We were eating breakfast at a café when Rachel’s phone buzzed. She smiled as she answered it. I watched her as I sipped my coffee. She nodded a lot, asked a few questions, then smiled again. “Thanks!”
“Car warranty renewal?” I asked.
She giggled. “Guy from the paper. Guy is actually his name. Now I’m not sure he’s gay.” She sighed, then looked at me. “Oh. Anyway, he was looking up stuff last night and he found out that there was another series of kidnappings on campus before Garner.”
My eyes widened a little. “Do tell.”
“Around seven years before that, three students, all girls, went missing in a semester. They eventually were found dead in a cave down by the river—I guess there’s a river somewhere? They’d been chained up, and . . . .” She shivered. “The guy who did it was a local farmer, Donald Evans. Killed himself.”
She leaned forward, arms on the table. “This is pretty good work, huh? Do I get a raise, boss?”
“Huh.” I looked at my empty plate, glad I’d finished before getting this news. “Seven years? Dead suspect. That’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“Is it really?” She raised her eyebrows.
Maybe not. “Okay. Go see your friend Guy. Find out if there’s anything more. Try not to flirt too much.”
Rachel pouted. “You take all the fun out of it.”
“You’re a young hot babe. I’m a middle-aged P.I. who needs to work out more. He’s cute. You do the math.”
“Aww.” She leaned across the table to kiss me. “You’re still the only guy I want to have hot motel sex with.”
I felt better. A little. “Okay. I’m going to go talk to Chief Stogue.”
Stogue glared as I entered his office, as if he wanted to hurl his computer monitor at my face. “Didn’t I tell you to get out of town?”
“You just told me to stop hanging around the sorority house. I’m not there. I’m here in your office.” I sat down.
He leaned back in his chair, looking me over. “I checked you out, Jurgen. Chicago PD says you like to go around spreading crazy theories about vampires and monsters and ghosts. Well, we don’t have any vampires here at Rackham College. We do have cells where I can have you locked up for interfering with a police investigation. Food’s not good in our jail, but you’ve got cockroaches for extra protein if you like.”
I’m used to not being popular. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it. “Look, the only reason I’m here is to ask about the pattern you’ve got here. A seven-year pattern. Do you know about that?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Garner. Nothing to do with this. He’s dead.”
“And seven years before him, a farmer named Donald Evans pulled the same stunt. Four dead girls. He’s dead too. Isn’t that at least a little interesting?”
Stogue blinked. “You’re talking fourteen years ago. I was a cop in Milwaukee then.”
“You keep records, don’t you? I’m sure you can look it up.”
He stared at me for five seconds. Then, with a long sigh, he turned to his computer. “Thank you for the information, Mr. Jurgen. I’ll be sure to look into it when time permits. We’re pretty busy right now.” The message was clear: Get out.
The Chicago cops tolerate me because sometimes I’m right about vampires and monsters—although they do their best to cover it up when it happens. But Stogue would put me on a cockroach diet, and that didn’t sound very appetizing. So I left.
In the car I texted Rachel. Then I drove out to the Church of the Risen God.
In daylight the church looked serene and more welcoming. The open front door helped. I parked and walked in quietly, in case I was interrupting a service in progress.
Instead an old man with white hair was sweeping between the pews. He bent down to pick something up—a yellow paper, like the flier I’d found in the cabin—and stuffed it into his back pocket, then continued sweeping.
Stained glass windows filtered the morning light from the east. The sanctuary’s wooden pews looked well used. Red and gold candles sat on the altar, where a gray-haired Black woman was dusting and humming. I walked up and asked her if Reverend Vining was in.
She looked up from her dusting as if she’d been lost in her work. Smiling, she pointed toward a door by the side of the riser where the choir would sing. “Have a blessed day,” she said.
Through the door and down a short hall I found a half-open door. CHURCH OFFICE. I leaned in. “Pastor Vining?”
Edward Vining Jr. was a young man, early thirties, with curly brown hair and a warm, welcoming smile. He stood up eagerly, as if happy for a new soul to save. Or at least some company to distract him from whatever paperwork a minister does. “Yes! Can I help you?”
No cane. I told him my name and offered my card.
He sat down behind a small desk with a computer next to a candle in a brass holder, red and gold, like the ones I’d seen on the altar. The office was square and clean. A crucifix hung on one wall. A bookcase covered the other wall, filled with a random collection of books—theology, philosophy, science, and a few bestsellers. I saw Dan Brown and Stephen King crammed beside Aristotle and Kant.
Vining looked at my card, puzzled. “A private detective. How can I help you?”
I explained why I was on campus, but I didn’t know what to ask. Obviously he didn’t walk with a cane—although that didn’t mean he didn’t own one—but I didn’t really have anything tying him to the kidnappings, or killings. Just the church flier from the cabin. So I showed it to him.
“I found this at the cabin where those girls were found, seven years ago. Any idea how it got there?”
He took it from me, opened it up, turned it over, and set it down with a shrug. “We print up a hundred or so of these every week. I ask people to recycle them. But they end up all over town. I’m sorry, are you trying to imply something?”
“I’m just trying to cover every base here.” I looked around the office. “Do any of your congregation walk with canes?”
Vining cocked his head, staring at me with narrow eyes. “We have a lot of elderly people. I haven’t really noticed how many use canes, or walkers, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have any serial killers in my pews on Sunday.”
“It’s just that people have reported seeing a man with a cane when the girls disappeared. Now, and seven years ago.”
Vining stiffened behind his desk. “I don’t think I can help you, Mr. Jurgen. What’s happening is—terrible. I’ve prayed about it. But the only direction I can point you in is toward Jesus.”
I stood. “Thanks for your time. If you hear anything, please call me.”
The woman dusting the altar was down among the pews, checking hymnals. The sweeping janitor was gone.
I sat down on a pew to think for a moment. Maybe divine inspiration would tell me what to do next. I still had a few more names on my list of Kayla’s friends, but I didn’t have much confidence that I’d find anything useful from them. The campus police were on the case, and the state police had to be involved too, and they had more resources than me—plus, the prospect of students fleeing the campus and parents not paying tuition and alumni holding off on donations would put fire under campus cops’ feet.
The church had been a shot in the dark anyway. Maybe I was just cynical about religion. I stood up to go, and found the gray-haired woman coming up the aisle with a plastic bucket in her hand.
“Terrible about those missing girls.” She set the bucket down.
I looked at her. She was old enough to remember seven years ago—and before that. “It’s happened before, hasn’t it?”
She nodded. “Long time. More than once.”
“What’s going on, do you think?”
She turned to gaze out the window at the trees outside. “The man who walked with a cane.”
I waited a moment for her to say more. “What man?”
“Out in the woods. Next to the river.” She looked at me. “Uncle John.”
“Who’s that?”
Suddenly she laughed. “The boogeyman. We called him Uncle John. My mom would always say, ‘Look out for Uncle John! Don’t let him get you!’”
I glanced around, startled by her laughter. The sanctuary was empty. “Uncle John.”
“That’s what they called him.” She reached into her bucket for a spray can and a rag. “Every town’s got its boogeyman, right?”
“Where’d the name come from?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. Probably somebody’s uncle.”
“That makes sense.” I stood up and handed her a card. “I didn’t get your name?”
“Louise.” She took the card. “Louise Graham. A private detective? Do you have a gun?”
“Not yet.” I thanked her and left.
In the car I called Rachel. “Still there with Guy? The cute guy?”
“Just having coffee. He’s looking stuff up on his laptop. Find out anything?”
“Ask him about a local boogeyman named Uncle John.” I looked at the trees around the parking lot. “He walks with a cane. I’ll be right over.”
“To check him out? Jealous much?”
“Very. Try not to make out with him.”
She gave me a breathy sigh. “It’ll be hard.”
“I’ll hurry.”
Guy Mantell was in his early 30s—closer to Rachel’s age than mine. Black, with a trimmed beard. Attractive, I guess, if you liked broad shoulders and turtleneck shirts and strong handshakes. “Nice to meet you.” He smiled. “Rachel says you’re a P.I.?”
“That’s right.” We were in the hallway in the student union building, where the student newspaper office was located. Rachel sat at a table, sipping coffee and grinning. “You, uh, hang around the newspaper here a lot?”
He laughed. “Kind of. I’m a math instructor, but I worked on the paper when I was here. That was 10 years ago.” He glanced over his shoulder at the office’s open doorway. “Kind of an unofficial faculty advisor. I help with computers and stuff.”
“Is there much news backed up?”
“You’d be surprised. They’ve got scanned print editions going back to the 1980s. And there’s the local news, too.” He leaned down to tap at his laptop. “Rachel says you’re interested in someone called Uncle John?”
“Yeah, sort of a local boogeyman?”
He nodded. “Yeah. First I was looking at the stuff about Evans, the farmer.” He worked the keyboard. “He was a soybean farmer. No one knows what made him start kidnapping students. Three of them, all female. He kept them tied up in a cave by the river for two weeks. They died of exposure.”
Yuck. I tried to stay focused. “Did he walk with a cane?”
Mantell shook his head. “Nothing says he did. But he was 74 when they caught him, so maybe? He hung himself in jail before the trial.”
He pointed to the screen, and I leaned over to skim an article about the case from the local newspaper.
“Anything before that?” Rachel scooted her chair next to him until their shoulders were touching.
“I looked at 2001 and 1994, but I didn’t find anything.” He scrolled down, going back through the years.
“What about Uncle John?” I asked.
“That’s different.” He exited the screen. “There’s one or two references in the student news. One’s a letter from a student complaining about campus police—here.” He clicked. “‘What are they doing, protecting us against Uncle John?’ Stuff like that. I had to go into the college archives and the local history sites. There’s a paper in a folklore journal on urban legends that mentions him—here.”
I peered at the screen. “ . . . in the Midwest, a character called ‘Uncle John’ or sometimes ‘Creepy John’ is said to kidnap or punish misbehaving children. He lives near lakes or rivers and is usually described or depicted as carrying a cane with—”
Mantell switched to a different article. “This one looks at boogeyman myths from different cultures. The sack man, el coco, gogol, and others around the world. Uncle John’s in a footnote, but it does include the cane. Rachel said you were interested in canes.”
“The witnesses both saw a man with a cane,” I said.
Mantell sat back and crossed his arms. “You think Uncle John is real?”
He wasn’t saying I was crazy. But maybe he was just humoring Rachel in hope of hooking up with her. Yes, I’m insecure. My job has taught me to be skeptical of everything.
“We know Garner and Evans were real.” I reached over his arm to take the mouse and click backward. “Maybe he can possess people.”
Mantell pushed his chair back to let me navigate.I went to the previous article. The sentence continued: “a cane with a skull or other round object, gold or the actual skull of a small animal.”
“What is it?” Rachel planted a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m not sure yet.” I pulled out my phone. I had April Brown’s number. She picked up on the second buzz. “H-hello?”
“April? It’s Tom Jurgen. We spoke yesterday?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She sounded nervous. “Are you still here? There’s another one missing. I’m going home this afternoon.”
“Probably a good idea. I’m still on campus. I have a question: When you saw that man, did you notice what kind of cane he was holding? What it looked like?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated. “It was raining. I didn’t really see it, just the bottom part, you know? I really don’t know.”
I hid my disappointment. “You don’t happen to have a number for, uh, Liza Bowen? She’s a friend of Kayla’s, and she saw the other girl last night, right before she disappeared.”
“Liza? Yeah, I know her. Just a second.” I waited. “Here it is.” She gave me the number.”
“Thank you. Get home safe.” I hung up and started calling Liza while Rachel cocked an eyebrow at me and Mantell watched.
“Liza? It’s Tom Jurgen again. I was just wondering—is there any chance you got a look at that man’s cane? The handle of it? I know he was across the street—”
“Oh, yeah.” She sounded out of breath. “I told the police. It wasn’t like a regular handle, you know? It didn’t stick out. It looked round, the way he held it. The way his hand was on it. I thought it was funny.”
“Round.” I nodded. “Thanks. Stay safe.”
“A skull?” Rachel asked.
“She didn’t say that. But not a regular cane handle.” I put my phone away.
“Like Uncle John,” Mantell said.
“Maybe.” My momentary surge of triumph faded. Now what? I wasn’t any closer to finding Kayla or the other girl—or their bodies—or the kidnapper. Uncle John. I couldn’t even tell the campus cops about it. Stogue would—well, he probably wouldn’t laugh. But he definitely wouldn’t listen.
“What’s next, chief?” Rachel punched my shoulder. “Hit the streets looking for people with canes?”
Not the worst idea, but not a very efficient use of our time. And the clock was ticking for the second girl, Benji. And maybe for Kayla.
I remembered what Louise Graham had said at the church. “Uncle John hangs around by the river?”
Mantell reached past me to tap at the keyboard. “Yeah, here.” He read: “ . . . lives near lakes or rivers and is usually described—”
“There’s a river near that cabin,” Rachel said.
“And the first group of girls was found in a cave by the river.” I looked at Mantell’s computer. “Guy, tell us about the river?”
“We call it, uh, Pig River.” He looked a little embarrassed by the name as he started working the keyboard again. “The real name is, uh, the Wonauk River. Native American. I guess there were some pig farmers or something—”
“Got it.” Rachel had her phone out. “It runs northeast, past the campus, down by the cabin on the west. And—wait for it—about a mile from that church. It’s here on the map, see?” She shoved the phone in my face.
“Let’s check it out.” I stood up. “Thanks for your help, Guy.”
“Sure thing.” He looked at Rachel. “Any time.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Gotta run. ‘Bye!” She grabbed my hand and led me away.
“Did you have to kiss him?” I asked as we headed down the hall.
“We might need him again. I’ll make out with you in the car if that makes you feel better.”
“Rain check.” I pushed on the door.
No comments:
Post a Comment