Sneak Preview Part II: Meet Mickey Murder

TWO

Getting the mail had not been a big deal as far as Adeline Lazenby was concerned, regarding her missing son anyway. He’d been gone for three years. The case was still open. But the case was also very cold. Adeline and her husband, her ex-husband now, were told after the first year that the case would stay open, though it could get colder, and it did get chilly, the case that is, but that they would be best served, she and her husband soon-to-be ex, personally, if they “moved on” with their lives.

This angered Adeline, and her ex-husband to be. They were still married through the second year their son was gone although, like their son’s case, their relationship got colder as time went on and still colder the longer their son was not found.

How could they tell us to move on, like he’s dead, when he might not be, Jason, our son? No. He isn’t dead. How dare they?

The anger was understandable. They, the ones that told her and her ex-husband who she was still married to until the start of the third year to move on, agreed with her and her soon to be ex-husband even as they told them to move on as she cried and her husband, now ex, yelled. They all said “We understand how you feel” which only made them, she and her husband soon-to-be ex, angrier even though they outwardly said they understood that what the ones that told them to “move on” meant and were, probably, painfully, right.

Without any clues, literally none (she hates people that say “literally” all the time but this time it is appropriate), zero, no-thing at all, the case was going nowhere, except to the freezer, and their son, dead or alive, was unlikely to be found unless someone, somewhere, who saw something, or knew someone, who heard something from someone who saw something, told them, the ones that told her and her soon-to-be ex to move on like their son was dead, even though no one knew if he was, or where he was, that even if he was alive, or dead (most likely according to they who said to “move on”), he was not ever going to be found.

Unless they got a freaking clue.

So, three years later, after they’d moved on (both in the sense of living like their son was dead or alive but never to be found and also in the sense of since we lost our son who we don’t know if he’s alive or dead but will probably never be found we hate each other and will agree to “move on” separately) and as she was going through the mail, by which time “moving on” had sadly become easier because without her husband, and the house they had shared with their son who had not been found alive or dead after three years, she found herself disturbingly able to not think about her old life, though rarely not about her son, and almost always to not think about her ex-husband.

And then that very day, in the mail, and she had been secretly anticipating that day with much trepidation, there was an envelope from someone who didn’t want to say who they were but had something to tell her without revealing their name or return address. There were no markings of any kind on the envelope, one of those manila (reminds her of vanilla) envelopes with a flap at one, narrow end and a metal-brass-ish, clasp, thingy-thing that someone had used to close it and then some already-there glue that someone must have licked to double secure the flap (along with the thingy-thing) and a white address label printed on a laser printer with her name and address on it (not her ex-husband’s name or address on it nor that of the someone who sent it), and a postage paid postmark from a post office somewhere in the City of Brotherly Love (is that considered irony?), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By the time she received the envelope, three years after her son disappeared, she was living in the Philadelphia suburbs, but on the Jersey side of the river, the Delaware River that is, about halfway across New Jersey, at a midpoint just off the Atlantic City Expressway between Atlantic City, thirty miles to her east, and Philadelphia, where the envelope was postmarked, about thirty miles to her west.

Before, when her son wasn't missing and she was married to her ex, the father of her missing son that she sadly was thinking less about these days (but still many times every day), they had lived in Philadelphia. But once her son was gone, and then after her husband left her too, she also wanted to be gone, if not totally from Earth yet definitely at least from Philadelphia, far from the too painful reminders of her missing son who is probably dead but might still be alive and never to be found and her ex-husband, who agreed with the men that told her and her ex to move on, though they probably weren’t suggesting she and her ex should move on from each other.

And, for some unknown reason, some crazy sense of intuition, some appalling anticipation of the horrid, she did not want to open the envelope because she expected it, she knew it would be there and she was afraid of what was inside of it.

She shook as she held it; shaking like she did in the days and weeks immediately after her son vanished, when the case was not yet freezing cold, though it had never really been hot, not even lukewarm (the first 48 hours having passed by rather uneventfully seeing as how there were no fucking clues); shaking like she did back then after her son was gone but before she could fill the prescription her doctor gave her to calm her and then the passage of time which wore her down and helped her keep the shaking to a minimum, along with the as yet ever present, ever full, pill bottle.

She was shaking for sure. And she was crying too. She was crying before she noticed she was crying but the shaking she knew about first. She was shaking and crying, which made her shake and cry more, as she looked around the room, her kitchen, looking for something, she was looking for something, and she didn’t know where it was, or what it was exactly, she’d know it when she saw it, the thing she needed, the thing she was looking for as she shook and cried until, just like when she realized she was crying, crying before she realized it, she realized that what she was looking for was not where she thought it would be, because what she was looking for was not there in her kitchen, or anywhere in her house, or anywhere on Earth except maybe with her son, who, whether alive or dead, would probably never be found with the thing she was looking for.

Because he didn’t have it, alive or dead. Found or not.

She was looking all over her house for a reason not to open the envelop.

And she couldn’t find one.

So, she stopped looking, but kept shaking and crying and not opening the envelope even though, had we been there to ask her why she was shaking and crying, she would not have been able to tell us why because she didn’t know.

It’s just an envelope, goddammit! Why would it have anything to do with him, my son, my maybe dead but maybe alive son who went missing without a trace, in Philadelphia, without a clue my boy who’s case is still open even though we’ve been told he may never be found and he is probably dead but he might be alive but we will probably never know and the case is so fucking cold because we don’t have one single fucking clue, not one single fucking idea who, what, when, where, why, and how that fucking boy went missing!

And then she stopped. Crying and shaking. She stopped. Not because she felt better. She felt worse. And she got scared. More scared. Because she knew that any moment now, she might be doing far more than crying and shaking. So much more. So, so much more.

She was starting to think she might die.

And when she thought the word die she wasn’t sure if that would be so bad. Because even though she had moved on, reluctantly, without her ex-husband her missing boy’s father, and she had moved out of Philadelphia, and she manages to work most days, and she manages to act normal sometimes, most of the time, at work and in social situations, she still really hasn’t fucking moved on!

Every day has been hell. How do you live? He was 10. He’s been gone for three years. If he’s alive, he’s now a teenager. If he’s dead, he will never be a teenager. My boy. My son. My only child. He’s gone. And so is my life. All of it. Forever. It’s already gone. This envelope. Why? What can it contain? Why do I think that my boy is in there? Jason. My son. My love. Named for my father, and his father. My ex was gracious enough to honor them. They weren’t alive to meet him, my missing son Jason, who I silently hope is still alive. Even though I know he most likely is not.

She looked at the wall calendar. To confirm what she already knew before she thought it. She knew. She remembered. How could she forget? She knew when she went to bed last night. And immediately upon waking this morning.

But she was practiced at acting normal. For them. For anyone. For everyone. Because she knew that they knew that she knew what today was and that they were going to not mention it to help her act normal because they thought it would make today easier for her even though they really did it for themselves because how the fuck do you talk to someone about this on the anniversary day?

Why am I shaking and crying? Why am I going to die if I open the envelope? Why?

You. Know. Why.

She knew the envelope was there in the mailbox before she saw it in that pile of mail after she got it out of the mailbox and dropped the pile on her kitchen table.

How? Mother’s intuition? Fuck.

She knew all day long it would be there. As did everybody else. She knew this envelope was coming last year. Even though it didn’t. She knew it would. It was just a matter of time. Because she knew, whatever year it arrived, whatever year it came in, this fucking envelope with her death warrant in it, it would come on this day. June 17th.

His anniversary.

The day he was taken.

The last day anyone ever saw him alive.

Because the motherfucker who took my son wouldn’t be satisfied until he rubbed my face in it, without letting me know what happened, how easy it was to take Jason, without bragging to me about what he did to my son.

She dropped the envelope on top of the pile of mail and called Detective Armory of the Philadelphia Police Department, Missing Persons Unit.