The Vanished, Part Two

Back home I looked into Silk’s Jewelry and the macrobiotics store, Soul & Body & Soul. The macrobiotics place had two other stories, one downtown and the other in a different suburb. All owned by a company called MacRo Inc. 

Two months ago they’d issued a press release recalling a proprietary product called Bluejacket Root. Instead of improving memory, it could apparently cause hallucinations. At least in some small percentage of people who took it. Customers were urged to throw it away and return their bottles for a full refund. 

            Silk’s was owned by a partnership, Zach and Jonathan Silk. Brothers, and serial entrepreneurs. In the last 20 years they’d launched a game shop, a bar, two restaurants, a café, a shipping office, and then a jewelry store. All of them had failed, but somehow they’d kept going on. Maybe their family had money to waste.

            I couldn’t find anything tying either business to any unexplained disappearances, but I wasn’t done looking. How hard had the local police pushed into the case? Ginny was disappointed in their efforts, but that was pretty typical for families of the vanished. It was why she hired me, after all. I’d keep digging until I’d run down all the leads I could find.

            Rachel came in from a meeting downtown. “How’s the case?” She pulled off her sweater and kicked off her shoes.

            “Nowhere yet. A few leads. And I’ve got other cases.” I sipped some coffee. 

            “What about Neral?”

            “He’s fine. Says hi. What do you want for dinner?” It was my night to cook, nightmares or no nightmares.

            Rachel planted her hands on her hips. “You know what I mean.”

            I sighed. “He gave me some prescriptions. I picked them up on the way home. And I’m seeing him next week. He thinks I may have issues.”

            She snorted. “He’s got that right.”

            “Hey, I’ve got no more issues than any P.I. who regularly tangles with ghosts and demons and cyborgs and possessed dogs and . . . huh.” I shrugged. “Okay, he may have a point.”

            She leaned close to me. “These prescriptions, are they going to affect your, uh, performance?”

            I kissed her. “Only one way to find out.”

 

I was running again. Hurtling down the dark path, desperate to escape whatever was chasing me. It wasn’t just one thing—I heard barking, howling, roars, screeches, all right behind me, just inches from my neck. 

            The path under my feet was jagged glass and hard rocks. Every step was agony shooting through my legs. The air was foul, like sewage mixed with vomit. Branches snapped against my arms, bugs flew into my eyes, dirt flew in my face, choking me.

            Lightning exploded in the sky, and for a second I could see everything. I was surrounded by demons, by vampire bats, by spiders leaping from tangled webs in the trees. Grinning skulls loomed in my face, lizards crawled up my legs. I wanted to scream, but my throat was twisted, and I could barely breathe. They were coming, they were coming for me, and I couldn’t—

            “Tom!” Rachel’s voice jarred me. So did the slap across my face. “Tom, goddamn it! You’re safe! Wake up!”

            I opened my eyes, gasping for breath. Rachel was kneeling over me, her face red. She shook my shoulders. “Snap out of it!”

            “I’m okay!” I lifted my head. I was in the living room, flat on my back, next to the TV. The table was on its side, all the books and magazines and the TV remote scattered over the rug. “Sorry.”

            “So much for Neral’s pills.” She slumped against the sofa, breathing hard herself.

            “He said they’d take a while. Maybe up to a week.” I sat up. A bottle of water from the table sat next to my foot. I grabbed a drink.

            Rachel sighed. “Look, I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She pulled the bottle from my hand and took a swig herself. “I mean—I’m sorry, I know this is hell for you, every night—”

            “I know, I know.” I rubbed my temples. “Maybe you should just chain me up in here. You’ve got chains. I never asked why.”

            “They’re from that time you were a vampire.”

            “You had them before. I always wondered.”

            She patted my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

            “Right.” I stood up. “Let’s go to bed.”

            “No funny business.” She dropped the empty bottle on the floor next to the magazines. “You’re cleaning that up tomorrow.”

            “No funny business. Clean up. Got it.” I nodded. “At least the pills didn’t stop me from—”

”That’s what I mean by no funny business.” She punched my chest. “Take a shower. You sure work up a sweat.”

It wasn’t all from the night terrors. But she said no funny business. I headed for the bathroom.

 

I called my client the next morning. “That macrobiotics store your mother was in? So it turns out that they’ve had trouble with the federal government about a supplement they were selling for memory issues that turned out to cause seizures and psychotic breaks. It wasn’t the ginkgo, but I’m wondering if there was anything else in her bag.” 

            “I don’t think so. I’ll check again.” She sighed. “Is there anything else?”

            “Not yet. I’m still looking into the jewelry store where your mother was last seen.”

            “Yeah, there was a necklace from that place. I showed it to the police, but they didn’t think it had anything to do with the disappearance.”

“I’ll keep checking. But I’ve got to be honest, I’m not very optimistic. It’s been two months.”

            “Yeah.” Another sigh, longer this time. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I can’t stop thinking that she’s somewhere. Out there. I don’t know. It’s more than just a feeling.”

            Something in her voice made me curious. “What do you mean?”

            “Well . . . I didn’t want to tell you, because you’ll think it’s silly, but I hired you in particular because you have this reputation for, uh, strange stuff?”

            I do. “Go ahead.”

            “I’ve been, uh, having dreams about her. She’s chained up, in her underwear, in some dark room. I’m trying to get to her, but I can’t move. She can’t see me. I wake up and I can’t get back to sleep.” She sounded tired. “Crazy, right?”

            “No. Not at all. I’ve been dealing with some—disturbing dreams myself. From another case.” I didn’t want to go into details. “Whatever else Freud said, dreams are sometimes telling us things we need to know.”

            “Okay.” She seemed relieved that I believed her. “So is this it? You’re done?”

            “Not quite yet.” I still wanted to know more about the jewelry store. “Check your mother’s purse for anything else from the Soul & Body & Mind store.”

            “Okay. You think maybe she took something that gave her amnesia or something?” She sounded skeptical.

            “It’s one possibility.” A faint one, that probably wouldn’t check out once she’d looked in her mother’s purse. But you have to look everywhere. 

            “I’ll call you back.”

            Rachel came into the office carrying coffee in her Supergirl mug. “Feeling any better?”

            “A little.” I looked her over. Shorts and a tank top. “A little better.”

            She smirked. “Going to work out later. No point getting dressed, right?”

            “I totally approve.” My phone buzzed with an email. My client. She’d sent me a picture—a bottle with the store’s logo.

            BLUEJACKET ROOT. From what I could read of the label, it promised to help with memory issues, mental acuity, concentration, and focus—with an asterisk warning me that these claims had not been confirmed by the FDA.

            “Mom’s worried about dementia,” Ginny wrote. “Always taking stuff like this.”

            I called the mall store. “Hi, I’m wondering if you have any Bluejacket root for sale there?”

            “Just a moment . . .” Not Mimi, but another chipper young woman. I waited.

            “No, that’s been recalled,” she told me a minute later. “If you have any, don’t take it.”

            “What’s the problem?”

            “Recalled by the manufacturer. It doesn’t say, I’m just supposed to tell you not to take it. If you have any. Do you have any?”

            “No, it’s for a friend. When was it recalled?”

“About a month ago, I guess. We sent it all back.”

A month. “Thanks.”

            A few minutes online showed me the problem: Bluejacket root, from a South American plant, caused hallucinations. Not all the time, not to everybody, but often enough for the government to demand a recall three months ago. It was especially risky for older people. 

            I looked at the email image again. The bottle looked half empty. 

            I called Ginny May. “I don’t know,” she said when I asked about the Bluejacket. “She took a lot of things, like I said. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. Do you think—what do you think?”

            I didn’t have a theory yet. “Well, she probably didn’t buy it at the store that day and take half the bottle. It might have kicked in unexpectedly when she was at the mall. Doid you ever see her have any hallucinations?”

            “No.” Her voice was firm. “She worried, like I said, but I never saw any sign of her losing her marbles. Forgetting things, or acting strange. She was fine.”

            I nodded. “Okay. Maybe it’s nothing. I’ll get back to you.”

            I sat back and looked at my computer screen. It seemed a long shot to blame Veronica May’s disappearance on a pill. And it didn’t explain the stuff burned in the dumpster. 

            So I sat forward and started digging again. 

            Fifteen minutes later I found something. “Whoa.”

            “What?” Rachel turned in her chair. “You cracked the case? Or is it just weird online porn?”

            “That jewelry store? The brothers who own it, there’s been mysterious disappearance at almost every location they’ve set up business in.”

            She cocked her head. “Lots of people disappear.”

            “Yeah, but—” I stopped. Okay, Rachel was right. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, any more than the Bluejacket did. Still, I saved the results of my research for a closer look later.

            “Are you getting anywhere?” She stood up and walked over to my desk. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve got a lot to go on.”

            “Not much.” I shook my head. Missing persons cases like this aren’t easy to solve, most of the time. I’ve gotten lucky, but some people just slip through the cracks. 

            But—"She’s having dreams of her mother being held prisoner. And she can’t help her. Like me. I mean, I’m helpless in my dreams. Sometimes I’m running and I can’t get away, and sometimes I can’t move. It’s, it’s . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

            Rachel sighed and then kissed my cheek. “I get it. You can’t let things go. You never could.”

            “Tenacious Tom, that’s what they call me.” I grinned.

            “Stubborn asshole, that’s what they call you.” She punched my arm. “So keep working on it. What do I care? As long as I get a good night’s sleep.”

            I rubbed my arm. “I’ll do my best.”