“Yes. They found me alone in the room, and she didn’t leave a note or anything. So none of it makes sense to me. Did you ever know her to be suicidal?”
“Oh no, absolutely not. Kasey was full of life, and like I said, she adored you. I can’t imagine her leaving you alone like that. I’m sorry...I always just assumed because Paul said you were with her family, that she’d left you with them before she...” He stopped there, like he couldn’t bring himself to say, “killed herself.” Taking a drink of the bottle of water on his desk, he looked thoughtful for a few seconds and then said, “I can’t think of anyone I knew that would want to hurt her. Everyone loved her, even our tourists...” He hesitated then, for so long that Blackheart said:
“What is it? Did you think of someone?”
“Not someone, per se...I just remember this day when I came into work and Kasey was already here. Usually she was out with the guests when I got here in the morning while they had their breakfast, refreshing their coffee or helping the kitchen staff bring things out. They always all loved the baby she carried in a pack against her chest. But that morning she was in the office, and I could tell she’d been crying. When I asked her what was wrong she blamed it on hormones...I don’t know much about women who have babies, but you were already about six months old at that time. I remember telling her she should go home and take the rest of the day off, and then being surprised when she took me up on it. Kasey never left a minute early, or showed up a minute late, and that was the only day I ever remember her not being here when she was scheduled, except for the days she asked off to go home to her father’s funeral.”
“But you never figured out what was wrong with her?” Patrice asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s been a long time ago so forgive me if I’m forgetting some of the details...I do remember mentioning it to the wife when she came in that day. She thought it was strange too and she called to check on her. Later that day she told me something that I think I meant to ask Kasey about later, but I can’t honestly remember if I ever did. She said that Kasey sounded good, but she’d asked my wife to do her a favor while she was on the phone. There was a guest here...a couple, I think. But my wife said Kasey specifically mentioned the man by name and asked how long he was registered for. When the wife told her he was only there for one night, she seemed relieved...I don’t remember anything else ever coming of that, though, so I must not have followed up with her on it. I wish now that I had.”
“You think she was afraid of this guy?”
“I don’t know if I’d say afraid, she just seemed really sad to me.”
Patrice looked at Blackheart and he said, “Any chance you have records from twenty-five years ago?”
Grayson made a face and said, “I have the registration books...that was before we went online. Once we did, about ten years ago, we’ve tried to go back and catch up...but that’s going slowly.”
“Would you have any idea what day that was? The month or the date?”
Grayson was shaking his head again, and Patrice felt discouraged. “No, all I really remember was that it was just about two months before she went to New Orleans. Like I said, she never asked for time off, so that’s the only reason why any of that sticks out to me.”
“Any chance you’d let us look through those books, around that time?” Blackheart asked.
Grayson looked again like he was thinking it through and while he was doing that, Blackheart reached into his pocket and took out a thick, black wallet. He opened it up and Grayson said, “No, please. You don’t have to offer me money. I want to help if I can...I’m just not sure about confidentiality or anything like that.” Blackheart put the wallet away and said:
“There’s only one name we’d be interested in, and there’s probably not much chance of us even figuring out who that is. But I can promise you if we do, no one but us will ever know where it came from, and if you ever needed anything in the future, my club would be more than happy to do whatever we could to repay your kindness.”
Grayson nodded and stood up. Blackheart and Patrice followed suit. “The books are in the basement. I’ll show you down.” When they got to the bottom of the stairs in the fully furnished basement he looked at Patrice and with a warm smile he said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, but if you don’t, please never forget how much she loved you. She told me once that her life had been dark before you, and after you it was like constantly living in the sunshine, no matter what the weather was like outside.” Patrice felt the tears burning her eyes yet again. She held them back and gave him a smile, thanked him, and once he was gone she looked at Blackheart and said:
“While it’s just us here, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you doing all of this. I know to you she was just a one-night stand, but...”
“But what I’ve heard about her so far makes me wish I had gotten to know her,” he said. “I’m sure I would have liked her...her daughter’s starting to grow on me already.”
19
Patrice and Blackheart knew that it had been late August of 1997 when Kasey’s father passed so they began with the books marked May and July of that year. It was hard because they had no idea who they were looking for. Patrice concentrated on couples, which unfortunately was the bulk of those registered. She was also concentrating on the ones from the southern part of the United States, because if Kasey knew them it was likely she knew them from back home, or Maine...and there weren’t a lot of visitors who were local. She glanced over at Blackheart when she was about halfway through her book. He’d tied his long hair back in an elastic band and was sitting cross-legged on the floor, poring over the book in his hands. For the second or third time that day, looking at him gave her a warm feeling...and that was strange because from the moment she’d first seen him, she’d tried hard not to like him. However, the more she discovered about her mother’s life, the more she was coming around to the idea that her mother hadn’t really given him any choice where she was concerned. Kasey had written in her diary many passages about telling him someday, but at the time she died, she still hadn’t decided if that was the right thing to do or not. She was afraid he’d think she wanted something from him, and from what Patrice could tell, her mother was pretty independent. She didn’t like to ask for help, and she even wrote a lot about how inept she felt, letting Paul pay for most of the household bills. With Paul, however, she also wrote a lot about how someday she was going to be a doctor, and she could finally repay him for everything that he’d done for her. Patrice didn’t judge her mother for living with a man she knew was married, and had children, but she had a hard time understanding it. Was her mother’s self-esteem so low that she didn’t believe she had a right to a man who was her own?
“Fuck,” Blackheart said, suddenly, breaking the silence in the room, and startling her out of her thoughts.
“What? Did you find something?”
“Bernard Hebert...fucking Bernie...”
The name didn’t mean anything to her. She waited several seconds and when he still didn’t look up at her she said, “Is that someone you know? His name is in the book?”