“Ah, I see.” Frank took his hand off Brandy’s shoulder and strolled closer to the window, his hands behind his back. His corner office consisted of floor to ceiling windows that opened to a stunning view of Newport Beach. He turned to her. “He told me that as well. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much of the details of our childhood. I remember we played together, of course. And I told him I always had the impression that he came from a troubled home. He confided to me the abuse allegations and it made sense to me. You know what I mean?”
Brandy nodded. “Yes. He told me all that too.”
“Did he tell you about my mother?”
Brandy shook her head. He could tell she was being truthful. “Frank showed up in my life a few days after I returned home from tending to my mother’s funeral. She’d been murdered in a home invasion robbery by a guy named Steve Anderson, who was seriously disturbed.” He shrugged, looking reflective. “Steve later hung himself with his shoelace in his cell a month before he went to trial.”
“I’m sorry to hear this,” Brandy said.
“Thank you,” Vince said, nodding. Steve Anderson, in fact, had been arrested two months after Frank’s death and the pieces of evidence against him fell quickly into place. “I was still reeling from the shock of my mother’s murder when Frank came back into my life. As much as I wanted to believe that Frank and I experienced similar things in our childhood, I simply couldn’t. I went along with him anyway because, like I told you, I was going through a bad time myself.”
“The Orange County medical examiner still won’t tell me the details of Frank’s death,” Brandy said. “All they’ll tell me was that his injuries were fatal… that he’d died from severe blood loss and shock.”
“I understand the police believe Frank was killed by an unknown assailant when he was trying to buy drugs,” Vince said.
“That’s not true!”
Vince shrugged. “He was found two blocks from a neighborhood in Fountain Valley where heroin and opium was regularly sold and used at.”
“How do you know this?”
“I tried calling him a day or so after I last saw him,” Vince explained. “A police officer answered his cell phone. He’d died maybe a few hours before. I met with the investigating officers and told them all I knew. They asked me if I’d observed Frank under the influence during that time and… well, I couldn’t lie to them.”
“Frank wasn’t doing drugs!” Brandy protested again.
“Didn’t they find traces of marijuana in his system?”
“Well yes, but—”
“And traces of opiates?”
Brandy looked upset. “He’d been prescribed OxyContin a month before following minor surgery on his back. But that doesn’t mean he—”
“Backslid? Perhaps not, but the lab results tell another story. The way he disappeared sure explains things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Brandy, let’s cut to the chase. Frank Black had fallen off the wagon and was losing his mind. It was obvious to me in the few days I spent with him that he was on a wild goose chase involving his alleged abuse, that he had a major drug problem, and that he was either making shit up or hallucinating it. He obviously sent you away as part of this fantasy, but I believe he also wanted you and your kids out of the way so he could get high in peace.”
“Why… why are you saying that?” Brandy was starting to cry.
Vince sighed, put his arm around her and gently escorted her away from the desk, toward the windows overlooking the view. “I’m sorry, but if you’d heard some of the things he was saying, you’d think it was crazy.”
“Try me.” She turned to him, her eyes imploring him to tell her the truth.
Vince looked reluctant. He shook his head. “Are you sure he never told you about his childhood? About his mother, Gladys?”
“He hated his mother,” Brandy said. “He never told me why, just that she and his stepfather were horrible people.”
“He didn’t tell you that he thought his parents were Satanists? That they belonged to a secret nationwide Satanic cult that was involved in white slavery, the international drug trade, and child pornography?”
Brandy looked like she’d been slapped in the face. She gasped, her eyes widened in surprise. “N-no… he didn’t. I—are you serious?”
“Very serious.”
“He told you this?”
“Yes, he did.”
“What about… your parents? Were they part of it too?”
Vince laughed. “My mother? A Satanist? She was the most Christian woman you could ever meet. It’s mind-blowing to say the least.”
“Did Frank tell you you’re mother was involved?”
“No. Only his.”
“You’re saying my husband told you that he thought that his parents were members of a satanic cult and that they abused him?” Brandy still looked like she was having a hard time accepting this.
Vince nodded. “Yes indeed.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Were they?”
Vince noted her serious tone, her unblinking approach. He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not,” Brandy said. “My husband obviously believed it. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because it isn’t true,” Vince said. His tone and demeanor became more serious, less playful. “I’ve gotten to know Gladys Black and her husband in the past few years due to the intersecting of our professional lives. She’s a lovely woman. Very driven, professional. She was saddened to learn of Frank’s passing. We’ve talked a lot about Frank in the past few years and she shared some details of his childhood with me. He was a very disturbed child.”
“If you’re going to—”
“Let me finish,” Vince said, over-riding her protests. He stood tall and firm near the big plate glass windows that overlooked Newport Beach. “Your husband was obsessed with his theory. It was obvious to me he’d gone through a rough time, but Gladys tells me that Frank was seriously disturbed at a young age. He had disciplinary problems as early as the second grade. He began using drugs at a very early age, began drinking, began getting in trouble with the police. Gladys did everything she could to control him, but she couldn’t. She finally sent him to her former sister-in-law’s place in Texas. They had a hard time with him too, and he eventually left their home and wound up in Los Angeles. I’m sure he told you the rest? The years of selling and using drugs, being involved in petty crimes?”
Tears pooled in Brandy’s eyes. “You’re painting the impression that he was some kind of scumbag. He wasn’t anything like that!”
“I agree, he redeemed himself later,” Vince said. “I have to commend him for that. I think his relationship with you really helped as well. Unfortunately, his past demons were strong. He could never completely escape from them. In the end, they consumed him.”
“The police said Frank was talking to a guy named David Connelly,” Brandy said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “They found the phone records on Frank’s cell phone. They haven’t been able to locate him. It’s like he just disappeared. Did he ever mention that name to you?”
Vince shook his head. David Connelly was the pseudonym Mike Peterson had adopted and opened his alternate identity under. With Carol Peterson’s help, they’d dismantled all traces of David Connelly when the three of them had been in Pennsylvania. “No, he didn’t. Why?”
“Are you sure? Because the phone records the police retrieved were made in the week the two of you were parading all over Southern California.”
“Frank made a few phone calls, but I never asked who he was talking to and he never told me.”