Twelve for Twelve

By Dawn J Rasmussen

Twelve years of heartache. Twelve acts to uncover the truth.

“...and born of my torment, a plan conceived: daring, dastardly, and a touch divine, a frantic clutch at fate’s unruly ruffs, that the great black hole of despair might not swallow me whole.”

Twelve years after his disappearance, Jack Sutton is spotted jogging through a park. Tortured by questions of Jack's unknown fate, Camden Slade’s anguish takes a turn for the reckless, and she conceives a plan to discover what happened to him. With the help of two friends and a hired gun, Camden sets her strategy in motion, a plan that requires her full arsenal of skills as a fraud examiner and turns the tables in her favor. When things start to fall apart, Camden finds herself scrambling to avoid detection and hide her wrongdoings. She is finally able to ask the long-awaited questions of her heart, but is she prepared for the answers she receives or to face the soul-altering savagery of what she has done?

“I highly recommend this novel for its edgy anticipation, compelling characters, and a winding path of justice. Woven within this excellently written book are humor and intense love. The mysterious stages play out in fascinating and unpredictable ways. The plot unfolds while characters come to live in your heart as deeper meanings to life develop.” —Readers' Favorite

• Language: English
• Publisher: TouchPoint Press
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 195685102X

Dawn J Rasmussen

Dawn Rasmussen's personal slogan is "Always be on the lookout for a spot of magic." This is how she lives her life. She finds magic in nature, spontaneous adventures, amazing books, and great swimming holes. Dawn started writing TWELVE FOR TWELVE as a self-imposed therapy assignment that recommended recording her unresolved feelings and burning them afterward. Rather than engaging in bonfire triumph, Dawn kept writing until one day it became a novel. Her great hope is for one person to feel less lonely by what she has written.

Book preview

Chapter One

Unexceptionable Truth

T

he haughty sign above the entrance hall thus declared: No one ignorant of geometry can enter here. I chuckled as I passed beneath the forbidding barrier, recognizing the words that echoed the call of Plato’s Academy in ancient Greece. Whittier College, in Southern California—where I was guest lecturing that evening—was no Acropolis, to be sure, but it had its own charm, lent by the dogged determination of students who had already put in a full days’ work, and now sat amid the glaring fluorescent lights and concrete walls, hoping to survive just one more night of lectures.

My phone buzzed, but I sent the call to voicemail as I connected my device to the projector, did a quick glance-over of the class, and flipped out the lights. Many sighs of relief issued from the back of the room. The famous wigged-portrait of Sir Isaac Newton flipped onto the projector screen.

In my study of the greatest minds of history, I have found that they all have one thing in common, a higher law that each of them followed. Can anyone guess what that might be?

An amused voice drifted from a silhouette standing in the open door frame, A mad love of the Opera? To some shocked gasps, the lights flipped back on, and Professor Linderman strolled into the room. He shook my hand and introduced me.

Class, this is Ms. Camden Slade, doctor of many things that I can hardly be expected to recall at my advanced age, and a true expert in fraud examinations. She wrote the case study you’ve been rigorously working over the past few weeks . . .

A few sour grimaces were directed my way.

. . . which is why she is here tonight: to provide you with the missing pieces. Thank you for coming. He squeezed himself into one of the student desks and waved a hand at me. Please, carry on.

Someone at the back of the room killed the lights again.

As I was saying, the greatest minds in all of history, whether or not they were aware of it, followed a single law. I paused for emphasis, but sensing dead enthusiasm, gave the answer in a mystical voice hoping to expand student interest. It is the quest for unexceptionable truth.

The fidgeting audience grew silent.

Has anyone heard of this law or can anyone think of an example? When no one responded, I added, You might take a hint from the picture on the screen.

A lazy voice in a yellow shirt finally drawled an answer. Grrrravity?

That is correct. Gravity is, indeed, an unexceptionable truth. Any other ideas?

How about hunger pangs in the middle of class? said another student to some laughter, while others grumbled their assent. The girl sitting next to him tossed a granola bar his way.

You’re actually getting warmer, I said. Believe it or not, some of these truths can be quite messy, such as the law of unintended consequences, more commonly known as Chaos Theory, and when coupled with its more glamorous comrade, Catastrophe Theory, the results can be truly—

Catastrophic? said the same student, to another round of laughter, which caused him to choke and spew dried bits of granola. The girl next to him shook her head and passed him her water bottle.

Why don’t you give the class an example, Professor Linderman suggested as my phone buzzed. The name of my caller was displayed on the screen for the whole class to see: BARCELONA. My closest friend.

I silenced the call and continued my lecture.

All right, Mr. Hunger Pangs, when I came in the room, I noticed that both of your shoes are untied and that you’ve got a spot of strawberry lipstick on the rim of your t-shirt.

Strawberry jam, more like . . . he muttered, sniffing at his shirt.

My theory? You were accosted in the hallway on your way home last night by an insanely beautiful woman, who, in the throes of passion, kept you all night from doing your homework, with the catastrophic results of failing the class.

How’d you guess? he said with a grin. Granola girl gave him a sharp look.

My phone buzzed again. This time, every eye in the room drifted to the screen: BARCELONA. Again.

She was out of town and wouldn’t know I was lecturing that night. I sent the call to voicemail and continued speaking. "Catastrophe Theory basically states that the slightest change in one thing can lead to great changes, elsewhere. The key word being slightest. In the Fraud Triangle, a slight change in one of the elements could mean all the difference between committing fraud and finding a less legally reprehensible solution. For example . . ."

My phone buzzed again. This time it was a text message: Jack! It’s JACK! Call me now!

At that moment, I froze. Even the walls seemed to hold their breath. The kid in the yellow shirt slowly raised his hand. It seems kinda urgent. Is that a call from Spain? Maybe we should cut class early so you can call back . . . you know, time zones and all.

Professor Linderman slid from his seat, unplugged my device, and steered me into the hallway, a hand on each shoulder. In disbelief, I stared at the words, hardly able to comprehend their meaning. My hands shook as I pressed the callback button.

Instantly, Barcelona’s voice shouted in my ear, I think I lost him!

Where are you? Are you sure it’s him? My voice cracked and echoed down the empty hallway.

I’m in New York for that conference and traffic was detoured! I swear he jogged right past my car and into a park. I pulled off the road and tried to get a better look, but I’ve definitely lost him.

Jogging!

In a park? Did you see his face? Surely it could not be him.

. . . But surely it is, Barcelona breathlessly avowed as she marched hard. I could hear the clop of her heels on the sidewalk and knew she was dressed for business. Her car pinged warning sounds as the door stood aloft, the engine still running. His fingers were doing that thing . . . you know, where he plays the music on the air?

I knew what she meant. Jack loved music. His favorite instrument was the guitar, and he subconsciously strummed whatever song was in his head, subtly, with his hands at his sides.

For one glorious moment, my heart surged: Jack! Alive! I knew it! I knew it! Finally! A chance to see him, to talk to him, to understand!

But then I did understand: Jack. Alive. Well. Out jogging.

I felt numb.

How could he do it? Leave everyone and everything he loved behind? How could he do it?

For the second time since Jack’s disappearance, my world fell to ruin. I forgot about my lecture, about my surprise ending, I forgot I was on earth, a living being that occupied space, it took everything I had to hold myself together, to make it home, to slither under the covers, to stop living.

Journal Entry #01

Black Hole

I

n the weeks following the sighting of the elusive Jack—for whose unknown fate I had been grieving for the past twelve years—I fell into a period of extended despair. I kept reliving memories of Jack, going over every scenario of those last days with him, searching for hidden meaning, or hints I may have missed, any indicator of what might have happened. Over time, the power of my melancholy increased in such a way as to produce a pattern in my mind. A pattern to which one might apply the quality of perpetuity, running counter-clockwise, with endless points of inflection that grew increasingly sharper.

Mostly to occupy my mind, I sat down and drew it on a graph.

It took several hours, plenty of Aspirin, and a protractor. I followed the law of Perspective, which is the geometry needed to draw objects in depth and measured the distance between some of the curves using the anti-derivative, which in a real-world situation would indicate unfavorable profitability.

At first, the pattern resembled a spider web, but eventually, the tangles formed an inward-spiraling mass that never ceased to end: a black hole. If placed on a tri-plane graph, it would actually have been a black hole.

Grief was a black hole.

A vortex of matter so dense that no light can flow through it. It was a portrait of my soul, one through which no light could flow. I needed a change of Perspective, an opposing solution, and I instinctively knew it was the one thing I didn’t want it to be, the one thing of which I had none:

Hope.

There was no need to put it on a graph. Its qualities were inherently known. It was the thing that spiraled ever outward, the breath of life, the breath of the very universe. It was the antithesis of the black hole.

Jack had been my hope. My future. His dazzling smile flashed in my head, a wolfish, triangular smirk that melted every part of me, but now interred a terrible ache. How the questions of the unknown tortured me: Where had he gone? Had he suffered? Been murdered?

In the early years of Jack’s disappearance, I had campaigned a relentless search for any sign of his whereabouts, sick with the growing feeling that something awful had befallen him, but at that time, technology and information were in a devolved state, and any efforts to question Jack’s family had been met with coldness. The feeble attempts of the revolving detectives assigned to Jack’s case as a missing person only affirmed what my sinking heart was loathe to accept: Jack was gone, and no answers would come.

Contrary to the mass of devoid evidence, I knew that Jack would never purposely abandon the life we had envisioned for ourselves. For twelve years, I had clung to that knowledge, unable to fully grieve, unable to move forward, married to the unknown fate of one most beloved . . . but then came the sighting.

There was no proof, no picture, only the word of a friend, but something inside of me shifted: I needed truth.

Unexceptionable truth.

It was the slightest change, the sort of thing to precede Catastrophe, and born of my torment, a plan conceived: daring, dastardly, and a touch divine, a frantic clutch at fate’s unruly ruffs, that the great black hole of despair might not swallow me whole.

Phase I

(Six Months Later)

Chapter Two

Eye of Newt

A

fter unwittingly discovering my plans for Jack on the whiteboard of my home office, Barcelona made plans of her own to ambush me.

You stole my van? I shouted as I barged into Barcelona’s workspace at home. Those were the last words I got in, as all future expletives were muffled by gauzy fabric, stuffed abruptly into my mouth. Quicker than a trice, Barcelona had me bound to a pillar in a swaddle of materials that disabled me entirely.

Wha-r-oo-doin! I tried to shout. The taste of lavender felt bitter on my tongue, courtesy of the herbal pouches Barcelona used to keep her fabric supplies fresh. Half-draped sewing mannequins littered the room, and I had the eerie sensation of being planted in a graveyard where my own mummified corpse shuddered for escape.

Barcelona admired her handiwork with supreme satisfaction. If you’ll stop shouting, I’ll ungag you.

My entire body shook with outrage, but her strangely-successful contrivance held me in place with pythonish strength.

"Fine, then, I’ll do the talking, she said. Let’s start with this."

Barcelona held up a plastic library card that I knew she found in the van. The name scrawled on the signature line caught my attention—something I had failed to notice before, something important. Suddenly, you’re a pick-pocket, now?

One of Barcelona’s stained-glass windows was cracked open, and just outside it, the hired gardener suddenly saw fit to water the rose bushes beneath it. I glared at Barcelona. It was imperative that my secret remained just that: a secret.

Have you gone crazy? she said in what she imagined to be a scratchy whisper but was hardly a whisper at all.

The idea blipped my radar of interest. Perhaps, I was crazy. Something about it felt appealing. Justifying. Barcelona observed me with exasperation as a light sprinkle of water peppered us through the window. She eyed it with a smug glint.

"Now, listen up, sassy pants, I’m going to remove this gag, and you’re going to talk . . . softly. She swept her swarthy mane into a bun and plugged it into place with a pencil before freeing my mouth. I gulped at the air as Barcelona continued to talk. I know you’re hurting, Cam, but there has got to be a better way, she said. Why this? Why now?"

I faux-spat the bitter lavender from my tongue, and instead of giving an honest reply that was sure to bring up many unpleasant emotions, I gave her a classic misdirect, something I knew would distract her. Because ‘I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul,’ I said with stale exuberance.

The dimple next to Barcelona’s enviable lashes squinted as she chewed over my quote. She loved the guessing game. Gandhi?

Despite my fettered predicament, a slight amusement crept at my lip. Calvin.

And Hobbes? Barcelona said.

That’s the one, I replied as I mentally inventoried escape options that would help me avoid a real conversation on the subject.

Figured a magical way out of this, yet? she said, reading my thoughts. My eyes drifted to a witch hat adorned with bats and pumpkins, propped on one of the dummies.

Not without some eye of newt or the spleen of a salamander, I said with a half-hearted smile, trying to keep things light. I knew she had the upper hand on this one, and a proper discussion of frippery feelings was the only way out of it. Barcelona knew it too.

She planted herself on a stool in front of me and gave me a long, knowing look. I hated her for it because the moment she caught my eye, a wave of emotions threatened to breach their inner confines. I looked away, determined to maintain a calm appearance.

Barcelona’s next words were soft and coaxing. Is this because of what I may or may not have seen?

I steadily maintained an indirect gaze, but despite my best efforts, a touch of moisture dribbled onto my cheek, a treacherous, deliberate advertisement of everything I wanted to hide. My hands, which were starting to go numb, could not even budge to shield it.

We don’t even know if it was actually him, Barcelona said. Sensing my vulnerability, she dabbed at my cheek with the gauze. With a pitying smile, she added, And I’m pretty sure the great Gandhi wouldn’t approve of your master plan.

Yeah, but Calvin would.

Look, I’m on a bit of a time schedule, I said, curtly. And with all due respect to the great Gandhi, it’s happening . . . and sometime in the next hour or so. There’s no stopping it. The only question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you would like to verify what you saw.

Barcelona stopped up short. This seemed an important negotiating point. I could see her erratic nature teetering the top edge of a parabolic swing.

Plus, I added in my best tempting schmooze, you’ll get to wear a disguise.

In the next hour . . . ? Why didn’t you say so? Barcelona seized the straightjacket of materials with both hands and darted swiftly around me in dizzying circles. As the fabric unraveled, I shoved it off me and stepped out of it, then promptly snatched the card from Barcelona’s grip. I turned away and rubbed a gentle, covert thumb over the signature line.

But don’t say I didn’t tell you so when they’re hauling you off in shackles, Barcelona said, gathering the materials into a heap on the floor. And maybe it will finally help you to move on.

I struggled to conceal my inner cringe.

Move on.

Friends, family, and complete strangers alike all had a bit of advice to offer the broken, and it generally included those much-dreaded words: You have to move on, or keep living, or start doing the things you love again.

I used to love music. As an accomplished musician, Jack had amplified its effects most stunningly. He was rarely found without an instrument in his hands, his top choice being the guitar. Jack could play the notes on just about anything: the starry sky was one big musical scoreboard for him, power lines were just another set of strings envisioned to be played, and the bouncing of daffodils was a lively beat to be followed.

Once, on a sunny afternoon under our favorite tree in Jack’s front yard, he sat tuning his guitar as I studied, lazily flipping through flash cards of French verbs. My progress halted all at once as Jack’s fingers tickled along my arm. Thrills of happiness flooded through me as he swept back my sleeve to reveal the speckled dots of my arm. He indicated for me to remain still and lovingly plucked-out the notes of my freckles in the musical stanzas of his mind. Later that night, he added the tune from the stars of my birth constellation, Libra. Combined, these notes became my own personal theme song, courtesy of the lovely Jack. He sang it all the time, applying different words for the occasions, silly things like reminding me to grab marshmallows for our camping trip, or expressing his affections when we were alone. For Jack’s birthday, I gave him a golden guitar pick, engraved with the first five notes on a musical stanza, and he was never found without it from that time forward.

After Jack disappeared, I tried to plunk out my song on the ukulele I had been gifted as a child. It filled me with deep sadness. Jack was everywhere, in every song. My personal melody pervaded every sound: the sough of leaves in the afternoon breeze, the shouts of an ocean wave, the burble of daily life. A once true and beautiful tonic had become soured, an embittered acid that poisoned my soul one strum at a time, and I had learned to shut it out. The biblical scribe surely pegged it right: As vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.

Songs of advice, songs of hope, songs of move on.

Mercifully, the rattle of keys in my face brought me back to the moment.

Are we going, or what? Barcelona said. I grabbed the keys without argument and headed out the door, dusting gauzy fluff from me as I went.

The van was clumsily parked on the curb of Barcelona’s driveway, demonstrating her hasty getaway. As I cornered the garage, another ill-aimed spray from the rose-watering spigot doused me down the front. This proved to be an adequate catalyst for me, as I was already on the defensive. I turned to the hedge and observed Barcelona’s gardener with dour contemplation. He gave me a sheepish grin and sprayed the hose into the air so that it rained directly over himself, a simple act he seemed to enjoy. It suddenly struck me that I could hardly remember the last time I had enjoyed anything simple.

Threats before noon? said Barcelona as she opened the passenger door. Stop harassing my gardener with your spine-chilling glares and tell him to mind his own business.

Isn’t that what I just did?

Journal Entry #02

Obscuro

T

here is something awful about not knowing. Not knowing if your legs will give out before the end of a marathon. Not knowing if your body will heal from a prolonged illness. Not knowing the fate of one who is dear. The Latin word for this darkness is obscurus, or more specifically, obscuro: to cause to be forgotten.

I once read the biography of a death-row inmate who described the terribleness of not knowing his own fate as the yin-yang of agony. Tiny peaks of hope followed by long stretches of despair.

Society has a tendency to impose a firm embargo on discussing one’s loss. It is a thorn that turns rational people defensive. As a result, the hushing policies of polite society become a powerful tool in converting one’s loneliness into deep isolation. There is a whole brigade of people like me, isolated in our grief . . . obscuro.

We are the widows and widowers of an undead partner, the missing, the presumed-dead, or the forgotten. We are a fleet of ghost-ships, forever lost at sea, buoyed to nothing, our path obscured by a fog of not-knowing. We sit mired in the yin-yang of agony, awaiting death by public execution for a crime we never committed, unable to give up or move forward, clinging to the futile hope of clemency that will never come.

Chapter Three

Jack’s Bad Luck

T

he windowless van, hijacked by Barcelona, belonged to my consulting firm and was filled with an abundance of forensic-world wonders, often used for activities of a semi-questionable nature. After using its amenities to prepare basic disguises, Barcelona and I headed out. Along the way, she peppered me with a series of questions, never stopping to draw breath, and inventing solutions to suit her own wishes, many of which were way off mark.

I let her ramble and stifled my disgruntlement at the turn of events. I had wanted to keep this first stage of events to myself as sort of a trial run, an evaluation on whether or not I should continue with the rest of my plans. Plus, Barcelona was an established clothing designer, and as such, was imbued with a certain level of notoriety. I just didn’t want to be noticed.

I had been careful in my preparations, which at the time had felt passionless—a mere provocation aimed at gaining an audience with a subject of interest. It was just another typical day at the office . . . or so I told myself, but as every investigator was well aware, no design ever went as planned. The human element always bungled things up, and the fates often took it incumbent upon themselves to send forceful reminders of this inescapable law. I hoped it would not be one of those times.

The Orange County Library system was insuperably ordinary. Much of the lighting was expired, the vibrant orange chairs were old and filthy, and the circulation desk was satisfactorily understaffed. I had chosen this particular branch for a special reason: the surveillance was minimal, and I had it on good authority that the cameras were only dummy models.

However, for precautionary measures, I had donned a baseball cap over my bronze locks, wound into a wad at the nape of my neck. A pair of oversized glasses were lodged beneath the hat’s rim to better shield my face. I had also applied adhesive to my fingertips to avoid leaving prints. It was overkill, but one could never be too sure. Paranoia. It was a criminal’s best friend and worst enemy.

I pulled out the plastic library card—the one I had lifted off a teenager the previous week—and Barcelona ogled it with big eyes. I flicked her behind the ear, and she responded with an excellent grin, revealing a stack of perfect, white teeth. Barcelona had also gone with the hat and glasses routine, but that swarthy nimbus of hers was difficult to conceal.

A lot of foot traffic sailed around us due to a book club meeting arranged in a conference room across the lobby. A table full of teacups and delicacies was set up just outside the door. We made our way to the bank of computers where I logged on with my illicit means and tapped into the live feed. The signature on the card seemed to stare up at me, and my throat contracted with a tight pang.

The major disadvantage of using the library was the lack of privacy. Anybody who passed by could see the screen, and the stations to either side were within an elbow’s reach. Our only option was to shield the area with basic hovering maneuvers and large encyclopedias to each side. Barcelona’s glossy bouffant could have provided sufficient security to one side, but it was too risky to chance it; she was just so distinctly recognizable.

I had received word from my contractor that the camera was in place and carried a ten-day battery life. So far, I’d done nothing illegal, and surely, finding a library card—which would be returned by the end of the day—was not so very bad. And surely there was nothing wrong with setting up an encrypted webcam for my own private viewing.

No, no, nothing at all . . . which was probably the justification of the