somewhere, for whatever reason, the Man from Primrose Lane is keeping an eye on him? Are these things usually this complicated?"

"They only appear to be," said David. "The explanation is always elegantly simple. I guarantee that when we find this man, we'll smack ourselves for not seeing him sooner."

The waitress returned to ask about another round.

"Could you tell me something?" asked Katy. "What's with the clown nose pictures?"

The woman rolled her eyes. Obviously, this was the 347th time she'd been asked this question. David doubted the credibility of her answer, which, he believed, she had concocted as a ba.n.a.l autoresponse to customers who wished to waste her time. "Mitch, the owner, he just wore this clown nose someone left here one night. His wife took a picture of him and hung it behind the bar. Then he took one of her. And then it became a thing." The waitress shrugged and walked away.

"That was a simple explanation," said Katy. "But not exactly elegant."

"It was untrue."

"How do you know?"

"Truth is always simple but it's never that boring."

She lived in the "up" of an old house rented out to college students near the university. He parked the Volkswagen out front and kept it idling. It was warm inside, warmer than the fall air outside, which felt like early winter. Katy turned to him, and as she did, her hair brushed over his jacket.

"As far as first dates go, Mr. Neff, this is definitely one of my 'Top Five' weirdest."

"One of?"

"I once went to see Rocky Horror with a trans woman who thought she loved me, but that's a story for another day." She smiled at him and his mind was a void of pleasant light. "Can I tell you a secret?" she asked.

"Sure."

She leaned to him, to his ear, and he felt the swell of her breast against his arm. She cupped her hand around his ear. The touch of her hand against his skin lit up his senses as much as they could be lit, and he was suddenly sad again to be numbed by medicine. This was a peak he wished to experience in full. "This is just to say..." But instead of finishing the sentence, Katy pushed her lips against him, parted them with her tongue, and gently, briefly, licked his lobe. Then she was back in her seat, rummaging in her purse for her keys. "I'm going to go in now," she said. "You have my permission to jerk off to my Facebook alb.u.ms tonight. Call me sometime? Let me know how your investigation is going, okay?"

He watched her bound up the front steps and disappear into the house.

There was a message waiting for him when he returned home. Cindy Nottingham had stopped by the house and left her card. Wanted to talk. About what, she hadn't told Aunt Peggy.

Cindy was a blogger-one of Ohio's most popular gossipmongers, a talking head on the cable news channels whenever a celebrity from Cleveland went to rehab or got a divorce. A few years ago, Cindy had worked with David at the Independent. It was his fault she'd been fired.

That she was showing up on his doorstep now, as he began work on his first piece of journalism in nearly four years, filled him with unease. He was worried about what she knew. He was worried even more about what she thought she knew.

It took the fun out of that nibble in the car. His sleep that night was broken and troubled. For that, and so many other reasons, he hated Cindy Nottingham.