Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) (26 page)

Quik-E-Mart, Canton, 7/19/2013, 6:39 p.m.

I walked in a daze to the Porsche, threw everything into the trunk of the car, and puttered through the cooling afternoon, looking at the clouds on the horizon that promised rain later in the evening. I would enjoy the night out in my hammock sheltered from the rain by my tarp, but feeling and hearing it nonetheless … the Unfortunates, those people that the Edelman/Reineger Justice League disappeared, never saw or heard or walked in the rain again. I parked further away from the Chinese place than I needed to, and used the walk to think and stretch all of my parts.

I placed an order for dumplings and an order of painfully spicy shrimp and scallops with broccoli, then retreated to the back of the restaurant, sitting by a mossy looking fish tank with a few bored koi kissing their way back and forth along the length of the tank, reading a favorite Matt Scudder mystery for a while. I enjoy the angst that Lawrence Block creates within his favorite of my characters, and the way that he paints the city of New York in my mind, a city that I no longer have access to except through his books (
and others like them
). The food came and I ate with one hand, while reading with the other, desperate to escape my current reality perhaps … to let my subconscious work on the details and solution to the problem that I faced now—what to do about the Crockers and also the Edelmans and Reinegers (
and most especially, anyone the latter had entombed in their cells
).

I went through the pictures and cryptograms and story in my head from various
angles, taking it apart, looking at it, and then putting it back together again. The best and safest thing to do (
for me and anyone possibly entombed underneath Camp Juniper Bay
) was to present the whole thing to Frank Gibson, the SLPD, and any other suits that might be interested. It was too late to get things rolling tonight, but if I got a cheap hotel room for the night, and wrote everything down in a clear and concise manner (
that even a caveman could understand
), it would certainly be enough for the authorities to get a warrant, make their search, find the prisoners, catch the bad guys, and tie things up neatly for the Crockers while Hope and I were safely beyond the blast radius of the media spectacular that it was certain to become. Dorothy would be upset at not being able to minion her way into this case, but it made more sense all around to do it the safe way; I ordered some more food and lingered over it while making plans for how to present the entire thing to Frank in the morning. Bloated, my tongue burned by those tiny red chili peppers the restaurant used, I started referencing my mental map for the best place to stay (
it needed only a roof and electricity and wifi, and to be cheap to qualify as ‘best’ to me
), and came up with the Scottish Inns, over towards Potsdam; I called and found that they had rooms available for the night.

By this point, I had stretched my mealtime nearly to the breaking point (
when a guy from the kitchen came by to scowl at me, scrutably enough for even me to pick up on his intention, for a third time, I knew that it was time to go
), I wandered (
slowly, ponderously even
) back to my car. Rolled slowly through town, aiming for a Quik-E-Mart on the edge of town to gas and food up for the overnight and tomorrow morning. I pulled in, and was filling the tank when my cell phone rang.

“Tyler?” Meg said.

“Hi Meg,” I answered.

“Jesus Christ, Tyler, he’s coming here … NOW!” she shouted into the phone.

“Who, and he’s coming where, Meg?” I know that my steady voice at times like this is maddening, but I also knew that raising my voice, either in tone or volume, did not help with communications or whatever was happening at Meg’s end.

“My sorta uncle, Bobby, Robert Reineger. He called, just now, he just hung up and I called you. He’s coming here Tyler, and he …. he must be in on it … all of it ….” She just trailed off at this point. I noticed Barry coming around the
corner of the Quik-E-Mart to lean against the side of the Porsche.

“Meg, listen carefully.
Are you alone in the house? Did you call Frank?”

“Of course I did,
I called Frank before I called you, and he’s on his way, but he’ll be half an hour. I am alone—Austin’s at his grandmother’s, thank God; I worry he’d do something stupid. Are you in town?” She sounded scared and needy, which is not Meg’s way.

“No, I’m still up in Canton. Look out your front window and tell me if your neighbors across the street are home (
they should be, I hope they are
). Are they?” I prompted.

“Yes, but ….” I cut her off.

“When we get off the phone in thirty seconds, call them and tell them to come over. Tell them that a drunk relative is coming over and you’re frightened … they’ll come.” I knew the Mullanes would come over to help Meg, based on the way that Frank had spoken about them.

“If Reineger comes, don’t talk with him alone, stay with the Mullanes in your living room … better yet, all of you meet him in the driveway, and talk there. Stay there. Don’t deny anything, hide anything, ask anything. Just be friendly and smile and seem uninterested in anything having to do with Kimberly Stanton or the Crockers or me. Frank will be there soon … make sure that Reineger knows that also, that Frank is on his way. Everything will be fine.”

“Are you coming here Tyler?” she asked.

That stopped me for a second. I had certainly been planning to for the last eight seconds, but now that I’d paused to think, I knew that I couldn’t. As soon as he went to see Meg, and realized how dumb he had been to confront her like that, Reineger would try and figure out a way to cut his losses. He might kill the people (
if there were any
) in his cells … or simply fill them in with cement or dirt or dynamite. I had to get going and know what I was doing before I arrived at Juniper Bay on Upper Saranac, or I would fail the Crockers and all of the people who had lived, and died, in those oubliettes over the years.

“No, but you have to believe me that it’s for a very good reason. Frank will be there soon, and I’ll be there in a few hours, but there’s stuff that I have to do first. Please tell Frank to stay with you and the dogs at your house until you hear from me … okay?” I asked.

“Um, okay, if you’re sure Tyler.”

“I’m sure. Gotta go Meg. Call the Mullanes now. Bye,” hoping that I sounded more certain than I felt.

I dialed Frank’s cell, and waited through two rings, while he probably felt around for it on his passenger seat.

“Meg?” he asked.

“No, Tyler. I just got off the phone with Meg, and the Mullanes are coming over. They’re going to meet Reineger together in the driveway, and the Mullanes will stay until you get there.”

“Thanks, I guess, although she got into this because of you.”

“I know,” I said, “and I feel awful about that, but she’ll be fine. He’ll realize he’s making a mistake as soon as he sees other people there.”

“Okay, so what’s next?” he said. One of the things that I like about Frank is his ability to set a problem aside, and to compartmentalize ...hence, ‘what’s next.’

“I need a favor, Frank. A pretty big one.”

“What?” he asked.

“You know how we were joking about me having flashers for the Porsche earlier?”

“Yup, and you….” He trailed off.

“I have one, and I need to make an emergency run from Potsdam to Upper Saranac Lake. Can you set that up?”

“Jesus, Tyler, are you going through Tupper?”

“Nope. I think it’ll be quicker and less populated going the other way … 11B to 458 to 30.” I said, picturing the route/map/roads in my head.

“Tell me what’s happening, what you’ve found Tyler,” Frank said.

“There’s not time now, and even if I could explain it all, it’s not enough for a cop to risk his career on … not with the kind of people/money involved. Just make the calls, Frank,” I answered.

“I’ll make the calls as soon as you hang up. Do you need me to meet you, wherever?”

“I think it’d be better all-around if you stay home with Meg. I’m 98 percent sure, but there’s an outside chance I’ll be embarrassed … and then incarcerated.” I paused, but he was just listening. “If I’m right though, tomorrow will be a really interesting day for anyone with thumbs and a TV or radio.”

“And I get to hear everything when this is all over, including stuff for my numbers wonk down in Albany?”

“Yessir, as soon as I’ve given my report to the Crockers, you’ll get everything.” I mostly meant it, but would figure out the editing later. I could see the form of an unhappy-looking Barry stuffed into the passenger seat of the Porsche, and knew that I had to get going … the clock was running … out.

The pump stuttered to a stop, and I flipped my phone closed. I ran inside to pay and grab some supplies … food and drink and a couple of other items that I could hear Barry shouting to pick up as well. As I was handing my credit card to the attendant, I reconsidered, and paid with cash instead … just to be on the safe side in case things went sideways when I landed at the far end of my drive.

I dialed Dorothy as I peeled out of the Quik-E-Mart, and went quickly through the details of what I wanted, as I squealed and roared my way noisily through town. Once Dot and I were done (
she already knew what she was supposed to do, I just gave her the go-ahead
), I plugged the dashboard flasher into the lighter socket, jammed it up against the windscreen, and pushed my foot down towards the floor, feeling the 993 leap forward like a cheetah on speed.

The wind was howling at me through the broken driver’s side window as the car hunkered down and sped across the flat farm country to the north of the Adirondack Park.

Route 30, near Camp Juniper Bay, 7/19/2013, 7:31 p.m.

Once I got through Potsdam (
a nightmare of honking and lights and powerslides and, surprisingly, no accidents or policemen stopping me
) and onto 11B, I toggled the high-beams on, and let the Porsche off its leash. I was stuck with a horrible time of the day for a high-speed run, and the shoulders of the road weren’t as wide as I would have liked them, but the surface was dry and clean (
after a rain a few days ago
), and I didn’t see another car for most of the ride. A mile outside of town, I moved the low-slung car so that we were straddling the yellow lines, and went over the route ahead of me, using my mental map to help keep track of my progress back down and into the Park, and towards Juniper Bay.

“Pair of eyes, left, 300 yards,” Barry said, calmly. I could see the deer on the side of the road, likely sampling some clover. I gave a blast of the horn, and drifted a bit to the right, watching it bound back up into the woods away from the storm of noise that Barry and I were pushing down the road at a bit better than a hundred miles an hour on the straightaways. (
I imagined that the deer had seen us dopplering towards it in a red-shift, and fading in the distance a split second later in a blue-shift of near-relativistic speeds
).

The 993 had four-wheel drive, knobbly tires, and a whale-tail that helped to push the speeding car down onto the road when it tried to Bernoulli up and off the road surface, all of these worked together to grip the tarmac like nothing I’d driven before. We caught air a few times, going over bumps or rises or poorly graded turns, but I trusted the car to catch me, and it did each time, grabbing the road with an angry squeal and pulling me into the next turn. Normally I get bored driving, as the two-dimensional field of play and low speeds keep things very predictable and use only a small portion of my brain; but, driving at top speed through the twists and turns heading through an Adirondack night was the very antithesis of regular driving. The high rate of speed kept me at the very edge of my reaction time (
especially given the relatively short effective range of the 1980s era headlamps
); and even in the cold from the broken window, I was sweating and aching within a few minutes from the stress of the drive.

“Holy Crap, Tyler! What are you trying to do? Kill yourself for a stranger? The Crocker girl’s most likely been dead longer than you’ve been alive,” Barry said, from the passenger seat next to me. Ordinarily he could not possibly fit into the Porsche, but I guess that my brain needed him … so there he was, scaled down a bit perhaps, but still seeming as large as when he was alive and trying to kill me.

“Reineger hadn’t gotten to Frank and Meg’s place yet, and he’ll be there for at least a few minutes before he comes to his senses. It’ll take him 20 minutes to get back to Juniper Bay; but that still beats us by … 20 minutes, even driving this fast. Dorothy might buy us the extra time, but I hate to count on it.” Saying this, I pressed incrementally harder on the gas, and felt the car push me back into the seat a bit more assertively.

I dropped off of 11B, and into the hard right hand turn that put me on 458, heading south into the empty northern end of the Park, not really looking at the road (
things were moving too fast for that now
). I was trying to take in the whole picture in soft focus, letting my peripheral vision and some primitive chunks of human brains that are particularly tuned to movement, sweeping the car back and forth across the blacktop in response to stimuli/input that I was barely aware of on a conscious level. I was in a place, traveling at a speed, beyond being careful … if I hit a deer (
possibly even a rabbit or a crow
) at this speed it would be fatal. Knowing that, a part of me relaxed, and was able to think about the likely endgame that was fast approaching.

“If you want to save the princess in the tower, you’ll need to go in hard, Tyler. You’re not running away from the bad guys here, you’re storming the castle … and these guys outnumber and outweigh you, and probably have you outgunned as well. It’s like that saying, ‘if you want to make an omelet, sometimes you have to kill a great camp full of crazy kidnappers,’ funny how often those old sayings are true,” Barry said, with a guffaw.

At great personal risk, and with no possible benefit (
since Barry is a figment of my imagination
), I turned to stare at him for a full second before giving my attention back to the road, swerving minutely to avoid a frost heave on one side of the road as we roared down the long hill into tiny and empty and dark Santa Clara. We rattled and thumped, very briefly, across the old metal bridge, momentarily in the pointless glow of a few streetlamps, and then were off again, through the emptiest stretch of road we would hit that evening.

Wide shoulders, great surface, guardrails, and long straight sections of road allowed me to bump my speed up to 140 mph for nearly two miles, before I saw the sign for Route 30. I slowed to 60, honking and flashing, and slid through the gravel and dust at the stop/intersection, thankful for low traffic density on the road between Saranac Lake and Malone. I was able to keep my speed over 100 mph from the 458 turn, until I reached Paul Smiths, at which point I had to slow for some traffic, which I flashed into pulling over while I zoomed by them.

The 993 flew over the road surface, not like a cheetah but like a snake, invisibly syncopated parts working together to support movement nobody would believe under normal circumstances. I knew the specifications of that car, had known them for years, but until that foolish high-speed run I never understood what they meant when taken together, as a whole. The four-wheel drive, ridiculous horsepower count (
424 in this model
), turbocharger flooding the huge chambers with blisteringly hot air to enhance combustion, and aerodynamic shape, all worked as one to throw me down the road so fast and so smoothly as to defy the imagination.

At Paul Smith’s College, I was presented momentarily with a choice, but my body decided on the back road … opting for less traffic over better surface (
Donnelly’s Ice Cream would be crowded, and that 90 degree turn onto 186 would have been a killer, so I guess that the unthinking, or at least unconscious driver within, made the correct decision
). The last 13 miles were twisty and noisy and the cabin of the car filled with the smell of overheated gearbox, as I used gears more than brakes to get through turns while maintaining as much momentum as was possible.

I could see a glow through the woods, and smell smoke as I approached Juniper Bay … Dorothy seemed to have been minioning according to plan in my absence. I killed my flasher, switched to low beams, and dumped the Porsche into the woods via a wide trail leading back to the Colgate University camp’s tennis court, on the non-lake side of the road a few camps down from Juniper Bay. On my way out of the 993, I noted both the time and the odometer, and as I was preparing to leave that magnificent (
and most of the time, pointless
) vehicle, I figured out that I had made the journey from up near Canton at an average speed of just a hair below 90 mph. I was out the door as soon as the car stopped rolling, grabbed stuff I’d picked up from the Quik-E-Mart and shoved it into a backpack, and ran through the dark woods towards Juniper Bay, Barry moving (
with good reason
) like a ghost through the forest. I could hear the Porsche ticking and clicking and cooling behind me, the crackle of fire and shouts of firefighters from the burning boathouse, and the noise of my passage through the woods, my own harsh breath sounds and sticks breaking under my feet as I hurried towards the caretakers.