The Vanishing Expert Read online

  Kate began to cry, and Edward embraced her. “Thank you,” Edward said to her. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.” The boat jerked to one side, forcing them to step apart to regain their balance. “I need to go.”

  “Wait,” Kate said. She reached into her coat and withdrew a small waterproof pouch. She handed it to her brother, who studied it curiously.

  “It’s just some extra money,” she said. “In case you need it. I would have gotten you more, but I could only manage to get fifteen hundred without Kenny knowing about it.”

  He accepted it reluctantly. “I’ll pay you back,” Edward said as he slipped it inside his wetsuit. He embraced Kate once again. As they drew apart this time, Kate gripped his arm and looked at him imploringly.

  “You can still change your mind,” she said. “You can still go back.”

  Edward smiled sadly. “Be careful getting home. Stay close to shore. It’s getting pretty rough.” Without hesitation, he jumped over the side into the frigid water.

  He’d carefully chosen a remote spot to come ashore to avoid being seen, but he looked around nervously as he climbed out of the water, before running to the Jeep he’d stashed nearby just a day earlier. He quickly changed into the dry clothes he’d left in the back seat, and drove away, heading north and out of the state that had been his home most of his life.

  Life begins with a death.

  When he arrived at the tiny studio apartment he’d rented in Waterville, Maine, he was prepared for a week of seclusion. He’d stocked the refrigerator and the cupboards with food a week earlier. After a long hot shower, he crawled into bed and fell asleep to the drone and flicker of the television.

  It wasn’t until the next evening that Edward Moody’s disappearance first began to make the news. He shivered when he saw his picture on the television, and the brief glimpses of the aftermath. There was an interview with a spokesperson for the Coast Guard who assured viewers that a search for Edward Moody was ongoing, however, given the location where the boat was found and the temperature of the water, the status had changed from a rescue effort to a recovery. The message was clear: at this point, they were looking for a body.

  There was footage of Gloria, her tears mixed with the drizzling rain that fell upon her as Kate and Kenny helped her to their car. There was a shot of the Chris Craft being pulled out of the water. Edward was relieved that his boat had been recovered, but he couldn’t erase the image of Gloria, his inconsolable widow. He knew he could erase her pain and grief with a phone call and a hasty return. It was a fleeting thought, quickly dismissed, and he turned off the television as soon as the story ended, and faded off into a fitful sleep.

  For those he left behind, the events of that tragic day would be far too real to dismiss.

  When the Coast Guard cruiser reached the shore that morning, Gloria was helped onto the pier, and without so much as a glance over her shoulder at Edward’s prized antique boat, she walked with Kate and Kenny to their car, where she laid down across the back seat and sobbed while Kenny drove them all home. Gloria had always seen the Chris Craft as a rival for her husband’s attention, and never more than on that bleak May morning when they found it adrift off the coast in Narragansett Bay. That boat had always been Edward’s way of escaping from his life and, she thought, from her as well. Now it had taken him away from her for good.

  Kate stayed with Gloria for the first two days in a vain effort to console her, and she grew increasingly angry with her brother for what he’d done. She’d always blamed Gloria for a share of her brother’s misfortunes, but on the morning that Edward disappeared, and during the days that followed, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Gloria, weak with despair and numb from the shock of losing her husband. Edward’s death was a hoax, she knew, but Gloria’s pain was real.

  In the days following Edward Moody’s disappearance, those who knew and loved him held desperately to the thin hope of his being found alive— everyone but Kate, who knew the truth but remained silent. She had to look into the mournful face of her brother’s grieving widow and offer her weak consolation, knowing it was all a lie. She tried in vain to work up tears at his funeral, when all she really felt was relief that Edward’s plan had succeeded, and guilt for the willing role she’d played in it.

  Within a few days the stories about Edward Moody’s disappearance tapered off, especially in Maine, where the fate of a Rhode Island boater lost in Narragansett Bay was hardly a cause for concern, except that it was noted he was an alumnus of the University of Maine in Orono. Any stories about the search for Edward Moody’s body were few and far between, appearing deeper and deeper into the paper each day until finally, like Edward, they disappeared altogether.

  It was a relief when it all ended. And only then did James Perkins begin to emerge from the tiny studio apartment in Waterville.

  During those first weeks of self-imposed isolation in Waterville, he often thought of Gloria and Kate and his father. In time, he’d be able to distract himself from those thoughts, but for now, they weighed heavily on his mind, as if he were grieving the loss of Edward Moody along with everyone else.

  He was careful not to become a familiar face about town, fearful that someone might recognize him. He grew a beard, his first since college— Gloria had hated it— and he allowed his hair to grow longer, over his ears and collar but still neat. In time, as the beard began to fill in, and the stories of Edward Moody’s curious disappearance faded from the newspapers, he became more confident that he wouldn’t be recognized.

  When he felt the urge to be among people, he waited until evening and slipped into a neighborhood bar, where he could sit in the shadows with his beer, his attention divided between the television and the locals. He rarely spoke to anyone in Waterville. When he did, he was friendly, but more often he was aloof.

  He made no effort to make new friends in Waterville. It was a transitional period for him, he knew— nothing more than a stop along the way in his journey to find a new life. But even as he became more comfortable with the notion that he’d succeeded in his deception, there was, on occasion, a reminder to him that he still needed to be careful.

  He took a construction job working for a contractor in nearby Gardiner. One morning in late August, as he ate his lunch on a construction site, a fellow worker named Joe Tibbits approached him with his cooler in one hand and a newspaper in the other. From the beginning he noticed that Joe had a ritual of reading the daily paper during lunch, and for that reason alone, James chose to avoid him. If anyone would recognize him as being the long lost Edward Moody from Rhode Island, it would be Joe Tibbits, who devoured the daily news as voraciously as he did his lunch. As a result, James usually saw to it that he was conveniently out of sight when Joe Tibbits opened his morning paper. But on that day in July, Joe found James sitting in the shade near his Jeep, and Joe came over and sat down beside him.

  James couldn’t take his eyes off the newspaper in Joe’s hand, and as Joe opened it, James tried to glance at the headlines, though there hadn’t been any stories about Edward Moody in weeks. Judging by how quickly Joe turned the pages, never reading more than a few lines of any story, James assumed it must be a slow news day. Ordinarily, Joe Tibbits pored over every story, but on that day, nothing seemed to hold his interest, and James was relieved as he saw Joe turn to the back page, certain that he and his secret were safe for another day. Joe took a big bite of his sandwich as he quickly read one last story tucked away on the back page, but James paid no attention.

  “Hey, Jimbo,” Joe Tibbits said, his mouth still full. “You read about that guy down in Rhode Island that fell off his boat?”

  James felt his stomach tighten. “No,” he said. “But I haven’t seen the paper today.”

  Joe took a gulp of his soda to wash down the sandwich so he could talk. “No. This happened a while ago. The dumb son-of-a-bitch went out on his boat in a storm, and he never came back. They think he got knocked overboard by a wave or somethi
ng and drowned. They never found the guy.”

  “At this point, they probably never will,” James said.

  Joe looked at James and smiled, a big broad knowing smile. Joe always looked everyone squarely in the eye when he spoke to them. It was a quality that James generally admired in people, except that now, he had a secret he was trying to protect, and Joe’s glare made him uneasy. He casually turned away from Joe, whose gaze lingered on him a bit too long, and he went back to his lunch. When he looked back at his companion, he realized that Joe was still looking at him, still smiling.

  “Nope,” Joe said, returning to his sandwich. “I figure he’s long gone.”

  It was an ambiguous remark that James considered for too long, until it was too late to respond to it. He finally just let it lie.

  It wasn’t until they were finished with their lunches and were preparing to return to work that James noticed the date of the newspaper Joe Tibbits had been reading. It was lying in the dirt between them, carefully folded, but James could clearly see that the newspaper was dated June 3, 1990— the week immediately following Edward Moody’s disappearance.

  It made no sense to him at first, but as he thought about it throughout the afternoon, he became certain that Joe finding him, sitting down beside him with the newspaper, and remarking on the Rhode Island man who had disappeared in May had been carefully staged. It troubled him long into the night as he sat alone in his apartment, unable to sleep, wondering if his plan was about to be exposed.

  He spent the next several evenings at home, afraid to venture out. During the day, he worked diligently, rarely speaking to anyone, being particularly careful to avoid Joe Tibbits, who continued to read the newspaper every day at noon. But Joe never mentioned another word about the dumb son-of-a-bitch from Rhode Island, and James decided Joe Tibbits had proven his point— that he knew— and he was just biding his time.

  From that point on, James was cautious, always fearing that someone, somewhere, would make the connection and discover that he was really Edward Moody. James lived a solitary existence in Waterville, and when he left to work for Peter Langston, he did so quickly and quietly, without telling anyone where he was headed.

  He hoped to build a life in Bar Harbor. He was relieved to put Waterville and Joe Tibbits behind him, and he hoped that Joe Tibbits would forget all about him once he was gone.

  He would not.

  5

  Weight Of The World

  Tracy Kendrick met Edward when they were both freshman at the University of Maine, and they quickly became friends at a time when neither of them knew anyone. When Tracy developed a crush on him, Edward was the last to see it. He often denied, to anyone who noticed the attention Tracy paid him, that they were anything more than just good friends, never knowing the disappointment Tracy felt in hearing such things.

  When he moved back to Rhode Island after graduation, Tracy followed, settling for a job she despised at a local insurance company in order to be close to him. After Edward married Gloria in the spring of 1981, Tracy chose to remain in Rhode Island, consoling herself with the idea that, if she couldn’t have him, she could at least be near him.

  Over time, Tracy and Gloria even became friends. Gloria was aware of Tracy’s affection for Edward even as he denied them, but Tracy had a vulnerability that drew people to her. While most women would likely feel threatened by Tracy’s interest in her husband, Gloria, instead, grew very fond of her. It was one of Gloria’s more attractive qualities that she was always very protective of anyone who seemed to need her, and it was one of the things that eventually distanced her from Edward, since he never seemed to need her at all.

  Tracy wasn’t a helpless person by nature, but for some reason, she tried so hard to please Edward that she simply lost herself along the way. She consulted him on nearly every decision, and she followed his advice to the letter. He wasn’t always right— she knew that— but it comforted her to know that someone was watching over her.

  Now that he was gone, she felt vulnerable and alone. For days after Edward’s disappearance, she was unable to leave her apartment, and she lay sobbing in the darkness of her room listening to the records they’d once listened to in college. Every one of them reminded her of Edward in some way, and she wept through every song until she finally drifted off to sleep with Edward’s name perched upon her lips.

  During the months that followed, Tracy remained something of a recluse, venturing out of her apartment only to go to work. Everything she did was an effort. Most days, she found it nearly impossible to face another meaningless day, and over time, she missed so much work, that her supervisor finally called her at home and told her not to bother returning.

  When her money began to run out, she took a series of temp jobs, spending her evenings at one of a handful of neighborhood bars where she could be left in peace while she numbed herself with alcohol. She frequently missed work when the morning simply crept up on her, and the placement agency threatened to dismiss her unless she became more dependable. So, the next time she found herself unable to face the day, she simply deadened her grief with a shot of tequila.

  With that began her habit of drinking in the mornings; not much at first, just enough to soften the edges of her ragged emotions. It didn’t take long before her employers began to notice; some claimed they smelled the alcohol on her breath, though she was quite good at concealing it. In the end, it didn’t matter; the agency simply stopped calling her.

  Her roommate, Linda, grew frustrated with her when she fell behind on the rent, but Linda knew only too well that Tracy was fragile, and she couldn’t bring herself to ask her to move out.

  By September, what had started out as grief had completely consumed Tracy, and Linda grew concerned enough that she considered calling Tracy’s parents to intervene. But Tracy had refused help from them a few months earlier. They wanted her to move back to Maine, to put some distance between her and the reminders of her recent loss. When Tracy refused, there had been harsh words, and her parents withdrew from her. Since then, Tracy had little use for them, her contempt for them usually growing more severe when she’d been drinking.

  In the past, there would have been a simple answer; if Tracy needed help, she would have called Edward. Now that he was gone, there was no one. Not knowing where else to turn, Linda decided to call Kate.

  Kate was distressed to hear about Tracy. She’d lost touch with Tracy shortly after the memorial service, and she assumed, since Tracy made no attempt to contact her, that it was a mutual decision to carry on with their lives separately. As for Kate, it was easier to keep Tracy at a distance than to be confronted by the pain her brother’s disappearance had caused her, especially considering her own hand in it.

  Even so, knowing how much Tracy meant to her brother, she decided to help. She visited Linda, and gave her Tracy’s share of the rent, which was about to come due, and she reached out to Tracy. Most of their time together was spent discussing Edward, Kate offering the same assurances to Tracy that she’d offered to Gloria— that Edward had gone to a better place. It was only when Tracy began asking her if she believed in an afterlife that Kate became fearful for her.

  “Do you really think he’s in a better place?” Tracy asked her. Her voice had the tone of a curious child, disturbing because of the subject and Tracy’s almost ghoulish fascination with it.

  “I want to believe that,” Kate said. “But I don’t know what happens to us. Nobody does.” She frowned at Tracy. “And I’m not really in any hurry to find out, and you shouldn’t be either.”

  Tracy seemed surprised. “Don’t you miss him?” she asked.

  “I miss him,” Kate said. “I miss him every day. But we have to get on with our lives. I know that’s what he’d want.”

  Tracy considered that for a moment, and then she looked sadly at Kate. “I don’t know if that’s what I want,” she said.

  That was when Kate first considered that Tracy might actually be less inte
rested in rebuilding her life than in finding the courage to end it.

  At only sixty years old, Bud Moody’s body and his mind were failing him, the effects of two strokes and the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He walked only with assistance, and what the nurses and orderlies initially thought was an inability to feed himself was soon discovered to be an aversion to what he often referred to as ‘hospital gruel’. He always spat out the word gruel as if the word itself had the same vile taste as the pastes and puddings the hospital tried to pass off as food. He sometimes skipped entire meals, save for the pudding, grumbling that he just wasn’t hungry. When he was presented with sweets that Kate baked at home and presented to him, both his appetite and his dexterity miraculously improved.

  While his memories of his childhood and the early years of his marriage were as vivid as if the events had happened just days earlier, everything that actually happened days earlier was little more than a vague notion, if not completely lost to him. He often mistook Kate for his older sister, Gin, who now lived in New York, and he was convinced that Edward and Kate were still children who might come bounding into the room at any moment. He sometimes clung to that belief even when his now-grown children were right there in the room with him.

  Leaving his father when he did was Edward’s greatest regret. He knew he should be caring for his father at this time in his life, trying to make his final years a little easier. Instead, he deserted him, leaving his father, as frail as he was, to grieve over the loss of his only son. He might have found some consolation in knowing that, in the months that followed Edward’s tragic disappearance, no one had been able to convince Bud Moody that Edward was dead. Kate and Kenny tried to explain it to him on two occasions, but Bud became confused and agitated at the suggestion.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted at Kate on one occasion. “He was just here!”