By the end of the first box, I knew that the posed photos likely wouldn’t help me at all. I wanted to peek behind the curtain, and see something that somebody didn’t want me to see. Donated Crocker family pictures, as nice a window into that time as they were, were not going to give me the view that I wanted into the past. I picked a few pictures that I wanted names for, if possible, and put the rest on the lid of the box, waiting for Tom’s return.
“Hi, Tom, thanks for all of these,” I said smiling my best #3 at him, “but I think that we need to shift the focus to get a slightly different set of results.” His smile faltered a bit, before he put down his current load of photographs, and took out a pencil and notecard.
“I want to see more candid shots, specifically from the summers of 1957 and 1958, not necessarily at Topsail, the Crocker Camp, but definitely Upper Saranac Lake … for the moment.”
What he did next both surprised and impressed me; he stepped outside/beyond my expectations, and made me curious about his backstory, but not curious enough to ask (more important stuff to do and think about). He sat down at the table across from me, looked into my eyes, and asked a perfect question (something the world sees too few of).
“Tyler, close your eyes for a minute and think about the pictures you’ve seen in the last hour. Now think about how big our photographic archives are. Don’t worry about my being bored, or luck, or getting the job done by quitting time. Imagine the perfect picture to advance your research, answer your questions. Now describe it. What does the picture you’re looking for hold, show, or reveal?”
“It’s like these ones, but not as polished,” I said, after literally closing my eyes for a few seconds (not the minute he suggested, but still). “It’ll show Dee Crocker or her family, and someone who hates her/them for something Dee or the Crocker family did, or are perceived to have done. (I didn’t want to explain Kimberly Stanton, and the car wreck, it seemed a needless sidetracking). That box of photos came from a copy of a photo album that some family member or photographer put together. They culled the shots that I want most; the ones with someone off to one side accidentally in the shot, or someone glaring at Dee or one of the other Crockers. It would have been in the bottom of a box of photos that nobody took the time to throw out, although they meant to. There’s a chance it won’t pay off, but I have a feeling that it might.”
“Excellent! 1957 or 1958, Upper Saranac Lake, candids or even discards. I’ll talk to our map guy and look for specific camps on Upper Saranac, so I can search by name, and avoid the ‘Album Program’ codes,” he said, and without waiting for my reply, he headed out and I didn’t see him for nearly an hour … I read one of my current books, a nasty Matt Scudder mystery, while I waited.
He kicked open the door, and staggered in, loaded down with boxes, followed by another, older man that he never introduced (perhaps his ‘map guy’), similarly laden with boxes. The other set down his boxes and left; Tom turned to face me with a smile.
“Your picture is in there,” he said, pointing to the pile of boxes now dominating one end of the table. “I don’t know how many pictures you’re going to have to look at to find it, a couple of thousand maybe, but if the picture exists, it’s on the table, or back in the stacks, still waiting for us to find it,” he finished with a flourish, and an expectant look on his face that I didn’t understand.
“Well, thanks. I’d better get to it.” Tom seemed to deflate before my eyes, and I realized that I hadn’t gushed enough; so I started up again. “This is incredible, Tom! I don’t know how to thank you enough.” He brightened a bit, and I reached for the first box.
By a process analysis done a number of times over the course of the afternoon, I was able to filter/assess/sort approximately six hundred pictures an hour for the next four hours and 48 minutes; this translates to approximately two thousand nine hundred pictures examined (a shade under, in all likelihood). The vast majority of those pictures were utterly useless to me: wrong people, wrong timeframe, wrong location. The subset that included the right people, during the right months/years, and in the right places was 221 (roughly eight percent, for those interested), but most of those (214, or almost 97%) didn’t seem indicative of animosity/resentment towards one or more of the Crockers. This left me with seven pictures out of nearly three thousand, roughly one fifth of one percent of the pictures I had looked at in Tom’s ‘sure thing’ pile of boxes.
Those seven pictures, laid out on the table like a hand of cards revealed in a poker game, most likely meant something to the right pair of eyes, but at this point in the day, my eyes were done. I pushed all of the boxes of photos and the loose considered/rejected photos to the far end of the table, leaving me with eleven photos: four from the Crocker box, and seven from the mountain of boxes that Tom and the nameless museum minion had carried in. I went over to the wall-phone and called the extension Tom had given me for him; he picked up partway through the first ring.
“Tyler?” he said hopefully, a combination of curiosity and 5:30 in his voice.
“Hi, Tom. I have a handful of pics that I’d like to get copied or scanned or whatever you do. I’m done for the day, but was hoping that I could take advantage of your (I paused infinitesimally, looking for the right superlative) spectacular help again tomorrow.”
“So you found the picture you needed? I’m so glad!” He sounded it.
“I found seven pictures, and I’m going to need to do some more research between now and, say, noon tomorrow, which is probably as soon as I can get back. (I was already seeing the trip back up to my hidden campsite, stopping on the way at the Long Lake Stewart’s for a bagful of their eternally ‘ready and fresh’ bacon cheeseburgers, bed after some reading, a quick run up to Topsail to speak with Kitty and Mike as early as they can manage, and back down here while I still have a semi-willing assistant).”
“I’ll be there in a flash, and can copy or scan those photos for you. We do both,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice … pride and liking to know something that I didn’t, I think.
“Both would be great, as high resolution/quality as you can.” Then I hung up to wait for him. True to his word, he burst through the door in a flash (which in museum-lackey is 23 seconds). I gave him a card with my current email address circled (for the scans), the eleven pictures, and shooed him back out of the room before he could ask questions that I didn’t have answers to … yet.
He was back shortly, and seemed surprised to find me reading when he came back. I’d been reading, but that only occupies a portion of my brain … with the rest of my brain, I was trying to see the next steps, anticipating where the research/investigation might take me. As he laid the high-quality copies down on the table, I could see another possible line of inquiry, in case the Crockers and/or these photos were a bust tomorrow morning. I held up a finger, signaling Tom to wait for a second, speed-dialed Frank, and told him what I needed (although out loud it sounded like a polite request for help). That done, I looked at the copied photos, and gushed over Tom’s work again for a few minutes, while another chunk of my brain thought about how he could profitably spend his morning.
“How familiar are you with the camp ledgers and journal and diaries and letters collections?”
“Somewhat,” he said guardedly. “Why do you ask?”
“It might be a good idea for you to explore them a bit tomorrow, get a feel for what they have for the Upper Saranac Lake great camps in the years we’ve been dealing with, plus a cushion, say 1955 through 1960. I also anticipate needing to see how the ledgers cross-reference with journals and diaries and letters, to get a well-rounded picture of life in these camps. Does that sound doable?” I asked.
“Yup, it does. No problem, now I’m gonna head out if we’re cool for tonight.”
“Where’s home?” I asked.
“Indian Lake. I told my girlfriend, Marcy, to wait, and that we’d make supper when I got home from this,” he said, looking at his watch pointedly.
“Call
her and tell her to meet you at Marty’s Chili Nights. They’re still open, right?” I asked, handing him a $100 bill.
“I couldn’t Mr. Cunningham. Thanks anyway, but...” The money had shifted me back to Mr. Cunningham quickly.
“Tom, stop it. You were helpful today, you’ll be helpful tomorrow, and I made you late for supper. It’s the least I can do. I’ll expense it to the client … and remember, I’m Tyler.” This all may or may not have meant something, but it seemed to work, as he took the bill from my hand, thanking me profusely as he dashed from the room. This would keep him motivated and digging in my absence, certainly much better than a gift or gratuity after we were done.
When he left the room, I picked up the phone, and dialed Dorothy’s cell-number; she picked up on the first ring, “Tyler, how’s it going? Got anything that I can help you with yet?” she asked hopefully, “I bet this call means that we’re not having dumplings and General Tso’s, right?”
“Sorry Dot, nothing that fits your skill set as yet, and yes, I’m on the far side of the planet from the good Chinese place and you (and Hope, I mentally added … Hope loves the dumplings, and I often order too many on purpose, so that she can have some when Dorothy and I get together for these dinners). So we’ll have to postpone,” I said.
“No worries, I sorta figured, and Lisa made a lasagna. We’ve got a couple of movies on deck with Netflix, and now she won’t be alone with your miserable dog. Hope has restricted our cats to the bathroom, and yodels if they even think about crossing the threshold,” she said this last bit with harsh tones, but I imagined that I could ‘hear’ a smile in her voice. It was nice to hear her voice, and about Hope and home, but I still got off the phone quickly, thinking my way through the next day or two of the investigation.
I gathered all of my things, including the copied photos, and left, retracing my steps to let myself out of the now quiet offices behind the museum. I climbed into the car, started it up, and drove off with the late afternoon light of the falling sun behind me lighting the mountains in a spectacular way that seems only to happen in summer in the Adirondacks. Hungry and eye-tired, I could see the road ahead in my mind, stretching to Long Lake for food, to Little Pine Pond for reading/resting/sleeping, and even beyond that to my drive up to Topsail early tomorrow morning to see if I’d found anything useful.
Somewhere West of Little Pine Pond — near Horseshoe Lake, 7/17/2013, 11:11 p.m.
“You have to end it Tyler, decisively (decisively is not a word that Barry would use, but the ghost had struggled, and eventually simply cheated). This can’t just fizzle out, or end with a letter to the old lady. You embarrassed that guy, those guys, twice now, and for them it’ll be more than just about stopping you,” Barry said from outside my tin-can perimeter. I was reading a Travis McGee mystery, having finished the Matt Scudder story hours ago. (Matt had done the right thing, as he had seen it, and anguished over his decision after the fact … both things I enjoyed reading about in mystery/crime novels, but had no ability/interest in, in real life.) I was thinking about Dee Crocker, or, more accurately, what had happened to her.
“We’ll head in tomorrow morning, early, stop off and talk with Frank/Meg, see the Crockers with these pictures … oh, and pick up the bacon and farm stuff from Helgafell.” Helgafell is a farm on the road almost exactly halfway between Saranac Lake and Paul Smiths worked by kids looking to hide from the world. It is run/owned by retired bad guys looking to hide from the world; I’d once been involved briefly with them during my first case (more than a decade ago now), and while they may have had unsavory pasts, that’s where they’d left them, in the past. They seemed a good fit for the Adirondacks, so I left them alone … except to buy their fantastic slab bacon whenever I could.
“Yah, well, every mile you drive in and around the Tri-Lakes in that silly little car makes you easier for them to find. If you die, I die, and I’m still not ready. So be careful.”
“It’s nice to know that you care, Barry,” I said.
“Eat shit, Cunningham. Because of you, my body’s broken and rotting in a messy pile at the bottom of a mineshaft, mixed in with that dumbass Justin. Weird as whatever this is, it’s better than nothing. Also, I hate the idea of those Carhart-wearing motherfuckers getting you when I couldn’t.”
I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to say in response to that, so I went back to reading, and thinking.
Helgafell Farm, Gabriels, 7/18/2013, 7:04 a.m.
I’d woken up at a bit before four in the morning, cold and damp from a heavy dew that had settled on me in the hammock during the cold hours of the night. I listened for a few minutes, and couldn't hear anything beyond expected night noises, so I donned my headlamp to aid me in breaking camp without tripping over things. I dismantled a section of the alarm system by cutting (and retying) the strings and allowing myself a narrow path through the cans. My hammock and tarp and limited gear would take only minutes to stow if I decided not to stay another night, so I left them in place, had a lukewarm Coke and a handful of Tyler-kibble, and was ready to hit the road within ten minutes of waking.
Creeping along the barely paved road, I slalomed from one side of the road to the other dodging potholes and frogs and other things that I had no wish to subject my borrowed car to (or vice versa). The bigger roads were devoid of life (and potholes) between the southern end of Tupper Lake (the body of water, not the town, which I avoided insofar as was possible) and the gravel turnaround at the Helgafell farmstand, that I crunched my way into at three minutes before six.
The farmstand is a simple shed with a front that opens to share the produce of the farm with the world. It was completely dark and quiet and empty (except for empty cardboard boxes that would be filled with fresh food soon), but I could see a light in the gatehouse, and walked over, coughing and snapping sticks as I went. Although I was reasonably certain that John, the Gatekeeper of Helgafell, heard me, he was someone I made a point of not surprising.
“Tyler, come for your bacon, I imagine.” His voice came from the shadows at an unexpected end of the little gatehouse where he lived, keeping the world from the hippies in the farm (but mostly keeping the world from bothering/finding Nick, his boss, retired from … I don’t know exactly … smuggling, I believe). Although it had been a bit more than eleven years since our first meeting, he seemed very much the same man, big and broad and quick and quiet, perhaps a bit more grey in his hair, but still manning his post, and so far, keeping the barbarians mostly on the right side of the fence.
“John, nice to see you. It’s been a while,” I said struggling to keep my voice even and not cracking with surprise/fear. I hadn’t expected him to be up and out, and I guess that I was wound up, with the events of the last few days. I could see Barry had managed to flank John, and towered over the big man menacingly, for what it was worth (nothing, really, since Barry was essentially an imaginary friend, and couldn’t do much with the pretend tire-iron he had appeared with).
“Why don’t you come inside for a minute. I’ve got the bacon in my mini-fridge, along with some other stuff that the kids set aside for you.” He must have caught my eye tracking Barry, because he looked over his shoulder at the exact spot that Barry appeared (to me) to occupy. “We can talk about whatever’s bothering you, if you’re not in a hurry.”
“I am in a bit of a hurry this morning,” I said, but dropped into one of the comfy reading chairs in his little house anyway, once we got inside. He looked at me, nodded, and walked over to grab a wrapped parcel out of his little fridge, stopping on the way back to add a few jars of various things to a box he had made up for me.
“I couldn’t help but notice the replacement for your old car,” he said, smiling. “It’s got style, but long term seems like an odd match for your lifestyle.”
“I’m working on something, and borrowing the Porsche is a part of it.”
“Ah,” he said, as if just figuring something out, “so maybe that’s it.” I hate playing this sort of game, bu
t the rules were apparently laid down long before I started playing.
“Maybe that’s what?”
“The reason you seem a bit keyed up,” he said, looking me up and down.
I prepared a denial, a defense, and an excuse, but in the end just sat back in the chair and asked, “Does it show that much?” There are a gazillion downsides to not coming from the factory with the standard emotional software package that most humans have installed from birth; one upside, however, is that people cannot read/interpret/analyze you as easily as the rest of the species. It would be unfortunate if I were to lose one of the few benefits of my singular condition.
“Don’t worry, if I hadn’t been studying you for years, I never would have noticed.” John said it casually enough, but it was not a throwaway line; he had been paying attention over the years, and there was some measurable difference. “Mid-September of last year is when the change-event took place, and you’ve been trying to work things out on your own since then. Nowadays they call it ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ back in my day they called it being ‘all fucked up’.”
“Back when you were working for Nick at whatever he used to do?” I asked, keeping it vague for his comfort, and for politeness’s sake.
“Ha! No, Tyler. Long before I started working for Nick, the U.S. government fed and clothed and housed me for years, and showed me the world. One of those trips was to a small and unimportant town in a small and unimportant country in South America. I saw, and eventually also did, some horrid things while down in that lovely land, Tyler, and the boy who came back was different than the boy who flew down.”
“How were you different?”
“I had trouble sleeping, got angry faster over little things, panic attacks, and even had a couple of ‘flashbacks,’ which still sounds druggy to me. For me, they were more like a daydream about that day in Lago Agrio, usually started with some noise or smell.”
Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) Page 16