Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Stolen by David Dean

This new story “deals with themes of justice, redemption, and whether a crime might not serve a greater good in spite of the harm done,” says David Dean. “A trip to pick up my son from school in West Virginia inspired it.” After years of producing exclusively short stories, David Dean has finally written a novel, which he plans to send out to publishers soon. By day, he’s still on the police force in his New Jersey resort town.

The grey drizzle accompanied him all the way from Frederick, muting the increasingly dramatic landscape of thickly forested mountains and steep ravines; cloaking both the budding signs of spring and his own previously buoyant mood. Desmond had started his trip with the carefree abandon of a schoolboy playing hooky, and even the rigors of negotiating I-95 and the Baltimore Beltway had failed to dampen his spirits. It was only as he entered the foothills of western Maryland and the Alleghenies hove into view that he had felt a slight tightening of his chest — a claustrophobic reaction to the sight of the thin ribbon of highway he drove winding in and out of sight, and finally being swallowed whole by the mist-shrouded mountains.

Desmond cracked his window an inch and plugged a cigarette into his mouth, firing it up with the dash lighter. He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out in a steady stream that was whisked out the window and tattered to pieces. As he climbed upwards, long tendrils of fog coiled and uncoiled in streamers that undulated down the slopes to the highway, where they, like his cigarette smoke, were torn and scattered by the passage of automobiles. Desmond had the sensation of leaving the solid world and entering one that receded from direct scrutiny, yet would creep up threateningly on the unwatchful. He sighed, yearning now for his journey’s end and the welcome mundanity of a chain motel, then flicked his cigarette angrily out the window like a shot across the bow of his uneasiness.

Desmond was not tolerant of dark moods, as his was generally a nature of high spirits, and yes, a dangerous temper when fueled by alcohol. As this was one of his abstemious lulls, he found it especially irksome to be beset by depression, however fleeting. He worked too hard at remaining sober to suffer gladly the black morning-after feeling normally reserved for binges.

Yet he was not an insensitive man, and suspected he understood the true source of his moodiness — in a word, family. Obstensibly, this was a trip to retrieve his nineteen-year-old son from his freshman year of college; in reality, it was an attempt at repair and reconciliation, not only with his boy, but his wife Linda as well. She had pled a heavy work load at the realty company where she was an agent as an excuse for staying back, but Desmond understood that this long, lonely trip was to be his penance.

“My own via dolorosa,” he chuckled irreverently, glancing hastily at the passing lane to see if anyone had noticed him talking to himself. But there was no one there, and he began his steep, grateful descent into the narrow valley that the city of Cumberland, and his hotel, lay folded within.

Desmond was surprised, and not a little taken aback, at the gritty, urban quality of Cumberland. He had expected something far more small-town and “countrified,” and since he had not made the previous treks to his son’s school with Linda, he was unprepared for the jumble of red-brick, turn-of-the-century buildings that lay squeezed into the tight cleft provided by the mountains. The highway was elevated for its passage through the town, and Desmond was allowed an almost aerial view before reaching his exit. A broad, fast-flowing canal ran to his left, while a series of railroad tracks followed the same constricted path to his right, intertwining and dividing several times within the heart of the city. Even as he watched, a freight train crawled smokily into view, the wail of its horn mournful and fraught with warning.

Desmond slowed and turned into his exit, then braked suddenly, several times, as the ramp corkscrewed its way to the city streets, his tires making little barking sounds as they gripped the wet roadway. Fortunately, signs were posted all along his way directing him to the hotel, as there was no line of sight for more than a block that was not obstructed by buildings or the pillars of the overpass. The feeling of claustrophobia that had begun in the foothills now deepened as he parked and retrieved his overnight bag from the car. All around him were three- to six-story buildings with little or no space betwixt them, while mountains crowded up close as if to lean in and watch. Above it all, clouds ran streaming and grey, obscuring and connecting each peak and sealing off the valley beneath like the lid on a kettle. Desmond felt buried.

The hotel was exactly as he expected, and desired — modern and anonymous — and he breathed a little easier in such familiar surroundings. His mood was further buoyed by the clerk retrieving his reservation from the computer without a hitch. He couldn’t remember how many times in his business travels he had had to dig through his wallet, or address book, for some torn slip of paper containing his confirmation number, while some somnambulant desk jockey gazed vacantly on. If he were in his drinking mode, he usually gave them an earful on their qualifications, IQ, and possibly their family antecedents; the last depending on how well they took the first two. But that was then, and Desmond was happy to reach his room and find that hot water was in abundance for his shower. He emerged clean, refreshed, and anxious to try the dining room on for size.

The dining area was large and murky; the subdued lighting combining with the gloom of the day outside to give the room a dreamy, underwater quality. Desmond found he was one of only four people there, and the hostess had seated them far apart. He surmised from this that the restaurant had too many servers and too few customers — the hostess was trying to spread the “wealth.” Obviously, he thought drily, his server was in no particular hurry to snatch a piece of that limited bounty, as he had been seated for five minutes without so much as a glass of water. He turned his attention to the scene outside the window at his elbow.

Another train (or was it the same he had seen on entering town?) was inching its way along the sprawl of tracks at the rear of the hotel. Even at the walking pace the engineer maintained, Desmond could feel the rumble of its passage through the seat of his spindly chair. He looked back over his shoulder to see if he could spot the last car, but the colorful array of brilliant blue and yellow cars extended around a bend and out of sight. They were the only color he had seen in hours. The crack of glass against pressed wood spun him around to find his water waiting for him, along with a teenaged girl with short bleached hair and a jewel in her nostril. She stood poised with pen and pad as if she, not he, had been forced to wait.

“May I take your order?” she asked tersely.

“You may,” Desmond shot back, instantly irritated. “Whatever you’ve got that resembles a hamburger... fries... and...” Here he had to watch himself. “And a Coke.” He favored her with a big smile. “And...” She froze in the act of reaching for his menu. “Hurry.”

She snatched up his unopened menu and hesitated for just a moment before turning on her heel and retreating to the kitchen.

Desmond returned his attention to the train, which continued unchanged, it seemed, in its antediluvian progress. There was still no end in sight. Desmond took a sip of his water and grimaced. It had a slightly rusty taste. He set it back down and glanced at the closed doors of the bar at the end of the dining room. He had been ignoring it since he walked in. Desmond could just make out the interior through the frosted glass and pictured himself comfortably situated there with a bourbon on the rocks. He suddenly felt unfairly burdened by the demands of being a family man. To have to deprive himself of a welcome drink at the end of a long day’s drive; a drive, he might add, that was solely to demonstrate that he did, indeed, care for his son and wished to make his wife happy. It was costing him time away from work, and a lot of aggravation. He glanced impatiently around the room for his waitress. She was nowhere to be seen. Outside, the train dragged itself along.

Besides, he queried himself, what was the big payoff for him? Tomorrow morning, when he finally reached his son’s college in Morgantown, would there be the warm greeting and shared laughs of a father-and-son reunion? Desmond knew better. Though he had started this journey in high hopes of an opportunity for exactly that, the exhausting drive and dismal landscape had shorn him of such unrealistic expectations. No, he would find the boy as he had last seen him — sullen, uncommunicative, and evasive, if not openly hostile. Justin had brought in the verdict long ago, with his mother as presiding judge: A father was not allowed to have a few drinks at the end of a long day, and God forbid that he should take a little time out for himself now and then — go on a tear, as it were. How could he expect justice from a mere boy who had never struggled a day in his life — a child, really, who had yet to experience anything like real stress?

As for his wife, didn’t it matter at all that there had never been another woman? Whenever he had taken off, it had always started out as a bar-hopping expedition with the boys from work and progressed from there. He had never hunted skirt, though he could tell her girlfriends a few tales about their “wonderful” husbands. No, it had just been for fun. He got carried away from time to time, but he always came home... and he always brought home the bacon... most of it, anyway... and certainly enough for their needs. The company knew his worth, even if his fun-loving ways had cost him a few reprimands and suspensions along the way. You can’t keep a good man down, his old man had been fond of saying, and he had enjoyed a thirty-year career with ConRail and never left a bottle standing.

The clatter of his order being slammed down startled Desmond from his reverie and the waitress was already marching away when he realized that silence had descended at last. The mile-long train had completed its passage unnoticed.

Across the tracks, he could now see a row of drab two-story buildings. In front of one, a group of disheveled, unshaven men shifted about in the gathering twilight — some with Styrofoam cups that they sipped gingerly from as they glanced from time to time at the closed door. They all appeared to be waiting. A neon sign above the entrance flickered into life announcing “Rescue Mission.” Next-door stood a liquor store and corner bar.

Desmond finished a mouthful of soggy burger and signaled the waitress. “Bourbon, please!” His voice carried across the room and the other patrons glanced in his direction. He defiantly stared at each in their turn. “I need something to wash this down with,” he informed them, as they now studied their own plates with renewed interest.

“Well, Rip, I’m glad to see you’ve finally joined us.”

Desmond opened his eyes with effort, the light behind the closed Venetian blinds causing his sore orbs to throb with pain. He raised a hand to shield his face and groaned and closed his eyes once more. His throat felt very sore as well. This is not good, he thought. He knew all the symptoms, and as he catalogued them, found each and every one present and accounted for. He was in for it this time. Linda was going to kill him. “What in hell was I thinking about,” he berated himself. “And where in hell am I?”

Then it struck him like a physical blow and he sat up suddenly, only to fall back with a cry from the long silver needle someone had rammed into the back of his skull. “Oh God,” he croaked, “The boy... I forgot the boy.”

“Who’s the boy?” That voice again. The son of a bitch should be shot for shouting.

Desmond’s lips were sticking together, and they parted with an audible smack. “Justin...” was all he could get out.

A merciful saint brought a straw to his lips and he reflexively sucked on it; cool water flooded his parched mouth and cascaded down his arid, constricted throat. A little dribbled onto his chin and was instantly dabbed off with a tissue.

“Sorry,” she whispered, as if it was her fault. Truly a saint.

Desmond tried to open his eyes once more, in order to see this angel of great beauty and kindness, but the room glowed agonizingly in his vision like an overlit stage scene. He wondered for a moment if he were dead. But only the damned in hell would be in this much pain and discomfort, he reasoned, and surely in that place there would be no cool water.

“Lower your voice,” the merciful one instructed the loud, obviously happy man who had spoken earlier.

“Oh... right,” he whispered almost as loudly as before.

There was the painful squeal of a chair being scraped across the floor and Desmond was suddenly looking up into a large, jovial face. The stench of cheap aftershave wafted nauseatingly into his nostrils and a pair of small grey eyes peered down with piggish good humor into his own.

“Hey,” he greeted Desmond with a smile. “I was getting worried that we might never get this opportunity.”

Desmond stared back — his head and ears ringing. He was at a complete loss. He had no idea as to how to respond or what was expected of him.

“Lots of folks have been real curious about you.” He patted Desmond gently on the shoulder with a great paw. “And I gotta admit, I’m not the least of ’em.”

The big man paused and glanced back over his shoulder. Desmond looked beyond him in time to see a white-coated figure nod. The big man resumed. “Yep, you’ve even made the papers a few times... somethin’ of a celebrity, I suppose.” He leaned in confidentially. “They dubbed you ‘Rip Van Doe.’ Ain’t that a crock?” he chuckled good-naturedly.

Desmond’s vision swam and refocused. “Rip?” he murmured to the big face.

“Yeah, you know, like the story — Rip Van Winkle? He went up in the mountains and fell asleep for a buncha years and when he woke up, nobody knew who he was. Remember?”

Desmond felt as if he wasn’t getting enough air. “Doe?” he managed.

“Well, that’s kinda our fault. When we found you, you didn’t have no identification or nothin’, so we listed you as a John Doe. ’Fraid the local rag did the rest... the Rip Van part,” he concluded cheerfully.

Desmond managed to swivel his head to take in his surroundings. Mercifully, the brilliant light was subsiding. It was a hospital room, as clean and generic as his motel suite had been. “How long...” his voice caught, and the question hung in the air like the mountain mist.

The big man clasped his hands together and lowered his great head as if deep in thought. “Well, one of our boys, Officer Boychuck, I believe, came acrost you round about mid May. It’s late October now, so...” He threw open his hands. “’bout five and one-half months, that would make it,” he finished apologetically.

Desmond felt the words like physical blows as they entered his consciousness and were swept away down the dark, winding corridors of his mind. The sense of loss was sharp and surprising.

“Was I on a tear?” he asked sheepishly, shame making his face hot and sweaty.

Again, the big man patted his arm like a schoolchild and chuckled. “Yeah, partner, I reckon you were, least by some accounts. You were noticed around the tracks and mission area sharin’ a bottle with some of the tramps and such that pass through here. Didn’t cause no trouble, though,” he noted approvingly. “Stood out a bit, however,” he added with a wink. “The clothes... don’t get too many hoboes wearing expensive duds round here. ’Course you weren’t wearin’ those duds when we found you. All they left you were your skivvies. From the looks of it, you fell off a loading dock and cracked your skull on the tracks. Lucky for you one of our boys spotted you before that mornin’ freight was due.”

He took a long pause to study the effect of his words. “You’ve been in a coma all this time, and ain’t spoke one word till this day.” The nurse, squat and froggish, shouldered by the large man and took a few swipes at Desmond’s forehead with a cool, damp cloth. The merciful saint was not how he had pictured her — nothing, it seemed, could be taken at face value.

He recalled leaving the hotel with a good buzz on after an hour or so of visiting the bar. Desmond remembered the raggedy men clustered outside the mission, their faces drawn, weathered, bewhiskered — prematurely old; their clothes reeking of old sweat and the acidic tang of dried urine. He also remembered luring them away from a night’s shelter with a bottle of Seagram’s Seven. It had seemed like an adventure then, good-natured and generous, and he had felt a bit like Tom Sawyer venturing down to the river after dark — a little dangerous, yes, but promising excitement. With the passing of the bottle, each man had become his Huck Finn, comrade-in-arms and fellow adventurer. He had just intended lightening their daily struggle with a few welcome snorts. This was all he remembered.

“Is my wife here?” He could hear the plaintive whine of his own voice and prayed that he would not begin openly weeping.

The big man looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, now... I guess that’s the problem, you see. We wouldn’t know who she might be, as we didn’t have any idea who you were... are,” he corrected himself.

“She doesn’t know I’m here?” Desmond felt a loneliness as deep as death settle over him and tears flowed down his cheeks unnoticed.

The big man sighed and sat back. “That’s about the size of it, I’m afraid. Till now we didn’t even know you were married. You mentioned a boy.” He consulted a small notebook. “Justin, is it?”

“My son,” Desmond sobbed unashamedly. “No one’s come looking for me?” he persisted.

“You may be listed as missing out of your home state, I don’t know. But without a name and date of birth, I’m afraid you match ’bout a thousand other missing men.” The big man gave a shrug and brought his pad to the fore. “All right, then, let’s get started settin’ things straight, how ’bout it?”

Desmond nodded weakly.

“What’s your name?”

Desmond Mercer had never been reported as missing by his wife, nor had any inquiries been made of the Cumberland Police Department. These were things that the kindly Lieutenant Bowie had refrained from saying over the last few days of Desmond’s convalescence. Rather, he had allowed Desmond to arrive at these conclusions on his own, and in his own good time, based on the bare facts of his department’s investigation. These facts had spoken for themselves, Desmond found, in insinuating whispers during the long quiet evenings between visiting hours and breakfast. But the scream had lain at the end of a telephone line, when on that first day of awareness he had called home, heart pounding, only to find a recorded message that the number was changed and unlisted.

His memories of his arrival and stay in Cumberland only served to deepen the mystery of the circumstances of his misfortune. The police found the record of his check-in at the hotel and... his departure. The day clerk had not seen the man who checked into Room 217, only the one who had checked out, and his hazy memory of that unremarkable event provided a description that could easily be applied to Desmond himself. No belongings had been left behind. A check of the parking lot only served to show that his car was no longer there. Whoever had stripped him of his clothes, money, and credit cards had also discovered his room key.

Lieutenant Bowie had only begun to puzzle over how the mysterious double had been able to determine which room the plastic key card went to (as no room number was printed on them for security reasons), when Desmond was able to supply the answer. He had been given a receipt when he had charged his meal to his room. This he had dutifully folded into his wallet. Clearly this was no master criminal at work, but some tramp that had seized his good fortune with both hands and made the most of it. In one bold move, he had become Desmond Mercer — robbing the original of everything he ever was or ever would be.

As Desmond sat in the bus depot in an ill-fitting suit donated by a kindly member of the C.P.D., he was sure of only two things. One: Whoever had done this to him could not possibly have foreseen the consequences for Desmond. Two: If it were humanly possible, he intended to find and kill this man.

Desmond felt funny burglarizing his own home, but not funny enough to stop. As he had conjectured, the garage door into the kitchen was left unlocked (Linda was always forgetting her house key) and he felt confident that he could go about his business for several hours, if need be, before she returned home from work. Their small dog had initially put up quite a ruckus as he walked up the drive, but now leapt and leapt for his attention. He knelt and stroked her sleek head for a moment as she tried to lick his face, and a sickening, unwelcome sense of homecoming made itself felt in his belly. He shoved her away, rising quickly to get about his business. The dog followed him at a puzzled distance.

Desmond snatched a wicker basket from atop the refrigerator and slammed it onto the counter. It was overflowing with bills and receipts that he began to rifle through, tossing the ones that held no interest for him into the air. The dog made sport of it by leaping up to snatch those that fluttered enticingly and shredding them with rapid shakes of her head.

In just a few moments, Desmond had reduced the welter of paper to a small pile. These were credit card bills beginning with his trip the previous May. It was those transactions that had occurred after his checking into the hotel that interested him. He leaned over the counter and studied these like a road map leading to his quarry. Disappointingly, there were only a few. The first was for gas in Hagerstown. He was traveling east, Desmond noted. The second was for a nice, big meal at a Denny’s in Frederick that same day.

He started to relax the farther he got from Cumberland, Desmond mused.

The third and final entry threw him. It was a five-hundred-dollar purchase from a Home Depot in Gettysburg the following day.

“By God, he’s doubled back and turned north,” Desmond exclaimed, the excitement of the hunt thrilling him. The dog’s ears swiveled in his direction and she began to scent the air, as if she, too, sensed prey.

But it ended there. There were no other transactions, and a sense of the impossibility of his task cloaked him like a hair shirt, both suffocating and irritating — something to be borne or cast off, and he could do neither. He had no other purpose but this; no other identity.

His hands shook as he stared at the paper, more evidence of how easily he had been written off. Hadn’t his wife questioned these transactions at all? Surely the purchase of hardware must have seemed strange to her, set off some alarm that things weren’t right? How often had he made home-improvement purchases when on a drunk?

Desmond angrily stuffed the paper into his pants pocket, where it nestled against a twenty-dollar bill — the last of the money that Lieutenant Bowie had sent him off with. He had claimed that the officers in his department had all tossed some money in the kitty for him, but Desmond didn’t really believe that. The large policeman was not good at lying. It seemed, at the time, the kindest thing anyone had ever done, or would probably ever do, for Desmond. When he had waved farewell to that good man from the window of the bus, it had felt as if he were entering a world as dark as his coma, but this time his eyes were wide open.

He mounted the stairs two at a time, with the little dog nipping playfully at his heels. Desmond didn’t notice. He retrieved a suitcase from the attic and brought it into his old bedroom and tossed it onto the bed. Throwing it open, he turned to the closet and reached out for some of his shirts hanging there. His hand was arrested in midair, inches from the clothes. He stopped breathing. They weren’t his.

With a small, muffled cry, Desmond staggered back and sat down hard on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands, and remained that way for several minutes.

Then slowly, with great effort, he hauled himself back to his feet, legs shaking, and stared hard at the unfamiliar clothes. Hurt fed his anger into a white-hot flame as he began to rip suits, shirts, and pants from their hangers and fling them onto the bed. He held one particularly fine suit from a shop he had never visited up to the light. “By God, we wear the same size,” he shouted with a triumphant sob to the empty house. The dog sought shelter under the bed.

Within a few minutes, Desmond had stripped out of his baggy, donated clothes and donned the finest of his replacement’s. He was mindful to transfer the twenty-dollar bill and credit card receipt, and hastily stuffed everything else that would fit into his suitcase and carried it downstairs. The household cash was in the same kitchen drawer as always, and this, too, he snatched without hesitation. The keys to his son’s car hung next to the garage door, and he lifted them off the hook as he walked out. Hell, the boy won’t need the car till the summer, he reasoned bitterly. I own it, anyway.

Desmond began to pull the door to and stopped. He called the dog, and after a few moments’ hesitation heard her happily thumping down the stairs. She dashed to her master, tail wagging in anticipation of an outing, and gazed up at him expectantly. Desmond stared back and wondered if the new “man of the house” received the same affection from the animal he had once enjoyed. He picked up a hammer that lay on a workbench in the garage and weighed it thoughtfully; the dog continued to stare hopefully into his eyes. The darkness blew back and forth through Desmond’s mind like a black curtain in a fitful wind. Distantly, a car door slammed.

Desmond carefully laid the hammer back down. Retrieving the suitcase once more, he stalked from the garage leaving every door open behind him. She’ll stay or she’ll go; live or die. Why should she be any different from me? Desmond thought angrily, as he peeled out of the driveway in his son’s car.

As he glanced back, he saw the small, not-very-bright dog blithely following a scent trail that led to a busy nearby intersection. Desmond forced his eyes forward and sped away.

In the end, it had proved ridiculously easy to find him. Providential, even, Desmond thought, as he sat watching his Doppelganger’s home from the comfort of his son’s car.

Upon fleeing his own, he had driven to the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to report his driver’s license stolen and, hopefully, be issued a new one. He didn’t know what the future might hold for him, but he did know that he wouldn’t get very far without some form of identification. Instead, he had received the address of the man he had sworn to kill. It had been a simple, innocent exchange.

When he had explained the purpose of his visit, and given the sympathetic clerk his name and home address for verification, the unexpected had happened. After typing in the information and bringing up his license on the screen, the man had looked perplexed and glanced nervously at Desmond. “You’re reporting your license stolen?” he queried.

“Yeah,” Desmond began. “In Cumber—” he stopped short. “What’s that say?”

The clerk glanced back at the glowing screen. “It says you turned it in and applied for a new one in West Virginia... Could that be right?”

Desmond felt the first stirrings of hope. “Well...” He grinned sheepishly, leaning forward so that the clerk could get a good look at the jagged, still-livid scar that ran through his hairline. “I was in an accident up that way ’bout six months ago. I’m afraid it played hell with my memory for a while.” He wasn’t lying altogether. Even the West Virginia part... hadn’t that been his ultimate destination, after all?

The clerk drew back with a grimace. “Damn... you did take a crack on the head,” he observed sympathetically.

“Did I use my brother’s or uncle’s address on that?” Desmond inquired evenly.

“I wouldn’t know that,” the helpful clerk exclaimed, and then proceeded to read the address aloud from the screen.

“That would be my uncle’s,” Desmond lied. “So sorry to have troubled you.”

“No trouble,” the kindly bureaucrat replied as he watched Desmond stride purposefully out the door.

“My wife, my life, everything, for a hillbilly’s double-wide in the mountains,” Desmond mumbled, then spat contemptuously out the car window. His quarry glanced nervously in his direction as he crossed his rocky yard from his work shed to his house, weaving in and out of his creations: handcrafted lawn chairs, porch swings, birdhouses, even miniature windmills. Desmond’s car sat in the driveway sporting West Virginia plates like a reproach.

Desmond had made no secret of his presence, and the fact that the watched had not approached the watcher only served to convince him that he was not only right but righteous. Here, clearly, was a man whose conscience prevented him from taking those simple steps open to the innocent — inquiry, confrontation, or simply calling the police.

He shuffled across his stony patch like a whipped dog, with occasional fearful glances at his tormentor. This was a pattern that had gone on for several hours and Desmond found himself enjoying it.

A tired-looking woman came to the window after the man went inside, and studied him, but after a few moments, a hand on her shoulder pulled her away. Desmond felt swollen with power. A power that had suffused him since the moment his prey’s location was revealed to him. “This was meant to be,” Desmond whispered to the empty yard.

It took repeated blows to the flimsy door to finally produce an occupant. To the man’s credit, Desmond thought, he did not send his wife to answer the summons.

They stood staring into each other’s eyes for several moments before the mountain man shifted his gaze to his feet and said, “Yessir,” in a hoarse voice.

They were of a kind, Desmond observed coolly — roughly the same height and weight; even the same hair and eye color. He was possibly five years younger than Desmond, but hard living was written all over his lined face and he could certainly pass as older. He wondered briefly why this cringing man had even come to the door.

“Mr. Mercer? Desmond Mercer?” Desmond inquired politely.

There was a long pause as the man appeared to be actually shrinking with dread.

“Yessir.” His reply was barely audible.

“Did you make this?” Desmond asked pleasantly, holding up a two-story, gingerbread-style birdhouse he had picked up in the yard.

This time, the false Desmond could not even make a reply, but dumbly nodded.

“Well, that explains the side trip to the hardware store.” And with that Desmond heaved it up and brought it crashing down on the head of the man who had stolen everything from him.

The miniature house exploded into dozens of pieces of wood and minute latticework, sending the stunned victim staggering back into his home. The entire house rocked as he slammed against the far wall and slumped to a sitting position, blood streaming from his scalp. Desmond was vaguely aware of the plump, weary-looking wife running in from the kitchen, wailing in fear and outrage.

“Don’t, mister! Don’t!” she cried, straddling her husband’s prostrate form. Beneath her, he groaned and clutched his head, blinded by the blood that ran into his face. Desmond noted, as in a dream, that she wielded a large butcher knife. It did not alarm him.

Instead, he was drawn to a shotgun propped in a corner of the mobile home. Why hadn’t he answered the door with this, Desmond wondered, even as he calmly retrieved it, broke it open to be sure it was loaded, and, satisfied, snapped the breech closed with a loud crack. Outside, air brakes hissed, followed by the unmistakable sound of a school-bus door clacking open. The shouts and laughter of children wafted into the room like evidence of life on another planet. He took a step toward his prey.

“Daddy!” The girls screamed simultaneously and rushed past the shotgun-wielding stranger as if he didn’t exist, to fling themselves over their wounded father.

“Mister, don’t!” the wife warned yet again, making threatening, pitiful swipes at the air.

Desmond took a step closer, bringing the gun to bear. He dimly registered that the two skinny girls might be in the way. “Stand away,” he demanded.

The older of the two — a pale, pouty-looking eleven-year-old — turned to face him, her eyes full of tears and defiance. “You better git outta here and leave my daddy be!” The younger began to cry as if her heart would break, her face buried in her father’s shoulder, oblivious of the blood.

Desmond gazed at the tableau as at a great work of art that he could not fully comprehend — puzzled, troubled, yet mesmerized by its unlikely, inexplicable beauty. He couldn’t look away. “This should have been mine,” he stated sadly to no one in particular.

The other Desmond had begun to recover himself, and managed to stand, shoving the girls behind him in the process. He wiped the blood from his eyes with his sleeve.

“Mister, you’ve got every right, but please don’t hurt my family. They ain’t to blame,” he pleaded thickly while swaying like a man on a pitching deck. “They’re no part o’ this.”

“No,” Desmond corrected him. “They’re every part of this.”

“It was me what done it. Caused everything, I mean. It was the damned bottle. I couldn’t leave it alone, and it cost me... us, that is, everything we had — my job, our house, car... everything. I run off like a coward, which I was... still am, as you can see.” He gestured weakly, as if anyone could see his fault.

“Then you came across me,” Desmond prompted. “In Cumberland.”

“Yessir... I did. I thought you was dead, mister, and that’s God’s own truth. I never woulda done it otherwise. I hope you believe me on that part.”

Desmond made no answer; thinking only that now they would even share a similar scar on their skulls. The new Desmond went on with his confession.

“It weren’t right... but at the time, it was like God’s providence... a second chance.”

“God’s providence,” Desmond repeated, recognizing the phrase.

“I used your money to buy tools for my business; my own I’d done sold off for whiskey and such. When I got back, I told the old lady what I done.” He nodded toward his wife, the knife still in her hand, but now pointing at the floor. “She scolded me good, but I wouldn’t listen. It was a chance, you see, and it was me determined to take it. I made ’em come along.”

Desmond was aware of the soft weeping of both girls now in the quiet room.

“So I got credit cards in your name, and closed out your old one. Did the same with your license and car and moved us here to set up shop,” the new Desmond continued in a rush, as if every word were a relief. “’Course, I guess I knew there’d be a reckoning someday; I was always lookin’ over my shoulder — I just never guessed it would be you.”

The woman spoke up. “Some good come of it, mister. He swore he’d never take another drop, and he ain’t. He was always a good man but for that bottle, and praise God, that at least is behind us. He’s done wonderful well by us since.”

Desmond’s eyes wandered over their meager, shabby possessions and back to the contrite, brave man and the family that was willing to die for him.

“You stole nothing of value from me,” he announced quietly, leaning the shotgun against the wall. “I possessed nothing of value. As to my ‘identity’...” Desmond laughed bitterly. “You’ve already made better use of it than I ever did.”

With that said, he left the bewildered family and drove away. It no longer mattered where.

Copyright (c); 2005 by David Dean.