The Disappearance of Grace (16 page)

“How much worse could it get?”

“When I say you are under suspicion, it simply means you have not been eliminated as a suspect. You have no alibi and you've already been caught fabricating your blindness. Taken together with the heated argument you had with Grace only hours prior to her disappearance, we find we simply cannot rule you out as a suspect.”

“My blindness is real and it's temporary. My US military record reflects the truth.”

“Indeed it does. But that does not take away from the charade you carried on this morning.”

“I'm trying to protect Grace from any further harm.”

“You are only managing to cause her further harm by interrupting my investigation into her disappearance.” Holding out his hand. “Now if you don't mind, your passport, please.”

“I want to speak with Mr. Graham at the embassy.”

“He's been alerted and he's aware of our decision. He can't help you, Captain.”

“We'll just have to see about that, won't we, Detective?”

“You're free to contact him at your convenience.” Gesturing over his shoulder towards his desktop. “By all means, use my phone.”

I decide not to give him the satisfaction. Reaching into the interior pocket of my leather coat, I retrieve my passport, hand it over to him. What the hell choice do I have?

“As usual, Captain, I am happy to provide you with a lift back to your apartment.”

I stand.

“No grazie, Detective. I'd rather walk. For now, I can see.”

I go for the door.

“But what if you should go blind in the meantime?” he asks, some sarcasm sprinkled in his tone. “I would feel terrible unleashing you onto Venice without the benefit of your eyes. As you are already sorely aware, this city can be a confusing place even with perfect vision.”

In my mind, I'm picturing the overcoat man leaving a picture of Santa Lucia on my apartment floor while I'm asleep on the couch. Maybe he was the one who arranged the plates, bowls, knives, forks and boxes to resemble the water city of Venice. Maybe he somehow baited me up onto the roof of my building on the early morning before he was to kidnap Grace. Maybes. Possibilities. Or perhaps, just wild assumptions on my part.

“Nor is it without its dangers,” I say.

“Never a truer word has been spoken, Captain. We'll be in touch.”

“Find my Grace, Detective.”

“It will be our distinct pleasure. Believe me.”

I leave his office, praying that my eyesight stays with me long enough to make it back home.

Chapter 40

TURNS OUT I BARELY make it back before the lights start going out on my brain. I'm seeing only through a blur of distorted shapes and lights by the time I make the stairs back up to my apartment. Unlocking the door, I step inside, feel my way to the harvest table, then feel my way to the couch and sit down.

I barely feel the blow to the back of my head before I'm face down on the floor.

Unconscious.

Chapter 41

THE ELDERS GET UP from off their knees now that the prayers for the dead are over.

As they begin to approach us, my men instinctively pull back the bolts on their weapons. Lock and load.

The elders have piercing blue eyes that look like precious stones trapped inside chiseled granite busts. The women remain down on their knees wailing at the site of their loved ones, but the men seem not to notice. Their expressions are not angry but certainly not happy either. They are simply matter of fact as they approach me, not the least bit affected by the weapons being pointed at them.

With one eye focused on the elders and the other on the boy lying impossibly still on the gravelly earth, I feel the tension building in my men.

“Captain,” one of my corporals speaks up. “You wanna explain this situation to us?”

“SNAFU,” I say.

“Got that right,” says the corporal. “Situation Normal...All Fucked Up.”

He shoulders his weapon, plants a bead.

“Not yet,” I say.

Chapter 42

WHEN I WAKE I am lying on the bed, face up.

It's dark out, the time on my watch barely five o'clock in the morning. An hour before the dawn. I've been asleep for more than ten hours. As usual when I wake up these days, I can see. Perfectly. Clearly. Without the need for eyeglasses, which I have never needed. Not even for reading, even after turning forty.

I reach around to the back of my head and feel for a lump, or an abrasion, or a cut. Something to indicate that I was hit over the head when I came back home by someone who'd been waiting for me. The overcoat man maybe. No, scratch that. For certain, the overcoat man.

I feel the back of my head.

There's a lump that rises from out of the back of my lower head above the spine. It's a bruise and tender to the touch. I pull back my fingers and examine them for blood. There's no blood, but someone definitely hit me with something. A sap maybe.

My head throbs.

Whoever hit me was waiting for me inside my apartment.

Whoever hit me has a key to the place.

Whoever hit me doesn't want me dead. He wants to antagonize me. Torture me. Prove to me that he has power over me.

Whoever hit me is holding Grace captive.

Whoever hit me wears a long brown overcoat, black eyes, and he is following my every move.

Why?

I have no idea, other than he is not satisfied with simply abducting Grace. He wants something more. But what exactly does he want?

Without a note or a phone call or an email detailing a list of demands, I haven't the slightest clue. But there's one thing I do know. I have no idea if my eyesight is going to last. Best that I take advantage of the sight I've got for now.

I start by checking the cell phone to see if I received any incoming calls while I'd been knocked out. But there's nothing. I speed-dial Grace's number and get the usual song and dance. Setting the phone back onto the table, I slip out of bed, turn on the bedside lamp, and in the dull glow of the lamplight, see something extraordinary. The furniture of the studio apartment has been put back in its rightful place. The couch and the harvest table take up the center of the room, the length of the table pressed up against the back of the couch. All the plates, cups, bowls, spoons, knives and forks have been returned to the cupboards, the boxes and jars of food replaced on the shelves. Grace's unfinished painting remains undisturbed and ready for more brushwork, should she ever return to it.

I stare out the open French doors and feel the cool, fish-tainted air seeping in. In the distance I can make out the occasional electric light, but no voices or purring motors or footsteps. No Grace.

Stepping around the table and couch, I slide past the easel-mounted painting and I close the doors. Then I decide to take some aspirin and make some coffee. When it's done I take it to the couch and try to figure out exactly what happened when I arrived home yesterday afternoon. Did the overcoat man hit me over the head, then leave? Or did he clean up the place, and if so, why the hell bother? Why didn't I wake up on the floor or on the couch? How did I get to my bed? Or maybe I woke up on the floor and then, in a sleepwalking somnambulant state, cleaned up the studio and got in bed, fully clothed, and fell into a deep, dreaming sleep.

I think about finding the card of Santa Lucia on the floor yesterday morning.

If it hadn't been placed there by the overcoat man, then how did it get there?

Maybe it had been inside the apartment all along, care of the previous tenant. Maybe when I discovered it, I immediately interpreted it as a clue. Maybe the overcoat man simply followed me to the church of Santa Lucia instead of the other way around: Me following him.

My mind is spinning with questions but I have no answers. Why am I not calling the police right now about being attacked in my own place? The police…the detective…they don't trust me. They'll think I'm lying. At the very least, they'll use the attack to detain me inside a cell. For my own protection, they'll insist. Grace is still out there somewhere, at the mercy of the overcoat man. I can't allow myself to be locked away. I can't risk it.

I sip my coffee and wait for the onset of dawn.

The coffee is hot but the unanswerable questions that buzz around my brain like flies around the dead fill me with an ice cold dread.

The coffee cup nearly slips from my fingers when the phone rings. I set the cup down, sprint to the wall phone, pick it up. I don't utter a word. I just listen. The earpiece is filled with a near silent static. Like air blowing in through the line. Then I hear the voice.

“I. See.”

“What do you see?” I respond, as if at this point, I'm going to get an answer. “Tell me what you see.”

“I. See.”

His refusal to say anything but those two words are my cue to begin rattling off the obvious questions. Questions I know have no chance in hell of being answered.

“Do you have Grace? Do you wear a brown overcoat? Did you follow me to the Church of Santa Lucia? Have you been up in my apartment? Did you hit me over the head? For Christ's sake, please answer me.”

“I. See.” is all he says. And then the line goes dead.

Goes. Dead.

Chapter 43

I SLAM THE PHONE into the wall-mounted cradle, wondering if the police have tracked the call, and if there is anything they can do about it at this point. I run my hand behind my head, feel for the bruise. Just touching the tender skin and flesh sends shockwaves of pain throughout my head. The smart thing to do would be to get myself to a hospital. But that would only prevent me from doing something about finding Grace.

Outside the French doors, past Grace's painting, I make out the first rays of the sun exploding over the horizon. Soon it will be first light, and the second full day of Grace gone missing. I feel my eyes drifting to the bed and the baggage stacked beside it. I see my computer bag. It's gone untouched since I arrived more than a week ago now.

For the moment, I can see.

Maybe it's time to go online and do a little detecting of my own.

I set the laptop on the harvest table, boot it up, wait for an internet connection. When it arrives I bring up Google search and CNN world news. I scour the headlines for the latest events.. Another suicide bomber in Kabul. The military withdrawal from Iraq. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Myanmar. Or what we all used to know as Burma. I check all the stories and see nothing. Until I decide to type in, “US woman missing in Italy.”

And there it is.

A small side-bar story of just a few paragraphs. It's not accompanied by a photo.

The piece, written by a woman named Alessandra Betti, simply states that a woman, a US citizen, by the name of Grace Blunt, an artist from Troy, New York, was reported “missing” yesterday by authorities in Venice, Italy. “Having traveled to Italy with her fiancée, a Captain Nick Angel of the US National Guard, Blunt is said to have disappeared from a popular tourist café in Piazza San Marco. While it's still too early to tell if her disappearance was the result of her own decision to leave what un-named witnesses describe as a ‘troubled relationship,' or the result of foul play, the detective in charge of the matter, Detective Paulo Carbone, has reported that Blunt's passport was located floating in the Grand Canal. While the US Embassy states that no US officials have yet committed to the search for the American, they do not rule out the possibility.”

That's it.

No mention of my temporary blindness. No mention of the overcoat man. No mention of the strange “I. See.” phone calls. No mention of the overcoat man having followed me to Santa Lucia yesterday morning. Nothing.

My heart races and my brain buzzes with adrenalin. Why didn't the reporter contact me for my side of the story? And who fed her the not–entirely-accurate information about Grace and I having a troubled relationship?

I click on Alessandra Betti's by-line.

The link offers up her bio. No contact info. Not even an email address.

Maybe it would interest her to know that I have an opinion on the matter of my missing fiancée. But then, how will it be possible for me to contact her? I see a place where I am invited to comment on the above article.

Perfect.

Chapter 44

HERE'S WHAT I WRITE: “The woman you are writing about, Grace Blunt, is my fiancée. She was taken from me while we were having lunch at a café across from the cathedral in San Marco. I have been suffering a recurring, temporary blindness since my participation in the war in Afghanistan and had no way of seeing her being taken, nor the individual who did the taking. But only moments prior to her disappearance, Grace had been complaining of a man in a long brown overcoat who was staring at her. He was a man with a cropped beard, black hair, and black eyes hidden behind sunglasses. It turns out he's been following us all week. He approached our table, which upset Grace. Within seconds, she was gone. Please contact me here as soon as you see this. I am desperate.”