Charlotte Had A Boyfriend : 5

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

 

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We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else.
— George MacDonald

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My eyes opened as wide as they can go. "Anything to tell you?" I repeated. "But I don't remember ANYTHING!"

"Nothing?" Carly challenged, her eyes afire. "Nothing at all?"

"Well... I remembered that my name is Perry Mason," I told her.

She gaped at me in offended disbelief and shook her head. "Don't jerk me around," she warned.

Her reaction confused me. Carly was angry, and didn't make any attempt to hide the fact.

Then, again, maybe it was the name. Thistlewaite resisted it, too, and warned me that people would "react" if I said my name was Perry Mason. It clearly wasn't the time to plant my flag on that issue, so I ignored her response and pushed on, telling her, "I did remember somebody. I recognized a person... someone I knew, or know, somehow."

"Who?"

"Charlotte Rafflyan. She's a nurse here in this hospital. She's about this tall—" I began to describe her, but Carly quickly cut me off with an angry, barking scoff. "Charlotte Fucking Rafflyan? I know who she is! Hell, we all know who Charlotte Rafflyan is. Every cop in this town knows who she is. Believe me, you're not doing yourself — or anyone else! — any favors by mentioning *her* name."

In that same moment, Tatum's phone buzzed. She took a step back as she read a series of text messages. While she read the first message, another buzzed in behind it, then another, and a fourth. Others continued to arrive, buzzing like a swarm of bees, as she blinked, reading as quickly as she could, struggling to keep up.

"Charlotte had a boyfriend," I recited.

Carly returned a look that was even more annoyed and impatient than before. "I know that! Everybody knows that! Charlotte won't let anyone forget it!"

"No," I insisted. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what it means when I say it. All I'm telling you that it's something I remembered."

Carly swore. "The one thing — the ONE THING you remember is the one thing everyone else wishes they could forget! Congratulations!"

"When I saw Charlotte, I knew her name."

"Wait — what?" Carly shook her head, perplexed. "What do you mean, you *saw* her? When did you see her? Where? In your mind's eye? In your memory?"

"No. Here in the hospital. She came to my room last night. I woke up, and she was standing next to my bed, like right here, right next to me, staring me in the face."

Carly twitched as if a spider had crawled down her back. "That's pretty damn creepy! What the hell did she want?"

Tatum, still absorbed by her reading, let out a deep, throaty, profane oath.

"I don't know what she wanted," I replied. "She didn't say much, but she did ask me why my name is Mason." Tatum glanced up at me for a moment, startled.

"What kind of stupid question is that?" Carly began, her face registering annoyance, puzzlement, and curiosity all at once.

"That's — uh — actually a really good question, actually," Tatum put in, hesitantly. She turned her phone so that Carly and I could see a picture of a young man, twenty-ish, with light brown hair. "See this guy? Do you know who he is?" I shook my head no and shrugged my shoulders. Tatum pushed me a little, "Want to guess his name? Go on, take a shot."

"No," Carly demanded, near the end of her patience. "Just tell us, will you?"

"Alright. I'll tell you. His name is — get this — Mason Rafflyan."

"What the fuck!" Carly shouted. "Is this a joke? What the actual fuck!"

"Why are you showing us his picture?" I asked.

To say that I felt lost was a gross understatement. I began the day at lost and now, under their barrage of questions, I was fully at sea. Totally at sea, with no sight of shore. Frightened, agitated, worried, confused — and worst of all, the police seemed to be blaming ME for all the things THEY didn't understand, and — to make things worse — they didn't appear to understand anything.

It was a lot of weight for an amnesiac to bear.

Consulting her phone, Tatum explained, "I'm showing you his picture because forensics found three sets of prints in Hugh's car: yours—" she gestured at me "—Hugh's, obviously, and this guy's: Mason Rafflyan."

I felt as though the floor had dropped out beneath me. The world ceased making sense — not that it made much sense before. "What does this mean?" I asked plaintively, helplessly. "I don't know either of those men!"

Carly scoffed, a disgusted scoff, and said, "I'll tell you what it means: it means, unfortunately, that we're going to have to talk to that goddamn lunatic Charlotte Rafflyan. It also means that your name isn't 'Mason' after all—"

"No," I insisted. "That's the one thing that I'm sure of. The one thing. The only thing. My name is Mason. Perry Mason."

Carly shook her head and covered her face with both hands, groaning, growling.

Tatum added, "It also means that you're not going anywhere. You can't leave town until we have some answers about Hugh Fencely and this Mason guy."

"That's not a problem! I have nowhere to go!"

Carly blew out a breath and spoke to Tatum. "I'm going to talk to the chief. Maybe he can get the hospital to keep her for an extra day... or two or three."

Tatum, half-joking, quipped, "We have some empty jail cells down at headquarters, if it comes to that!"

"Fine with me," I said. "It's better than being homeless... It beats being out on the street."

Carly waved her hand dismissively, prompting Tatum to add, "I was only joking. I'm sure we can find some temporary place to put her."

"We need to widen the call for missing persons," Carly told Tatum. "Somebody's missing this girl, and obviously she knows more than she's telling."

"Through no fault of my own!" I protested.

Carly scratched the back of her neck, thinking. She nodded toward Tatum's phone. "Anything else in those texts?"

"The chief launched a helicopter search for Hugh. Over the desert."

"It's a waste of time," I found myself saying.

Two sets of cop eyes fixed on me, flashing, intense. "What's that supposed to mean?" Tatum demanded.

"I don't know!" I replied, terrified. "Those words just came out of my mouth! I don't know what it means!"

Carly shook her head, angry, teeth set. "You better get busy remembering, girl! Or I don't know what's going to happen to you!"

 

---

 

They left me in a state of agitation, to say the very least.

Neither Carly nor Tatum came out and accused me of anything. At the same time, they had clear and obvious doubts about my amnesia.

I suppose if I were actually guilty of something — or NOT guilty of something — my own awareness and self-knowledge would give me an inner rock to rest upon, a sort of psychological shield. I mean, no matter what the police could accuse me of... well, *I* would be confident of who I was and what I'd done — or NOT done.

Unfortunately, since I couldn't remember, I didn't have a clue.

Carly's aggression and irritation were more than a little frightening, since I had no idea what part I may or may not have played in the disappearance of the two men.

Thistlewaite popped in a half-hour later, delivering the news that I'd had been granted another night's stay in the hospital. He didn't say why or how it had happened. I assumed it was the work of the police; to Thistlewaite's credit, he didn't boast that it was due to his own "string-pulling."

He didn't intend to stay long. Just long enough to deliver his news and to get a cursory memory check. So I stopped him.

"Can you do me a favor?" I asked.

"Sure, what is it?"

"Take me seriously," I said, and paused until he was about to respond. Then I cut him off, repeating my request, more firmly this time: "Take me seriously."

His eyes narrowed with curiosity. "I *do* take you seriously! What makes you think I don't?"

"You laugh at a genuine, existential concern of mine. You've done it several times."

"Existential concern? What are you talking about?"

"I told you that I'm worried that a stranger might come, pretending to be a relative, and take me away under false pretences."

"I'm sorry I laughed — I'm not sure that I did — but for some stranger to carry you off? That just couldn't happen!" he declared.

"Why couldn't it?"

"Well," he blustered, "there are safeguards in place, aren't there!"

"I don't know," I shot back. "Are there? What are they?"

That stumped him. Clearly, he didn't know. He had no idea how to give a serious answer my question. For once, he was silent, looking down, searching for something to say. When he lifted his head, I could read what was coming next. It was written all over his face, so I cut it off before he could even take a breath.

"Don't tell me that I'll remember or that I'll somehow 'just know.' For the love of God, please park that assertion at the front door. It's been hours. Maybe it's been a whole day by now, and all I've remembered is random shit, none of it important, and some of it (apparently) just plain wrong. I don't care what you do or say or believe, but *I* have to assume the worst case: that I won't remember, okay? That I NEVER remember. Can we work from that assumption? Just to be on the safe side?"

"Well..." he temporized, looking a little pale. "Honestly, I can't accept that drastic a prognosis. Honest and truly. As to your other question: Okay, I'll admit it: As far as safeguards and procedures are concerned, I don't know. I've never had to deal with a situation like this before." His face went from white to red. "And... I'll confess, I did get carried away by your situation. A case of such pure retroactive amnesia is very rare." He stopped and took a breath. "That said, I imagine that if someone comes here, they'll need to establish their own bona fides..."

"Bona fides?" I repeated. "Do you mean they'll have to prove their own identities?"

"Yes, that. And they'll have to demonstrate their relationship to you." He gave me a sort of imploring look.

Truthfully, he hadn't said much, and he didn't give me any reason to believe that the hospital had any sort of definite protocols for a case like mine, but the fact that he finally acknowledged my grave concern gave me a small sense of relief.

"You're not going to be alone," he said. "It's not as though someone can walk up to the front desk and claim you, as if you were a undelivered package or a lost pet."

"Okay," I said, softening.

"There's a note in your chart to call me if your memory suddenly returns. I'll amend that note to have someone call me if anyone says that you're their missing person, and to not release you without my okay."

"Thank you."

He looked me in the eyes. "Also — and I don't want to scare you — but I can assure you that the police will have plenty of questions for anyone who comes here, anyone claiming to be connected to you. I heard that the police were here earlier. One of their own is missing: a young policeman named Hugh Fencely."

I shook my head. "They did ask me about Hugh, but I don't have anything to say."

He shrugged. "Not right now you don't, but it may turn out that you have vital information. The police aren't going to let go of you, even if your entire family, clan, or tribe come clamoring for you. They're trying to nail down young Fencely's timeline, and you're probably the last, or one of the last, people to see the man."

I smiled grimly. "So they say..."

 

---

 

After he left, I spent some time nervously looking things up: news regarding my accident, anything I could find about Hugh Fencely, Mason Rafflyan, and Charlotte Rafflyan. I took notes in my little book. Wade's last name, as it turned out, was Burdleton, and he had a brief but colorful history. He was, apparently, a bright, talented attorney. I didn't understand all the details of his work history, but in addition to being smart and successful, Wade had a serious drinking problem, and had (as he told me) twice been arrested for driving under the influence. Now that he'd hit his third DUI, the expectation was that he'd be disbarred.

I didn't find much about Amos, aside from the fact that he had accounts on Instagram and Facebook. I wasn't able to access either one.

The same was true of Hugh.

Mason, as it turned out, had a Twitter account that was mainly about fitness, running, and an upcoming civil-service exam. His entire timeline was pretty sparse, but I didn't find any references to Charlotte, Hugh, or the town of Robbins.

Charlotte, on the other hand, was in a class of her own. She was everywhere and nowhere. She was nowhere in the sense that she didn't appear to have any social-media presence at all. She didn't post anything to the internet herself... didn't have an account anywhere... and as far as I could tell she was unaware of, or indifferent to, all of the online activity that swirled around her. In that sense, she was nowhere online. At the same time, Charlotte was everywhere in the sense that armies of other people had boatloads of things to say about her. The predominant flavor of their remarks was indignation. These folks were outraged on Charlotte's behalf. Specifically, they resented the way Charlotte was being SILENCED and IGNORED (always in caps). Aside from those two words, I couldn't make out what exactly they believed Charlotte's message to be, or who specifically was silencing and ignoring her. It didn't help that all the material produced by her followers was written badly. At its best it was muddled, meandering, and confusing. As if that wasn't bad enough, each piece asserted a connection to more complicated conspiracies: no matter how brief the message, it was invariably peppered with references to alien abductions and crop circles. They were also occasional hints that the earth is either flat, hollow, or only 6000 years old. Nearly all protested that "the media" is manipulated by the CIA, the Illuminati, and/or by lizard people.

It made my head ache. I did look up crop circles, but couldn't see the connection. At long last, I found myself turning off the phone. I stopped reading and put the phone on charge. Charlotte's web made for tiring reading, and none of it triggered any memories.

 

---

 

Mid-afternoon, around 3:30, the two policewomen returned in the company of Dr Thistlewaite. The policewomen seemed... well... not contrite (if I can use that word), but they'd certainly lost their combativeness, their aggression, and (apparently) their mistrust of me. From the way they behaved, I got the idea that they'd been talking with Thistlewaite about my amnesia and together had worked up a plan in my regard. They was an air of seeking common ground. I mean, there was no way they'd all happened to waltz in together, at the exact same time, and as they stood around my bed, they kept glancing at each other in a way that suggested they'd agreed on everything except who was supposed to speak first.

Although I doubt they'd ever totally buy into Thistlewaite's don't push the river idea, he must have at least convinced them that threatening me not only wouldn't help, but also could hinder me from remembering.

Even so, Carly started off by asking me, "Tell me this: would you be willing to submit to a lie detector test?"

Thistlewaite's jaw dropped open, his face clearly reading This is NOT what we talked about!

"Absolutely," I agreed. "I'd do... whatever! Lie detector, hypnosis, truth serum... anything that might knock something loose in this amnesia thing."

"No!" Thistlewaite protested, with a baffled, offended tone. "We've already discussed this! None of those things will help! Hypnosis could easily produce a coherent fantasy — like Bridey Murphy, for example. As far as a so-called truth serum is concerned, there is no such thing!"

"It's called sodium pentathol," Tatum offered, "I'd think you'd know that."

"I know what sodium pentathol is," he shot back. "It's a barbituate. The idea is that lowering a person's psychological resistance will make them more likely to tell the truth."

"Isn't that what we want?" Tatum challenged.

"No!" Frustrated, the doctor made vague motions with his hands, as if trying to conjure up a strong refutation. "You might as well get the poor woman drunk — on the theory of in vino veritas—"

"If you think that would work!" Tatum responded with a smirk.

"I don't think it would work. Here, in the present case, Deeny has no resistance to overcome! She *wants* to remember. She'd be happy to tell you everything she knows!"

"That's true," I agreed.

"About the lie detector, though—" Carly began, but the doctor cut her off.

"The polygraph only detects intentional, willful lies, at best," he told her. "It doesn't magically detect truth."

"But it does show emotional reactions to questions and to words, right? Couldn't that be useful? It might show us her hotspots?"

"Hotspots?" I asked.

"Triggers," she explained. "Things that make her uncomfortable or provoke some visceral response."

"I don't see how that would help," the doctor told her.

"It's just an idea," Carly replied, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm looking for a way forward. Trying to find some light in the darkness." She turned to me. "I appreciate your willingness, though. It does mean something."

After a moment of hesitation, I threw out an idea. "Hey, uh, listen... something occurred ot me... maybe a way to restore my memories. It might be a little crazy, but what I'm thinking is this: I got a knock on my head and it wiped my memory, right?" I pointed to the bump on my forehead. Dr Thistlewaite gave me a wary look. "What if I got a knock here—" I pointed to a spot on the back of my head, opposite to the lump on my forehead. "Couldn't that second, opposite, knock, undo the effect of the first knock?"

"NO!" Thistlewaite thundered. "No, it would NOT! Please, do NOT try that. It won't work, and in your state, it could cause permanent brain damage!" He bristled for a moment. "You can't un-knock a knock. The 'opposite' of getting knocked on the head is NOT getting knocked on the head. Okay? In any case, you've already gotten the knock on that side."

"What are you talking about?"

"Have you heard of coup contrecoup injuries? No — of course you haven't, or you don't remember. See, your skull is a hard box, while your brain, on the other hand, is a soft, spongy mass. In a traumatic event like a vehicle collision, while your skull gets dinged here and there, your brain is shaking and bouncing around inside this very hard box. It's banging into your skull on the inside.

"So, sure, you hit your forehead there, and you've got an obvious external injury, and yes, naturally your brain took a hit there as well, but at the same time you have an injury to the opposite side of your brain, when it rebounded. It bounced back, away from injury in front. See? Your head was jerked forward, hit something, Your brain banged into the inside of your forehead, then bounced back and hit the inside of the back of your head."

He let that information sink in. Then: "Consequently, right now, that blow to your head—" he pointed to the lump— "caused two injuries: one in front, and one in back. You've got to let those injuries heal. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I acquiesced.

The four of us were silent for a moment.

Tatum cleared her throat to get our attention. She held up a dark marking pen and two packs of post-it notes for us to see. One pack was yellow and the other light green.

"If we're done with the medical pleasantries? Yes? Okay — We're here right now to talk about Hugh Fencely, the policeman who disappeared. We're obviously still concerned about you—" (here she gestured at me)— "about finding out who you are, where you come from, and so on, but right now it's looking like your appearance and Hugh's disappearance are somehow tied together."

"It's almost as if the two of you switched places," Carly commented, half-joking. "He drove out to the desert, abandoned his car, and disappeared. You were either there when it happened, or showed up soon after." She shook her head. "Of course, that isn't what happened. It doesn't make any sense. Something important is missing from the story, but we have no idea what it could be."

"Are there caves out in that desert?" I asked. "Could Hugh have fallen into a hole, like a sink hole or something? Or down a big crack, where he got stuck?"

Carly shrugged. "Anything's possible. We're going to talk to the state park service after this." She nodded to Tatum, saying, "Make a note to ask them about caves and holes and such."

Carly went on, saying, "Hugh's case is high-profile, high visibility. He's a policeman — one of our own — born and raised in Robbins. As you can imagine, there's a lot of pressure from his family, his friends — as well as from the police chief, the mayor, and pretty much everyone else who lives in Robbins.

"Unfortunately, we don't have many real, demonstrable facts to go on." She took a deep breath to steady herself before saying, "On the other hand, there's a lot — in fact, a ton — that's weird in this case, and plenty of gaps in what we know. However, I don't want to dwell on what's *not* here. We can jot down questions along the way—" here Tatum lifted the light-green post-it notes to show us all— "but I don't want to get lost in speculation. No running off into the weeds. We're going to line up the honest-to-God facts and see where they take us."

As she mentioned the "honest-to-God facts," Tatum lifted the yellow post-it-notes and waggled them for our attention.

Without meaning to, I glanced at Dr Thistlewaite. Defensively he explained, "I'm here to see fair play."

First, we went through Hugh's timeline, starting with Monday. For each step, for each sighting, for each interaction, Tatum jotted the time and a few words on a yellow post-it, which she stuck on my window. Hugh worked a normal daytime shift; he was seen twice at headquarters: once, just before lunch, doing paperwork, and later at five-thirty, clocking out to go home.

"We need more detail," Carly pointed out. "We need to know whether anything unusual happened on his shift."

"Does he have a partner?" I asked.

"No," Carly replied. "We're short-handed, so a lot of our officers work alone."

Hugh was next seen at Ebbidles, a local restaurant, at 8 PM, in the company of a man fitting Mason Rafflyan's description. The pair stayed there until 8:40. Ten minutes later, they were captured on a traffic camera at the edge of town, heading west. About 40 miles out, he turned and drove off the road, about half a mile into the desert.

After that, there was nothing, until his car was spotted by the medivac helicopter the next day, Tuesday.

"Obviously, we need to fill in the gaps," Carly pointed out, directing her comments to Tatum, who jotted them quickly in her little book."What did he do between 5:30 and 8 PM? Was his car caught on any other cameras in town in the ten minutes after he left Ebbidles?"

"And whether anything unusual happened during his shift," Tatum added, catching up.

"Right."

Very soon we had a horizontal line of yellow post-its, marking the little we knew of Hugh's Monday. Several green post-its, representing questions and lines of inquiry ran in short verticals below the yellow facts.

Next we ran through Mason Rafflyan's timeline, which was even more sparse than Hugh's. His first sighting was at 4 PM on Sunday, when he checked into Robbins' Good Old Inn. According to the desk clerk, Mason stayed in his room all night, until he emerged at 8:30 AM on Monday for the free continental breakfast. He took his time over his food and his phone. He left at nine AM. He didn't check out, but he never returned. The staff at the Inn had little to say about him: only that he was quiet and polite.

He was next seen at the police station at 9:30AM.

"What was he doing there?" Carly queried.

"He wanted to talk about Charlotte Rafflyan," Tatum replied in a cautious tone, as if she were risking her big toe at the edge of a minefield. She knew how the mere mention of Charlotte's name could set Carly off.

In fact, Carly took a deep breath, and her face turned red, but she managed to keep her negative comments to herself.

"The desk sergeant told Mason to leave," Tatum added. Carly nodded, as if that was the proper action to have taken. Grudgingly, unwillingly, she added, "We need to find out exactly what Mason said, what he asked, and what the sergeant told him." Tatum nodded and made a note of it.

"Did Mason and Hugh intersect there, at the station?" Carly asked.

"I don't think so," Tatum replied. "It's true that they were at the same location at the same time, but Mason didn't get any farther than the front desk. If Hugh was writing reports, he would have been at a desk in the back. They aren't likely to have seen each other."

"Unless... unless...," Carly cautioned. "Unless Hugh happened to stick his head out. Unless Hugh finished quickly and ran into Mason on his way out of the station." She frowned. "Remember, Hugh tries to keep quiet about it, but he's into all those conspiracy theories — UFOs in the desert, alien abductions... the whole nine yards."

"Get a couple of drinks in him, and it all comes spilling out," Tatum commented.

Carly nodded grimly, in acknowledgement. "So, there's a possible connection between Hugh and Mason — at least they have a shared interest."

"There are cameras at the front door and at the front desk," Tatum said. "We can check the footage; see if the two of them intersect."

It was a good thing I'd taken a dip into the internet earlier that day, and gotten an idea of all the baggage the name "Charlotte Rafflyan" brought along with it. Otherwise I'd have been both confused and full of questions.

"I hate to say it," Carly added, "But, as I said earlier, we're going to have to talk with Charlotte Rafflyan to find out whether Mason had any interactions with her." She sighed heavily. "There's a pretty obvious chance that the two of them are related." She rolled her eyes at the prospect.

Tatum scribbled Charlotte / Mason: related? on a green post-it, stuck it to the window, and returned to her little pad. "The next sighting of Mason is dinner with Hugh at Ebbidles at 8 PM. What did he do in between? How do Mason and Hugh connect? Did they know each other before? Do they belong to the same Charlotte Rafflyan conspiracy club?"

"Is there really such a club?" I asked, naively.

"No," Carly snorted. "It's just a bunch of crazies on the internet. They aren't organized, thank goodness."

"So... what are you going to do? What's next?" I asked. "Do you have to go through all the CCTV in town, tracking their movements?"

Tatum shook her head. "Robbins doesn't have cameras placed around town. Privacy concerns put the kabosh on that. We do have a few traffic cameras and red-light cameras, but those are focused on drivers and license plates, not on pedestrians. You don't get any background in those shots."

"What about stores?"

"Well, sure, a lot of stores have cameras, but they're generally pointing inside, at the merchandise and the shoppers, not outside at the sidewalks or the street."

Now we had two horizontal lines of yellow post-its, each with green questions hanging below. As you can imagine, the points on Mason's timeline were few and far between.

The two policewomen cast about for more facts, for more yellow points, to add to the rather sketchy timelines. Though they were unable to add any more yellow post-its — representing known, demonstrable facts — they did rack up another handful of green questions: dark corners in need of light and clarity.

A lot of the questions had to do with Mason Rafflyan. Who was he? Where did he come from? What was his connection to Hugh? Was he responsible for Hugh's disappearance? Or was he a victim, like Hugh? Sharing the same fate?

Tatum consulted her tablet. "Mason's driver's license shows that he lives in Amsterholt."

"Where the hell is that?" Carly asked. "Nebraska?"

"No," Tatum replied. "I had to look it up, but it's way up north, near the state line. I've got a call in with the sheriff's office—"

"The sheriff?" I echoed, surprised.

"Amsterholt is too small to have its own police force, so the county sheriff has to cover whatever, uh, law-enforcement needs arise up there.

"Oh!" she suddenly recalled, "speaking of law enforcement, we also know that Mason wants to be a police officer. In fact, he just took the civil exam for the second time—"

"The second time?" Carly repeated.

"Yes. He failed it both times."

Carly shook her head.

"Is it a hard test?" I asked.

Carly looked at me for a few moments, but didn't answer.

"Okay," Tatum intoned, looking over the colored note-squares decorating my window. "I think that's as far as we can go with the boys." She took out her phone and snapped some pictures of the timeline. Then she turned to face me.

"Now we need to figure out how you come in," she said.