The Criminal Mind

by Thomas Benigno

  Charlie directed me to the northernmost part of Cartersville that bordered Phoenix, a town also cut in two by the Oswego River. Though his childhood home did not border any waterways, as he remembered it, you could see the Oswego and Seneca Rivers from his backyard. Since that was over fifty years ago, I doubted it was still true, and told him so. Surprisingly, the cantankerous and outspoken veteran remained silent in response, and for the remaining twenty-minute drive said nothing. After I turned onto his street, I asked him if he was okay. He responded with a “yeah,” and shrugged me off. He wasn’t okay, and as I was about to turn up the long driveway that led to his childhood home, he abruptly stopped me. “Hold it,” he said, then gripped my upper arm painfully tight. He was staring straight ahead, his face beet red.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked.

  “Just give me a minute.” His voice was gravelly and hollow. He dropped his head. Eyes open, he was looking down at what remained of his legs. “I don’t know if I can go any further,” he said hoarsely.

  “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you want. Can you just loosen your grip on my arm? It’s getting numb.”

  Charlie turned and looked at me intensely. His eyes were red and watery. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for bringing me here.” He turned toward the house. It was sitting on a slight hill. A small first floor lay beneath an even smaller second. There were curtains in the windows behind light blue shutters and yellow siding. “I mean it,” Charlie continued. “You know…when my mother died in Florida ten years ago, I didn’t…couldn’t…go to her funeral. What was the point anyway? She was gone.” He turned to me again. “So, I want to thank you for everything—for flying me up here and introducing me to Paul and Lauren. They’re good people, and I feel like what we’re trying to do—as tragic as it all is—working together—has breathed new life into me.”

  “That’s good, Charlie. I’m glad to hear that,” I said gently.

  “And thank you for my home in the city. It’s immaculate and run by wonderful people.” He paused to swallow, then looked back at the house. “You’re a good man. It’s a gift to have met you. Really.”

  “Are you’re trying to make me cry, Charlie? If so, cut it out.” I turned to him and smiled warmly. “Now, you’d better be done, because any more of this, and I may just drive into the nearest tree trunk to get you to stop.”

  Charlie let go of my arm then smacked it affectionately, which was almost as painful as the squeeze he had given it in exactly the same spot.

  “Now, are we going up this driveway, or not?” I asked. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime. You may never be coming back here again.”

  Charlie pointed straight ahead. “See that garden beside the driveway?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That’s where I last saw my mother happy. She was planting flowers the day that Peggy went missing. When I got the call from Howard, the not-so-secret boyfriend and prom date, to tell me that she hadn’t shown up at his house, I yelled out to my mother from my bedroom window on the second floor. I remember it like it was yesterday––my mom looking up, squinting in the sunlight, brushing her hair off her forehead with her gloved hand. She looked so pretty then…because she was pretty.”

  Charlie began to cry. One of the toughest men I had ever met in my life was sobbing next to me like a child.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “I think of my own mother every day, Charlie…every day. That you love your mother is a beautiful thing.”

  “It’s also fucking sad.” He spoke through his tears.

  “I know. Sometimes I think that there can be no love without sadness.”

  “Damn you. Give me a break. You’re a fucking poet now, too?”

  Whereupon Charlie began to laugh and sob at the same time. And when the laughter surpassed the tears, I joined in until we eventually gained our composure, shook it off, and sighed.

  “Oh my God,” Charlie said. “We had a moment there, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, we did,” I answered––a moment neither of us would ever forget. I took a deep breath. “Okay, now are we going up to that house, or not?”

  “Fuckin’ A, Captain. Let’s do it,” Charlie howled, his voice cracking with every syllable.

  I then proceeded to coast up the long driveway—my speed of approach a signal to all inhabitants that we came as friendly visitors. We don’t wish to startle you.

  We pulled in front of a pair of garage doors, beyond which a rolling hill of green grass swept down until it met the woods about a hundred yards away. A break in the trees on the north side provided a distant view of the Oswego River. A break in the south revealed a similar peek at the Seneca. Son of a bitch, I said to myself. The views he spoke of are still here.

  Charlie and I had yet to exit the car when one of the garage doors opened and an elderly woman walked out in a housedress and slippers. “How we doin’, boys?” She looked as friendly as she sounded.

  “My friend here grew up in this house a long time ago, ma’am.”

  “Really,” she said, with a higher pitch in her voice.

  She walked over to the passenger side of the car to get a closer look at Charlie. “You want to come in, fella? Before my husband died, he was in a wheelchair too. There’s a ramp around back.”

  I pulled the chair out of the trunk then wheeled it around to Charlie, who had already opened the car door. To avoid being reprimanded, I let him maneuver himself into the chair, which he did with ease.

  The elderly woman, no bigger than five foot, and with a wide enough girth to fill her house dress, introduced herself as Hilda. She then stepped in front of me. “Let me help you there,” she said to Charlie and grabbed him under the armpits from behind and adjusted his seating position. “I helped my husband in and out of his wheelchair for almost five years.”

  I held my breath, as I feared Charlie’s pride would get the better of him and he would react poorly to the kindness of one sweet elderly woman—kiss the visit to his childhood home goodbye. But I was happy to see that he rose to the occasion and accepted Hilda’s help graciously.

  “My name is Nick, by the way, and this is Charlie.”

  “Nice to meet you boys.” She looked down at Charlie. “Let’s get you inside.” Hilda took the chair by the handgrips and pushed Charlie around to the back of the house, up the incline, and into the rear porch.

  “This wasn’t here,” Charlie said.

  “My husband built it. He was very handy—God bless him.” Hilda then left us both alone and hurried into the kitchen. “You boys go wherever you want. I’ve got a pie in the oven and a book club meeting down the road.”

  “Thank you,” I shouted. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” I turned to Charlie. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “This backyard…” He pointed out the rear porch window. “It’s smaller.”

  “Everything seems bigger when you’re a kid,” I said.

  “Not this time. The woods were only about fifty feet from the house, and I wasn’t a kid when I last saw it. I was nineteen.”

  “Either way…nice memories?” I asked.

  “My father committed suicide in that backyard.”

  “God, Charlie. I forgot. I’m sorry. And because of your sister.”

  Charlie nodded.

  Hilda called in from the kitchen. “There’s a chairlift if you two want to go upstairs.”

  I looked down at Charlie.

  “I got this,” he said, then wheeled himself over to the stairs and swiveled onto the lift with just the use of his arms. Sunlight beaming through the porch windows acted like a stage light as he strapped himself in. All it took thereafter was a finger on the armrest’s toggle switch, and up he went. “This is the closest I’m getting to a ride at Disney World, so I better enjoy it,” he said cheerfully.

  I was happy to see Charlie in better spirits. “We
solve this thing up here and we might just get there,” I said, while relishing in the pleasant distraction that thoughts of Mickey, Minnie, and the Magic Kingdom conjured up in me. Meanwhile, I feared he would break down again. His PTSD was also a concern of mine, as I followed behind him carrying the wheelchair. When we got to the top of the stairs, Charlie easily angled his way back on to it. “Now, what?” I asked.

  The second floor of Hilda’s home looked like it hadn’t been occupied in years. A film of dust coated a long thin table against the hallway wall cluttered with framed photos, snow globes, and tiny souvenirs from different parts of the country. I waited with Charlie as he soaked in his surroundings before he spun his chair to face north.

  “That was my room,” he said. I then wheeled him over to the bedroom doorway. “It looks so much smaller than I remember.”

  “It always does,” I added, and then at his direction, I turned the chair around and wheeled it over to the opposite doorway that led to what was once Peggy’s bedroom.

  Charlie sat silently for a moment, then gestured toward the window on the opposite wall. “There was a hope chest there,” he remarked heartily. “Peggy would sit on it and look outside for hours. I always wondered what she was thinking.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty sight. Rolling green lawns, the river in the distance, the treetops…”

  Charlie rolled himself halfway into the room. “I don’t remember those trees,” he muttered.

  “That’s because they probably weren’t there,” I said.

  “They definitely weren’t there,” he answered, then pointed out the window. “See that widow’s walk, and that steeple over the treetops?”

  I bent, looked out, and squinted. I could see the copper cap of the steeple he was referring to. It had a landing below it, and a black railing, which made for the perfect widow’s walk.

  “Looks like some big house over there,” I said. “What is it…maybe three-hundred feet away?”

  “Fifty years ago, you could see the entire house from here, and if the lights were on, you could see right into their windows, clear as day.” Charlie’s tone was somber.

  “Which means they could see into your windows, too. Peggy’s included.” I answered.

  Charlie muttered that he had seen enough, and we went back downstairs.

  Before leaving, we thanked Hilda and returned to the Altima. I used my cellphone to Google the address of the large home behind the trees, and as we drove back to town, I called Jasmine and asked her to find out who the owner was back in the early 1960s. When she got back to me five minutes later, I put my cell on speaker phone. “From 1954 to 1970, there was only one pair of owners, Frank L. Norris and Clarice Norris.”

  “And before 1954?” I asked.

  She took a few seconds to answer. I could hear her fingers tapping the computer keys. “You won’t believe it. George Holcomb,” she answered. “Seems he sold the house…No, he gifted the house to Clarice Norris, his sister, and her husband, Frank.”

  “Are you telling me this is the same George Holcomb who was the father of Richard Holcomb?”

  “And editor-in-chief of the Cartersville Gazette. Absolutely,” Jasmine said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if that house gift was payback to his sister, Clarice, and her husband, Frank, for hiding his son, Richard, after he jumped bail on that murder charge in New York City. After all, he was last seen getting off a bus in Cartersville.”

  “And walking toward a sewing shop!” Charlie yelled. “The same sewing shop whose owner claimed that she saw my sister, Peggy, running to catch a bus on the day she went missing. Could there be a connection between the sewing shop and the Holcomb family?”

  “There is,” Jasmine said definitively. “There’s only been one sewing shop in Cartersville, and the record owner—you won’t believe it— is still none other than Clarice Norris, Richard Holcomb’s aunt.”

  After I hung up with Jasmine, it was all Charlie could do to contain himself. “Damn…it’s all starting to make sense to me now. With an evil murderer in town and living next door, my little sister didn’t stand a chance.”

  “We don’t know that, Charlie. There’s no reason to believe Holcomb had anything to do with your sister’s murder.” I thought again. “I have to admit, though…I do recall Lauren telling me, early on, that her research revealed that young boys started to go missing around here sometime in the mid 1950s—which would be about the same time Richard Holcomb was seen returning.”

  Charlie responded as if he hadn’t heard a thing I said. “Do you think this Clarice Norris still runs the shop?”

  “She would have to be a hundred years old by now.”

  “Either way, c’mon—what do you say we go check it out?”

  Considering the emotional roller coaster Charlie was riding that day, I just couldn’t say no. “If you want,” I answered. “We’re headed that way, anyway.”

  “And you thought you’d be bored to death running around with me today.”

  “I never said that.”

  “But you were thinking it.”

  Weed-covered tracks of an abandoned railroad crossing outlined the northern end of the Cartersville business district, where half the storefronts were closed, boarded up, or had whitewashed windows. From the look on Charlie’s face, he was saddened by what had become of his town, and—despite the bright sunny day—the streets we drove past had a creepy feel to them. Deserted property can do that—spurring thoughts of a backstory filled with dark secrets.

  “I think you made the right move getting the hell out of here,” I said.

  “It didn’t always look like this,” he answered, and I tried to imagine the same town filled with pedestrians and bustling with economic fervor. Then, like a lone black crow swooping down from the sky, I envisioned a young Richard Holcomb lurking along the same streets and sidewalks—expelled from college, charged with murder—dark thoughts swirling around in his head as he trekked to his aunt’s sewing shop on the far edge of town.

  After we passed a gas station that looked like it was built in the 1960s and a shuttered drive-in burger stop called Louie’s Beefy Burgers, we spotted the shop. I pulled over and parked a block away. Since I had no idea who, if anyone, was inside, I didn’t want to telegraph our approach.

  After I retrieved the wheelchair from the trunk of the car, as usual, Charlie got himself into it. He insisted upon wheeling himself as we headed across the street and toward the corner entrance, but the closer we got, the more the shop appeared to be closed.

  But it wasn’t.

  I opened the wood framed entrance door comprised mostly of a large thin pane of glass. Not exactly burglar-proof, I thought to myself, as I wondered how many generations of secrets this shop must be hiding. But even as hope that our investigation might be getting somewhere dangled in front of us, the truth seemed to be buried so far back in time, I started to believe we would never find it. And this relic of a shop did not make me feel any better about our prospects. I let Charlie wheel himself over the saddle bump, then followed him in.

  Though the store was dead quiet (even its shades were drawn), and there was no buzzer or overhanging cow bell to announce our entrance, I still expected someone to pop up from behind a counter or hurry in from the back. But there were no comers—at first.

  We waited a bit longer amid an array of displayed fabrics, spools of thread, and mannequin torsos modeling a variety of dowdy skirts and blouses. A waist-high display counter marked the rear of the shop. An open doorway was behind it. Green shag carpet covered the floor. Inside the storefront windows that wrapped around the corner were more dressed up mannequin torsos—their clothes old and faded.

  Suddenly, a voice rang out that startled us both.

  “What can I do for you fellas?” A woman in her late forties entered from the rear of the shop and looking like she had just popped out of a nineteenth century time
capsule. Wearing a laced gingham dress down to her ankles, her hair in a bun, her eyes immediately dropped down to Charlie. I could sense a note of discomfort in them that I couldn’t quite calculate the import of. She smiled and extended her hand. “I’m Johanna Ferrigno. Looking for something for the missus, fellas?” Between the gingham dress, the ‘missus’ remark, and the look of wheelchair discomfort, I was afraid that I had stepped back into a time and place where provincial mores presided over kindness and common sense. But I was wrong to jump to conclusions, as I quickly found out when Johanna explained the dress. “My book club is meeting in half-an-hour,” she chuckled. “This get-up is in celebration of Pride and Prejudice—our book of the month. We do this sometimes.”

  “Is there a Hilda in your club?” I asked.

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. You know Hilda?”

  “Charlie and I just paid her a visit. Charlie used to live in her house.”

  “Why, that’s great,” she said cheerfully. “Hilda is such a wonderful woman. Sad that she is a widow and all.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “Well then, if you’re a friend of Hilda’s, you’re a friend of mine. What can I do for you?”

  “Frankly, we’re a couple of history buffs, you might say. Small-town history buffs…and, driving by your shop…we just had to stop in. It has such a charming, old-world quality.”

  She looked around. “It does, doesn’t it? And if all you want to do is explore, by all means, go ahead. I only bought this place a few years back.”

  “Why thank you,” I answered.

  “But I am also sorry to tell you that I have to go,” she said apologetically. And as she did, a tall, curly-haired teenage boy of college age entered the shop wearing a Mötley Crüe T-shirt and jeans that looked like they passed through a woodchipper. He was donning earbuds and bobbing his head to music that was mercifully his alone to hear. “This is my nephew, Garth,” Johanna announced, as she headed toward the door. Garth glanced at us and nodded rhythmically in affirmation. “These men are history buffs and will be looking around the shop!” She had to shout to be heard her over the earbuds.