Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) (20 page)

“Thanks John! For the talk, and for the bacon … pass my thanks along to Nick and the kids as well. I’ll stop in and see you soon,” I said, leaving, and walking back to the Porsche. Barry was waiting by the Porsche when I left the building, and safety/comfort/calm of John’s presence and mood evaporated as soon as I saw Barry leaning on the hood of the 993.

“Nothing he said is wrong. Nothing he said is gonna help. Not now, anyway, maybe in a week or two, when this hiding and spraying people shit is over and done with,” he said. “Let’s go talk to super-cop, and super-cop’s wife; I think that you got something there, Tyler.”

Frank and Meg Gibson’s House, Saranac Lake, 7/18/2013, 7:43 a.m.

I kept an eye out for people/vehicles seeming to keep an eye out for me, on the w
ay over to Frank and Meg’s, and ended up at their place only after driving some loops through the surrounding neighborhood. Both of their cars were still in the driveway, so I pulled in, and under the partial cover provided by Frank’s boat shed (
the boat lives on Lower Saranac Lake during the warm months
). Walking in, I could hear morning noise from a household of three, with two dogs; everyone was breakfasting in a room at the back of the house that overlooked their fenced backyard, and they were all surprised when I walked in.

“Good morning all!” I said. “Toby and Lola, you should be embarrassed.” They looked it, and then segued past their failings as guard dogs by sniffing my newly wrapped bacon very intently … very.

Austin, Frank and Meg’s son was the first to reply/respond to my presence (
Frank was still deciding whether to be angry, and Meg was checking that she was sufficiently dressed
). “Tyler, ‘tsup? Is it getting cold yet in hammock-land?”

“Hey Austin. It’s been wet, but not cold, so far this summer. Give it another month, and I’ll start getting some cold nights. Have you gotten out in your hammock yet this summer?” I’d helped Frank pick out a camping hammock for Austin last Christmas, and the last I’d heard, it was still factory-fresh.

“Yup, out on Middle, last week with some guys I go to school with; they thought it was neat, lined up to try climbing in for a swing. Thanks again for helping Dad with the non-lame present, Tyler.” I didn’t fit in Austin’s worldview of kids or grownups, which apparently (
according to Meg
) freaked him out a bit, not knowing where/how to place me. I was obviously too old (
closing in on 30
) to be a kid, but equally obviously was not a functioning grownup (
no real job, sleeps in the woods more nights than not, no wife or girlfriend/boyfriend
). Apparently (
again, this according to Meg
), I was on his radar enough to warrant consideration, and bounced back and forth between cool (
only very rarely
), meh (
most of the time
), and creepy (
again, rarely
); it was interesting trying to figure out where on the bell curve I was whenever I saw him.

“Tyler!” Frank interrupted, “What’s up? Is everything okay?” Frank had clearly decided to be angry about the intrusion into their morning, and his question nudged Meg into worry. She seemed to be gearing up to gush some maternal instinct all over me, so I cut in just under the wire (
it wouldn’t do me any good, and might result in a unwarranted downgrade in my rating with Austin
).

“Everything’s fine. I had to run through town, and pick up this bacon, and my office is still barricaded, so I was hoping that I could get you folks to take it off my hands for me (
I hadn’t initially planned on the bacon as a bribe/misdirection, but it would work, and meet my storage/usage/consumption needs as well
)” I said.

“That’s it?” Frank seemed (
rightfully
) skeptical.

“Well, there are two, no three, other things that I wanted to talk with you two about … nothing major though.” I tried my #8 smile (
sucking up and obsequious
), and saw it fall flat with both Frank and Meg (
Meg at least smiled back … Frank just shook his head
). Meg waved me towards the table, which had some muffins and juice sitting on it; they didn’t even bother to offer me coffee, even though they were all drinking from serious mugs … they know how I feel about that bitter/nasty/too-hot drink.

“What?” Frank said, and left it at that, watching me while we each worked our way through a couple of muffins which tasted awfully healthy to me.

“One: Can you find out if one or two people went to one of the local hospitals or doctors in the last few days with chemical burns to the face? Eyes and nose and mouth especially.” This was addressed to Frank.

“That sounds a lot like things are less smooth than we had previously heard. If there’s something I should know about, I’d prefer to hear it now.” I was sure that he would, but equally sure that it wouldn’t go better for me just to get my two cases of assault off of my chest, so I let it slide; if they hadn’t complained to the police by now, they wouldn’t be.

“Two: Could you get in touch with your Great-Aunt Betty again, and get a look at, or take pictures of the guestbook for Kimberly’s funeral, assuming that someone can put their hands on it. I’d like a list of the names in the register,” I asked, addressing this one to Meg.

“Easy peasy. Betty’s oldest sister’s husband was Kim’s mother’s younger brother; her niece Trish has an attic literally stuffed to the rafters (
probably not ‘literally’, I thought, but didn’t say, although my understanding is that Webster’s is softening the definition … this sort of stuff lets the terrorists win, in my opinion
) with Stanton family papers and photos. I could zoom over sometime today, and take Trish out to lunch before looking. Do you need the book, or just a list of names?”

“Names would be fine, thanks.”

“No problem, it’ll give me an excuse to stop in and see Betty as well, can I just say it’s a historical thing?”

“Sure, you can say whatever you want about it, up to, and including, the truth.” By this point, Austin was no longer pretending to be engrossed in his coffee and the repugnant health-muffin; he was watching his parents interact with me, and it was making Frank uncomfortable.

“Lemme guess number three, Tyler. Police flashers for your car, so you can drive that stupid thing as fast as you want?” Frank asked.

“Nope, I’m good; I got a flasher after last year (
I winked at Austin with this comment, knowing that he knew at least some of what had happened
). What I actually need is more research into stuff that I can’t easily get (
I was angry all over again at Cynthia being dead and gone; she would have loved this sort of stuff
). I need to know if there are other people who have disappeared in the Tri-Lakes since 1950 without explanation, or being found later.” Frank started to object, and I cut him off, watching Austin tilt his head like a confused dog when Frank allowed it.

“Before you jump on me, I started trying to work through missing persons data available to civilians, and it’s not connected or closed. Sometimes the person is found, or found dead, downstate or in another state altogether, and the information isn’t readily accessible. My research suggests that most missing persons cases resolve in one way or another; what I’m looking for is local cases that don’t/didn’t resolve at all, like the Crocker girl … woman.” I’d started researching missing persons back in the SmartPig office (
before I shut myself off from it
) and been surprised to find out that most people get un-missing before too long, almost nobody disappears for 54.85 years without a sign. Then when John made the comment about me going missing, it made me wonder about whether this had happened before/after Deirdre Crocker, or if she was a unique case … either answer might steer my further investigations.

Frank nodded, looked at Austin’s grin, and said (
to him
), “We’ll talk later, young man, about why Mr. Cunningham gets special consideration, and also who you talk with about that.” With that, Frank grabbed another muffin, shellacking it in a thick coating of butter, which must have more than undone any benefits gained from the sawdust and sand making up most of the muffin.

“You’re sure that you’re okay, Tyler?” Meg asked, seeming not to care what Austin heard/thought about her worry.

“He’ll be fine Megan. He’s a big boy, and whatever goes on in that melon of his, it’s beyond me; he generally works it so that things work out right in the end, and nobody gets hurt. Right, Tyler?” Frank asked this last question in a way that made it sound a little like an order … I nodded, not knowing how else to respond.

“Promise!” she said, to both of us, and came over and gave me a kiss on the top of my head, before heading upstairs to get dressed.

Frank went to pour himself another cup of coffee, and Austin leaned in quickly, and through the side of his mouth, as if he/we were in a cold-war era spy movie, said, “Little Bob, Robert Reineger, Jr., missed a get-together yesterday. A bunch of us were going for our ‘Saranac 6er’ patch, trying for all six in one day. He begged off, said he had pink-eye. Probably nothing, but hey,” he tailed off as Frank rejoined us at the table.

“Thanks, I appreciate your help, and your discretion,” I said to Frank, but also included Austin with my eyes, (
and another wink, a new and seemingly useful addition to my slowly growing list of facial expressions, out of the non-Dad side
). Frank looked at me funny (
but then, he often does, so it was likely no big deal
), but I could see Austin puff up a bit at being included. It was most likely nothing, but it never hurt to toss extra information into the hopper, and see what came out on the other side.

I yelled out to Meg on my way out, gave the dogs half a horrible muffin each (
they loved them!
), and headed out to Topsail, to talk with Mike and Kitty Crocker, also, to show them the pictures from my research the day before.

Camp Topsail, Upper Saranac Lake, 7/18/2013, 9:08 a.m.

I pulled through the imposing stone and ironwork gate of Camp Topsail at a few minutes before eight, having noodled and looped around Frank and Meg’s neighborhood a bit, and then taking the most unlikely route from there to the north end of Upper Saranac Lake imaginable. I passed Anthony, Kitty Crocker’s legal legwork wonk/minion, on the road; he was finishing up a jog. I also saw a small team from one of the camps a few over from Topsail working on one of the tennis courts that line the far side of Route 30 at this end of Upper Saranac Lake (
numerous camps own land on both sides of the of the road, and use the space furthest from the lake for tennis courts
), but otherwise, it was a quiet morning at this end of the lake.

I waited for Anthony in the parking lot, and let him catch his breath and mop some sweat from his face before I spoke.

“I know it’s early, but I need to talk with Mrs. Crocker and her son as soon as possible this morning. It won’t take long, but it’s important,” I said.

He seemed surprised and straightened up and looked at the rear section of the main lodge, as if he could see through the walls, and ascertain whether or not Kitty was awake and ready to receive visitors.

“So soon?” he said, and then followed it up, somewhat guiltily, with, “That’s great news, I’m just surprised that after 50 years (
54.85, I thought, but didn’t point out
) things could move so quickly.”

I’m not modest, nor do I have an ego, in the sense that most people talk about when they use the word (
although ironically, in the Freudian sense of the word, I’m mostly ego, in terms of Freud’s structural model of the psyche
), so my reply was simply based on my assessment, “A different set of eyes/grey-cells/assumptions looking at the data in a new way were almost certain to see new things.”

“I’ll stop in and tell Mrs. Crocker on my way through, and have someone ring Mr. Crocker. Will you need me to join you, or is it private?” he asked, perhaps curious to see/hear what I had turned up.

“I can’t say, ask Kitty.” He nodded and walked off, a suit again, even in his sweaty running stuff.

He turned, on the back porch of the old kitchen entrance, and said, “Why don’t you wait in the
great room, that way I’ll know where you are when she’s ready.” I walked towards the lake, climbed onto the long porch, and after a long look at the morning lake, I headed back into the great room to wait.

I sat for a quiet fourteen minutes, reading an e-book on my iPad, until Kitty and Mike arrived nearly simultaneously through different doors. Kitty came scraping and bumping her way through the door with her walker, and looking like she’d been up for hours, having an unpleasant medical morning. Mike had obviously been asleep fifteen minutes earlier, and looked ill (
although, more likely, based on the off-gassing bourbon in his sweat, hungover
). Despite his discomfort, he served his mother a cup of coffee before getting one for himself, and only then sat down (
with a sigh and crash that suggested that he might not get up again for a long while
).

Both Mike and Kitty stared at me, waiting for me to begin, and explain the reason for my early-morning interruption of their routine, “I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I have some questions that can’t wait for a more decent hour.” Mike looked as though he might throw his mug at me, and it would be embarrassing all around no matter how it turned out.

“I’ve made a bit of progress, and need your help before pushing forward in my research and investigations. I’ve got some pictures that I want you to look at and then tell me everything that you can about the people and places in them … okay?” I asked.

As I finished, I could see them both gearing up to break in with questions (
as I should have anticipated, but didn’t
). Mike got there first, but deferred to his mother.

“Tyler, I insist that you tell me everything,” she said … insistently (
I mention this only because she was so adamant about it, in tone and facial expression
). “Everything.”

“Mrs. Crocker, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to tell you everything. Things are moving, and based on my experience, I should keep pushing, rather than let it run down, and try to start again. Do you remember when I talked about informational/investigational echolocation?” Mike Crocker looked nonplussed at this term, and started to say so, but Kitty rode over his interruption with a combination affirmative and brief explanation of the concept (
at which she did quite well
).

“Yes, well … I made some subtle (
as well as some not-so-subtle, but why point that out
) signals in the last few days, and got a mix of returns … some each of strong, weak, clear, and confused. My preliminary thinking is that Deirdre may have been taken by someone connected/related to Kimberly Stanton, the young girl with whom Deirdre was in a car accident during the summer of 1957.”

“That’s preposterous! I remember the event and talk about it afterwards, my father made sure that she was fine, and that all of her medical needs and expenses were taken care of by our Family (
the word ‘family’ was spoken with a royal emphasis in this case
). Why on Earth would she, or anyone associated with her be angry with Dee or the family?” Mike asked this of me, and to a lesser degree, his mother. Kitty, in the meantime rang a small silver bell, a third of an octave deeper than the one that she had used during my previous visit, and when Anthony came in, held a brief one way exchange of information, whispered into his right ear; he left seconds later.

“Why do you think this Tyler? What led you to believe it?” Kitty asked.

“Kimberly was dying, Mrs. Crocker (
I had no idea why I switched to a more formal mode of address, but I trusted my sub-conscious
). She didn’t die until January of 1958, which is likely why nobody connected the dots earlier, but from the moment of the car accident, she was dying, and someone blamed Deirdre for it.”

They both leaned back in (
presumably
) shocked silence, and that is when Anthony came back into the room with the cooler from the other day, still (
or, more likely, again
) filled with ice cold Cokes made with real sugar (
as our neighbors to the north and south both do it
). He poured half of one into a glass for Mrs. Crocker. When he had finished pouring, he offered me a can, and then scuttled back out again, taking her untouched coffee with him on his way.

“I’ve been enjoying your vice, Tyler, and thought I might share one with you now. I’ve asked Anthony to get all of the relevant documents from his offices down in the city, and they will either drive or messenger up a copy as soon as is possible. Tell me what else you have found,” Kitty said.

“Someone besides you still feels very strongly about the matter, and has become concerned with, and engaged in hampering, my investigation. I’ve had two encounters with persons intent on stopping my investigation, through violence (
I had meant to add ‘if necessary’ when I started that sentence, but skipped it, since they obviously were ready to resort to violence from the first
), which strikes me as odd in the extreme.”

“Why?” asked Mike Crocker.

“For two reasons, really. First, because it happened so long ago, that the person, or persons, guilty of her abduction are likely dead, which begs the question why would these people involve themselves? Second, getting back to informational echolocation for a second, doing nothing would almost certainly be better than doing anything so rash as trying to attack me to stop an investigation into a crime that was decades old.”

“Why do you think that they would be dead … her, the people who took my Dee,” Mrs. Crocker asked.

“You’re exceptionally long-lived Mrs. Crocker. If we assume that the person, or persons, who took her, were between the ages of 25 and 35, than that would make them 80 to 90 years old now, which is longer than the lifespan of most people living up here.”

“Why do you imagine them that old, and not my age, or Dee’s, at the time of the … crime?” Mike asked.

“The abduction and, excuse me for this insensitivity (
I knew that I was about to be insensitive, but apologizing for it still seemed a waste of time and words
), killing were planned and executed in a manner inconsistent with a crime of passion. This level of criminal planning is generally perpetrated by a person at the height of their mental and physical fitness, as it tends to be demanding in both respects.”

A handful of mixed/associated thoughts struck me at this instant, not for sharing with the Crockers, but for my consideration later. The original crime must have been extraordinarily well-planned. It was held off on until it could be done right; and it was thought out sufficiently to avoid being caught or found or even suspected in the decades since the crime. This speaks of a great mind at work. The attacks on my person had been foolish and the result of overreaction; this speaks of impulsivity and aggression, someone thinking with their muscles. The fact that attacks had been perpetrated over such a lengthy time span, and with such diverse methodologies, suggested to me that I was dealing with a multi-generational conspiracy, with people of diverse schools of thought (
as regards planning and execution of their revenge/retribution
). I could suddenly picture two different minds at work, not just now and then, but in both time frames … it was a reach, but it appealed to me, and fit what I felt about the crimes I was investigating (
and involved in
). As these thoughts spun around in my brain, I felt the need to move on to the actual reason for my visit with the Crockers today (
the ‘report’ was largely window-dressing to cover my early visit to get their help
).

“That is one form of feedback that I’ve been getting in the last few days. Another is from my research. I looked through thousands of photos recently, and came up with these eleven that I would like your help with. Please look carefully at them, tell me who you see, where they are, and your thoughts, if any on the pictures. If you aren’t certain, feel free to guess, but tell me that it’s a guess.” I got out a tiny notebook, a pen to write notes with, and a sharpie to mark each picture (
a small numeral, 1 through 11, up in a corner, away from details if possible
).

Photo #1 - July 1957

“Oh, that’s Dee and I and the Steuer children, Gale and whatshisname,” Mike said.

“Ruben?” Kitty offered, not sounding 100% sure. “A grubby little boy, and a poor sport, which is what we’re seeing in the picture; he must have lost the tennis game you were playing, and is angry about it.”

“Yes, we’d gone over in the morning to play, and Dee wiped the court with them, without much help from me actually. Ruben Steuer was miserable about it; he had a bit of a thing for Dee, and had been hoping to impress her. Picked the entirely wrong game for that, as it turns out.

Photo #2 - Summer 1958

“Yes,” Kitty spoke up at once, squinting at the photo. “All of us paddled out to Tommy’s Rock for a picnic, and the Edelmans were already there. We joined them.”

“I don’t remember that,” Mike said.

“Your father had to jump before the two of you would even go near the edge, and he cut his foot open on a rock or mussel shell in the water; he bled all over the island, and in the canoe on the way home,” Kitty remembered.

Photo #3 - August 1957

“That’s the Taylor’s camp,” Kitty said.

“The children with Dee and I are Cindy, Lee, and Amy, from left to right,” Mike said. “That was a cookout towards the end of the summer, they were leaving the next day, I remember kissing and groping Amy Taylor after dinner. It was quite a big deal for me, time and place, you understand.”

“Amy, not Cindy, you’re sure?” Kitty asked Mike. “She seemed like a nice girl. And just where were you groping her, young man?” she said, with some actual disapproval in her voice.

“In the boathouse, Mother,” Mike said with a straight face, which he ruined with a wink at Anthony when his mother looked down to grab her drink.

“Look at the scowl on the handyman up on the ladder behind you children,” Kitty said. “Maybe he saw you two up in the boathouse.”

“No, Mother. I told you, that all happened after dinner (
he tilted his head for a moment, enjoying the memory, turning it this way and that in his mind, and evidently pleased, came back to the discussion at hand
), and this picture was taken beforehand. I remember now, that guy staring daggers at Dee all afternoon and evening; he might have asked her out or some such.”

Photo #4 - July 1958

“The Turners came up for a few weeks that summer, the summer she disappeared, and that was a day-paddle we all took from Hoel Pond to Turtle Pond to Slang Pond, and then into Long Pond, over that nice carry, for lunch. That’s Moshi, our black lab, do you remember him, Mike?” Kitty asked.