The Boy Detective Fails

by Joe Meno

  Mr. Lunt enters, old and sad, his long beard a puff of whiteness above his brown robe. He grimaces as he approaches on two wood canes.

  “I come here to thank you for your kindness with those heathens. I’m not a very polite sort of man, so it took me some time thinking before I realized I ought to thank you properly,” he says.

  “OK,” Billy replies.

  “I’m not the kind of fellah to go on and on with a lot of fancy words. I never had much use for talking. I can tell you’re the same way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I come to find out I got no one, no one at all. And there’s this business of my treasure. Seeing as I’ve come to find there’s no one I can leave it to, I’ve decided I’d give you a chance with it. You’ve been kind to me and I want to pass it on, but not for nothing. You’ll have to work for it the way I did.”

  “OK.”

  “So what it is, is a riddle.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll recite it, and if you’re smart, you’ll be able to figure out where the treasure is buried. That’s the only help you’ll get with it.”

  “All right.”

  “So here it goes, then: ‘At the beginning of a silver line and the end of another made of twine, if you have old lungs, the treasure you will find.’ That’s it. You take some time to think on it.”

  “OK. Well … thanks?”

  Mr. Lunt nods once more and then turns, ambling with some struggle down the dim hallway. Billy lies back in bed. Then he sits up and stares across the wall at a clipping of Caroline.

  The boy detective thinks: I wouldn’t have anyone to leave anything to either, I’m afraid. But if it’s his wish for me to find it, I will.

  He begins scribbling down the riddle on some paper with a pencil, scribbling and scratching it out. Finally, Billy takes two Clomipramine and sighs, closing his eyes, soon falling asleep.

  The boy detective, in a dream again, descends into the cavern, past the now-familiar signs. Holding a flashlight, he climbs deeper and deeper, listening to someone crying. At the bottom of the cave, through the dark, Billy can see a girl in tears, but it is not his sister this time. It is Daisy Hollis, the missing kidnapping victim, a lovely blond teen in a dirtied white ball gown. Her hands are tied and she looks roughed-up. She has a white sweater on with a monogram, DH, etched in gold cursive.

  “Help me, please, anyone! Please, help me!”

  “Where’s Caroline? You’re not her. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. Please, please help me.”

  Billy begins to untie Daisy’s hands. She is still crying. A horrible growl like a jaguar echoes through the cave. Billy looks up, terrified.

  “What? What was that?”

  “It’s … it’s what brought me here …”

  “Here, we have to hurry.”

  “No, it’s too late,” Daisy cries. “It’s too late for me.”

  The horrible ram-horned, claw-fingered demon leaps out from the darkness, howling.

  The boy detective awakes with a shout. He is covered in sweat. He pulls himself out of bed and inches across the room to the dresser, opens the bottom drawer, and pulls out the detective kit. The corners are all worn, all bent, all oddly angled. He notices his heart is still pounding. The cartoon boy looks sad and unfamiliar. Billy closes his eyes and feels the cardboard with the tips of his fingers, listening to his pulse pounding loudly somewhere within his ears. There is dust along the lid, and something else. Something like an invisible magnetic field, the childhood implements echoing in far-off whispers. Billy opens his eyes and decides not to open the kit. He puts it back in the drawer and turns on the light. He opens another drawer, finds Caroline’s diary and fingerprint set, and climbs back into bed.

  Billy stares at Caroline’s last entry in her diary:

  how can anyone in the world believe in good anymore?

  On the fingerprint set is a label which has been perfectly typed and reads, Property of Billy Argo, but the Billy is crossed out and has been replaced by Caroline in a handwritten cursive.

  “What happened?” Billy whispers out loud. “What happened to you, Caroline? Why? Why did you go and do it?”

  He looks closely at the diary once again and makes a strange discovery: There is a small white torn corner, bound just behind the last page, evidence of a missing entry. He frowns, running his finger along the tear.

  It is then that Billy hears a ruckus in the hallway. He opens the door and sees two paramedics wheeling poor Mr. Lunt out. It is obvious: The old man is dead. His face is very calm and very happy. Across the hallway, Professor Von Golum in his white robe and Mr. Pluto in his blue gown watch as the old man is wheeled away.

  “Look at him, the fiend,” the Professor mumbles. “There is the look of the dead, all right. Quite happy to take his secrets with him, happy to have thwarted his fellow man. Lousy old fool! Now nobody will know the truth of it!”

  Mr. Pluto nods, hanging his gigantic head low.

  “In the end, it seems we have only been bested by that one adversary slightly more cunning than Man, the one no mortal has ever dared to truly comprehend: our dear, lifelong companion, Death.”

  Billy closes his door and lays in bed. As the dark arrives, his hands make strange shadows above his bed.

  He makes a bunny.

  He makes a dog.

  He makes a horse.

  He makes a crocodile.

  He makes a ghost.

  TWELVE

  At school, Gus Mumford is the only child in class. From his seat directly in front of Miss Gale’s desk, Gus turns around and sees for himself the classroom is entirely empty. A bit of dust blows about the corner of the room. As the clock strikes and the final bell rings, Gus places his hands on his desk and stares questioningly at Miss Gale’s taut white face.

  “It seems it will only be you and me today, Gus,” she whispers. “All of your other classmates have come down with a strange rash, which circulated at Missy Blackworth’s birthday party, to which, I conclude, you were not invited.”

  Gus Mumford sadly shakes his head.

  “We will, however, continue on with the lesson as planned.”

  Gus Mumford nods, and in that moment something wonderful dawns on him: There are no other students present, no one else to raise their hands, no one else who could possibly attempt to answer any of Miss Gale’s unintelligent questions. The boy sits at his desk grinning, his eyes wide with delight. Cracking his knuckles, he then flexes and relaxes his fingers, readying his hand to be raised and—finally—seen. So happy is the child that if we were to listen close, perhaps we would be able to hear him giggling to himself.

  Miss Gale stares down at her geography book seriously and then begins the day’s geography lesson.

  “Now, class, who can tell me where the Capital of the United States is located?”

  Gus Mumford decides the woman at the front of the classroom has been defeated. There is no one else she can call upon, and so the small bully decides he can take his time. He glances around the room, yawns, stretches his arm, and then slowly, languorously raises his large-knuckled hand.

  “No guesses, class?”

  Grinning, Gus Mumford flicks his fingers right before Miss Gale’s face, tapping his other hand on his desk.

  “No guesses? The answer is Washington, D.C.”

  Gus Mumford’s hand comes crashing down like a meteorite.

  “Now who can tell me who Washington, D.C. is named after?”

  Gus Mumford decides not to stall this time. Immediately, he raises his hand and lunges forward, nearly leaving his seat.

  “No guesses? He was the first president of our country. He said, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’ Do you remember who that was, class?” Gus Mumford, snarling, whips his arm back and forth.

  “Class, the answer is George Washington. Do we all remember him?”

  Gus Mumford drops his arm. He stares at his hand, wondering if it is somehow not real.

  “Now, class,
who can tell me what river did George Washington cross on his way to victory over the British?”

  Gus closes his eyes and places his face in the crook of his arm, too angry to begin crying.

  On the school bus, hidden back in the very rear seat, Gus Mumford raises both arms in the air and starts howling. The happy noise of after-school conversations soon dies, as all the other children turn and stare at the boy who will not, cannot, stop shouting. The sound, in their minds, reminds them of their frequent nightmares: the depiction of a deadly fall off a very dangerous cliff.

  * * *

  It is the very same day that Gus Mumford makes another terrible discovery: Secreted beneath the front porch, the boy finds that all but one of the proud inhabitants of Ant City have mysteriously died. The remaining fellow, a bright red and spunky arthropod, busily shuffles the corpses of his unmoving citizens, carefully constructing grave after grave after grave. Gus Mumford stares at the carnage and begins howling once again.

  THIRTEEN

  At work, the boy detective and the cleaning lady, sitting in the dark on the plush carpeting of the office, silently watch a television show about unsolved cases.

  On the show, an older B-grade actor in a black suit and tie speaks directly to the camera, smoking a cigarette and looking back over his shoulder at the city of New Orleans. The actor, the host of the show, says: “One of the most bizarre unsolved crimes concerns a killer known as the Axeman of New Orleans. From newspapers at the time, similar killings were described early in the year of 1919. The victims, as the murderer’s name suggests, were always assaulted with an axe. The front doors to some of the victims’ homes were also sometimes split open with the same weapon. The Axeman of New Orleans was never caught, though his crimes ended as strangely as they began. To this very day, the killer’s true identity is still a mystery.”

  Billy and the cleaning lady glance at one another, then around the great, empty office.

  The actor continues with his story: “It seems the Axeman of New Orleans drew many revelations from pulp stories concerning Jack the Ripper. Like that other famous murderer, the Axeman penned frightening letters to the city’s various newspapers, often asserting he was a demon of some kind. On March 13, 1919, a letter allegedly written by the Axeman was published in the city’s newspapers, claiming that he would commit a murder just past midnight on the night of March 19, but strangely, or so the missive said, he would avoid any location where jazz music was being played. On that bizarre evening of March 19, 1919, every one of New Orleans’s dance halls was full of people, while bands played jazz music at gatherings at thousands of homes around the city. More odd, perhaps, was the fact that, as promised, there were no killings that evening.”

  At the end of the program, Billy returns to his desk, thanking Lupe for sharing her small television. He stares at the phone, suddenly afraid to speak to anyone for quite a while. Instead, Billy tries his hand at solving Mr. Lunt’s riddle. Throughout the night, the single light above his desk flickering, Billy attempts to discover the secret to the old man’s clues—now his final words—a mysterious glimpse of someone Billy barely knew. Billy lowers his pencil for a moment and wonders: Without death, there is hardly any threat strong enough to truly appreciate human life. He thinks: I am as good as dead—too afraid to live, only waiting, never taking a risk—I am as good as dead already.

  Billy pops an Ativan and feels its effects quite quickly. He spins around in his chair, around and around and around, and the next thing he knows, he is

  FOURTEEN

  Again, returning from his job, the boy detective discovers some strange new commotion at Shady Glens. As breakfast is being served and beds are being made, the hospital staff is surprised to discover that Professor Von Golum disappeared sometime in the middle of the night. His clothes and personal effects have all been removed and a single note, left posted on Billy’s door, provides the only clue.

  Billy,

  I have deduced that it is the unknown which, in the end, sustains Life and since I am so nearing the termination of my own, I have decided to embark on one final adventure—better that than to die in the safety of deathly boredom. I must salute you for years of superb opposition. You remain, to this day, my greatest foe.

  Yours truly,

  Prof. Josef Von Golum

  Billy stares at the note a moment longer and then crumples the paper into a ball and throws it as hard as he can down the hall. Within a few seconds, the object explodes in a flash of green fire and cloudy, phosphorous smoke.

  Mr. Pluto begins to cry softly, staring at the vacant room. The giant lowers his head and says, “Our worlds are so momentary. We are alone all our lives and then go off that way as well.”

  Holding Mr. Pluto’s hand, the boy detective walks to the small park, past the statue of the armless general. The two sit on a park bench, not speaking for a long time. It is a day where the sun has returned, but only temporarily: a soft white dot in the sky hanging there familiar and lazy. The gloom of the end of autumn is momentarily cast away as the two men sit, watching the children in their winter jackets chasing the pigeons. They sit and stare for quite a while until Billy says, “I have never been very strong nor brave. I would be quite happy to know someone who is.”

  The giant nods.

  “I would like to be your friend. I would like to be your friend because I would like to be remembered fondly by someone who knew me.”

  The giant nods again.

  “Would you like to be my friend?” Billy asks.

  Mr. Pluto nods once more and, patting the boy detective on the shoulder, says, “Before you came to Shady Glens, I doubted I would have a friend ever again.”

  “Well, I am glad that has been settled.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am very glad.”

  An inquisitive pigeon comes pecking near their feet. Mr. Pluto reaches into the pocket of his large overalls and, smiling, drops three small crumbs of bread at the cooing bird, which quickly gobbles them up.

  “Well, what would you like to do now?” Billy asks. “I am free all afternoon.”

  “I have never been to the museum. I have been too afraid someone would laugh at me. Would you like to go there with me?”

  Billy nods and the two march off toward the art museum, a strange-looking white building which rises before them a few short blocks away.

  Stumbling into his room later that afternoon, the boy detective receives another secret message. It is like the others, in a white envelope with simple black handwriting. Opening it, he finds a similar code:

  K-24

  15-22-25-25-12,

  14-15-5-14-16-14-17-14-15-5-14!

  Billy’s nose twitches. There is something about this third message, unlike the two others—perhaps the strange symmetry of the coded words rising like a wonderful little pyramid—that makes Billy decide to sit down on the dusty spring bed and, with a pen and pencil, begin to solve the secret message. It does not come easy at first. But when he discovers the pattern, the message quickly reveals itself. He stares down at the words and does not like what he has discovered—no, not at all. He crinkles the paper up into a ball and hides it beneath his mattress.

  Billy lays in bed wondering who might have sent such a thing. Why, why, what is the meaning? He scrambles and takes the last of his Clomipramine. He stares at the vial of pills sadly and searches for his bottle of Ativan. It too is empty, and Billy decides not to ask Nurse Eloise for any more. He decides he will face the world of mystery now on his own. Thinking once again about the message now balled under his mattress, Billy turns on his side and stares at the newspaper clippings of Caroline and Fenton on the wall, wondering.

  FIFTEEN

  In the twilight just before evening, the boy detective is surprised to find both of the Mumford children standing among the graves of the Gotham town cemetery. Effie Mumford in her purple and white winter jacket, black headphones clamped over her ears, holds a large microphone raised between her hands, aiming the device at a large gray headsto
ne near their feet.

  “How is your experiment going?” Billy asks with a small smile.

  “The dead are quiet tonight,” the girl says. “All we have recorded so far is a strange sound coming from that mausoleum over there. We thought someone was singing, but then we heard the record skip.”

  “I see. Perhaps someone requested that a certain song be played over and over again after their death.”

  “Gus ran away from it at first.”

  Gus Mumford, in a hat and scarf and holding a small silver compass, nods, embarrassed. He hands Billy a note: It most definitely sounded like a ghost.

  Billy smiles. “I understand,” he says.

  “What are you doing here?” Effie Mumford asks.

  “I do not know, really. I saw the gates and decided I would walk inside. I have not been here in quite a while.”

  “Do you know anyone who’s buried here, Billy?”

  Billy stares across the great wide expanse of gray headstones and frowns.

  “Yes, I am afraid I do.”

  Without a word, Billy heads over a small green hill, down a stone path, to a large grave marker, the two Mumford children following, both holding his hands now. There, at the end of the little path, is an enormous slab of stone which reads, DAISY HOLLIS, beloved daughter. Billy lowers his head and whispers, “If you’ve come to find a ghost, this is as good a place as any.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A young girl. But she is not in there.”

  “Why not?” Effie Mumford asks.

  “The body, sadly, was never found.”

  “Oh, that is terrible,” Effie says. “I bet she is a ghost just waiting to be seen.”

  The wind whips through the empty trees, howling behind their backs then.

  “Perhaps,” Billy says. “Perhaps, all this time she has been patiently waiting.”

  It begins snowing. This makes it seem like all the gravestones are somehow frowning.

  SIXTEEN