by Ed Markham
“You’ve been squatting in his place?” he asked as they moved among the trees.
Dermitt nodded, and David could see that he was calming down a little.
“How long?”
“ ’Bout four months,” Dermitt said. “Yeah, I think. Four months or so. But he told me I could! Says, ‘Be my guest, Steve. Go right ahead, old pal.’ ”
Although Dermitt’s breathing had steadied, his words were still coming out a mile a minute.
“How do you two know each other?”
“Painted houses together,” Dermitt said. “One day we was at this job site, and he hands me the keys to his place and says, ‘I’m outta here, partner. Take my place if you want it.’ He knew I was sleeping outta my truck and he said that wasn’t no way for me to live and I’d be welcome to his abode. Says it just like that. ‘Abode.’ ”
“And you have no idea where he went?”
Dermitt shook his head from shoulder to shoulder as he walked. “No, sir. Just said he needed some help. Needed to get off and get away and stop using and feel whole again. That’s what he says. ‘Get whole again.’ Just like that.”
David thought about this quietly for a moment. Get whole again. “What was he using? Meth?”
Dermitt nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Meth and booze. Said he needed to get off both and he thought he knew how and if it worked out he’d never be coming back again and if it didn’t work out he wouldn’t be coming back then neither. So that’s why he says I can have his abode.”
They emerged from the woods and into the clearing behind the shack.
Martin stood near the back of the place, hands stuffed in his windbreaker. When he saw them coming, the concern that had pinched his face slackened. “That’s not James Ganther,” he said.
“This is Steve Dermitt,” David answered. “He says he’s been squatting here for the past four months.”
“He tell you what’s inside?” Martin asked.
David nodded. “He said he’s been cooking meth in there.”
“Bathtub gin as well, unless my sense of smell’s off.”
“That’s illegal, too?” Dermitt said to David, his eyes widening.
“I’d be more worried about the meth if I were you,” David said.
Without warning, Dermitt started to cry again. “Oh Jesus, I messed up,” he said. Tears and snot ran down his filthy face.
The three walked together around to the front of the house, and David had Dermitt sit on the cinder block stoop. He called the local police to let them know he had a headache for them to come deal with. By the time he was off the phone, Dermitt’s tears had dried again.
“Did Ganther have any good friends in town—people who might know his whereabouts?” David asked.
Dermitt’s mouth tightened as he considered this. “Good friends?” he repeated. “Tim O’Farrell, I guess. Not a good friend, but a buddy I guess. They knew each other from AA. He runs the liquor store on Chestnut. Tim O’Farrell.”
David nodded, and the three men waited in silence for the police to arrive.
Chapter 22
TIM O’FARRELL SMIRKED at David’s FBI credentials as though they belonged to a seventeen year old trying to buy alcohol with a fake ID.
O’Farrell had leaned down to get a good look at the ID as he stood behind the liquor counter, and now he stood back up to his full height, which was at least half a foot taller than David. The smirk twisted one half of his wide, rheumy face, and he nodded to David as if to say, “All right, I’ll buy that, but only because I can’t say for sure that it’s bogus.” He wiped the back of his hand under his nose and then used the heel of the same hand to rub one of his eyes.
“Okay,” he said, still rubbing and not looking at David or Martin. “What can I do for the Federal Bureau of Investigators.”
“You know James Ganther,” David said, not asking this but stating it so O’Farrell would know there was no point in trying to deny it. He didn’t wait for O’Farrell to confirm. “We’re looking for him. We heard you know where he is.”
This wasn’t exactly true, but David wasn’t about to hedge and give O’Farrell an easy out. The large man’s shoulders bounced a few times as he chuckled to himself.
“Who says so?” he said.
“Someone who wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, at least not to us,” Martin put in.
O’Farrell shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in months.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Martin said. “He hasn’t been around in months. Where did he go?”
O’Farrell smiled. “No idea, officer. And aren’t you guys supposed to wear suits and ties?”
David looked at him quietly for a few seconds. The liquor store owner was at least fifty years old, his face craggy and low-cheeked and obstinate. David recognized him as the type of small-town tough that had grown up detesting authority, and probably considered it his unsworn duty to piss on the shoes of men with badges any chance he got, regardless of the name on the badge.
David nodded slowly toward O’Farrell, knowing the score and wanting O’Farrell to know he knew it. The liquor store owner wasn’t going to say a word to a piece-of-shit D.C. FBI agent unless that agent gave him no other choice.
David looked at the rows of liquor bottles lined up behind O’Farrell like prizes at a fair game. He glanced up at the cigarettes suspended above the counter, and then at the counter itself. His eyes stopped on a laminated printout of black and white bar codes. “No idea where Ganther could be,” he said.
O’Farrell followed David’s eyes to the barcodes. He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, his smirk going flaccid. “No,” he said, shaking his head but looking a little worried now.
David nodded calmly and then motioned toward the laminated sheet. “What’s that?” he asked.
“What’s what?” O’Farrell said, looking perplexed. He glanced at the counter but wouldn’t look directly at the laminated sheet, as though he weren’t sure what David was talking about.
David tapped lightly on it. “This sheet of barcodes you have right next to the scanning gun and the Access Card reader.”
Access Cards were like debit cards for those Pennsylvania residents who were on welfare. You could only use them to buy certain approved items, like groceries or prescription drugs, but David knew from his colleagues at Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that liquor store owners sometimes ran up customers for food items when they were actually selling them alcohol or tobacco products.
“Oh that,” O’Farrell said, shrugging. “That’s for some of the more exotic types of liquor that don’t have barcodes.”
He sniffled and kept his eyes on the counter, not meeting David’s.
“Grab one of them and ring it up for me,” David said.
O’Farrell paused for a second, his eyes still on the counter. Then he started to shake his head. His smirk returned, but this time it looked more like a grimace. “You guys,” he said. “You fucking guys. What the hell do you want with Jimmy Ganther?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Martin said. “Worry about losing this store for selling liquor in exchange for Access Card funds.”
David added, “We just want to know where James Ganther’s been for the last four months.”
O’Farrell shook his head a few more times and again swiped the back of his hand along the underside of his nose. After a long pause he said, “Jimmy’s at some kind of drug rehab clinic. On a lake near Jonestown. Not anything licensed. I don’t know that much about it really, but Jimmy said they give you some kind of drug to help you get off of drugs. It had a weird sounding name I’d never heard before. Ibo-something. He said it was going to cure him—make him a new man. Whole again. Said this shit was like acid on acid, and would drive you crazy but bring you back a better person.” O’Farrell shook his head. “Sounds nuts to me, but Jimmy was a little nuts.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” Martin asked him.
The big man scowled and shook his head. “That’s all I kn
ow.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes flashing nervously from David’s to Martin’s. “So you going to shut me down?”
“Not unless we find out you’re lying to us,” David said. He reached forward and pulled the laminated sheet of barcodes off the counter. “Don’t start this up again.”
Twenty minutes later, he and his father were back in the car, heading east toward Jonestown.
“Think Ganther’s actually there?” Martin asked.
David didn’t answer right away. “Jonestown is only about forty minutes from Philadelphia, and that would put him closer to all of our murder sites.” He was quiet for a time. “Maybe this drug—if there actually is a clinic, as O’Farrell called it—triggered Ganther’s old pathologies. I doubt it, but you never know. The synthetic stuff they have out there now—bath salts, whatever you want to call them . . . there’s no telling what they’ll do to a person.”
Martin nodded, but said nothing.
Chapter 23
CARSON AND JOSH were playing an old Sega Genesis game called “Sunset Riders” when Josh’s watch started to beep.
Carson hit PAUSE on his remote controller and looked at the other boy. “What’s that mean?”
Josh pressed a button on his watch and the alarm stopped. He stared at Carson for a second, his eyes a little sad and a little afraid, and then he looked over his shoulder at the basement stairs. “He sets the alarm on my watch and tells me I have to come to the top of the basement steps when it goes off. I bang on the door to let him know I’m there. Sometimes he gives me food. Sometimes he takes me back upstairs to be by myself again.”
Carson nodded but said nothing. His eyes moved from the TV screen to the basement stairs.
The two had spent a big part of the morning talking and watching movies together before they decided to switch to the Sega. Carson liked Josh well enough, though he’d realized early on that, were it not for their situation, they probably wouldn’t be friends. Josh was a little weird—funny and all right to be around, but also nerdy and not at all self-assured. If they met outside of the basement, Carson knew his buddies would think Josh was a “loser”—their catchall term for any kid not worth spending time on. Carson would probably agree with them. But for now he was grateful for the company.
Since Josh had shown up, Carson had lost track of the seriousness of his situation. Now it crashed down on him again, and he felt terrified at the prospect of once again being alone in the basement.
“You might have to go?” he asked.
Josh looked at the basement door and stood up from the couch. “We’ll see.”
“I hope he gives you food instead,” Carson said.
Josh looked at him and smiled a funny sort of smile. “Yeah, me too. I don’t like being alone upstairs.”
Carson watched from the couch as the other boy walked to the foot of the basement stairs and disappeared up them toward the locked door. He heard Josh bang on the metal door with his fist. A few seconds later, he heard the electronic whirring as the locks slid away. One. Two.
“Hi,” he heard Josh say. He thought his new friend sounded a little frightened.
He heard the door opening wider, followed by a few sounds he didn’t know how to interpret. Movement. Then he heard the door close and the locks engage.
Carson’s shoulders sagged and he felt tears growing warm in his eyes. He sat looking at his video game controller for a minute or two, feeling more alone than he’d ever felt in his life. But then he heard more noises, and the electronic locks again moved in their metal tracks. He saw Josh descend the staircase carrying a tray filled with food.
“It’s okay,” Josh said, smiling and looking relieved. “I’m not going anywhere.” He walked toward Carson and put the food tray down on the air hockey table. It held two sandwiches, a few water bottles and juice boxes, fruit, and potato chips.
“He made me come with him to get the food,” Josh said. “And when he gives me this much to eat, it usually means we’re going to be down here together for a while.”
“Why?” Carson asked. “Does he go somewhere?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably.”
Carson lowered his voice to a whisper. “So maybe we could escape?”
Josh’s eyes widened and he looked frightened. He shook his head, slowly at first and then quickly. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve tried before with some of the others, and there’s no way out of here.” He looked at Carson with a worried expression on his face. “I also think maybe he doesn’t leave sometimes, like he’s just testing us to see what we’ll try. I’d be really afraid he’d catch us if we tried anything.”
Carson thought about this. “What time did he set your watch for?”
“Oh, duh,” Josh said. He looked at the watch and pressed a few buttons. “Ten-thirty tonight. So that’s a while from now.” He smiled, embarrassed. “I can’t believe I never thought of that before.”
“And you think he’ll take you back upstairs?”
Josh shrugged again. “Who knows? He may just bring us more grub.”
There, Carson thought. What kind of dork uses words like grub? Or duh? It was that kind of thing that made Josh seem a little odd, and that made Carson think that, outside of this basement, in the ultra-critical world of middle schoolers, Josh was probably a bit of an outcast. Definitely not one of the cool kids, he decided.
“You hungry, or you want to keep playing?” Josh asked.
“I’m hungry,” Carson said, forgetting the isolation and worry he’d felt just a few seconds before.
He dropped his controller on the ground and stood up from the couch. He joined Josh at the air hockey table and the two ate sandwiches together in silence, their eyes occasionally lifting up toward the basement ceiling.
Chapter 24
THOUGH IT WAS only 5:30 in the evening, darkness had descended quickly and completely outside the Jonestown Police Department.
Sitting alongside his father, David had watched the night come on in the large window behind Chief Dale Markenson, whose expression was blacker than the gathering night.
Markenson was a thick, middle-aged man with gray-green eyes and a jarhead haircut that made him appear both younger than his years and, at the same time, vestigial—a holdover from a different era.
From where he sat behind the desk in his small office, Markenson frowned at the two FBI agents. “Let me get this straight,” he said, speaking slowly as though he were having trouble understanding. He scratched at his cheek with one of his fleshy thumbs. “You believe there’s some type of illegal drug clinic operating somewhere in my town?”
“I wouldn’t call it a clinic,” David said, trying for the third time to help Markenson grasp the situation.
“Probably more like a commune,” Martin interjected.
David went on, “We spoke to our drug enforcement people, and they mentioned an illegal psychotropic called ibogaine. It’s a cousin of hallucinogens like LSD, but some people think it has therapeutic benefits, especially for addicts.”
“And you believe,” Markenson continued, as though he hadn’t been paying attention to these explanations, “that a possible child abductor and murderer may also be located within town limits at said clinic?”
David decided it wasn’t worth arguing semantics with the small-town police chief. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
“Almighty,” Markenson said. His face pinched together for a moment and then relaxed as he expelled a long breath. “What can I do on my end?”
David handed him a piece of paper containing an address. “Our people did some research online and found a few web forums mentioning this address on Crescent Lake. Do you recognize it?”
“Web forums,” Markenson said to himself, frowning as though all of this produced a very sour taste on his tongue.
David glanced at his father and nodded toward the police chief as if to say, “You too should get along well.”
Like Markenson, Martin had no great affection
for technology or the Internet. While he understood the value of the Bureau’s databases, David’s father disdained, on Constitutional grounds, the use of the email- and information-tracking tools the FBI, CIA, and NSA employed. He also regarded computers as crutches for the indolent or the incapable.
The police chief’s scowl deepened when he read the address David had given him. “Shi-it,” he said, drawing out the word. “Well this isn’t no great surprise. There aren’t many places out on Crescent. A lot of it’s protected land, but there are a few small cabins and campgrounds, and a half-dozen big old mansions on the southern tip. We’ve heard a few complaints about this one in particular. Reports of strange noises—yelling and such—and people wandering down the shoreline onto other folks’ property, acting strange.” He looked at Martin. “I thought of it right away when you said the word commune.”
So he was listening, David thought.
The police chief continued, “We stopped by this place a few times, but the guy who owns it, Harvey Horn, is a savvy operator. He was a big real estate developer in the Poconos and is worth more money than John D. Rockefeller. He owns almost all the developable property on the lake. He also knows his rights, and has threatened all kinds of lawsuits if we try to check out his place.” He looked at David and shrugged his round shoulders. “We haven’t had enough justification to request warrants and risk being sued.”
“So you won’t mind if we send in our people to search Horn’s place and look for our suspect?” David asked.
“Hell no,” Markenson said. “You’d be pulling a big thorn out of my side.”
“Glad to hear that.” David didn’t need Markenson’s permission to do anything in Jonestown, but he knew it never hurt to give the local authorities the impression they had some say in things.
“You have a room we could work in while we set this up?” he asked.
Markenson nodded. “Yes, sir. Follow me.”
He led them to a small, windowless room featuring a square table and several computers. The walls were covered with corkboard, on which hung dozens of printouts detailing fugitive and missing-person descriptions, new station protocols, police force maxims and regulations, as well as photographs of the Jonestown Police Department’s softball and bowling teams.