The Vortex

by Robert R. Dozier

  “Are you sure you’re not the target?”

  “I can’t see any reason for it,” she replied. “I have a little money, but it’s tied up in a trust fund and can’t be touched.”

  “The third possibility is that this house is situated on some sort of underground cavern, or something that carries voices of people far away. This seems rather far-fetched to me, but it is a possibility.”

  “What kind of work do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a programmer with a project run by Professor Iturbi out of Sandia; but” she said, noting the interest the statement had awakened in Curt’s eyes, “we publish all our findings, and what I’m doing is open and available to anyone. Besides, what I do can be done by anyone who knows computers. It took us all of two hours to hire a temporary replacement for me when I took a leave of absence Friday. I merely adjust our program as we discover new findings.”

  “Maybe it’s personal,” Curt suggested.

  “Maybe, but I can’t see where anything like this would be personal involving me and Aunt Elizabeth. And I really think,” she said, picking up the remains of their lunch and putting it on the counter, “that what I heard is the same thing Aunt Elizabeth heard. Remember when she said she thought the voices were men’s voices? Well, about two weeks ago, when I heard them the second time, it seemed to me to be two men arguing; although I can’t be too sure. The sounds are rather indistinct.”

  “The last possibility,” she said as she returned to the table with two cups of coffee, “is that there are actually people coming into the house. Why anyone would come into the house at least six times, make no effort to be quiet about it, and leave without taking anything that I’ve been able to discover, goes beyond my understanding. Still, it’s a possibility, so that’s why I got Roscoe, or George. He’ll give them a surprise if they try it again. Aunt Elizabeth’s pistol is still upstairs and, if it becomes necessary, I’ll use it. Also, I haven’t figured out how they managed to lock an inside bolt after they left. I’ve installed new ones.”

  Curt sat back in his chair and stared evenly at Sheila. This, he concluded, is quite a person. Alone, falling into a situation that would have rattled anyone, she had calmly analyzed it, drawn possibilities, and had taken steps to confront it as rationally as possible. She didn’t panic, she didn’t fly off the handle, and she just merely analyzed the situation and had taken whatever steps she could.

  The problem in her analysis was that she did not know she was under surveillance by a large number of agents, right at this moment, or that it was likely that their conversation was being listened to by many ears. Curt indeed hoped that those listening would see that Sheila had nothing to hide, that what they were looking for was someplace else. He had planned to ask her outright questions which would have brought out much of what she said, but she had done it all for him. He had the impulse to go out and find an agent or two and knock a few heads together, but he knew the best way to get those agents away was to demonstrate that their efforts were misdirected. Not a very heroic plan, he admitted to himself, but one that should work.

  “It seems to me,” he said evenly, “that you’ve covered all the bases. Why do you want to hire me? Why not call the police? If someone is purposefully invading your privacy and your home, it should be some sort of crime.”

  “I have several reasons Curt”, she replied. “I’m really interested in finding Aunt Elizabeth most of all, not in protecting my privacy. I’m a novice at this sort of detective work and I need a sympathetic assistant.”

  She was smiling, and he smiled back.

  “Besides,” she continued, “Uncle Charles wants to keep the police, reporters, and so forth out of it; and frankly, so do I. There’s always the possibility that I’ll mess everything up and make it harder to find Aunt Elizabeth if I create a big stir.”

  “OK, OK, you’ve convinced me; and, of course, I’ll help. But I want to begin this employment under the correct assumptions. “One,” he said holding up a finger, “I’m practically a novice myself. This is my first field assignment.” He then told her about the circumstances of his coming to New Mexico in the first place.

  “Two,” he said holding up another finger, “I’m also working on a missing person’s case in Santa Fe, which I feel morally bound to continue, and three, my fee is one dollar, no expenses. With these conditions, do you still want to hire me?”

  She paused, looked him directly in the eyes and said slowly, “I think we’ll work together very well.”

  Curt met her gaze, understood what she meant, and smiled.

  “Then let us get on it right away,” he said, after a pause. “I’ll search the living room for the transmitter that broadcasts the sounds of those men talking, and you can remove all the furnishings that might be acting as receivers.”

  That afternoon, both worked constantly, watched with interest by Roscoe, or George. Sheila took out all light fixtures and metal objects, including the fireplace grill, while Curt examined the undersides of every piece of furniture. He had to help her remove the small refrigerator in the bar; it was quite heavy, but otherwise they concentrated on their own tasks.

  After about forty-five minutes, Curt stopped, puzzled. He had not found a single listening or transmitting device, even though, after his experience in Santa Fe, he was sure that the living room was probably blanketed with them. The telephone on the bar was clean, and every conceivable hiding place was empty.

  “Do you have phone extensions?” he asked.

  “One in my bedroom and one in the kitchen,” she replied, rolling the large, console TV out of the living room. Both phones had no bugs.

  Returning to the living room, Curt sat on the sofa and tried to think. Unless the transmitter and the listening devices were embedded in the walls or ceiling, and the solid plastering showed no signs of ever being repaired, then there were none. If there were none, then Shelia Cavanaugh had probably been under surveillance when he arrived last Saturday. In other words, he had not stumbled into someone else’s problem; he had added to the problem himself. But what about the voices Elizabeth and Sheila had heard? Were they connected with those agents? It appeared as if there might be two puzzles to solve.

  “Finished?” she said, sitting down beside him.

  “Practically. The only place I haven’t looked is under that big buffet in the corner. See how the design at the bottom would allow sound…”

  “That old thing. Aunt Elizabeth was forever threatening to sell it or move it out of the living room. I doubt it has been moved since Uncle Ron bought it.”

  “Uncle Ron?”

  “Yes, you see, this was once his house. When he died, his estate was tied up for many years. Aunt Elizabeth got this house, and my mother some property near Las Cruces.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “I’m not sure. Uncle Ron died when I was a little girl - in l960, or 1961, I think. Aunt Elizabeth didn’t move in here until about a year ago. The house was empty up ‘til then.”

  “What did he do?” Curt asked, forcing himself to think of a way to get under the buffet. Her presence next to his on the sofa was exciting and disorienting.

  “He was a physicist, and a fairly well-known one at that. In fact, one of the reasons I entered the field was because I was expected to carry on the family tradition and all that. I don’t know much about him, except for the comments made about ‘Poor Uncle Ron’ this and ‘Poor Uncle Ron’ that. I think he worked for the government at Sandia and Los Alamos and was killed during an experiment.”

  As Sheila explained some of her past, Curt could not help staring directly at her eyes. She had a way of speaking where her expression amplified her words, and her eyes seemed to change tones of color for emphasis. He was fascinated and found it hard to keep control of his thoughts.

  “So, this was his house?” he said, after a long pause.


  “Yes, but he didn’t live in it very long. He had bought it for his bride, and both were killed about a month later.”

  “Well,” Curt said, getting up, finally deciding to tackle the buffet. “Maybe you can help. I’ll raise one end and you can look underneath.”

  He had to move, to do something, anything, or he might have made a fool of himself. She was the most disturbing woman he had yet encountered. When near to her, his thoughts seemed drawn in her direction as if she were a magnet.

  Curt found the massive buffet to be every bit as heavy as it looked. Straining, he managed to get one end about four or five inches off the floor.

  “There’s something there! Hold on, I’ll get it.”

  Sheila reached under the buffet and, after a struggle, brought out a strange looking device.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The object was about six inches long, two inches thick and three inches wide, covered with dust. It had obviously been under the buffet for many years.

  “I think it’s an antique listening device,” Curt said, brushing and blowing off some of the dust. “See, this whole end is a microphone and this other is a transmitter.”

  He turned the object over and forced the back cover off. Two D-cell batteries, corroded and moldy, had leaked acid into the cover, but the acid had dried long ago.

  “This isn’t what we’ve been looking for,” he said, “although it appears as if someone bugged your aunt or uncle a long time ago.”

  “Let me have it,” he said, “I’ll have it checked out, but I can’t see how it has anything to do with our problem. Worst of all, since we haven’t found anything else that even remotely resembles a transmitter, we’re back to square one about how those voices came to be in this room.”

  “Maybe we’ve corrected the problem,” she said. “Remember option one? – objects accidentally picking up radio transmissions? There’s nothing in here now.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But your option two seemed the most logical at the time. And then, there’s option three, or is it four? – real intruders regularly coming and going. Let’s check that one out. To get in, these people must either have had a way of unlocking and relocking the door with ease, or, there are other ways of getting into the house.”

  For the next hour, they worked at trying to get into the house without a key – or to get by the sliding dead bolt on the door. Curt checked every window, looking for scratches or other indications that someone had forced his way in. The results were all negative. Unless there were secret doors and passages, which was highly doubtful, there were no secret ways of getting in and out.

  Both sat wearily at the kitchen table and said nothing. Curt knew how disappointed Sheila was, and tried to think of some way of restoring her spirits. The problem was that both of them were swimming in strange waters. His forte was records, documents, evidence that could not wiggle away or hide. Conclusions he reached about the meaning of those records were supported by the records themselves. One looked for methods and deduced motives. Sheila dealt with a far more esoteric world and communicated in math, which had the virtue of non-involvement, of non-distortion by emotion. Now, both were attempting to explain rationally a series of events imperfectly understood and illogical in nature.

  “Coffee?” Sheila asked, and, after his nod, rose and began preparing the brew.

  “I think we’re approaching this from the wrong direction,” she said without looking at him. “All afternoon we’ve been trying to discover how these things have been done. Maybe we ought to try to discover why.”

  “Of course!,” Curt exclaimed. “We’ve been running around doing all sorts of things not even knowing what we’ve been looking for! What are the first rules for any investigation?”

  Sheila looked at him puzzled. “Do you mean scientific investigation?”

  “I mean,” he continued, standing now, “any sort of investigation. Before you can find anything, you’ve got to be looking for it. You’ve got to have a hypothesis. Even if you stumble over your answer, you’ve got to have asked the question first.”

  At her continued puzzled look, he tried to explain. “Listen, who or what are we looking for? When? Where? How? And why? Are the steps in any…?”

  “I see,” Sheila interrupted,” we haven’t established any bases in fact.”

  “Precisely. Let’s start with the first question - who or what are we looking for?”

  “Aunt Elizabeth? Oh, no, wait - I see what you mean. Not the how of the voices she heard, but the reason for the voices or noises in the living room,” Sheila replied.

  “Yes, that’s it. If we can identify exactly what we’re looking for, the why for the voices or noises that sound like voices, we’d have a better idea of what we’re doing. Are you sure you heard voices?”

  “It sounded like voices, men’s voices, arguing with each other, but I’m not sure. I can’t remember any words or expressions they used.”

  “How did Elizabeth describe them? As men’s voices? Was that in the back of your mind when you came down the stairs?”

  Sheila brought two cups of coffee to the table and sat down. “I see where you’re heading Curt, but I’m fairly sure that I heard two men in the living room.”

  “Let’s look at Elizabeth’s letters again and get her impressions down exactly. We have six pieces of evidence – four from Elizabeth and two from you, and we should analyze them as carefully as we can.”

  In Elizabeth’s room and sitting on Elizabeth’s bed, they re-read her letters.

  “In her first letter, she said the house ‘rumbled and murmured’” Curt noted, and “In her second, she said the noises sounded like ‘voices, men’s voices,’ then she thought she heard the door ‘close’. Isn’t that what you remembered on your second contact?”

  “Actually, I thought I heard the door slam just after I turned on the lights. I thought the voices were of two men – one pleading with the other.”

  “All right, so far so good. Elizabeth’s third contact was walking into the house and hearing voices all around her. I wonder what she meant by that? Did you have any directional feelings about where the voices were coming from?”

  Sheila concentrated for a moment.

  “Why, yes, now that you mention it,” she said after a few seconds. “Thinking back about it, it does seem as if the voices were separated at first. One, the soother, came from the area around the bar and the other, the pleader, from near the fireplace. But then I think they merged, near the door, just before I heard it slam.”

  “Then we’ve wasted the afternoon trying to find transmitters,” Curt said flatly. “What kind of device can alter the direction of sounds that way?”

  “You’re right. There’re none that I know of,” she replied. “Sound travels like ripples in a pool from the point of origin. The only way to change its direction is to change the point of origin.”

  “So, if Elizabeth came into the house and heard voices all around her, she probably arrived after the voices had merged near the door; that is, if the phenomena we’ve been discussing are repetitive,” Curt said.

  “Repetitive?”

  “Yes, sort of like a reply of a movie film. I thought, originally, when we were talking about destabilization and so forth, that the scenario was really only a rebroadcasting of a tape of sounds, over and over. It seems like the same thing happens on every occurrence.”

  “Good God,” Sheila said softly. “This is really getting weird.”

  “There’s another weird part to it,” Curt answered. “Was Elizabeth in the habit of forgetting things?”

  “Absolutely not!” she replied. “Elizabeth had a photographic memory with almost absolute recall. She could learn languages faster than anybody I’ve ever heard of.”

  “But doesn’t it seem strange that Elizabeth remembe
red writing you about her first contact when she related the second, yet makes no reference to either in her third and fourth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when she was surrounded by voices, she attributed the experience to taking a drink, and the last contact she explained as the television set turning itself on and off. Surely she should have remembered rushing down the stairs with a pistol in her hand. Yet, she treats the first two incidents as non-related to any others.”

  “That is really strange,” Sheila replied. “I didn’t notice it before. Aunt Elizabeth rarely forgot anything. Maybe she just assumed… .” Her voice trailed away.

  “Well, let’s put that aside for now,” Curt said more to remove Sheila from her dilemma than any disinclination to continue.

  “If these events are repetitive, let’s try to establish ‘when.’ When did you hear these voices?”

  “You mean, what time?”

  “Let’s start with that.”

  “Let’s see. The first time, I was working late trying to pay bills. It must have been around midnight. I had to wake up my neighbors after I ran out. The second time; I had already gone to bed, so I’m not sure-”

  “What time do you normally retire?”

  “About eleven or eleven-thirty. It could have been about the same time.”

  “All right. Now, on what dates?”

  “That is a hard one. I moved in last month, March 20 or 21, and the first contact was about a week later, about March 26. The second was after payday, about April 2 or 3.”

  “Well,” Curt replied, “maybe all we’ve discovered is that these phenomena happen about midnight.”

  “We’re calling them phenomena now?” Sheila asked with a smile.

  “What should we call them?” Curt said, answering her smile.

  “Ghosts,” she said, laughing. “You know, we’re further away now from understanding what this is all about than I ever was, and yet, I’m not nearly as concerned about it.”

  She stood up and moved to a row of pictures, picked up one and looked carefully at it. “I tried to be the modern woman - assertive, on top of it, in charge and all that, but, to be honest, I had practically no control over myself whatsoever when these things started happening. I was angry, frightened, confused and sometimes even disgusted at what was going on. That’s why I tried to set up rational explanations, my options. But you came and demonstrated that at least two of them were groundless. Instead of feeling more frustrated, I feel rather relieved.”