THE FRUSTRATION
Desiree woke up to the shrill ring tone of her cell
phone. She had chosen an annoying tone on purpose, so she would always want to
answer the phone as soon as possible but today, she had managed to sleep from
it long enough that the caller lost patience and hung up.
She sat up in bed and wondered why she was still
dressed. Then she looked at the time: it had only been two hours since she had
talked with Everill and had come home to sleep. When she picked up the phone,
she recognised Everill’s number on the missed calls list. Why was he calling
her already when he had said it might be a couple of days?
She went straight for the coffee machine, then
called him back. He picked up immediately.
“Bad news,” were the first words he said. Desiree
felt her stomach tie itself into a knot. Had they found Susan? “The bastards
are gone.”
“What?” she asked, unable to comprehend what he was
saying.
“They’ve left the goddamn country!” Everill sounded
angrier than she had ever heard him.
“Wait, start from the beginning,” Desiree said.
“What happened?” Her voice was also kind of high-pitched, she realised.
“When you left, I talked to my chief,” Everill
said, clearly concentrating hard on keeping his voice normal while explaining
everything. “He gave me the green light to bring the doctor in, and to try for
a warrant for the doctor’s documents.”
“Right,” Desiree said and poured herself a cup of
coffee. She sat by the kitchen counter and tried to focus.
“Now, you don’t need a warrant to bring someone in
for questioning,” Everill said, “so I called the company to make sure Dr.
Jackson was there before I drove out to pick him up – and the number had been
disconnected.”
“What?”
“That’s what I said. So I looked the company up
online and called every number I could get a hold of,” Everill said. “Nothing.”
“Oh my god…”
“So I went out there, and the entire place is
fucking empty.” Everill was getting angry again, and Desiree couldn’t blame
him. She was mostly tired and confused – but she knew herself well enough to
know that she would probably get angry later. Right now, she felt like crying.
“They’ve cleared out the entire building,” Everill
said. “They moved on, just like they did in all the other cities we found. I
called a few contacts, and it looks like Dr. Jackson left the country – along
with a hell of a lot of cargo – three days ago [timeline]. Fuck!”
Desiree finished her cup of coffee, and poured a
second. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “What can we do?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Everill said. “It’s going
to take me a while to figure out precisely where they are. Depending on where
they eventually touch down, there may be different options as to how we can get
a hold of Jackson – or there may be no options at all.”
“This really sucks,” Desiree said, mostly to
herself but Everill agreed vehemently. She hid her face in one hand and tried
to sort out her thoughts.
“I promise I’ll do whatever I legally can,” Everill
was saying.
“Yeah, that’s just it, isn’t it,” Desiree said. It
wasn’t a question, and Everill didn’t respond. “You have to take legal action
to deal with illegal actions. That’s hardly fair, and it’s not really getting
us anywhere!” She was starting to get angry now; she could feel it bubbling
inside. It was every bit a childish reaction: a sense of extreme unfairness –
as if life was ever fair – born from the impotence she was feeling.
“Now, you’re forgetting how much information we
already have,” Everill said in a calming tone of voice, “and there are
actions I can take, don’t forget that.”
“But what if it’s not enough? Huh?” Desiree
challenged him. “What if it turns out there’s nothing to do, and that slimeball
is going to get away with whatever he did to Susan?”
“We don’t know for sure that he had anything to do
with it,” Everill said but Desiree wouldn’t listen.
“Oh, please! Running away like this is as good as a
confession!”
“Oh, I agree but that argument won’t hold up in
court,” Everill said sternly. His tone of voice made Desiree hold her tongue,
even if it didn’t calm her down. “Now, I’m going to do what I can, and you are
going to take care of yourself in the meantime. Maybe make an appointment to
see a psychologist. Hmm?”
Desiree surprised herself completely, by holding
the phone away from her ear and sticking her tongue out at it. “Sure,” she said
then, “and thanks, Everill. I know you’re doing all that you can.”
---
Desiree thought about going in to work in the
afternoon but decided against it. Instead, she took the longest shower of her
life, letting her mind run through every piece of information she and Everill
had found in the past days. But even that didn’t put her at ease.
When she had turned off the water and reached for a
towel, she realised why she was still feeling on edge: she didn’t actually
trust Everill to do everything he could to solve this case. As much as they had
warmed to each other in the course of the investigation, she was convinced that
he still wasn’t completely comfortable around her.
She wasn’t sure what the reason was but she knew
that it had caused a tiny bit of distrust in her. It might not be logical, or
even fair towards Everill but she couldn’t help it. She was seriously worried
that this bump in the road – that Dr. Jackson had moved his company abroad –
would be the one that put a final stop to solving the mystery of Susan’s
disappearance.
Desiree put on makeup, did her hair and got dressed
as usual. Then she sat down in the sofa. She didn’t know what to do.
After staring into space for a while, Desiree got
up to make herself something to eat. Susan was usually the one who cooked their
meals, and Desiree tended to forget to eat if Susan wasn’t around. She would
have to get better at planning her meals, at least until Susan came home.
The thought made her physically flinch. She didn’t
really believe that Susan was coming home any more but she wasn’t ready to
fully accept it either. She opened the fridge and stared into it as if it had
personally hurt her. There was some vanilla-flavoured yoghurt on a shelf – that
would have to do. Desiree grabbed a handful of dried fruit from a container in
the cupboard and tossed it on top of the yoghurt. She returned to the sofa to
eat.
Halfway through the yoghurt, she suddenly sat up
straight. She had promised to attend a work function tonight! One of the
clients was represented at a gallery opening and since most of the office was
otherwise engaged, Desiree had promised to be one of only three people from the
agency attending.
She gave a small sigh. Her colleagues would probably
understand if she cancelled – but she actually didn’t feel like cancelling.
There was a part of her that wanted to go, in an attempt to get back to normal
life. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to go, even for a short while. She could leave
at any time that she wanted to. The gallery was in the middle of the city, so
it wouldn’t be a problem to find a cab if she wanted to get home fast.
---
By sunset, Desiree had changed her clothes to
something evening-appropriate and had changed her makeup to match. She grabbed
her cell phone on the coffee table, just in case Everill needed to get in touch
with her at some point during the night. Then she took a cab to the gallery
downtown.
The reception had already started when Desiree
arrived. She sought out the client and the owner of the gallery, to
congratulate both on their work. Then she checked in with her two colleagues
who were both happy to see her and anxious to know if there had been any new
development in finding Susan. Desiree kept that conversation short, and soon
moved on to mingle with the other guests. A gallery opening was usually a good
way of finding new potential clients for the agency, so she would at least
pretend to be doing just that.
Time passed slowly for Desiree. She did her rounds,
small-talking and admiring the art on the walls but her heart wasn’t in it. As
the evening progressed, the gallery opening changed to something resembling
more of a regular party. Desiree found it very hard to relax even though she
saw the other guests loosen up all around her, and she decided to leave early
and call it a night.
She was moving through the room, trying to find her
colleagues to say goodnight, when she spotted the client on a sofa in a corner.
She ought to say goodbye to him as well, so she made her way towards to sofa.
When she got closer, she could hear him talking about a tattoo he had gotten
recently, and by the time she was close enough to say her goodbyes, he had
drunkenly pulled up his shirt to show the handful of people gathered around him
the letters that had been printed just below his ribs.
Although the letters were curled and ornate, they
were large enough to easily read from a distance: Euphrosyne.
Desiree stopped short, and the smile disappeared from
her lips. “Why did you get that?” she asked. There might have been something
strange about her voice because the guests gathered here turned their heads to
look at her.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the client asked with a big
grin. He was still coherent but clearly drunk. “I just absolutely love it!”
“You’re right, it is beautiful,” Desiree said and
made her way to the sofa. The other guests let her through, and she squeezed through
them to sit down on the sofa next to him. “But why did you get it?” She had
come down from the shock of seeing that name, and was using her professional
voice that usually made people tell her what she wanted to know.
This time was no different. The client smirked at the
guests around them and said, “Please excuse us. I have to tell this beautiful
lady a secret, and you can’t hear it!” The other guests laughed, some sounding
more forced than others, and the area around the sofa cleared. The client
turned back to Desiree and looked straight into her eyes.
“I’m so happy,” he whispered and leaned towards
her. “I’m so goddamned happy.”
Desiree looked at him and was surprised to see that
he wasn’t actually trying to come on to her. He was crying: tears of joy, she
thought.
“Why are you so happy?” Desiree asked quietly. “Does
it have something to do with that name?”
“It has everything to do with this name,” he said
and broke into a big smile again. He didn’t bother wiping away the tears on his
cheeks. “It’s the name of the goddess for happiness, after all.” Desiree didn’t
respond but just kept looking at him. After only a short while, he continued, “And
as a matter of fact, it’s also the name of a company that has helped me
immensely.”
“Helped you how?”
“They took my unhappiness away,” he said, leaning
back on the sofa and staring off into space. “They took it away and replaced it
with happiness. As simple as that! Can you believe it?”
“I’m not sure I can,” Desiree said. When he turned
towards her again, she gave him a smile that was meant to be slightly
condescending.
“It’s true, whether you believe it or not,” he said,
as seriously as he could after a number of drinks. “I had… depressive
tendencies, at least that’s what they said. And then they took those tendencies
away. I haven’t felt even the least bit depressed since then. That was, like,
two weeks ago – and I’ve never been happier!” The big smile that was never far
away returned to his face, and Desiree had to admit that it looked very
sincere.
“I’m glad you’re feeling so great,” she said,
leaning towards him and putting her hand on his thigh. She was pretty sure that
he was one of the clients who had no idea that she wasn’t attracted to his
gender – and she had no problem using that to her advantage. “Tell me more
about it.”
---
As soon as she got into the cab later that night,
she called Everill. She only had his direct number at the station but it was
worth a try. She let it ring for two minutes straight, and then looked at her
watch: it was ten past two in the morning. It wasn’t really surprising that
no-one was answering.
Desiree ended the call, and sat staring out into
the night while the cab took her home. What the client had told her tonight was
unbelievable, and yet it fit directly into what she and Everill had found out
about Euphrosyne.
Sam Jackson had developed a method to extract any
depressive and negative feelings from his usually rich and famous clients, and
to replace them with happy, confident, and positive feelings. She had no idea
how something like that was even possible – but she believed that Dr. Sam
Jackson had done it. And it didn’t take much for her to put two and two
together with regard to the homeless test persons: they were having their
positive feelings removed – maybe even replaced! – by the negative feelings of
the rich clients.
Oh my
god, Desiree thought to herself as the cab pulled up in front of the
apartment. Oh my fucking god. He’s an evil genius! That absolute bastard! She
paid the driver and got out, then hesitated by the front door. Suddenly nervous,
as if any passer-by could tell what she had just realised, she looked up and
down the deserted street before going inside.
When she closed the apartment door behind her, she
whispered to herself, “I have to do it. I have to do it. It’s the only way.
Everill can’t do anything; he said so himself. I have to do it.”
She looked at herself in the mirror: there was a
slight worry in the creases between her brows but most of all, there was a
fierce determination in her eyes. She turned away, went into the bedroom and
started packing a suitcase.
