Free The Remains by Vincent Zandri

pulled
out from under me. In just a minute or two I would find out if the
man who attacked me and my sister was still alive. If he had been
released from prison.
    Michael
sat at the computer desk in my bedroom with both hands positioned
on the keyboard. I watched over his shoulder while he typed in the
URL for Google. When it came up he entered the word “Sexual
Predators, New York State” into the empty search box. Fingering the
ENTER key the search came up with several pages of sites and URLs
that would list the registry of documented sexual predators,
deviants and offenders, the most prominent of which was a site
called www.childsafenetwork.com .
    Michael clicked onto the site, brought it
up.
    It was then I took an instinctive step back,
sat down on the edge of the bed. My heart was thumping so fast I
thought I might have a heart attack. I was having trouble
breathing, swallowing.
    Turning to me in alarm, Michael said, “We can
stop if you want, Rebecca. If you’re not ready.”
    I put my head in my hands, rubbed the feeling
back into my face. “What if it’s true?” I said. “What if after all
these years we find out Whalen is alive? What if he’s out of
prison?”
    “ Then at
least we know what we’re up against,” Michael said. “We can defend
ourselves if we know what’s out there. I can defend you. If we choose to ignore it, it might come
back to haunt you.”
    My hands were shaking. Adrenalin was pouring
into my brain so rapidly, it sounded like a brass band warming up
inside my head. Michael turned back to the computer screen, then
back to me again. I could tell by the look on his face that he was
brainstorming.
    “You never told a soul about what happened in
the woods.”
    I nodded.
    “If we find Whalen’s name on this list… if we
find out he’s alive, it won’t matter.”
    Swallowing, I looked in his eyes.
    “How can it not matter?”
    He shook his head.
    “Okay, wrong choice of words. What I’m trying
to say is this: finding his name on the state registry doesn’t mean
you’re in any kind of danger. You never ratted him out, so to
speak. You weren’t directly responsible for sending him to prison.
If you’re worried about the revenge factor, there’s no reason for
Whalen to seek you out.”
    Michael had a point.
    Why would Whalen want anything to do with me after all
these years? That is,
assuming he was alive in the first place. Besides, forty-two year
old women weren’t his style. Adolescent girls and young women
however, were a different story.
    I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My mouth
was dry. On the other hand, I found myself feeling something for my
ex-husband that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Trust. I was
placing all of my trust and emotions into his care, and I was
feeling all right about it. After all, he was the author of a
published detective novel, which in my mind anyway, made him a kind
of amateur detective.
    “How shall I proceed, Bec?” he said softly,
big brown eyes piercing into my own. “It’s your call.”
    By now my breathing had become so shallow I
felt like I was about to pass out. At least there was a bed
underneath me to catch the fall.
    I looked into Michael’s face.
    “Just do it.” I swallowed.
    He typed the name “Joseph William Whalen”
into the Child Safe Network search engine. Then he fingered
ENTER.

Chapter 19
     
     
    THE BLACK AND WHITE image of a man appeared.
A face. A mug shot.
    The black and white face of a man who
abducted me; abducted Molly. Attacked us.
    The black and white face of a man who touched
us and hurt us.
    The man was alive.
    The monster had been freed.
    Michael turned back to me. He started saying
something to me that I did not understand. It sounded like he was
talking to me through a cardboard tube. My legs went weak and the
room began to spin. I sat down hard onto the bed.
    “ He’s
alive,” I said, mouth tasting like the dried paint at the bottom of
a jar. “The monster is still alive. All this time I