by Triss Stein
“What was it?”
“Who the hell knows? Couldn’t make head or tail of it. But there was something. I know it in my heart.”
“Who was he? Did you know that?”
“Nope. Never did find out. What they told us is that some Good Samaritans in his building found him passed out—that’s all I knew about how he came to us—and those neighbors, they didn’t know much more. He kept his self to his self, is what I heard. I mean, I don’t know if the front office got more on him after a while. And when he wasn’t raving, he didn’t have a lot to say that was real personal. In fact, nothing.”
She leaned back and stared at me. “I think that’s a veggie burger’s worth of talk. I’m dry and I can’t drink alcohol anymore, so I’m heading home for an herbal tea with some energizing essences.” She gave me a wobbly grin. “You ought to try it sometime.”
“But wait!” I blurted out it out before she walked away. “I wanted to ask more about you, too. I’m trying to learn all about Brooklyn Heights.”
She snorted. “You mean like Loweezy Gibbs, the great? Yeah, yeah, little Sierra tells me stories. And besides, I knew her when. But, yeah, I have been hanging around here a few decades. More than a few. But memories are not my thing. What’s gone is gone.”
And with that, she was hustling out, bumping into tables as she went. I’d lost her for now, and I was kicking myself, but deep down, I knew I’d find her again. I was getting good at this.
It wasn’t until a few days later that she texted to say: “You want more? I have papers. His bench at seven p.m.”
Chapter Eighteen
Was I being jerked around? Why, yes. Yes, I was. I didn’t like it, and I hadn’t liked this Willow person so much in general. Was I going to be on that bench before seven o’clock? Nothing would keep me from it.
She was there, waiting, her arms wrapped around a plastic grocery bag. The sky was dark already, and she looked as if she was nodding off. I spoke her name, softly and then sharply, and when she didn’t respond, I felt a little tremor of fear.
She opened her eyes.
“Knew you’d show up. I can read your aura, you know.” She looked up at the nearby streetlamp. “We got enough light here, I’d say. I didn’t want to do this someplace all bright and public. It’s strictly between us.” She patted the bench. “Sit, sit.”
“You have something to show me?”
“I do. That there.” She pointed to the bag. It was bursting, with rips in the plastic, and sticky with oily stains. “Gonna give them to you. They are not safe where I am, and like I said, you have an aura. Jonathan Doe. Poor old guy. You ever see him?”
“I might have. Right here on this bench.”
“Skinny as a needle, he was. Lost some teeth, too.” She smiled. “He used to go in and out.”
“You mean mentally?”
“No! Well, that, too, sure. But no, I mean he went in and out of the home. He found a way. Not supposed to, but he did. He liked a little walk around outside. He’d forgotten a lot—like his name!—but he always knew how to get back home.” She shook her head. “Always a giant cosmic puzzle, what they lose and what they hold onto.”
I had no idea where this was going. I figured saying “Get to the point” would not be helpful, so I tried to hold her wavering attention.
“But didn’t he end up really lost? “
“Sadly, yes.” Her voice shook a little. “He ran out of…I don’t know, whatever it was that kept him anchored that tiny bit. But see, I knew him. I know he was happy being out on the street, however rough he was living. Free. A free man. But then I think, maybe I should have told on him before, and he would’ve lived longer. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t call that living, anyway.” She sighed deeply, sadly, looking out into the darkness. “Hard to tell what he would have thought, since he wasn’t exactly thinking anymore in the usual sense of the word. Mostly he was off in some parallel universe. That’s what I believed.”
She leaned in toward me. “He wrote crazy stuff. Real interesting and mystical, even, but crazy by our reckoning, anyway. He scrawled and scrawled on those papers. Illustrated them, too, with pretty good sketches. Sometimes he’d give them to me, like, for safekeeping. Like they had any value. I saved them. And no, I don’t know why! I never knew myself. Seemed like maybe they had meaning, and the reason would manifest itself.”
She was starting to sound as crazy as Jonathan Doe. I was wondering how soon I could get away.
“Long, long ago, some young kids, students, came to the home and recorded people’s stories. You ever heard of doing that?”
I wanted to laugh. I’d listened to many tapes like that and seen transcripts, too. Oral history has become a terrific tool in my world.
“So he was so off base, even then, that they didn’t keep what he said. She was kind, this kid, and listened like she was learning something, but then she tossed it away after. So I kept it, too. Figured, I dunno, it might come in handy for something, sometime.” She chuckled. “Like maybe there’d be a miracle and he’d get his mind back and explain it all.”
“Wait. Are you telling me you have his tape here? And those sketches he did?”
“No, no, no.” She smiled. It was not a warm smile. “Where did you get that idea? I said papers. These scraps I collected. Very weird, but there are secrets hidden in there. See what you can find. If you do well, maybe—maybe!—I’ll find that tape for you.”
“What are you talking about?” It came out louder than I intended. “Is this a game?”
“Game?” She was unruffled. Her voice was soft. “Game? Hardly. But I need to know if you are the right person to hold the secrets.” She looked down, spread her fingers, and examined her nails with an air of complete indifference. It didn’t fool me for a second.
“I’m too old for this.” I stood, keeping a tight hold on the shopping bag. I thought she might try to take it back. “And you should be too. Cat and mouse? Not me.” And I walked away, stomping down the block. If she wanted something, let her chase me.
Possibly I ruined the dramatic effect by sneaking a look back before I turned the corner. She still sat there, looking steadily in my direction, in the dim streetlamp light. She saw me. I know, because she lifted her hand in a gesture of, well, something unknown. Hail? Farewell? Dismissal? Respect?
Oh, who cared, I grumbled to myself as I went on my way. I had no patience for this nonsense. And I still had the papers in the plastic grocery bag, for what it was worth.
I was not hopeful, and that turned out to be a good thing. When I looked them over later that night, it was like going through someone’s overflowing wastebasket. There were sketches, amateurish, with monsters, people with scary faces, dark smoky landscapes. Pages torn from publications. Written pages that were random scrawls, phrases, nothing that told a coherent memory or story or even a chronology.
Even at first glance, I felt in the presence of a damaged mind, as expected from a man who was so lost. But what was going on in Willow’s mind that she saved them? Could I suppress my desire to shake her, hard, to force her to spill what she knew? I’d have to, if I wanted to talk to her again. I didn’t think my mom skills would work on her the way they had on Sierra.
My brain must have worked on while the rest of me slept, because I woke up with a new idea. One faint thread in those scrawls was familiar. They talked about fire.
I carried the bag to work and locked the office door. There was no way to organize that bag of papers the usual ways, by date or subject. Not even by physical format, as the papers were a mess of legal pads, torn-off off scraps of other pages, printer paper, school notebook pages, colored construction paper. Some ink looked faded, some pencil writing was badly rubbed. They had been written over a long time.
Completely random kinds of paper in random sizes. All I could do was make a pile as tidy as possible and get to work.
I made working copies and highlighted and set aside every page that mentioned fire. I tabbed the ones that had something of additional interest.
And when I was done dealing with a stack of almost trash, there it was. Something. I didn’t know what exactly, but the phrases about fire were the same as some of the writing in the letters Towns had received. Not mine. Not Louisa’s. Only his.
My hands were shaking as I looked for Sergeant Torres’s number and pushed the buttons. My voice didn’t sound like me when I left her a message. She cut in live before I was done. When I had told her, there was a long silence. She was a cautious woman.
“That is certainly interesting. And strange. Don’t do anything, okay? Don’t discuss with anyone. Don’t do anything with the papers. You’re at the museum? I’ll be over soon. Less than a half hour.”
That’s how I found myself with Sergeant Torres in the museum café, hoping no one I knew would see us there, using a larger table to spread out the pages.
She looked at all the pages I had set aside. She took out a folder and pulled some pages from it, laid them next to what I had given her, looked some more. She did not say a word. I fidgeted, looked at my phone, waited, wondered if a cup of coffee would calm the butterflies in my stomach.
Finally she covered her eyes and shook her head.
“Sweet Jesus! This is something for sure. And I can’t ignore it. A week ago I would have said I don’t even have a case to work on where this fits. We were only looking into the letters Towns got, and the Mrs. Gibbs ones.”
“And mine.”
“Yes and yours, but less heavyweight. But none of it, even added together, hit the level of crime. Now. Now, maybe it relates to his murder. Or not. It’s real cluster of a mess.”
“Wait! Are you sorry I brought them to you?”
She gave me a look that was mostly exasperation. “Don’t be ridiculous! I asked for your help. Remember? And whatever we have, we need. We’ve got something here. And one other thing?”
She turned two pages around for me to see. One was Jonathan Doe’s scrawling, one a copy of one the letters to Towns. Side by side, even I could see it right away. She looked smug when I gasped.
“They’re the same handwriting, aren’t they?”
“Looks like it to me. We’ll have to get our expert over to confirm. But.”
I was having trouble getting the words out. “Could this be it? Could he be? I mean, is this?”
She sounded amused. “You’re stuttering. And yeah, that would be nice and neat except for one little thing. I don’t remember for sure, and I have someone checking, but I think this derelict guy died before Towns.”
My next words were a curse. Her response was “You got that right. But it’s not nothing. We’ll see where it goes.” She started tidying the papers and putting them into her folder, marked set first, then the rest.
“Wait a minute! I can’t give you those!”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” Her impassive appearance made me nervous. “No. They are not mine to give away on some whim.”
“They’re possible evidence in a murder investigation. I can do whatever I think I need to do.”
And here I thought we were friends. I should have thought this through.
She softened a tiny bit. “I get it. I know. Unintended consequences. But it was the right thing to call me. And your contact will have to live with it. By the way, I need to know more about her, too. Everything you know, in fact.”
“Nothing.” I was embarrassed. “I don’t know anything. I have a cell phone number. And she used to work at Downtown Care Home. She is on leave, and she did say she expected to be fired. And that’s it. I don’t even know where she lives or, maybe, her real name.”
She gave me a sharp look.
“Willow Lief? Hard to be believe that’s for real, don’t you think?”
She nodded. “The rest, leave it to me. We’ll track her through her job.”
“They wouldn’t say a thing. In fact, they sounded kind of panicky.”
“Oh, they’ll talk to me.”
I had a moment of wondering what it would be like to walk in with a badge instead of a polite request.
“You got names of who you talked to? And Ms. Willow’s phone number. Unless the phone’s a burner, we might get to her that way too.”
“I have a request. A favor,” I said as I wrote the information.
“Yes. Probably.”
“What?”
“You want to know what we learn, right? Once this is all over, I’ll tell you all I can. No promises, though.”
She left. I still didn’t like it that she had taken the originals, though I knew she needed to if they were to be analyzed. But she didn’t know I had made copies of all the ones I thought were important. It’s always good to back it up, right?
And I had Ms. Willow Lief’s phone number. How could I make nice to her after our last encounter? My fully justified, unwise little tantrum? I could tell her to expect a visit from NYPD’s finest. She would be so grateful for the heads-up that she’d spill everything I wanted to know.
Or she might vanish. She was that ornery. And this was now part of a serious investigation. How much trouble would I be in if I meddled? Even unintentionally? No, Erica. Bad idea.
Or I could offer her food. She’d all but licked the plate at our first meeting. I silently thanked my long-gone mother, whose instinct was to smooth any interaction with food. She was not above using it as a bribe, too.
I called; I left a message, a pleasant invitation. I completely ignored our little kerfuffle. Never happened.
And then I waited. I finally gave up work as a lost cause for the day. I was so antsy I could barely sit at my desk, let alone concentrate on a museum project. Instead I laid out my copies of Daniel Towns’s threatening letters and Jonathan Doe’s crazy notes. I copied out each similar phrase.
They weren’t merely similar. They were the same. They must have had great meaning to Jon Doe—they came up again and again. Obsessively? Did they to Towns, the recipient of the letters? A page from an old book, saved and highlighted in glaring green, said: “the scriptures refer to Jehovah as a consuming fire… He annihilates those who set themselves in opposition to him.” And on another “the devil and all those not written into the book of life will be cast into the lake of fire.” That page spoke of the symbolic meaning of the phrase but that was not the part he kept highlighting.
And he wrote and illustrated, “sorcerer’s portion will be the lake that burns with fire,” “He came to baptize you with fire,” and “Lord your God is a consuming fire.” “Astrologers and stargazers are like stubble the fire will consume.” That one was illustrated with a chart of some constellations on fire. And “he that is taken with the accused thing shall be burnt with fire.” That one was written in two colors and vividly illustrated. It looked like someone’s nightmare.
And there were articles on the dangers of witchcraft, heavily highlighted. He circled the phrase, “peril of coming completely under the control of the demons.”
He wrote of other things, too—the pile even included photos of kittens—but as I slowly dug through the mess, witchcraft and fire as punishment kept coming back. It was an obsession that held him tight. At least that is how it looked to me.
No one at Watchtower would talk to me, I thought, if they wouldn’t even willingly talk to the police who were trying to solve Towns’s murder
It was a long shot, but I was glued to my office and I had a computer. I wondered what my friend Google might have to tell me.
As it turned out, a lot. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ major task was to communicate their beliefs to the rest of the world. That’s what the giant publishing business was for, and they were tech savvy too. Look for Witness beliefs online and there was be plenty to read. Lots and lots and lots. And I am ski
lled at looking.
Some tentative experiments with “fire” and “witchcraft” and I found all Jonathan Doe’s words, with the biblical citations for many of them. A lot from Revelations but some from the Gospels, some from the Old Testament, and some from Watchtower publications.
Time to ask Leary to tell me another story about the old days in Brooklyn.
I didn’t call. I scooped up the papers, left a note on my office door that read “Family emergency—call my cell if necessary,” and walked out the door without a pang of conscience. It was a while before I thought about what that meant. At the time, my only thought was, “Leary never goes anywhere. I’m going straight there to pound on his door.”
When he heard my voice and opened the door, I said, “Tell me a story. It should have witches in it.”
He pulled back in surprise, then laughed at me and said, “Are you sure you are spelling it right?”
“Always the smart aleck!”
“One of my better qualities. So seriously, why witches? And is that what I owe the honor of this surprise visit? I would’ve baked a cake if I knew.” He was still teasing me. He doesn’t know how to bake a potato, let alone a cake. And he can’t eat cake.
“Look! Look at this.” I threw the papers on his table and spread them out in the right piles. “Take a look and tell me what you see.”
He sat and looked. I sat and fidgeted. Then I got up and fidgeted. I was so anxious to see if he saw what I saw. Then he said, without so much as looking up from the papers, “Sit down and quit fidgeting.”
Finally—finally!—he muttered, “This is some strange stuff. Been a long time since I read anything that, um, weird? Delusional? Where’d you get it?”
I explained, just enough to make him understand.
“Witches, huh?”
“Don’t you see a connection?”
“Go in the office, look around the second set of cabinets, third drawer up. Under Brooklyn Heights, you ought to find a subfile.”