I fished around inside my jacket pockets, pretending I was searching, and pulled out the postcard I’d put there. “I didn’t know anywhere to stay up here, but I figured if they liked it here..." ” I held out the postcard.
Beth took it in her small, very white hand. “That’s my handwriting. Wait! I remember the little girl. I can see what you mean about her being a discipline problem. I remember thinking that I’d like to get her into a class for a few months. She’s a little bold if you don’t mind my saying so. Not enough structure and security in her life I’d venture. I suppose the parents are distracted easily and don’t deal with her in a consistent manner.”
I smiled blandly. “Something like that.” I felt relief wash over me. Now I knew all the postcards were from Megan and I was on the right track.
Beth nodded, pleased with her deductions. “She asked me to write the address because she said she had bad handwriting. That’s often a sign of other problems.”
“Well it got to me, so I thank you. Actually I was wondering if you heard them say anything about where they might be traveling. I’d like to surprise them.”
“In what way?”
“Well, we were supposed to be meeting in Maine in a week or so. I got off early and I’d like to find them sooner. It’s not really important, but I know they’d like to see me.”
There it was: my latest gambit. I had turned it over in my head all day and it had the advantage of being simple and non-threatening. To my great joy, neither of them seemed suspicious. Bob raised his eyes to the ceiling in a parody of thought. I guessed that these practical details were his forte. “I did hear the little girl say something to her mother about glass works or something like that. It seemed she liked colored glass.”
“I found it telling that she was glued to that stuffed animal,” Beth added, the educator strong in her voice.
I smiled dismissively. “You mean the surfer bear?”
“Yes. She held on to it like it was some kind of father substitute. Does she have some problem with her father?”
I let my anger pass and hoped it didn’t show in my face. “Nothing serious. She happens to like stuffed animals. And she is only seven.”
Beth smiled condescendingly and I realized I hadn’t really liked her from the beginning. I was tempted to ask her why I didn’t see any children around the Inn, but decided against it.
Bob stepped in, sensing a problem that he’d probably encountered with his wife many times before. “Beth has mapped childhood development over the years. She’s done a good job. She even wrote a couple of books on the subject."
His wife smiled proudly, feeling she had somehow scored a point. “I got some strange feelings from your niece. I had hoped to discuss them with your sister but she seemed in a hurry. She gave me the impression that she was trying to cover something up.”
It hit me that the reason that neither of them had expended any effort on finding out if I was legitimate was because Beth was so preoccupied with psychoanalyzing Megan. As much as I hated cheapening myself, I decided that I’d use it my advantage.
“She did? We’re not very big on airing the family laundry,” I said sheepishly, as though I’d been found out. “Well what feelings did you get?”
Beth looked triumphant. “So there is something wrong?”
“Well. I guess there’s no harm in telling you. I’ve never really thought there was anything we could do about it. I did say something about it to my sister once.”
I let the silence hang. Beth was waiting and ready to pounce.
“You see,” I continued. “The father cheats on my sister and he has a cocaine problem. When he gets bad enough, sometimes they have to send Megan away. Or sometimes he goes away.” I said it all very softly, as though I was ashamed to be uttering the words.
I looked appropriately stricken, I suppose, which seemed to spur her on even more. “What I found most telling and what seemed to be an indication of serious systematic abnormalities in her family, was her obsession with a place she called The Farm. She’d bring it up out of nowhere, telling me that when she got to The Farm she’d be able to sleep in a real bed and that she wouldn’t have to have any more bad dreams. There was also talk of big dogs that would protect her and a tower where she could see the whole world and tell what was coming from miles away. And a barn shaped like Noah’s Ark. All these are security issues, Mike. The tower, the Noah’s Ark to take her away from the rain. It’s pretty obvious. The fantasy was so persistent that her mother had to tell her to be quiet. I think your sister was embarrassed.”
Noah’s Ark, just like in Megan’s last postcard. I felt my pulse quicken; maybe I could find Megan and her mother “Yes. We’ve dealt with this before. Sometimes I think I should just tell Eileen to let Megan go on with her fantasies. She’s just a little girl. How long can they last?”
Dinner ended soon after. I made the standard excuses and went to bed.
*
My clock said 3:44 when I was awoken by the sound of a crash. I ran to the window just in time to see an extremely beat up blue tow truck take a second or third swipe at the front end of my car. There was steam coming from the front and I had to assume that it would be a miracle if the car ran at all.
I pulled on a robe and raced outside before anyone else could get there, my eyes scanning the inside of the car for what I expected to be there. I noticed that the right front window had been smashed with what was probably a tire iron. There on the seat was a piece of paper, the numbers 4-5-1 written on it in bright red. It seems that I had stumbled on the Chapter and Verse Killers for sure. I grabbed the paper and stuffed it in the pocket of my robe; I didn’t need the police to make any connections between me and a news story with national attention.
Beth made it outside before Bob and somehow I wasn’t at all surprised. “I called the police,” she shouted breathlessly just as Bob ran up. When the police arrived, they began by shining a light in my face as though they assumed I was at fault, but seemed to calm down when Beth assured them I was a guest of the Inn. I gave them a sketchy description of the truck that had hit my car. To my surprise, I realized that there was no license plate, something that made sense after a moment’s thought.
That fact seemed to bother the officer who was questioning me. “Do you know anyone up here?” he asked, a hint of hostility in his voice.
“He just came up here today,” Beth chimed in. “He’s on the way to meet his sister.”
The cop looked at her with some mistrust and I was reminded that she was barely better than an outsider in a town like that. “When he got here has nothing to do with why his car’s just been wrecked,” he said firmly.
“I have no idea why it happened,” I lied.
He took a deep breath. I could see the wheels turning in his head; he didn’t like outsiders, but the town needed them. I could cause him trouble. “We’ve had a lot of people come up here to make drug deals,” he told me.
“I understand.”
“Well then do you mind if we search your car?”
“Certainly.” I handed him the keys and immediately got a bad feeling.
“Really, officer, there’s no reason for this,” Beth said. “He’s a guest of the Inn."
I waved my hands negligently. It would satisfy their curiosity and now I was committed. “I’m going to get a thermos of tea,” Beth said suddenly, and bolted back into the Inn. In fifteen minutes, I was watching them dig into the back seats, sipping herbal tea, beginning to relax and expecting I’d be back in bed in a half an hour.
“Shit,” one of the officers said. He had pulled up the back seat and was working his hand around behind it. In seconds he had pulled something up that looked like nothing more than a few joints in a plastic bag.
Beth looked at me with the most profound look of disappointment I’d ever seen. “Oh Mike,” she moaned.
“It isn’t mine,” I said, knowing no one would believe me.
It took a few hours before they got around to proces
sing me. Of course they offered me a legal aid lawyer, but I figured Dennis would be better, and I couldn’t afford to be stuck in bumfuck when I had to find Eileen and Megan.
I sat in a cell with someone who looked like he’d lost the title bout. To my limited amusement he wore the regulation plaid New England hunter’s jacket. His face was red from booze and getting seriously pounded by someone. I figured that fighting was a form of recreation for someone like him.
He seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. Once when he was awake he smiled at me. “They deny your Gold Card? Is that why you’re here?”
“No. Sorry to disappoint you. They didn’t have my vintage in the local restaurant. So I pissed on the waiter.”
It was stupid humor born of desperation, but he loved it. He spent at least two minutes laughing until he passed out again.
Around seven they let me make my phone call. Dennis was at home and just developing his first awareness of the day, compliments of his Kona coffee blend. He didn’t quite seem to understand me at first, but then he got serious. “Okay. You’re all right?”
“Fine. Someone just trashed my car and planted a few joints under the back seat.”
“Oh god. Okay, Mike. They’re not going to like me up there so I’m going to have to find some friend of a friend who works up there. I don’t mind coming up, but I’d just be a New York lawyer with an attitude.”
“I see your point.”
“Let me try to find some people before they go to the office. If I can’t find anyone good, I promise I’ll fly up there.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m glad to see you’re brave. I suppose you still have some business to take care of, right?”
“True.”
“Okay. There’s an airport near Okemo that I know. You should either hear from someone who lives up there or see me by two at the latest.”
“Thanks, Dennis. I’ll pay you back some day.”
“At least you’re talking and okay.”
“Doing my best.”
“Okay. I’m going to make some calls. Talk to you later.”
*
In the end it turned out that Dennis didn’t have to fly up after all. I was sitting in my cell, munching on some breadsticks that Beth had brought me. I’d shared them with my cellmate who I’d found out was named Ken. We’d formed quite a friendship and he’d promised to take me to the bar where someone had beaten the shit out of him.
I could feel Eileen and Megan drifting away from me and there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it. That was when Layton Grant walked up to the bars and smiled at me. “You’re Mike Dobbs?”
“Umm hmm.”
“There’s a long chain back to your friend Dennis, but here I am.”
He told me the little bit about him that I needed to know. He was from Burlington and he came from old money. He was on retainer for three of the local ski resorts. What was most important and what he didn’t say was that he was connected. He’d spoken to the local District Attorney and the whole search had become questionable. Yes I had consented, but I was nowhere near my vehicle when the damage occurred. Assuming that I hadn’t trashed my car (a reasonable assumption) it was more than possible that the drugs had been planted. Beth was willing to testify that I hadn’t been near my car for at least eight hours before the incident.
I chalked it up less to good lawyering than I did to Layton’s friends in the court. I didn’t give a shit. Within a couple of hours I was out on the street walking with my new lawyer. “I would suggest,” he told me sotto voce, “that you get out of Selaquachie as soon as possible.”
“That is fine with me, but I have no car.”
“Rent one. Don’t wait for someone here to fix yours. You can come back and get it later. My concern is that, if you wait, something else will happen. Maybe Officer Johnson will get one of his cousins to cause you more trouble. Leave now.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“I’ve been paid.”
I nodded and realized that, despite my blossoming gratitude, Grant, Esq. wasn’t my friend. I went back to the Selaquachie Inn and gathered my belongings. Bob, who’d been quiet up to that point, revealed himself as a radical. He talked about the fascist police state in Selaquachie and offered to drive me to the nearest rental agency in the next town. Beth watched us in disapproving silence. I guess she had decided that not much good could be expected from people who were part of dysfunctional families like mine. Her only blatant bit of communication was to press a copy of her second book into my hand as I left with her husband.
*
He took me to an Enterprise Rental in one of the nearby malls. I had sat quietly in Bob’s car in a stupor from lack of sleep and feeling, by turns, omnipotent and ready to continue my quest and then paranoid and disgusted with myself for going this far. Still something seemed to be driving me on. There, with the primordial hills around me, I felt like some kind of figure in an old tall tale. It seemed right that I should go on.
Being late in the afternoon, there wasn’t much at Enterprise. I had a choice between a Corolla, a Mercury Sable, and a Pontiac Grand Am. I figured the Grand Am would be better if I had to drive fast, but part of my current persona was not to stand out, so I chose the Sable. As I paid with my plastic I wondered, in passing, if this car would suffer the same fate as my last and what I’d do if it did.
Then it occurred to me that I might suffer the same fate. I didn’t let the thought linger.
Bob seemed almost sorry to see me go. We shook hands in front of the rental agency.
“You’re not going to meet your sister, are you?”
I didn’t see any harm in telling him; my enemies clearly knew where I was. “Not really. She’s a friend and she’s in trouble.”
He smiled. “I almost wish I could go with you.”
I suddenly regretted being brusque with him earlier. “It’s not quite as romantic as it seems.”
“I know.”
He seemed like he needed to hear something from the macho John Wayne side of the world he thought I’d be part of. “You could take Beth to someplace exotic. She might get her head out of child psychology.”
“Or her ass?” he added, laughing.
“Yeah. Sometimes you have to live life and not establish a career.”
“I thought that’s what opening the Inn was all about, but it turned out differently.”
“You’ll figure it out.” I grasped his hand and he got back into his car. I was sure that I’d brought a little revitalizing excitement into his life but I also knew it would last a couple of hours. Maybe Beth would notice something different in him when he walked through the door and then she’d be sure that he’d be back to being an innkeeper by dinner time. In a way I envied him his comfortable life.
*
I stopped at a no name motel just around sundown. I wasn’t going to be very much good to myself if I was half asleep. I figured being stationary for a whole night might make me a better target for my mysterious friends, but somehow I just didn’t give a shit. I suppose it had something to do with being really tired and having had almost no sleep for two nights.
I went down the road to the nearest restaurant and got myself a burger and fries, taking it back to the motel. Somehow it didn’t seem to be the time for tuna on a pita. I sat with my meal beside me and ate while I watched “Orca”. It was a movie I’d always laughed at and it seemed the right thing to be watching at the moment. I looked around my room; I’d put some traps right in front of the doors and windows, things that would fall and make a lot of noise if they were disturbed. It was odd to see myself as just a survival machine, like something out of a bad detective novel, but it occurred to me that, to some extent, I’d been living that way ever since I moved to Bardstown. More than anything else, I felt numb.
I guess what I was really feeling was apathy. I’d lost everything and my life, at best, was like some fixer-upper house you’d buy with no expectations; everything nee
ded work and nothing was okay. Then I caught myself. There were thousands of people down in New York who’d lost everything, including their loved ones. Was I so important?
I pulled out the map and flattened it on my bed. Pesquot was pretty far up in Maine, at least another seven hours drive. I’d been up in that area once and all I could remember was how barren it was. The towns had always made me think of what I’d imagine rural Wales must be like, though I had no basis for comparison. A friend of mine had actually spent a summer on one of those islands off the coast and described it as incredible.
I hoped that I’d be able to keep my sleep light. If nothing else, I hoped they’d try to come in and not just shoot me through the window; at least my booby traps would make some noise. I realized more than once, that the most rational thing to do was to get in my rented car and head back south as far as I could go before I had to sleep.
Of course I didn’t do it.
I woke around 6:10 and knew I was still alive and not much else. I’d only gotten four hours of sleep that night and I could feel myself starting to fray at the edges. I found my mind wandering for a minute at a time while I thought I was concentrating on some important task like planning out my route for the day. I drank two cups of coffee hoping it would make me feel more focused, but it only seemed to make me feel stretched tighter than I already was. I wondered if I should even be driving.
No one had disturbed my booby traps during the night nor did there seem to be any sign of “them”. I wondered for a moment if I’d start seeing “them” even when they weren’t there, due to my depleted condition; I was at the point where rationality was beginning to battle with fantasy.
I shook off the thought. I knew I couldn’t afford that sort of self-indulgence, so I dragged myself into the office and got some more paint remover quality coffee, which I drank while lounging by the front window watching the scant traffic pass.
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