Kitty just sort of ran down, talking more and more slowly and quietly, and then her chin dropped towards her breastbone. Mike was lost in thought, and didn’t notice for a moment, by which time I’d walked around the table and felt for a pulse (her breathing was so slight it didn’t move her chest noticeably). Her skin was hot and dry, but there was a fast pulse beating on the side of her neck, and by that point Mike had noticed, and also stood.
“Should I get her nurse?” he asked.
“No need, I’m sure she’s fine, just tired. I’m sorry to have come so early, Mr. Crocker.”
“Stop it, Tyler. You’re doing exactly what she asked of you, and exactly what I would want if I was in her shoes. Do you really think that you can find out what happened, and who did it to her, to us?”
“I think that I will, and if things go the right way, it should be in the next few days,” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot, Tyler. Dee’s been gone, dead, for so long, I’m not really sure how real my recollection of her is anymore; I just remember the memories and pictures and stories that Mother has shared a thousand times. It’s different for my mother though, and if you can do this for her, I’d be grateful. She’d die, not happy, but at peace, and that’s something. That woman,” he said, pointing to his mother, “had a chunk carved out of her heart, her life, all those years ago. So … is there anything you need?” He was getting expansive, maudlin almost, so I stepped on the moment before we got to a hugging place.
“If you don’t think she’d mind, I might take a few of those chilled Canadian Cokes.”
Mike Crocker smiled at me, waved a hand at the cooler, and went off looking for something/someone, her nurse maybe. I took the Cokes and left, stopping to use the bathroom before I went out to the car.
Stewart’s, Long Lake, 7/18/2013, 9:52 a.m.
I had some idea that there might be someone waiting for me on Route 30 when I pulled out of Topsail, saw a dirt bike pull out of the woods across from the Colgate University camp (a few schools, Colgate among them, have inherited/purchased great camps on Upper Saranac, and turned them into summer destinations for alumni). The bike turned onto the road in my direction. It was a much better idea than trying a junker van again, but couldn’t work if I was expecting it … and I was. The driver had an enormous engine block for the size and weight of the vehicle it was being asked to push down the road, and in the first few seconds, he closed on me in a manner that would have been terrifying if I didn’t have the numbers already worked out in my head. I left the Porsche in second gear, pushed the pedal most of the way towards the floorboards, and felt my acceleration curve start to steepen like the bike’s. He was only 50-60 yards behind me when we entered the series of curves that follows the shore of Follensby Clear Pond, and a lifetime of safe and measured driving took over. I slowed a bit, allowing him to catch me by the time we got to the mile of straightaway that would bring us to the gate of the Fish Creek campgrounds. I pushed the gas pedal to the floor and dropped the car into third gear, running the rpms back up close to the redline, and opening up some distance between us (the bigger engine won out over the lighter bike, at least temporarily), as I saw an RV pull out ahead of me from the campgrounds. Frustrated, but slowing to avoid a collision with the heavy object in front of me, I took a breath and let my brain chew on the issue at hand.
I stepped on the brakes and almost caught the guy following me (I had taken the time to check him out in the rearview now, and was nearly certain that it was Left, from the other day) with my rear bumper. He backed off and then closed again, trying to pass on my left. I swerved towards him and he dropped back again. I slowed down still further, and waited for him to figure it out. I had been swept up in the thrill of a car chase, but this wasn’t one; it was a tiny vehicle chasing a large and heavy one. As long as I kept moving, he couldn’t do anything to me: couldn’t ram me, couldn’t force me off the road, likely couldn’t even drive further before running out of gas. He tried to pass again, possibly like he’d seen in some movie, and I didn’t let him. I slowed even more, and waited for him to get bored; he finally seemed to and turned around, giving me the finger as he called off the lamest car-chase in history. When it was safe/legal, I passed the RV and drove back towards the museum in Blue Mountain Lake.
It occurred to me that if he was not the brains behind the current incarnation of this operation, that they could up their game considerably, and effectively control my free travel in this part of the Park with just a pair of vehicles. A car at the intersection of Routes 3 and 30, just below the bottom of Upper Saranac Lake, and another in the village of Tupper Lake where they split apart again could box me in. (They could do the same thing along the nearly deserted stretch of road between Tupper Lake and Long Lake even more easily, if they were sure that I would pass through that stretch of road again). Whichever one saw me could get in touch with the other, and trap me in the middle, or even shoot at my car from a covered location, which would seemingly be much easier. It was unsettling to come up with this solution to their problem of me so easily, and I hoped that they wouldn’t, although I didn’t feel it would be prudent to assume that.
I got to Long Lake, fueled the car and myself, and pointed the Porsche in the direction of Tom and today’s round of research, feeling now a bit nervous about the forced simplicity of travel-routing in the Adirondacks. There is generally only one way, one main road, to get from one place to another, and this could easily be used against me by people who had already proven their willingness to do me bodily harm. I let the Porsche pull me along faster than I might ordinarily have driven, and found myself juking left and right between the white and yellow lines, hoping to spoil a sniper’s aim. Either it worked or I was unjustifiably paranoid, or Left and Right were just a bit slower on the uptake than I was (none of those made me feel better, so I dismissed the entire line of thinking, and instead focused on the research ahead).
Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, 7/18/2013, 4:29 p.m.
The Porsche and I rolled into the parking lot at the Adirondack Museum at seven minutes past eleven, and I was talking with Tom shortly thereafter, first having to endure three minutes of gratuitous gratitude and description of their spectacular meals at Indian Lake’s best (and only) Mexican restaurant. Once we had gotten the thanks out of the way, he brought me back into the workroom I had used the day before, and gestured dramatically to neatly stacked piles of books and letters he had sifted from the collection for me.
“These are all having to do with great camps on Upper Saranac during the years between 1955 and 1960, inclusive; most of these have to do with Topsail in some fashion. These ledgers, diaries, journals and letters are from Topsail, these are from the two adjacent camps, and these mention Topsail or the Crockers,” he said, pointing to piles of books and letters organized around the table.
“Excellent! Really well done,” I replied, in a manner supposed to sound enthusiastic and grateful, but which felt false/forced (as it was) to me. “If you don’t mind, while I work my way through all of this, I would like for you to run a similar search, but for Edelman, and the Edelman camp (I should have asked Kitty and Mike Crocker the name of Edelman’s camp, but was certain that Tom could find it quickly enough). After you’ve got that rounded up, if you could do a surface/basic search for some pictures of Edelmans and their camp during the summers of 1957 and 1958, that would be great.”
Tom nodded, wrote down a few things on a 3 x 5 card he had in a pocket, and left the room, promising to return soon, leaving me to work through what appeared to be a cubic yard of paper.
My earliest memories of any activity are of reading. It has always been a strength of mine, as well as a source of solace (or place of refuge) when, as often happens to me, the world (filled with noisy and irrational people as it inarguably is) threatens to upset my calm. I was escaping the stress of play dates and birthday parties and fieldtrips (with the other kids in the homeschooling collective that my parents were a part of) almost
as soon as they began, much to the disappointment of my parents, grandparents, and teachers. (The other kids were never fooled by my looks and size, they could tell in an instant that I wasn’t a kid like them, who would play and roughhouse and enjoy jokes about farting … I was something else entirely). Whatever my weaknesses were/are/will be in terms of social contracting and play, I think that my love for, and skill with, reading more than makes up for them.
I read through the materials taken from Camp Topsail first, not hoping for much from the victim side of things, but needing to start somewhere. There were guest lists, shopping lists, details from trips taken, work done on the various buildings in the camp, letters from guests and contractors and other people interested in (or associated with) Topsail. There was no telltale pattern of behavior or spending or correspondence that would lead me to the kidnapper of Deirdre Crocker, but I did get an interesting picture of the day-to-day life at one of the great camps over a number of years. There was a dramatic reduction in the amount of paperwork associated with Topsail and the Crockers immediately after the kidnapping, and continuing in the subsequent years; there were likely both fewer guests and trips, as well as less of an emphasis on paperwork.
The two piles from the camps on either side of Topsail along the shore of Upper Saranac, Camps Gimlet and Mohawk, were quite similar in the amount and sorts of paper produced. Letters from guests and friends and neighbors made up the lion’s share of the materials from Camp Gimlet, who seemingly lived for a full camp and big parties every night. Camp Mohawk apparently suffered a fire in the winter of 1956, and spent the next few years rebuilding seven of their outbuildings. I worked through the piles, not looking for patterns yet, just trusting that my brain would retain the relevant information for later compiling and analysis and comparison.
The last pile was comprised solely of letters and diaries and newspaper articles, each mentioning the Crockers in a section marked (by Tom, I assume) with yellow paper arrows with cutouts in the middle of each, so that they functioned like a paperclip (but without putting any stress/marks on the documents they were used with). The diary of Yvonne Sinclair mentioned Dee Crocker’s car accident in 1957, but not the fact that there was a passenger (much less her name or condition). A number of letters from Kyle Turner complained about the fruitless inconvenience and noise and interruptions caused around the lake after Dee Crocker’s disappearance, although he sympathized with the family. Articles in papers from as far away as Washington, D.C. and as close as the Adirondack Daily Enterprise (published in Saranac Lake) documented Deirdre Crocker’s disappearance. The coverage appeared to last over a period of months, the number of articles following a steep and short bell curve. They were interesting to read and load into the processor in the back of my head, but I couldn’t see how they would help me figure things out.
I had been reading for a bit under two hours when I finished scanning the last of the documents. My stomach had begun growling partway through the last pile, but I felt compelled to finish it before trading the reading/research room for the funky smells and possible contact with other people (it had been peaceful and quiet reading for the last few hours, and I wasn’t looking forward to the possibility of having to make small talk). As I stacked the last papers back in place, I made my decision, left Tom a note, and took my junk food laden backpack outside to sit in the grass at the verge of the employee parking lot. I gorged on the four Cokes from Kitty’s cooler, a pepperoni-stick, a giant wedge of sharp cheddar cheese, and six Twinkies (I had established a giant supply of the snack cakes when it was announced that they were going to disappear from America’s shelves the previous year, but now had it from reliable sources that they were coming back in the next few weeks, so my rationing plan had gone out the window). On my way back in, I stopped at the bathroom to use the facilities and to splash my face before heading back into the informational gladiator’s pit. The old piles had vanished and been replaced by a number of smaller piles, hopefully with more information about Edelman and his camp; there was also a post-it with Tom’s extension number and the words ‘Call me!!!’ I called him, trying not to get my hopes up about the multiple exclamation points … some people just like to use them.
“Tom Bailey,” he said.
“Hi, Tom, it’s Tyler. It looks like you’ve got some new stuff set out for me around the table. There was also a note asking me to call you. What’s up?” I said.
“It’s really easier if I show you (it generally isn’t in most cases, but people like to think that it is). Did you have a nice lunch?” Tom asked (‘why ask me about food when you wrote a three exclamation point note,’ I wanted to point out, but didn’t).
“Yes, it was nice to get outside, in real light and warm air for a bit. Can you come and show me whatever it is?” I asked, trying not to use an impatient tone I’ve occasionally been accused of having when conversational niceties get in the way of continued forward progress.
“Sure, I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, and I hung up.
Tom walked in and described the piles to me; except for the addition of a large pile of pictures and photo albums, they were quite similar to the previous set of piles: ledgers, journals, diaries, letters … it was at this last that Tom stopped and patted the pile of paper with a sense of foreshadowing import. At first glance, it looked like simply another pile of 50 plus year old correspondence, but I could make out a thin sheaf of copy paper partway down in the pile that was different (why give me copies of the letters to read, as opposed to the originals I’d been looking at for hours, I wondered).
Tom leafed through the pile, until he got to the layer of copies, and pulled them out to hand to me. “These are funny, and there’s an interesting story behind them. As soon as I came across the first one, I called Maureen, the documents archivist who retired a few years ago; she was working here on the day the museum opened, along with the next forty years, and knew the backstory,” he said.
“In the early years, we would reach out to people all over the Adirondacks, especially anyone associated with the great camps, to give us any documents/pictures that they might be thinking of disposing of, most often after the death of a family member, cleaning out closets and bookshelves and desks and such. We got lots of wonderful documents and other things in that manner; regular ads in the papers and calls to funeral homes and lawyers, asking them to present the option to their clients. It sounds a bit morbid, but it’s responsible for the preservation of untold numbers of Adirondack artifacts of unimaginable value to the museum, and to future generations. It’s literally a window into the past.” He seemed so passionate, almost defensive at this point, that I felt I needed to say something, even if only to hurry him along toward his point, assuming there was one.
“I understand,” I said. He looked as though he was waiting for more, but when I didn’t continue, he did … eventually.
“About 70% of the materials on this table came into the museum after the death of Petr Edelman, in 1969, and the death of the Camp Juniper Bay caretaker, Robert Reineger, in 1983. Both men’s wives donated their papers relating to the Adirondacks and to Camp Juniper Bay to the museum shortly after their husbands’ deaths. It was a usual, almost traditional thing to do, in keeping with the customs of great camp society. Strangely though, in both cases, the men’s sons got in touch with us shortly after we received the artifacts, asking for all of their father’s letters back, within a month with the Edlemans, and a few days with the Reinegers.” He paused here to take a breath and plan his way through the next bit, seeming to decide about something before continuing.
“Maureen was, is, a good person, so she was embarrassed to tell me about this when I asked her this morning. As she was packaging the Edelman letters for shipment back to the family, she noticed a stack of them that were different, noteworthy. 33 letters, personal, even friendly, in nature from Robert Reineger, the caretaker, to Petr Edelman. Two or three letters were sent each year between the years of 1957 and 1969. They talked about a variet
y of things – a book club the two men kept up through correspondence, hunting they had done together, vacations the Reinegers had enjoyed at Edelman houses in Florida and Wyoming, details about camp upkeep and local happenings in the Tri-Lakes, and updates on the Reineger daughter’s success at college. I read one of the letters, and it appears that the Edlemans helped Emily Reineger pay for college. At any rate, the letters are noteworthy because they paint a picture of the dynamic, the relationship, between the caretaker and camp owner, but the really interesting thing is blocks of seemingly random text at the bottom of each of these letters.” He finished, and seemed happy when he perceived that he finally had my full attention (he had had it the whole time, but admittedly, I looked up at him with more interest at his last sentence).
“Each letter contained a block of text at the bottom of the page, in what Maureen assumed was a code of some sort. She is something of a cryptography buff, and copied each of the letters containing a block of ciphertext for her own personal use … for amusement purposes only, you know, like Sudoku,” he said.
“I’m assuming that she didn’t crack the code, or codes?” I asked.
“No, but she worked on them for years, on and off. The funny thing is when Robert Reineger died, not that that was funny,” he paused waiting for me to absolve him of some misstep he felt that he had made … I nodded, eager for him to get on with the story. “When Reineger died in 1983, he had 78 friendly letters with blocks of ciphertext at the bottom of them … from Petr Edelman until 1969, and then from his son Peter Edelman until 1983. It seems to be a family tradition with at least the Edelmans, and I would bet the Reinegers also; decades of communication beyond the employer/employee dynamic, including coded messages … unless it’s just gibberish, which seems unlikely (although I treasured the fact that Tom’s mind hadn’t completely discounted the possibility).”
Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) Page 19