Into the Woods (Anomaly Hunters, Book One)

by J. S. Volpe

  Just then the window flooded with light and the sound of an engine grew audible as a car pulled into the driveway.

  Violet glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “Fuck, we totally lost track of the time! It’s him! We gotta get outta here!”

  Leaving the closet open, the shoebox unlidded, the topmost magazine splayed on the carpet, the two-thirds empty bottle of beer perched atop the dresser, the desk drawer hanging open, and a sheaf of papers arrayed on the bed, Donovan and Violet raced out of the bedroom, through the living room, and across the kitchen to the back door.

  The moment Violet flung it open, the front door opened behind them.

  “Who—who’s there?” a startled male voice cried.

  While Donovan bolted out the back door and sprinted away across the backyard, Violet whirled around in the doorway and thrust a finger at Theodore Walsh.

  “We are…the Spankmasters!” she intoned melodramatically. Then she spun back around and dashed off into the night.

  2

  “That was a complete fucking bust,” Donovan said as they walked home, their ski masks and gloves safely stashed in their jacket pockets.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Violet said. “We eliminated a suspect. It’s one less dude from the park we have to worry out.”

  Donovan grunted. As usual, Violet had a way of reframing things that turned even unmitigated disasters into undeniable victories.

  “So…what next, then?” he asked.

  “Easy. We move on to the next wanktard on our list: Roger Grey.”

  Part Three:

  Confrontations

  Chapter 17

  The Intrepid Investigators

  1

  Ever since the meeting in Mr. May’s house yesterday Calvin had been wracking his brain for a way to find out from his dad if any bank employees fit Mr. May’s perp profile. He couldn’t just come right out and ask; his dad would want to know why Calvin was asking, and Calvin knew better than to admit he was helping his secret crush and an elderly local eccentric find Emily Crow. White-bread Mark Beckerman would probably think his son had gone insane. No, Calvin had to gather the info with the finesse of a cat burglar swiping the crown jewels. But finesse, he found, wasn’t easy. He had been starting to fear he wouldn’t think of anything and would be forced to show up at today’s meeting with nothing to offer and thus look like a complete moron in front of Cynthia, but shortly after lunch he hit on the perfect solution.

  Calvin headed into the living room. His dad was stretched out in his recliner watching auto racing on TV. Calvin sat down on the couch nearby. His dad shot him a puzzled glance. Calvin normally shunned his dad’s Sunday sports-watching sessions.

  Calvin and his dad sat in silence while brightly colored cars drove around and around in circles. Finally a commercial came on.

  “I want to ask you about something,” Calvin said.

  “About the race?” Mark Beckerman said with a wry smile. Clearly he knew that whyever his son had come in here, it had nothing to do with auto racing.

  “Heh, no. Um, it’s just, I was curious about something a kid at school said happened involving someone from the bank.”

  “The bank?” Mark’s curiosity was piqued. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the point. That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

  “What was it that happened?”

  “Well, this kid said he was sort of accosted by someone he said worked at the bank.”

  Mark sat forward. The recliner slid into the sitting position with a loud thunk. “Accosted?”

  “Yeah. I guess this kid was in Indian Hill Park one day not too long ago, and this guy just starting going off on him. Just, like, yelling at him completely out of the blue. The kid said he was afraid the guy was gonna get violent. He hurried out of there with the guy still yelling at him.”

  “How does he know that the man works at the bank?”

  “He said he’d seen him working there before. He said it was a guy in his thirties?”

  Mark shook his head. “That could be a number of people. What exactly did he look like? What color was his hair?”

  “He didn’t really give a description. But he did say that he was surprised the guy was acting like that since he normally seemed like a very introverted, rational kind of guy.”

  His dad stared off into space with a frown, his blond eyebrows almost meeting in the middle. On TV, the commercials ended and the race cars started driving in circles again. Mark didn’t notice.

  “That sounds like Roger Grey,” he said. “But I can’t picture him doing anything like that. He’s very collected, very dependable.”

  “He hasn’t been acting weird or anything lately?”

  Mark opened his mouth, then hesitated and shut it.

  “Hm. Well, actually, he was acting kind of…spacey the week before last. But I figured that was just because he had a vacation coming up and his mind was on that.”

  “When was the vacation?”

  “He’s still on it actually. Last week and this week.” Mark shook his head. “Bad timing, too. If he’d been at work, he would’ve been able to fix that stupid computer glitch we had the other day…”

  Mark said more, but Calvin missed it in the rush of excitement that was coursing through him. Could it be only a coincidence that this guy not only fit the profile but had a vacation the same week Emily vanished?

  Well, he supposed it could be a coincidence. He had better gather more info.

  “How exactly was he spacey?” Calvin asked.

  Mark shrugged. “I dunno. Just kind of distracted. You know, like his mind was elsewhere. Sometimes I’d tell him something and it was like he wouldn’t even hear me, like his mind was a million miles away.”

  “Huh.”

  “Come to think of it, he does frequent the park a lot.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he goes out to eat his lunch over there. Always struck me as kind of antisocial, actually.” He grunted. “Still, I can’t picture him going all crazy like that. He’s always a very calm, collected guy.”

  “Could he be having problems in his personal life? Maybe he’s got issues with his wife or kids or something?”

  “Oh, Grey’s not married. And he doesn’t have any kids.” Mark sounded almost envious.

  Calvin was nearly exploding with excitement. Every single piece of data about Roger Grey matched Mr. May’s profile.

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t him after all,” Calvin said, trying to sound blasé. “The kid I was talking to might have been exaggerating anyway.”

  “Yeah…” Mark glanced at the TV, saw that the race was back on, and resumed watching it. After a few seconds, he glanced back at Calvin. “Let me know if you hear anything else about this. I’m curious.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Calvin remained there watching the race with his dad a while longer, but he wasn’t really seeing it. He was still buzzing with excitement. He wanted to call Mr. May right now and tell him the news. But no: The meeting was only about two hours away. Besides, if he waited till the meeting, he could reveal his big discovery in front of Cynthia. He smiled as he imagined how impressed she would be that he had come up with a suspect so quickly…

  2

  At that moment Cynthia was heading upstairs to Donovan’s room to ask him if he knew who had been in the park on Thursday afternoon. She didn’t expect he would, but she felt obliged to ask anyway, especially since she hadn’t learned much from her parents.

  She had been afraid to ask at first, worried that her mom and dad would find the question suspicious and demand to know why she was asking. But when she finally conquered her fears last night and asked her dad while he sat sipping a beer and watching an old Remington Steele rerun, she had received not suspicion or an interrogation but a tirade about how the goddamn police and FBI weren’t telling him a goddamn thing about goddamn anything. So, no, he didn’t know who was in the park that day. He seemed to regard the question as merely n
atural curiosity about her sister’s disappearance. It was too late by then to ask anyone else, since her mom and Donovan had gone to bed early. Or rather, Mom had gone to bed and Donovan had claimed he was going to bed but was probably actually doing things he shouldn’t have been.

  It had taken Cynthia nearly all morning to find an opportunity to ask Mom. Ever since dawn Mom had been prepping the house for Aunt Wendy’s arrival, a task of truly Herculean proportions. The guest bedroom, where Wendy would be staying, hadn’t been cleaned in years, and the rest of the house was littered with painful evidence of the family’s recent stupor: Chinese takeout boxes and empty beer bottles covered the coffee table; the kitchen sink was heaped high with food-crusted plates; the wastebaskets were overflowing with Kleenex; the floors were filthy with chunks of mud and bits of gravel from the passage of countless well-wishers and law enforcement officials. For hours Mom had been scrubbing, washing, mopping, vacuuming. The washer and dryer had been rumbling almost constantly. The smells of dust and stale soy sauce had slowly been replaced by the lemon scent of furniture polish. The trash cans in the garage filled up one by one.

  It was clear that this cleaning frenzy was a way for Mom to take her mind off the painful realities of the situation for a little while. Cynthia felt like a cad to remind her again.

  She felt like even more of a cad when she discovered she needn’t have bothered. Mom didn’t know much more than Dad. The one and only piece of information she had to offer was that she had heard one of the local cops mention that some junior high school kids had been playing a baseball game at the west end of the park.

  That left Donovan.

  He was in his bedroom with the door closed. She rapped on the door hard enough to make sure he heard it over the drone of the vacuum coming from downstairs.

  “Just a second!” Donovan called.

  Fifteen seconds passed. Cynthia was raising her fist to knock again when the door opened, and Donovan looked out at her. Despite the open window and the sinus-clearing scent of the peppermint Binaca on his breath and the freshly lit stick of incense burning in its holder on the dresser, the odor of cigarette smoke was unmistakable. For that matter, the incense hadn’t been burning long enough to account for the thick stratum of smoke that hung in the air behind him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, disappointed that his frantic effort to hide his guilt had been unnecessary.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure.”

  He waved her inside, then shut the door behind her. She sat down on the edge of his bed. He pulled out his desk chair and sat down facing her.

  Cynthia flapped a hand in front of her wrinkled nose. “God, it reeks of tobacco in here.”

  “Is it that strong?”

  “Are televangelists lying crooks?”

  “Crap.”

  “At least its just tobacco this time.”

  Donovan’s eyes slid away from hers.”Um, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sometimes I can smell the weed from down the hall. I’m surprised Mom and Dad haven’t busted you yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “You need to be more careful. For that matter, you shouldn’t even be smoking that shit in the first place.”

  “Which shit?”

  “Both shit! Neither one’s healthy.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she waved a placating hand. “Look, just forget it for now. I didn’t come here to get on your case. I just need to ask you about something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m trying to find out who was in the park on Thursday afternoon when Emily was there. I was wondering if you’ve heard anything about it from the cops. I asked Mom and Dad, but they hardly know anything.”

  “Oh, um, actually yeah. I mean, I don’t know anything from the cops, but I know some of the folks who were in the park.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Violet was there. Violet O’Donohue? I don’t know if you know her, but—”

  “You mean your not-so-secret girlfriend? Yeah, of course I know who she is. I only see her sneaking across the porch roof to your room, like, every other night.”

  Donovan gaped at her. “What? That’s, um, that’s…”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Mom and Dad. But only if you tell me who she saw in the park. It’s important.”

  “All right, all right. Violet said there were kids playing baseball and a couple of chicks with babies. None of them sound like they had anything to do with anything. But she said she also saw two other people. Men. Adult men. By themselves. One was a dude named Theodore Walsh. He’s that big fat guy who runs the antique store on Horst Road.”

  Cynthia stiffened. The antique store was practically right across the street from the park. And though Walsh was older than Mr. May’s profile demanded, it couldn’t be by very much. “Oh, my God.”

  Donovan waved a hand dismissively. “If you’re thinking it’s him, it’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Um…” Donovan frowned, looked down, scratched the back of his neck. “Well, you know, we, um, Violet and me, we sort of ruled him out.” He nodded, smiling, as if to convey to her that this was a satisfactory answer and she needn’t ask any more questions about it.

  But she did. “What does that mean exactly?”

  Donovan grimaced. “Well, um, we kinda checked out his house. You know, when he sorta wasn’t there.”

  Cynthia stared at him, blinking, as the meaning of his words sank in and she realized they didn’t admit of multiple interpretations. “You broke in?”

  “That’s kind of, you know, a harsh way to put it. We just sort of briefly invited ourselves in while he was out. Um…” He trailed off with a frown, realizing his euphemism didn’t really improve things very much.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t believe this. Donovan, you could’ve gotten arrested! You could’ve wound up in jail.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Think what that would do to Mom and Dad! I mean, they’re fucked up enough with Emily gone. What, you think it’s gonna help if they get a call and find out you’re in jail now, too?”

  “Damn it, Cyn,” he snapped. “I’m just trying to help Emily.” He glared at her a moment, his brown eyes filling with tears. Then he lowered his head and sleeved his eyes clear.

  Her shoulders slumped.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said gently. “I know, I know.” She heaved a sigh. “And that’s good. You just need to do it…better. Let me guess, the whole thing was Violet’s idea, right?”

  “Well…” He shrugged. “Kinda. Mostly. But it seemed solid.”

  “Donovan, she’s not a good influence. I mean, admittedly, I don’t know her all that well, but what I do know isn’t good. She’s got an IQ of, like, negative six or something. She’s irresponsible. She’s vulgar. I mean, isn’t she the one who covered over the M in the May High School sign with the big pink cardboard G right before the Homecoming game?”

  Donovan couldn’t restrain a grin at the memory. Seeing his sister’s scowl, he forced his smile down and opted not to tell her that he had been the one who supplied Violet with the cardboard.

  “Look, just watch yourself,” she told him. “She’s bad news.”

  “Yeah, okay…”

  She could see he was just telling her what she wanted to hear, but she decided to drop the matter. For now.

  “You said there was someone else in the park,” she said. “Another man besides Theodore Walsh. Who was it?”

  “A guy named Roger Grey.”

  “Who’s he?”

  Donovan shrugged. “I don’t really know. Violet says she knows him. He lives, like, practically right around the corner from her. She says he’s an uptight, dweeby, sexually repressed loser type, which makes him a prime suspect.”

  “And you haven’t, um, paid his house a visit?”

  “No…” Donovan looked away with a sheepish expression. “Not yet. We were kind of thinking about it tonight.�
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  “Well, don’t.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Just don’t, okay? I’m serious.”

  “Yeah, but if it is him, the cops aren’t doing shit, you know? They can’t. They’re, like, all wrapped up in laws and stuff and won’t be able to do anything.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not gonna get into a debate with you about this. Just don’t do anything. And keep Violet on a really short leash.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “I—” He frowned and eyed her closely. “Wait a minute. What’s going on? You’re up to something yourself, aren’t you?”

  A small, proud smile flickered on Cynthia’s lips. Despite Violet O’Donohue and gallons of booze and entire forests of weed and who knew what else, her brother could be pretty sharp sometimes.

  “Yeah, we kind of are,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Yeah. Do you know Calvin Beckerman from school?”

  Donovan shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s in my grade. He’s my lab partner in Chemistry.”

  Donovan smirked. “Is he, like, your boyfriend?”

  “No!” Cynthia said emphatically. “It’s just…look, if I tell you something, you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Not Mom and Dad. Not the cops. Not anybody.”

  “Well, yeah, okay.” He shrugged. “I mean, you’ve got the whole breaking-and-entering thing hanging over my head, so what the fuck can I do, right?”

  “Well, me and Calvin, we’ve been sort of working together with old Robert May next door—”

  Donovan’s jaw dropped. “Weird old Mr. May? He’s, like, some kinda mental case or something, isn’t he?”

  “No! That’s just stupid gossip. He’s actually a pretty cool guy. And he has some investigative experience, so he’s helping us out with a sort of private search for Emily.”

  Donovan clucked his tongue. “So you’re, like, doing the same thing you’re telling me not to do!”

  “We’re not breaking into people’s houses!”

  “Not yet.”

  “Look, I think we’re actually making some headway. Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “Okay, but…”

  “But what?” Even as she asked it, she realized what was coming.