by Joe Clifford
Spreading out the photos, the detective pointed at one, zeroing in on the name of the machine. Blue Diamond Construction Rentals. In fact, most of the machines seemed to bear that name, all leased from the same provider.
“Does that name mean anything to you?” she asked.
“No. Should it?”
Separating photos, she pointed at another with spray-painted graffiti. Then I saw it wasn’t graffiti but a simple circle.
“Why are you showing me these?”
“Seems before he died, Francis Balfour found a can of paint and—” the detective pulled out more pictures, all showcasing the same kinds of heavy machinery, property of Blue Diamond “—he made a point of circling the name. The cause of death isn’t in question. Blunt force trauma. Of course, being at the same quarry where Jacob died, it raises alarms.” The detective shut the folder. “Do you know why Francis would circle the name of a construction machinery vendor?”
“You do know Francis was mentally ill?”
“We are aware of Francis’s condition, yes.”
“The man was off his meds, talking crazy. Sometimes he made sense. A lot of the times I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“So the name doesn’t tell you anything?”
“Blue Diamond? Until three minutes ago I thought Blue Diamond made almond milk for lactose intolerant hipsters.”
I felt like I was disappointing her. I reopened the folder and pulled the pictures closer, willing connection, hoping there was a clue I was missing. I wanted to help, do good, be better.
There was nothing to see or say or add. In several pictures, Francis had circled the name of the construction machine rental company, Blue Diamond. In one picture, he circled the name multiple times. It was like discovering Jacob’s wall maps, random, disconnected, incoherent. These messages meant something to him.
I studied each again, one by one, searching for a pattern or clue. “It looks like he was in a rush,” I said. “He’s cutting off half the name.”
“Is there any reason Francis would’ve been in a hurry?”
“Other than trespassing on private property and not wanting to get caught?”
“If he was worried about getting caught trespassing, why was he taking the time to spray paint machines?”
“Francis should’ve been hospitalized. I work in the field. We took in people with more control of their mental faculties than Francis Balfour. He claimed he could see what others couldn’t, had special insight into what wasn’t there—”
I stopped, whisked back to an inane, innocuous conversation on the lost highways of Pennsylvania and Ohio. A history lesson about a dark sea and darker sky.
“What is it?” the detective asked.
I studied the pictures again.
I’d gotten it wrong.
I saw it now, clear as a cloudless summer’s day. Francis wasn’t circling the name of a construction rental company. He was circling one word, isolating a single, solitary color.
Blue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I couldn’t share what I was thinking with Detective Lourey—she would’ve had me locked up again. Recognizing secret messages from a dead schizophrenic renders the recipient guilty by association.
Before she left, I did ask her if the same machinery was present when they found Jacob’s body. She said that the quarry, as far as she knew, had been there for decades. That didn’t mean the same company was providing the equipment. But it would be strange if they’d switched vendors over the past few weeks. There was a reason he’d told me that story about the color blue. This wasn’t a coincidence, wasn’t random.
As soon as the detective was gone, I made for my computer and Googled to see if Francis was making up the whole story or if it were true. Not that it would’ve changed what he was attempting to convey. I was curious. The story seemed preposterous, but Francis hadn’t been lying. Until recently in our evolution, humans could not see the color blue.
The various articles, all from credible sources—The Smithsonian, Business Insider—shared fascinating facts and tidbits. My favorite was about this modern indigenous tribe that couldn’t differentiate between green and blue. Researchers had traveled down to the Himba tribe in Namibia, showing pictures and slides, and to tribal members the two colors were the same. Philologists, a field of linguistics, had examined ancient texts—Arabic, Icelandic, Chinese—and couldn’t find mention of the color blue. There were also contemporary, well-known languages, such as Russian, that didn’t even have a word for blue. Shades of it, tones, hues, tinges. But not the actual color itself.
Francis must’ve seen photographs of Jacob at the construction site. At the time, when he told me that non sequitur, I hadn’t thought it was any different than the countless other absurd harangues he shared. I had cast it aside, forgotten about it, moved on.
Until Detective Lourey delivered his message from beyond the grave.
Francis was trying to tell me the truth about Jacob’s death. It was like the color blue.
The answer had been hiding in plain sight. But nobody could see it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Someone else had been in that quarry with Francis, which was why he couldn’t spell it out. A scrawled name gets noticed. A kook tagging random circles, not so much.
I went to my drawer and pulled out the copies of Illuminations I’d taken from Francis’s bag. I smoothed out the baby blue zine and began paging through, hoping an item of interest would pop out now that I knew more of the story. It was hard getting past the schisms and discord, the scandalous aspects. Unlike before, however, this time I wasn’t going to let it sidetrack me.
What was I missing? I had to remind myself guys like Francis, Jacob—they believed what they saw. This wasn’t a con or a game; they weren’t playing to mess with minds. It was their execution that was off. I had to find the intent, the seed; from there I could chart growth. Where was the kernel of truth in this nutcase’s haystack?
The Shadow People.
Not the concept. I refused to buy into creatures creeping in the dark. Yes, I’d been stressed. Maybe I was genetically predisposed to mental problems like my birth parents. I hadn’t been sleeping well. All these circumstances conspired to overtax my system, tweaking interpretation, distorting perception. But I couldn’t doubt who I was. It was all I had to rely on.
The article. Abductions. I flipped to the piece. The source Jacob cited, Jessiesgirl81. More importantly, where this Jessie was from: Wroughton.
Francis and I had been there. The bus station. Where Jacob bought the car. The blue house on the hill. I reread the piece, about how the Shadow People had descended upon the tiny town of Wroughton, snatching bodies.
Black Annis. Jersey Devil. Bonhomme Sept-Heures. Shadow People. They were the all the same creature, changelings conjured by man to explain the inexplicable. Given time and requisite resources, I had to believe such mysteries could be explained.
So, if not the Shadow People, who—or what—was responsible for the recent spat of disappearances? That was if I accepted the basic premise. Had people vanished from Wroughton? I checked the web. One name came up: Darryl Smith. All it said was he was a person of interest a few months ago, hardly enough to classify as a mass abduction.
The subject matter of Jacob’s piece came via his insider contact, this Jessie. Who might’ve been the only girl he knew. Jacob had traveled to her hometown, a long way to go to thank a source for helping with a homemade magazine. Jessie had to be the girl with him in Minnesota.
Problem was I had no idea how to find out anything about Jessie. Not from here at least. I didn’t know the first thing about which websites catered to this clientele. The police had taken Jacob’s computer. Even if they hadn’t, I didn’t have the skills to scour and retrieve private search data. I couldn’t imagine Jacob, as paranoid as he was, leaving an accessible digital trail anyway. I didn’t have a clue how to navigate the Dark Web.
I had to go to Wroughton.
I drove back there in Francis’s Buick, the only car at my disposal after mine got towed from Nick’s Pizza. According to the Illuminations article, the Shadow People had been wreaking havoc, messing with the residents of Wroughton, trickster antics, causing mischief. It was only of late they’d graduated to abduction.
Find the truth within the lie.
Francis once told me there is no difference between a schizophrenic and a methamphetamine addict up for three days. The people living in that creepy blue house on the hill where Jacob bought the car had been on the drug.
I wasn’t green enough to think that just because someone is tall they can play basketball. If this was the big city, I wasn’t assuming every drug addict knew each other. But this was Wroughton, the sticks, the cuts, the boonies, population a couple thousand. What was more probable? That both Jessie and Jacob were schizophrenic? Or that Jessie was like that man we met at the house selling cars? Strung out on methamphetamine, mentally unstable, and emotionally unwell? For whatever reason, this thought offered solace, reassurance of my own condition. When you’re living in the dark, it’s harder to separate the shadow from the source.
I arrived in Wroughton at sundown. I would’ve preferred more light. Although I soon realized this might work in my favor, since, according to my research, people hooked on the drug didn’t sleep much. If they slept at all it was during the day, preferring to prowl at night, like vampires.
The creepy blue house on the hill came into view. I debated where to park. I didn’t want to be too close. I didn’t want to be so far away that I looked like I was casing the place. Finding a sweet spot in between was not easy. There weren’t many houses out this way. Houses? More like shacks. No matter where I parked, someone would notice sooner or later.
I needed a plan. Why hadn’t I remembered that story the first time we stopped here? Because you barely scanned the zine. You dismissed everything Jacob said. Maybe I should retrace my steps. The bus station would be closed. So too the pawn shop. The girl whose dad owned the pawn shop gave us the address. What was the name? Ace’s! And hers was…
Think, Brandon, think…
I couldn’t recall. Did she tell us? Did it matter? I had to go back in that house, and I’d have to go alone. The guy with the cars wasn’t friendly the first time around. I wasn’t in the position to drop two hundred dollars to curry good favor or graces.
Rifling through the center console, I found the LoJack certificate Francis left behind.
Okay, that’s the play…
I drove up nearer the house, which was livelier tonight than it had been the night I’d come with Francis. I parked close enough for the Buick to be seen but not so close anyone could see what was inside it. Hot winds blew. Surprising for this hour, a time when the day’s heat should’ve broken. I remembered thinking this house was evil at dusk. Nighttime drove it deeper into the rings of the inferno. I stashed my button-up in the car, leaving a plain white tee, which I untucked. I mussed up my hair and removed my glasses too.
I walked around the side of the house where Francis and I had gone in before. The wood panels of the exterior were so decayed, they’d begun to erode, straightedges turned toothy, snarling. I curled my shoulders, slouched, and strode forward.
A couple skinny guys waited by the door, smoking, muttering. I didn’t make eye contact. I didn’t want to come across as nervous. Act like you belong and you belong.
Like with Francis, I didn’t knock, turning the knob with confidence.
“What the fuck you doing here?”
This wasn’t the man who sold Jacob the car. This guy was bigger, more imposing, tattoos painted up and down his sculpted arms. Unlike the man with the Van Dyke facial hair, these tattoos weren’t sporadic etchings; they covered his flesh, wrist to shoulder to neck, bold and combative.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m here about a car. I…want to buy one.”
With one hand, and not much effort, the man shoved me against the wall, cracking the back of my skull, which would’ve hurt more if not for the soft, water-damaged plaster. He eyed me, deciding whether to punch me in the head or let it go. A mouse skittered across the floor, up an unattached oven pipe to the vent, disappearing within the stovetop.
“Does this look like a dealership?”
I bit my tongue. Because, yes, it did. Cars. Drugs. One-stop shopping.
“I need to buy a car.” I didn’t say more than that. Let him work through this at his own pace.
Instead of pointing at the back room, where Francis and I had gone last time, I was directed down the hall, egged on with a boot-stomp to my calf, buckling my knee and almost causing me to trip, prompting laughter.
“Go!”
I rushed forward. There were three doors. I reached for the first one.
“Not that one, dipshit,” he said. “The other one.”
At the second door, I knocked, craning and wincing a grin at the guard dog, who’d been joined by another thug. I offered a wave, hoping I had the right door. The thugs didn’t confirm, content to glower, growl. From within the room, a voice announced it was unlocked. I pushed my way inside, grateful to get out of that hallway and away from their disdainful stares.
The relief didn’t last long.
The first thing that caught my eye was the big bay windows. High on the hillside, the view should’ve offered the whole of Upstate New York’s wilderness and backcountry. When I peered out into the pitch-black night, however, I saw nothing. No moon, no stars. It took me a moment to realize why: the windows were painted, slathered with multiple coats of black, caked-on layers, all the subtlety of a hot-tarred roof. A couple girls, gaunt and sallow, lay on the floor, clumps of unwashed hair knotted like sickly beached mermaids. They looked dead. Then I saw ribcages move, the shallow breaths of the stranded.
A man sat in the corner, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand as he dumped a yellow powder onto a scale. The pungent smell carried across the room, reminding me of sulfur and rotten eggs from science class. He glanced over, sized me up, returned to the task at hand, unimpressed.
Why had I been sent into this room? I didn’t want to buy drugs. I didn’t want to buy a car either. I needed to talk to the guy who sold the cars, not some pusher.
“What you need?” the man said.
“I think there’s been a mistake. I want to buy…a car?”
“How much you looking to spend?”
“I was here last week. With my friend.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“We talked to another guy.”
He straightened up, dusting his hands, rubbing them down the legs of his dirty jeans, like baking flour. “You’re talking to me now.” Then he stopped, pointing a finger, a look of recognition overtaking his expression, which surprised me. “You were here with the old guy. In that Skylark. Nice ride.”
I didn’t remember him. Had he been spying on us from another room? I stared past his shoulder at the powder he’d been sifting, that mound of rank, foul chemicals. Who puts that garbage in their body? It was poison.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
Last time I’d been at this house I felt intimidated, out of my element, alien. This felt worse. Last time, I had Francis.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said.
He waited.
“I thought you wanted a car.”
“I do. I did. I also need to find someone.”
“The fuck?” he said. Which one could interpret a lot of ways. “Get the fuck out of here before I call Lester and Dog.”
If I was going with honesty, I figured I’d go all in. In the end, I believed people are all the same, we all want and need, challenged by the obstacles in our way, and if I could convey this simple edict, man to man, fellow human to fellow human, we could reach an amicable accord.
“I need to find her,” I said. “She knew my friend. My frien
d did buy a car from here.” I didn’t know if these guys were all friends, partners, shared profits, like wait staff splitting tips at the end of the shift. The cars were on common property; these guys were all housemates. And criminals. Made sense. Standing there made my skin crawl, like it was infested with a million invisible bugs. “She, my friend, my friend’s friend. I think she…” I pointed at the scale and powder. “Does that.”
“You a cop?”
Nothing about my person said cop. I assumed the inquiry was perfunctory, owed to the urban myth that law enforcement has to reveal themselves, a misnomer proven inaccurate by countless true crime podcasts and television shows.
“No,” I said, wanting to make him feel better, safer. “I just need to find my friend. Her name is Jessie. I think that’s her name.”
“You don’t know your friend’s name?”
“I met her in a chatroom—my friend met her in a chatroom. Conspiracy website. Kennedy’s brain in a jar?”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
“If you can—”
“Dog! Lester!”
In seconds, Dog, the man I’d met out in the hall, and his friend Lester were through the door, meaning they’d been poised outside, awaiting the call.
“Get him out of here!”
Before I could protest, Dog and Lester had me by the arms, spinning me around, flinging me into the hall, head banging face-first. My nose smacked flush, sinus cavity filling with blood. The force snapped back my skull. I felt cranial fluids swishing, my brain pork stewed in juices. My eyes watered and stung, like I’d rubbed them with hot pepper on my hands. I just wanted to talk—I could explain my way out of this if given the chance.
I never got the chance.
Dragging me to the back door, Dog kicked me down the stairs, where I skidded across broken bottles and glass on the hard ground, which tore through my forearms and shirt, slicing skin. I tried to stand, thinking they’d thrown me out and that was it. It wasn’t. A pair of hands hoisted me to my feet, jacking me against an exterior wall, before I took a knee to my groin so hard and violent I feared I’d ruptured a testicle. I swore I heard a pop, like packaging bubbles bursting. I held out a hand to hold up, let me catch my breath. What happened to honor and fair fights? A hard punch to the side of my head answered that question. Buzzing and flashing lights, the roar of the crowd, camera bulbs shattering, and I was down. They started kicking and stomping me, full roundhouses to the ribs with steel-toed boots. I curled up into as tight a ball as I could—reduce surface space, condense mass, minimize exposure. They weren’t going to stop until they killed me.