Three More Dogs in a Row

by Neil Plakcy

  “It couldn’t hurt to do a little searching online,” I said to Rochester, who was lapping water from his bowl. “Nothing illegal.”

  I turned it on and poured a tall glass of water for myself. Once it had booted up, I decided to see what I could find about missing persons. I discovered a whole site dedicated to Pennsylvania missing persons and unidentified victims. But there were only three males listed between 1962 and 1969, and none of them matched the details of the body.

  The more I read, the more depressed I got. Not just at the sheer number, but at the personal stories behind them. The worst were the kids who had disappeared without a trace—the paperboy returning from a friend’s house, the hitch-hiking teenager, the multi-racial girl with turquoise hair, the small-town toddler in yellow boots and rain slicker.

  I couldn’t imagine how those parents must have felt. I remembered my father’s friend Des and his lost son in Laos, how his obituary said that he’d never stopped hoping his boy would come home. The chances were that every missing in child in that database was dead, but what parent could accept that without the chance to say goodbye?

  I’d read newspaper articles about hidden websites where pedophiles connected to share sexually explicit photos and stories. Using my hacking skills, could I delve into those, find some evidence of a lost child, give some peace to a grieving family?

  My fingers hovered over the keys. I knew how I’d get started, the software I’d initialize, the unsecured ports I’d search for.

  Rochester came up and rested his sloppy wet mouth on my leg. “I’m not your napkin, dog!” I said.

  That interruption was all I needed to break my trance. Instead, I logged into my online hacker support group, using an email ID I had created for that purpose, one that had no link back to me.

  Each of our stories was different, but each was the same. We’d all given in to those itchy fingers at some time. Some of us had good reasons, or ones we thought were good; others did it for the thrill of sneaking in somewhere or exacting revenge on some foe.

  We were all anonymous there, so that we could be honest with each other, or as honest as we could be, without fear of law enforcement. My ID was CrossedWires – a tongue-in-cheek reference to Stewart’s Crossing as well as to the idea that all of us have a few wires crossed in our brains. Mine had led me to become a hacker.

  I began to read the messages from other members. Stinger23 had written a long post about his hair-trigger temper, and how he’d felt a physical ache when he got angry and wanted to screw with someone’s identity. Ilovekitkat was a teenager who had hacked into his high school’s computer system to change his grades. He was smart, but not hard-core like Stinger23. He’d posted about his temptation to hack in order to impress a girl.

  I’d shared my sad story when I joined. Mostly I logged in to remind myself of the trouble I could get into, but sometimes I added messages of support to those in difficulties or reminded those who were tempted of the consequences they could suffer.

  By the time I had finished reading through all of them, the urge to break in online had passed, and I spent some quality time playing tug-a-rope with Rochester. I knew I’d never be fully “cured” of my desire to hack – but I also knew it was important to those I loved that I keep trying.

  13 – Thoughts of Heaven

  Tuesday morning, I was on my way up to Friar Lake, Rochester riding shotgun, when Rick called. “You busy this afternoon?” he asked.

  “No more than usual. What’s up?”

  “I called George School and spoke to the headmaster. I asked if Brannigan had left any papers there that might help me out in the investigation. He passed me off to his secretary, Vera Lee Isay, who it turns out was Brannigan’s secretary, too. She’s very twitchy, though. She finally admitted that after Brannigan died in 1995, she boxed up all his personal papers and put them into storage.”

  “Do you need a court order to look through them?”

  “Not if the person in charge of them gives me access. As soon as I said I was looking for information about what Brannigan did during the Vietnam War, she closed right up. I had to convince her I wasn’t interested in going after him, just that I wanted information about the boys who he might have helped.”

  I turned onto River Road for the drive up to Leighville. The swamp maples at the river’s edge were a bright gold, and I glimpsed bits of gray-blue river through the branches.

  “She sounds like a kind of lioness—been there forever, very protective of his memory. Finally got her to agree I could take a look – but only this afternoon. There’s some kind of program starting tomorrow and she says she’ll be too busy to supervise me. I’m afraid there’s going to be too much for me to look through on my own. Think you can come up and give me a hand?”

  “What time?”

  “She asked me to wait until school was out. I guess seeing a police officer, even one in plainclothes, would be too upsetting for the delicate youth. So I said I’d be there at four.”

  “I’ve got a meeting at three,” I said. “Should only take a half hour. I can take the back roads to Newtown and meet you, but I’ll have to bring Rochester. I won’t have time to take him home and I don’t want to leave him at Friar Lake and have to go back for him.”

  “Sure, bring the dog. What kind of trouble can he get into? Dig up another body?”

  “I’m assuming that was a rhetorical question,” I said. “I’ll see you at four.”

  “English teacher,” he said, and hung up.

  When I got to Friar Lake I had contracts to review and sign for the materials Mark Figueroa and I had discussed, and the morning went by quickly. One of the disadvantages of leaving the campus was the lack of lunch facilities out in the country, so I had begun bringing food for myself and Rochester. Around noon, I walked down to the conference room and opened the refrigerator.

  Rochester was right behind me as I collected what I need for a dog and daddy lunch alfresco. I opened the exterior door and he rushed right to the picnic bench beneath a spreading pine tree. He barked once, and I said, “Hold your horses, dog. I’m coming.”

  When I got to the table, I poured food and water for him, then sat down to eat my sandwich of chicken salad on challah bread, with sea salt and black pepper potato chips. Rochester slopped up his water and downed his chow, and then sat beside me with an expectant look on his face.

  “You just ate,” I said. “Don’t give me that look.”

  He slumped down to the ground, resting his head on the grass. I wasn’t sure why I was still worried about making a commitment to Lili. I had certainly made one to Rochester, hadn’t I? When I took my previous job at Eastern, in the alumni relations department, I made it conditional on him being able to accompany me. Rick had done something similar after he adopted Rascal. He couldn’t take his dog with him to work, so he’d found that neighbor who could keep the Aussie active during the day.

  I had begun to organize my life around Rochester, making sure that he was fed and walked, that his teeth were brushed, his toenails clipped, that he was bathed regularly and saw the vet when he had to, that he had toys to play with and lots of belly rubs.

  In a strange way, I’d exchanged the restrictions of prison life for the constraints of being a doggie daddy, though there were a lot more benefits to life with Rochester. I bundled up my trash and took my big golden boy over to a secluded part of the hillside where he romped until his tongue hung long out of his mouth and he rolled on the ground beside me, in doggie heaven.

  Then we went back to the office, where he slept beside my desk until I left him behind with a rawhide chew and walked out to the abbey for the three o’clock meeting Joey Capodilupo had requested. “What’s up?” I asked, when I found him in the abbey.

  “What do you want to do with all these pews?” he asked. “Architect’s drawings say this is going to be a big open space, so I’ve got to pull them out. Shame to throw ‘em in the dumpster. Chop ‘em up for firewood?”

  “Surely they�
��re too good for that!” I looked at the pews, lined up in rows like the ones at the Quaker Meeting in Stewart’s Crossing, and had a sudden memory of my own wedding to Mary, in a synagogue in Southern California we had picked because it was convenient, had lots of parking, and was willing to marry two people who didn’t belong to the congregation.

  I remembered my parents walking me down the aisle on either side of me, in the Jewish custom, then leaving me at the altar to wait for Mary’s parents to deliver her. Would I ever wait for Lili that way, my heart in my chest as I saw the sanctuary doors open and her standing there in her white gown, looking radiant?

  Probably not. Even if Lili and I did marry, it wouldn’t be a big ceremony, and I was sure she wouldn’t wear a fancy white gown. That was very far from her style. But I could see us doing something together someday – a ceremony on a beach in Fiji, a climb to the top of a (small) mountain in the Himalayas, a sunrise commitment during an African safari. Something unconventional, to set our relationship apart from those we’d had with others.

  “Steve?”

  I looked at Joey. “Oh, the pews.” I leaned down and ran my hand over the back of one row. “They’re in pretty good condition. And look at the carving on the ends. You don’t see work like that these days. I wonder if they could be refinished and sold as seating.”

  “Looks like solid oak.” He pulled a tape measure off his belt and measured the length. “Four feet long. I could refinish one of these in a couple of hours.”

  I must have still had marriage, or at least matchmaking, on my mind as I realized what the next step ought to be and turned to Joey. “You know what? I’ll bet Mark Figueroa could sell them in his shop. Why don’t you work something out with him? You could refinish a couple of them to use here at the center, and in exchange you could have the rest to sell.”

  Joey smiled. “That’s a great idea. I’ll give him a call.”

  I went back to the office and let Rochester loose for a quick run. I watched him dash toward the trees, loving his athletic grace and the times when all four of his paws were off the ground. I realized he was chasing a squirrel, who scrambled up the trunk of a pine and disappeared in its boughs.

  Rochester put his paws up on the trunk and barked, but the squirrel didn’t respond. Then he dropped back to the ground and started to dig.

  “Rochester! No digging!” I yelled. He looked up at me, then went back to clawing the ground.

  I jumped up and strode across to him. “Did you not hear me say no?” I tugged at his collar and he raised his head and looked at me, all guilt and contrition.

  It struck me then that I’d been feeling guilty myself for so long – over the loss of my unborn children, the failure of my marriage, all the bad decisions I’d made, including the one to break into those credit bureaus, and my inability to be there for my father in his last days because I was in prison.

  I let go of Rochester’s collar and he smiled up at me, all traces of guilt passed. I had to do the same thing, I thought. Move on. Stop letting the past hold me back. And get on the road to my meeting with Rick at George School.

  14 – The Annex

  As I headed inland on Durham Road, past farms and small towns and isolated gas stations, Rochester leaned out the window, the wind streaming through his glossy blond hair. I wished I felt as happy and confident as he appeared but I had too many things to worry about, from Lili to my work at Friar Lake to the body in the Meeting House..

  As I pulled up beside Rick’s truck in the George School parking lot, I saw him standing by the front door of the administration building with a sixty-something woman in a severe black pants suit, her brown hair pulled up into the kind of top knot that I thought had gone out of fashion in the 1960s. She looked like a grim schoolmarm who’d rap your knuckles with a ruler as soon as look at you.

  But she softened immediately as Rochester resisted my attempt to get his leash on and rushed over to where she and Rick stood. “What a beautiful dog!” she said, kneeling to pet him. Rick raised his eyebrows behind her as I walked up.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Come here, you monster. Get your leash on.”

  “Oh, he’s fine,” she said. “What’s your name, Handsome?”

  Boy. First Tamsen Morgan, now Vera Lee Isay. I was either losing my looks or losing my touch. “His name is Rochester.” And because I thought she’d appreciate it, I said, “After the hero of Jane Eyre. Though I didn’t give him the name – he came to me with it.” I hooked the leash to his collar and he looked reproachfully at me.

  “Funny, you don’t look dark and brooding,” she said to him. “More like sunny and charming.” She stood up. “I want your assurance that anything you do will not blacken Mr. Brannigan’s good name. He was a wonderful man who did great things for this school.”

  “I’m investigating a murder, ma’am,” Rick said. “I can’t make any promises. But I’m not interested in digging up anything that doesn’t relate directly to the death I’m investigating.”

  “Did you work for Mr. Brannigan back then?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I was hired as his secretary right after I graduated from high school, and I’ve never left.”

  “When did Mr. Brannigan start to work here?” Rick asked, as he pulled a small spiral notebook out of his pocket.

  “Let me see,” she said. “He was born in, oh, 1920, I think, and graduated from Haverford College. He served in the war after that.”

  “I thought Quakers were pacifists,” I said. “How could he have done that?”

  “Pacifism doesn’t mean acceptance of violence, or simply standing by,” she said. “Mr. Brannigan was very passionate about the need to help people less fortunate than ourselves. He volunteered with an ambulance corps in England sponsored by The American Friends Service Committee. It was a difficult time but he was a very brave man.”

  “And then?” Rick asked.

  “Then he came here. He married and lived with his wife in Newtown until she passed. Soon after that the previous headmaster retired, and Mr. Brannigan stepped in.”

  “When was that?”

  “I believe that was 1966,” she said. “His secretary retired two years later.”

  I could tell by the way she spoke about Brannigan that she’d had a bit of a crush on him. I could imagine her as a young woman, working with a man she admired.

  “Were you aware of the work he did helping draft evaders?” Rick asked.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at us. “We called them draft resisters,” she said. “It was a moral decision. Mr. Brannigan couldn’t stand aside while young men were forced to serve in a conflict they didn’t believe in.”

  “Even though he had served himself?” Rick asked.

  “World War II was a very different conflict, with the fate of the world at stake. In Vietnam, we were meddling in a foreign country’s civil war to protect American business interests.”

  She stopped speaking and glared at Rick. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Mr. Brannigan worked very hard to find alternative means of service for boys who qualified as conscientious objectors. Helping them leave the country was his absolute last resort. Those young men have moved on in their lives, and I doubt they’d want their past dredged up.”

  I looked at Vera Lee. Could she be protecting something other than Brannigan’s reputation? Suppose our victim had discovered what Brannigan was doing and threatened to expose him. What if Brannigan committed the murder to protect the boys, and his volunteers, and she’d helped him cover it up?

  There I went again, imagining situations without any basis in proof. The immediate problem was that Rick and Vera Lee appeared to be at a standoff. I had to focus on getting us into that Annex.

  “I get your concerns,” I said. “Rick and I both grew up in Stewart’s Crossing, and we had many Quaker teachers. We both understand the ideals of the Friends movement, and how sometimes those ideals can cause conflict.”

  I could see in her eyes that she was following me
.

  “But that body belonged to a living, breathing person, who died, possibly at someone else’s hands. We have a duty to him, to find out who he is so that his family can know what happened to him.”

  A group of teenaged boys ran past, kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. I saw Vera Lee watch them, and then when she turned back to us her demeanor had softened. “The boxes are in the Annex,” she said, and pointed to a square brick building with a couple of small windows. “It’s right over there.”

  “I’ll put Rochester in the car,” I said.

  “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” she said. “You can take him into the Annex. We’re only using it for storage right now.”

  At least she still liked the dog, I thought. Rochester stopped to pee on a tree as Vera Lee led us to the Annex. She unlocked the door and flipped on the light switch. “I’ll pull out the right boxes for you.”

  We stepped into the cool, dim room, lined with rows of metal shelving, and each shelf groaned with cardboard storage boxes. I could see why Rick had thought he could use some help. A long aluminum table rested against the wall by the door, with two folding chairs leaning beside it.

  Ancient wood file cabinets took up one wall. “Those are student records in there,” she said. “All those are off limits.”

  “Of course,” Rick said.

  She walked over to one wall and started scanning the boxes. “Here they are,” she said. “When Mr. Brannigan passed, I boxed everything up by decade. There are six boxes for the seventies.”

  Rick began taking boxes off the shelf and handing them to me, and I placed them on the folding table as she supervised. Rochester sat on his haunches beside her. “The door will lock behind you,” she said. “Make sure to turn out the lights when you’re finished.”

  We agreed, and Vera Lee let the door close as she walked away. I assumed that we had convinced her she didn’t have to supervise us the whole time we were there.