You can navigate the entire novel from the Table of Contents at the link below, or at the publication front page.
3 Lives in Jury
3 Lives in Jury - table of contents
This novel, 3 Lives in Jury, is delivered, a chapter or two, every Thursday.
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For The Underworld Vents, which includes short stories and bonus material related to 3 Lives in Jury, go here:
The Underworld Vents
The Underworld Vents - table of contents
Chapter 5
“If this is bullshit, Frank, I’ll kill you.” Whit stepped onto the porch of the office.
Frank fumbled for the keys. “No, no. For real. I wouldn’t shit you about something like this. Police came and checked it out. It was a whole big thing. I don’t know if we’ll find anything in the office though. My mom keeps things locked down, hardcore.”
Frank stalled. He hated the idea of Lucy and Whit ransacking his mom’s office, but it never occurred to him to say no. That would make him a wuss and he couldn’t accept that. Maybe if he told them everything he knew while they were outside, he could convince them they didn’t need to go inside to see actual files. He spun away from the door, already throwing words into the air as turned.
“I know my mom treated a man who she thought might be involved with your, ah, disappearance.”
“She told you this?” Whit motioned for Frank to keep his attention on opening the door.
“Yes, I told you she consults with me, especially on matters of psychopaths, or when she has questions about the criminally insane because that’s my specialty. I’ve read all the literature there is to find on it.” He fidgeted with the key in the lock.
Whit stepped closer to watch Frank’s progress at the door. He could smell his warm, yeasty breath, see his forehead glisten with sweat.
Whit narrowed his eyes. “Your mom consults you?” He emphasized the word “you” to stress his doubt. “That doesn’t seem very likely, does it? A woman with her master’s degree, no, her doctorate, consulting her teenaged son?”
“Well, well, you know,” Frank stammered. “At, at first, she just mentioned it as a curiosity. She didn’t tell me the name or anything. I guess she was mostly wondering out loud. The guy, this client, said some weird shit and she wondered if she should call the police. It was more like she was bouncing ideas around.”
“What did she say?” Whit tugged on the front of Frank’s shirt.
“I know she phoned the cops. I heard her on the phone. I was sitting at the table with her. She told the police the man sounded suspicious, like he was up to something he knew was wrong and when she asked him more about it, he shut her down. He mentioned some shit about sick kids living way back in the bush. I remember Mom telling the cops the guy laughed about the missing kid on the posters too. That was you in the notices your parents put up all over town.” He pointed to Whit.
“The cops said they would look into it,” Frank shrugged. “I guess they came up with nothing.”
Whit mulled this over, then nodded at Frank to continue working on the door.
Frank hesitated, so Lucy tapped him on the back of the head.
“Come on, time’s a wasting,” she said.
“Fuck it,” Frank opened the door.
They slunk into a beige waiting room over-run with hydrangeas, potted cacti and creeping vines. The three of them knew the layout and strode into a short hallway with three doors — the unisex bathroom at the end of the hall, Dr. Kappens’ office to the right and a room where the therapy sessions were held on the left.
Frank jiggled the doorknob to the office. It was locked.
Whit shook his head. “Quit fucking around.” He whipped out his school ID card, slid the card into the gap next to the door and fidgeted as he turned the doorknob. It was an old house, an old door and it crashed open, rattling pictures on the walls. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Once inside, they hesitated. The weight of what they’d done and what they were about to do was sinking in.
Whit swore and he considered whether the smart play now was to leave, just back out and close the door before anything else happened.
Beside him, Lucy exhaled so loud that he hushed her.
“Cool,” she said, not stressed in the least. She stepped forward and walked the edge of the room, running her hands along the front of a long row of brown filing cabinets sitting against one wall. She pulled on a few random drawers. Locked.
Besides the filing cabinets and a large desk with an office chair, the room contained a couple of smaller chairs on the opposite side of the desk and a plastic plant in one corner.
Whit grabbed a stack of folders from a tray on top of the desk and shuffled through them; accounting records, office supplies and dull office business forms.
They scurried around the office, shuffling through files, not bothering to return the papers to where they had found them. They spilled entire trays of file folders from the top of the filing cabinet onto the floor.
“Go easy. Shhh.” Frank raised his figure to his lips. “We were going to leave the office as we found it, remember?”
Whit ignored him, opening desk drawers and slamming them shut so hard they shook items on the desk top.
Frank felt his panic rising. Shit, they’re trashing the office. These clowns will ruin everything and get us caught. Shit. He had to get them out. I know more than these dipshits, he thought. I’ve got to help them find what they want and get them out of here sooner.
Whit slammed the last desk drawer and waved to get Frank’s attention. “We need to get into the filing cabinet.” He pointed to the brown wall of file cabinets behind him.
“Maybe,” Frank said. “Or maybe we need to check the computer.”
He pointed to a laptop on the desk, sat and pulled the computer toward him.
“Now, if I remember correctly, let’s see, the password. What was it again?” He typed a few letters.
“Yep. Pow. We’re in.”
“Holy shit.” Lucy leaned over Frank’s shoulder next to Whit to better see the screen.
Frank clicked open a few items, found a folder titled Current Clients and opened it. Inside were notes and audio files of Dr. Kappens’ sessions. One folder was titled Whit Alma; one was called Lucy Kloot. They ignored those. Each might have peeked at the other’s folder were they alone but mutual fear of exposure kept them out as long as they were together.
Frank pressed onward, click and open, click and open, while Lucy and Whit pointed. They eventually found a Past Clients folder, which contained more folders with names of clients on each, but none of them were familiar.
“What now? Do you want to check each one?” Lucy asked Whit.
But then she saw it and shouted.
“There, there, there,” she pointed to the screen, to a folder sitting at the bottom of the long list, with the letters ‘zz’ entered as the first letters of its name to keep it at the bottom. It was titled zzJohn King.
Frank clicked to open.
Inside were sub-folders titled Appointment April 10 and Appointment April 17. John King’s two appointments with Dr. Kappens, both about 13 months ago. It fit the timeline for Whit’s abduction.
Lucy pushed Frank aside and clicked on April 10.
It contained admin forms, audio files and notes of sessions.
“There’s no photo,” she said. “Dammit.”
She clicked on a word file. It contained the date and time and a jumble of words, probably abbreviated notes Dr. Kappens used to try and understand the client, things such as no permanent relationship, no job, no mention of family, talks excessively.
“Boring.” Lucy clicked an audio file.
“What a dull day,” a voice mewled out from the back of the computer. “I lost my winter jacket. It was tough for me to get to this appointment.”
Whit’s legs shook, his knees almost buckled and his head became a fuzzy blur of jumbled thoughts and images. He recognized the reedy, nasally tone. It was an unmistakable voice, once heard. Horseface, it was him, he knew it. It was the horse-faced man who had asked him for directions. It was the voice he remembered from some other dark place too. One hidden from memory, but lingering close.
Whit nearly vomited but swallowed it down. Memories flashed from out of nothing: cedar trees, crows, swamp water, a tumble-down shack. Mere fragments, memories without place or time. He scrambled around the desk to a window, threw it open and breathed deeply the cool air.
Lucy watched, took stock of Whit and assessed the room for the tell-tale glow of malignant spirits. She saw none. Whit was fine and just needed a moment.
The voice recording continued. Dr. Kappens’ voice sounded distant as she thanked King for making their meeting on time, despite the hardships.
“Yes, well, here I am,” King said.
Whit, sweaty and pale, moved closer to the desk to better hear the voice scratching out from the laptop. King’s teeth clacked and he whistled as he spoke, emitting a sound like the creaking of rusty wheels.
“Holy shit. This is him, then?” Frank shot up from the desk and rushed to the door to check the waiting room as though he expected King to come crashing in.
“What should we do?”
Lucy pulled her glasses down to the end of her nose and looked over the top of her rims. “We do what we came here to do.”
She pulled up closer to the desk. Whit pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the desk.
The voice rattled out a name, “John Elgin King, age 42. For the record,” it said.
“What do you do for a living Mr. King. Are you currently employed,” Dr. Kappens asked.
“Odd job man and proud of it,” the voice snapped curtly, sounding bothered by the question, as if he were here to fill his own needs, not waste time being psychoanalyzed. He rambled on about the stupidity of his co-workers, the sticky dirt in the drink fountain at Sketchy’s and immigrants taking all the good jobs.
Dr. Kappens let him prattle for 10 minutes. Lucy hovered the cursor over the stop button, wondering how long to let it continue. She was concerned about the time they were taking in the office. Someone might happen by and discover them. But she held back, sensing King was building up to something.
He flitted from topic to topic and repeated himself several times, complaining about his crushing anxiety. He couldn’t stay in the houses for seasonal workers because he was too jumpy and couldn’t live in a place with so many people. His condition forced him into solitude and he had to camp out in the woods and walk back and forth to his job every day.
“I need something for my anxiety. I’m nervous 24-7. It feels like I’m having a heart attack. I get so shaky and sweaty that I can’t sleep. I never sleep. Can’t you give me something?”
“Possibly, but only after I see you a few more times. I can’t prescribe medication until we’ve established a longer relationship and I can form a solid understanding of your situation,” Dr. Kappens said. “Then, I can refer you to a medical doctor for tests.”
“That will take forever. No doctor around here is available for at least six months. You can prescribe pills in the meantime, can’t you?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Well, I mean I can, but first I must properly diagnose the problem. There could be underlying causes we’ve not addressed and the medications will only mask the symptoms. They won’t cure you.”
“Fine.”
“Look, I’ll give you a referral now to see a medical doctor. Maybe they can do something for you. I can also get you a referral to a rehab clinic in Gold Rush.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
The file ended a quick minute later.
Whit flipped the laptop around so it faced him. He scanned the screen, found another other audio file, this one from the week after, April 17.
He clicked. The simpering voice started again. It complained about the weather, the mud, the spiders, the worms in the earth. He whined about a few coworkers who held the boss’s favour and were permitted to come and go as they pleased, while he had been called onto the carpet for reporting to work only a few minutes late one morning.
“Where are you from again?” Dr. Kappens asked.
“Versailles, Missouri.”
King told her how he had come to Canada, to British Columbia, to work as soon he was old enough and latched onto a couple of foreign worker programs to get into the country. He lived where orchards and vineyards paid the bills and also kept the local townspeople fed. That made him feel like he was doing important work.
Then he asked about the pills again.
“I need something to help me see the sunshine through the clouds, you know?” he said.
“Tell me more about that.”
“I feel on edge, anxious all the time.”
“Are you under stress from anything? Pressures at work? Family?”
There was a long pause. “I have a sick friend,” he said at last.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is it serious?”
“Yes. He just lays there and won’t get up, day after day. And he won’t see anybody. I can’t get him to see a doctor and he needs help.”
Dr. Kappens hummed.
King must have taken it as a sign to continue. “He hasn’t eaten in days. I have to clean him up because he can’t get up to use the bathroom.”
“That sounds very serious, you should call an ambulance. He’s lucky to have a friend like you, but I think it’s time to call in the professionals.”
A grunting sound.
“You must be worried about him,” Dr. Kappens’ voice said.
“Damn right, I’m worried. That’s why I need the pills. I need to sleep. I need to feel right again, so I can help him.”
“You NEED to call an ambulance.”
“You think it’s that easy? What am I supposed to do? Tell them to drive out back through the woods, head into Mud Valley and stay, steady as she goes, until they reach the old pond where he’s lying in an old lodgepole shack? No sir. No ambulance is getting back there. He’s way back and gone. Living in some old hunting camp three, or four canyons away.”
“Maybe search and rescue could reach him. They might have a helicopter available. These are both realistic options and I think you need to consider them,” said Dr. Kappens.
King could be heard sniffing loudly on the recording. “At least if I had the strength to get him up and walking, I could bring him back here and get him help. Come on. If you can’t do it for me, let me help him. There’s no other way. He ain’t going to come out if a bunch of strangers go back there and try to get him. He’ll hear them coming and go hide in bush so thick they’ll never catch him. He might be sick but he’ll drag himself and hide in a hole if he needs to.
“Look, doctor,” the voice said. “Nobody has to know you gave me anything. And I’ll be back here in a day, two days tops. I promise.”
A long silence made Whit think the file had ended.
Then Dr. Kappens said, “I can’t do that, John. It would violate the law and my personal ethics. The only way for you to help your friend is to take us to him. We’ll see he gets help.”
King coughed and cleared his throat. “Never mind. I’m probably being overly dramatic, you know. Lack of sleep does that. The boy will probably be fine.”
“The boy? You didn’t mention your friend was a boy.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, he’s been staying with me.”
“And he’s sick, all alone at this camp? Is there anybody with him?”
“He sleeps a lot,” John said.
On the recording, there’s a grunting sound and “fuck this,” and the sessions ends.
Whit pushed the computer away, pulling at his hair, not sure how to process what he had just heard. What was he supposed to do now? Find this guy? Go to the police? He remembered nothing from the month he had disappeared, but suddenly, long-missing fragments were beginning to appear.
“And that’s where my mom called the cops,” Frank piped up.
“Jesus,” Lucy had come around the desk, unnoticed and shoved Whit in the back. “That sounds like he was talking about you. Do you remember?”
Whit shoved her back. She crashed onto the desk, knocking the laptop, trays and a phone onto the floor.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” Whit sprang to his feet and starting pacing the room, spinning, stamping his feet, pacing.
The racket alarmed Frank. “We have to go. We’ve been here too long. We need to go.”
He checked the laptop for damage, placed it back on the desk and started gathering papers and other fallen objects.
Lucy grabbed Whit by the jacket. “Whit, let’s go. Shit, we’ve been here almost an hour. We got to go, now.”
But Whit was lost to his memories, too occupied to hear Lucy. He was grasping for a sliver of recollection. He might find it if he could just concentrate. He paced and slapped the filing cabinet, clomped around the desk and flopped into a chair.
This was it. It had to be. The camp King mentioned. He recalled a small algae-covered, insect-riddled pond and a rickety shack built from skinny pine trees with gaping holes in the roof where sunlight poured through. The heat had burned his eyes as he lay in filth day after day. Suddenly, it all went black and he could think of nothing.
Lucy pulled him outside and they crashed loudly onto the porch. Frank followed them.
“I’ll clean up and fix everything inside. You two get out of here and I’ll catch you tomorrow,” Frank said, before he rushed back inside and closed the door.