by Nic Joseph
“Francis,” he hissed as I moved closer. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I didn’t respond but stepped forward, my eyes glued to the back of the boy’s head.
“Francis?” Delroy said again, shifting uncomfortably. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I kept going because nothing short of a cannon was going stop me.
I had to see his face.
As I stepped around the boy, Delroy put out a hand to stop me. “Francis!” he hissed again, a hair away from my face, but I didn’t stop. I turned to face the boy, my shoulder bumping against Delroy’s.
Then I looked down.
Into the face of—
A boy I’d never seen before.
Small, red nosed, and teary-eyed.
Scared.
But not Matthew Farr.
“It was a false alarm!” Delroy whispered in my ear. “What are you doing here? Are you nuts?”
I couldn’t move, my gaze still locked with the boy’s, who stared up at me helplessly.
“I heard on the news—” I started.
“It wasn’t him,” Delroy said. “This kid got on the wrong Megabus in Chicago and got dropped off here. The mom’s on her way here now.”
“And Alex?”
“No sign of him at all,” Delroy said, watching me carefully. “He’s not here, Francis. Somebody saw the kid wandering and assumed it was Matthew Farr. Not sure why they called in the pair, but people do it all the time. It’s not the first false alarm we’ve gotten in the last couple of days, but it’s the first one that got leaked to the press.”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here,” Delroy said. “I thought I told you to stay out of this.”
“I had to come, Cap,” I said. “You know that.”
His expression softened, just slightly, and he nodded. “Go home, Francis.”
I turned to leave. As I moved back through the crowds, I fought feelings of both disappointment and relief. They hadn’t found Matthew Farr with my father—but they were both still missing.
Cynthia Green was standing near the outskirts of the crowd, scribbling into her notebook.
“Hey,” I said approaching her, and she looked up in annoyance. “It wasn’t him.”
“I know that,” she said. “This case is so frustrating.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you at the office.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes still on her notepad. I turned to leave, but she kept talking. “Oh, by the way, some guy was looking for you.”
I froze. “What?”
She looked up. “The gas station attendant. He was looking for you earlier. He saw me talking to you and asked who you were.”
“What did you say?”
She frowned. “What do you think I said? I told him who you were.” She shrugged. “Weird guy. He got really hung up when I told him your name was Francis Clarke.”
“What do you mean?”
“He just kept asking if I was sure that was your name.”
“Where is he?” I asked, searching the crowd.
“I don’t know. He was here a minute ago.”
“Okay,” I said, stepping backward. “Thanks.”
I turned away from her and walked quickly toward my car. I didn’t know who Cynthia had spoken to, but it wasn’t the time or place to find out. As I approached my car, I took care to keep my head down, my eyes focused on the ground in front of me.
I almost made it.
I was opening the driver’s-side door when I heard the voice call out, hesitant, but loud enough to make the scattering of individuals nearby look up.
“Francis? Dude, Francis, is that you?”
My hand still on the door, I considered just getting in the car and driving away. But the voice was so close. I lifted my head only slightly in the man’s direction.
As I did, my heart skipped a beat. Peering at me from across the roof of my car was a thin man with a receding hairline. He squinted, carefully examining my face.
The man was wearing a striped shirt with a Citgo name tag on it.
“It’s me, Jerry Morton!” he said. “From junior high! I knew that was you. What’s all this Clarke nonsense? Didja change your name?”
“Oh, wow,” I said, ignoring the last question. “Hey, Jerry, long time.” I started to lower myself into the car but stopped as he continued talking, walking around the front of the car.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, shuffling along. “Looking for your dad? This is crazy stuff, huh?”
“Yeah, pretty crazy,” I said. “Hey, I’ve gotta r—”
“Francis? Francis Scroll? I thought he looked familiar.” It was a woman’s voice, and I turned to see a reporter rushing in my direction, followed by a tall woman carrying a camera.
I froze, stunned, as everyone around me seemed to spring into action.
“Francis Scroll?” the reporter croaked out again. “Is that you? Quick, Maxi, get a shot!”
I realized what was happening too late.
I lifted my arm too late.
I recognized the newsworthiness of my presence at the station that day too late.
“Francis Scroll!” the reporter said, rushing around the car and placing a hand on the driver’s-side door. “Can you make a comment for the record? Have you heard from your father? Please tell us if you have any information at all about where we can find Matthew Farr!”
I stared at her, mouth open, unable to think of a single response.
And then the flashes went off.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I backed up against the car, watching as the crowd seemed to multiply around me, faces peering at me, expecting something of me, waiting for me to react. I dropped into the seat, pulling on the door, which was still gripped in the reporter’s fingertips.
She latched on tightly and frowned, daring me to slam her fingers in the door. We eyed each other, and I shook the door angrily.
“You want to let go,” I said quietly. “Trust me.” Her eyes widened slightly before she finally removed her fingers and stepped back.
“Mr. Scroll!” I heard someone yell through my window, but I had already started the car to leave. I pulled a tight U-turn, narrowly missing a car in the oncoming lane, and stepped on the gas.
I glanced in the rearview mirror as I drove away. Delroy stood near the edge of the crowd, watching.
I picked up my phone and dialed Amy’s number, cursing as it went to voice mail.
“Ames, call me back as soon as you get this.”
Shit. Whereas some people have good luck, I have Jerry fucking Morton. I tried not to think about what would happen if Amy saw the news before I got to talk to her. As I sped back toward Lansing, I remembered she’d said something about going to the library. I would check the apartment first and then head there. She was just getting out of school, so she had to be at one place or the other, or somewhere in between.
She wasn’t at home. I tore through the apartment, calling out her name, but was met with only silence. I grabbed my keys and raced back out the door.
Ten minutes later, I screeched into the parking lot of the Lansing Public Library and jumped out of the car. As I climbed the steps, I took a deep breath and tried to force myself to calm down. The building was modern, clean, and almost completely empty. There were only two main rooms, and it took me a matter of seconds to realize she wasn’t there. Standing in the building’s atrium, I dialed her again.
“Don’t do it…” her recording started.
I sighed and hung up and began walking toward the exit. My hand was on the door when a thought crossed my mind, and I paused, turning back to the massive room.
It would only take a few minutes…
I strode quickly through the aisles towa
rd the computers. Sitting down at an empty station, I typed in “John Rose, Illinois.”
I frowned at the list of more than two thousand references. Shit. That wasn’t going to work. What else had my mother said?
He’d originally been from Tennessee.
I did the search, and that came up with more than four hundred sources. A quick scan of them told me I wasn’t going to find much that way, either. I typed in his name with my father’s name, just in case I would get lucky, but that came up empty.
Shit.
Who was John Rose, and why had my father been so obsessed with him? And more importantly—did that have anything to do with Matthew Farr? With shaky fingers, I typed in the names of both John Rose and D. B. James.
Three results.
Okay.
It was a start.
I clicked on the first one, and the headline made me gasp out loud.
“Possible Suicide Linked to Hypnosis Quack.”
It was an article in a small newspaper from 1974. The database only gave me access to the titles and publications, and I looked at the other results. One seemed to be completely unrelated, but the other…
…was an obituary for John Rose.
I took the titles of both articles and publications up to the librarian. “You have to use the reels,” she said apologetically. “We haven’t digitized those files yet.” I followed her into a small, dusky room and waited. A few minutes later, she came back with a box of reels. Fitting them on the projector took another ten minutes, since she’d never done it before.
“I just started here last year,” she said. “Nobody has had to look through these.”
“Not even a student?” I asked, surprised.
“Nope,” she said with a shrug. “You’re the first.”
I started by looking for articles about D. B. James. All of them listed him as a controversial researcher, except for one, published in a book about legendary scientists on the fringes. It heralded his work and called him forward thinking and innovative. The rest were local reports, and one was about some of his funding being taken away for “unsanctioned research practices.”
I leaned forward and began scrolling through the newspaper until I came across the obituary.
In loving memory of John Rose, gone too soon, loving husband and father of four.
He’d died in 1974.
There was no cause of death listed.
I put in the other reel and began scanning it for more information about the article I’d seen in the database.
It was one of the last articles in the paper, and I slowed as I scrolled.
It showed a picture of John Rose—a nice-looking man with kind eyes and a soft smile. He had his hair combed to one side, and he looked uncomfortable in front of the camera. Was this him?
As I read the article, my pulse quickened.
John Rose had committed suicide—he’d jumped off a bridge. His death had been linked to…
D. B. James.
According to the article, D. B.—described as a “noted hypnosis quack”—had done some experimentation on John Rose. The writer noted that Rose had been a loving and happy father and husband, but after the treatments, he’d changed.
“He was a different person. We will be seeking justice for this,” his wife had said in the article. I wrote down her name so I could look her up later.
What did it mean? How much did my father know about John Rose, and if he did know it, were he and Christine really using the same procedures?
I walked out of the room and thanked the librarian for her help.
I sat in front of the computer again and typed in Marian Rose and 1974. Only one article came up.
She’d died six months after her husband.
I sat back in my chair and stared at the obituary. What the hell was going on here?
The connection between the three men was becoming clearer. My father had been looking into the work of D. B. James, but as he told my mother, he wanted us to stay far away from it.
And that had to be because of what had happened to John Rose.
Did my father think there was any truth to the accusations about D. B. and his theories, and if so, had he been willing to expose Sam Farr to them anyway?
And maybe even Matthew Farr?
Alex couldn’t be that crazy.
Could he?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Sam Farr Story
By: K. L. Jones
DRAFT v.9—Not to be shared without express permission of author, K. L. Jones
Sam Farr was ready.
He stood in the middle of Lucas’s bedroom, his briefcase open on the bed in front of him.
The puppets were arranged neatly inside.
Sam stared at them as he paced back and forth, rubbing his hands together. Everyone was waiting for him downstairs.
It had been an incredibly long dinner party, and things hadn’t been going so well with Lucas, but none of that mattered. It was time for his show. He had to forget about what had happened outside.
Don’t think about it!
It would only make him mess up, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d been practicing too long to mess up. This was his first big audience, and he needed to show them what he could do.
He heard the music and laughter flowing from downstairs, and he knew he needed to hurry up. He didn’t want them to move on and forget about him. He tapped his thumbs quickly against each of his knuckles, loosening up his fingers.
Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie. Pointer, middle, ring, pinkie.
Sam stared at the display of puppets in front of him.
Nine of them, arranged neatly in the case, each one wrapped in a variety of plastic and bubble wrap he’d gotten from his mother. The wooden puppets delicately held on to the strings, and he smiled as he picked up two of his favorites.
Sam laced his fingers through the strings. He loved all of the puppets, but it didn’t make sense to try to show off all of them, not tonight. No, he had to choose, and choose well.
Holding the two puppets, he squared his shoulders and walked out of the room.
Sam walked to the stairwell and placed one foot on each step, descending slowly, watching as the puppets swayed back and forth in his hands. Even in the dim light of the hallway, he could see the glimmer of the paint on them, and it made him smile. His parents had given him the puppets as a gift, and every Sunday afternoon, he took his time polishing and protecting them.
Now it was finally time to show them off.
Sam reached the bottom stair, turned, and walked slowly into the living room. Quickly, the conversation stopped. Everyone looked up at him—his mother with a wide smile, his father with something that looked a little bit like concern. The Scrolls were also watching him. Kate Scroll stood and walked over to the CD player and shut it off before turning to give him an encouraging smile. The complete and utter silence was suddenly deafening. Francis Scroll was in a corner reading a book, and he glanced up for only a second before putting his head back down.
The only person who wasn’t there was Lucas. He didn’t want to come down to see the puppet show, and that was fine with Sam.
He didn’t need to be friends with him anyway.
“Why don’t you come over here,” Kate Scroll said, standing up.
Sam nodded, walking toward the front of the living room. It was so quiet all of a sudden, and he felt that he was breathing too loudly. Could everyone hear him? Could they tell how nervous he was?
“Thank you for sharing this with us,” Kate said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
Sam smiled again, wishing he could hug her, and maybe cry for a minute, just to get all of his nerves out. She smiled back as Sam turned around at the front of the room to face his audience.
Sam cleared his throat and began
to speak.
“Thank you all for coming this eve. What you are about to see, you will not believe!”
As he spoke, his hands shook viciously, and he swallowed, attempting to calm himself down.
There’s no way you can perform if you’re this nervous, Sam.
He lifted the first puppet and cleared his throat to continue, but when he spoke, all that came out was a nervous squeak. Sam stopped abruptly, feeling the words getting stuck in his throat.
The entire room was staring at him now, and he suddenly felt dizzy, his mind spinning out of control.
His father stood up and walked over to him. Crouching down in front of him, Brian Farr leaned forward. “Hey, are you all right?”
Sam looked up at his father and nodded.
“Hey, it’s okay,” his father said, staring at him meaningfully and putting a hand on the back of his head. “You’re okay. Just take a deep breath and get started.”
Sam nodded and opened his mouth, breathing in deeply as his father made his way back to his seat.
He lifted the puppets and tried again.
“This is the story of Annie McDerney,” he started, his voice still shaky, but he locked eyes with his mother, and she smiled and nodded. Feeling a surge of energy, he tried to continue. “You will be very surprised by the magic inside, so please sit back and get ready for a ride!”
He made eye contact with his father, who was watching him carefully, and he swallowed again, trying not to cry. His father had always cared so much about him, he knew, even though he was hard on him sometimes. Brian Farr nodded once, and it was the encouragement Sam needed.
He turned and marched behind the couch and sat down on the floor.
Lifting both hands high above him, he let the puppets’ feet dangle until they hit the top of the couch.
Now he was out of sight.
Now he was in his element.
Now he could begin.
“Once upon a time, there was a woman named Annie McDerney, and she walked through the streets, looking for her lost ring.” As he spoke, he lifted Annie up and down, spinning her around to look near her feet.