by Peter Straub
“I called the fire department as soon as I saw smoke, and I was just hoping the trucks would arrive to save Kalendar and the kids’ parents. He dropped the kids down on the front lawn and ran back in. Smoke was pouring out of the side windows, and through the living room window I could see the flames. Right away, he came outside, shoving Mr. and Mrs. Watkins ahead of him. Then he turned around and ran back in. He was yelling a name.”
“A name?”
“‘Lily! Lily!’”
“Who was Lily?”
Hillyard shrugged. “At that point, the fire trucks arrived, and a lot of firefighters ran into the house, and the hoses started up, and in a couple of minutes the firefighters were dragging Kalendar outside and congratulating him for saving the lives of four people. To me, he seemed awfully disoriented, like he wasn’t really sure why these people were being so nice to him. He got away as soon as he could. But the Ledger and the TV people got hold of the story anyway, and they pushed it as far as Kalendar would let them. A racial harmony story, a feel-good story. This was only a few months after the big riots in Chicago and Milwaukee, remember—1968, it was. Detroit, too. Black people burned down their own businesses. It was a hideous tragedy. You must remember it.”
“I was out of the country in 1968,” Tim said. “But you could hardly say that I escaped violence altogether.”
“Do tell.” Hillyard’s eyes went flat. “I went on a lot of marches in 1968. We were marching against racism and against war.”
“Mr. Hillyard, you and I were both unhappy with what was going on in Vietnam.”
“All right,” Hillyard said. Tim could tell things were not all right. Omar Hillyard still had all the noblest principles. If he’d had any medals, he had returned them to the government in 1968 or 1969. When he had marched, he’d held up a sign that read VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR. He couldn’t get over it. He was still pissed off by people like Tim Underhill, whom he thought had taken a great army and marched it into a swamp. People like Underhill had tampered with his pride, and he could not forgive them.
“If I hadn’t been drafted, I would have been marching right alongside you.”
“All right,” Hillyard said again, meaning This subject is now officially closed. “I was talking about Joseph Kalendar and the press. When he refused to cooperate with them, they called him a modest man, a hero who shunned the spotlight. A nice story, you know? But when the reporters began to ask around about the new hero, it fizzled out in a hurry. The world’s most antisocial man wasn’t about to invite reporters and photographers into his house. He put up that hideous wall, and we all thought it was to keep the snooping press out of his backyard. At the front of his house, at least he could see the bastards coming.”
“He couldn’t have been a hundred percent antisocial,” Tim said.
Mr. Hillyard’s expression changed to stubborn frustration. He reminded Tim of photographs of Somerset Maugham in old age.
“Jimbo Monaghan saw pictures of you and other people socializing with Kalendar at a lakeside tavern. He said it looked like quite a party.”
Hillyard’s face relaxed. “How in the world did that boy come across those photos, anyhow?”
“He and Mark found them in the house.”
“Those pictures were taken at a neighborhood party, except it was up at Random Lake, not far from Milwaukee. Someone had a cabin up there, near a little tavern with a pier and a beach. That must have been one of the few times Kalendar did something to make his wife happy. He had a good reason to keep her happy, but all the same, he was Joseph Kalendar. He did his best to enjoy himself, but it was all an act. He hated being there. And the feeling was more or less mutual. Kalendar had the power to kill all the pleasure in his vicinity. I actually felt sorry for him. You could see him going up to people and trying to join in the conversation, which meant he just stood there, until one by one the other men peeled away and left him by himself.”
“What do you mean, he had a reason to keep his wife happy?”
“Myra Kalendar had a big, big belly. She must have been seven or eight months pregnant.”
“With their son, the poor devil.”
“I don’t think so.” Hillyard seemed irritatingly smug. “The party at Random Lake was in 1965. In 1965, Billy Kalendar was four years old.”
“I don’t get it.”
Omar Hillyard continued to smile at him. “A month after the party at Random Lake, Kalendar put out the word that his wife had miscarried. They wanted no calls or notes of sympathy, thank you. You can draw your own conclusions.”
22
From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 27 June 2003
There he was, Omar Hillyard, annoyed with me but still handing me the secret, the key that unlocked the last, inmost door. I remembered Philip telling me that Myra Kalendar had one day appeared at their house in Carrollton Gardens begging Nancy to do something for her. Help me save my child’s life. Did she say, Take her from me?
I explained all of this to Tom Pasmore shortly after I turned up at the big old house on Eastern Shore Drive, but he refrained from comment until we were climbing the stairs to get to the room that contained his computers and computer paraphernalia. He said, “In your view, then, your nephew met Joseph Kalendar’s daughter in that house. She somehow managed to appear before him in physical form, made love to him day after day, and finally talked him into joining her in a kind of spirit-world?”
“Put that way, it sounds absurd,” I said.
He asked me how I would put it.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “But remember this sequence. Joseph Kalendar really does have a daughter he conceals from the world. Early one morning when she is three years old, she slips out of the house and hides, probably in the back garden or the alley. Kalendar rushes outside to find her and sees that the house next door is burning. Two little girls live in that house. Isn’t it likely that Lily would have watched those girls through the windows, that she would have yearned to play with them? Kalendar thinks so, because he races into the burning house. After rescuing everyone, he charges back in, looking for her. After that, he builds an enormous wall at the back of his garden to hide the next thing he builds, a horrible annex alongside his kitchen. In that room, he tortures his daughter.
“Three years later, his wife makes a desperate attempt to rescue her daughter, but her husband’s cousin, Nancy Underhill, turns her down flat. Philip would never have let her interfere, and he would certainly not have let Kalendar’s daughter move into his house.
“Then comes Kalendar’s meltdown. He murders a lot of women, undoubtedly including his wife and daughter. In 1980, he is arrested and convicted. Five years later, Kalendar is murdered by a fellow inmate, and the story seems to be over.”
We had reached the computer room. Tom walked around turning on the lights and hearing me out, nodding as he went. I didn’t want him to agree with me, I just wanted him to see the pattern.
“This is the interesting part,” I said. “About three weeks ago, my nephew, who has no conscious knowledge of this story whatsoever, suddenly becomes obsessed with Kalendar’s house. His mother forbids him to go near the place. A few days before, a pedophile murderer snatched a boy from Sherman Park.
“My nephew becomes increasingly obsessed with the Kalendar house, and one night he lies to everyone about his plans for the evening and he goes around the block and attempts to break in. He is repulsed by a kind of horrible negative energy. The next day, his mother kills herself.”
“Well, well,” Tom said.
“She’s picking up something from her son. Her guilt comes back to her, and what’s happening in the neighborhood makes it worse. She can’t bear it. The next day, her son finds her body in the bathtub. What do you think that would do to a fifteen-year-old boy, finding his mother’s naked corpse in the bathtub?
“Then Mark returns again and again, finding all the creepy modifications Kalendar made to the house. After two days, he tells his best friend that he senses the presence of a
young woman, and on the fifth day, she appears, calling herself Lucy Cleveland. Lucy is hiding from her father, a figure Mark has been calling the Dark Man, and whom he has seen on at least two occasions. Mark says Lucy has a plan, she wants him to do something, and he needs time to think about it. He goes off to the park to think, and is never seen again.”
“Very suggestive,” Tom said. “So you think that while he was in the park, he made up his mind to join Lucy Cleveland and—am I right?—protect her from her father? And after his mind was made up, he went back to 3323 and gave himself to her.”
“Joined her,” I said. “But gave himself to her, too, yes.”
“Do you think he will ever be seen again?”
“I’m sure of it,” I said. Even then, I could not bear to tell Tom about the e-mail I had found, via a program called Gotomypc.com, on my computer at home. “Because he isn’t dead, he’s just elsewhere.”
“You love your nephew, don’t you, Tim?”
Suddenly, my eyes burned with tears.
“How much of what you told me do the police know?”
“As much as they could understand. I tried to get them interested in that house, but they blew me off.”
“Well, I think it’s worth a good, long look. Let’s see what we can discover.” Tom had placed himself before a computer wired up to a machine that resembled an enormous toaster equipped with rows of small red lights. It said VectorSystems on the side, not that I know what that means. Thick cords led from the giant toaster to a number of enigmatic black cubes, some of which clicked and whirred.
“I’ll see him again,” I said to Tom Pasmore.
“If she lets him be seen.”
“There’s always that,” I said. “She will, though. I’ll never talk to him again, but I’ll see him.”
“And that will be enough?”
“Almost enough,” I said.
“When it happens, will you tell me about it?”
“I’ll have to tell someone.”
He smiled up at me, glanced at the screen, then back up at me. “Do you really want me to do this?”
Of course I wanted him to do it.
“Then come around behind me, so you can see, too.”
I moved behind him and watched him type 3323 N. Michigan Street into a blank form he had called up from some municipal office with no idea that Tom Pasmore was roaming through their records. He hit ENTER.
In a nanosecond, these words appeared on his screen:
Ronald Lloyd-Jones
159 Tamarack Way
Old Point Harbor, IL 61725
“Our Ronnie lives in a pretty nice part of town,” Tom said.
“This doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I said. “Millionaires don’t usually mess around in Pigtown . . .”
Old Point Harbor was a long-established eastern suburb of Millhaven with Tudor mansions, Gothic piles, and huge contemporary houses tucked into wooded landscapes on meandering roads illuminated by imitation gas lamps.
“Wait,” I said. “What did you say?”
“I think what I said was, ‘Our Ronnie lives in a pretty nice part of town.’ Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”
“You called him Ronnie,” I said. “It’s Ronnie! The guy in the park.”
“What guy in the park?”'
I told him about the astronomy professor and the boy and the police sketch.
“Amazing,” Tom said. “Your friend Sergeant Pohlhaus should have taken that house a little more seriously.” He looked back at the screen.
“When did Ronald Lloyd-Jones buy our little house, I wonder?” Tom pushed a few keys, and the answer appeared in a window on the screen: 1982.
“He’s owned that place for twenty-one years,” Tom said. “In fact, he bought it even before Kalendar was killed. This could . . . hmmm.”
“Why would a guy from Old Point Harbor buy a house on Michigan Street?” I asked.
Some of what Tom did then must have been illegal. Actually, there’s no way it could not have been, but I have to say it was amazingly effective. Half an hour later, we knew more about Mr. Lloyd-Jones than his parents did.
Ronald Lloyd-Jones was born in Edgerton, Illinois, in 1950. He graduated from Edgerton East High School in 1968. And from the University of Illinois, which he attended on a football scholarship, in 1972. He married pretty Edwina Cass, heiress and orphan, in 1975, and Edwina died in a boating accident in 1978. Lloyd-Jones had inherited approximately twenty million dollars, which matured into something like twice that amount, thanks to the ’90s market and other investments. His portfolio was spread across three brokerage houses. An accountant in Chicago handled his bills. He had never remarried and had no children. His garage housed a Jaguar Vanden Plas, a Chevrolet pickup truck, and a Mercedes sedan. A state-of-the-art security system guarded his home and the ten acres surrounding it. Lloyd-Jones had $65,374.08 in his checking account at First Illinois, and his Visa, MasterCard, and American Express accounts were fully paid up. He bought a lot of things on-line, ’80s rock music and James Patterson novels in particular. At six foot three and 235 pounds, he was a large man; he had an eighteen-inch neck and a forty-inch waistband, and he wore size thirteen shoes. Lloyd-Jones drank single-malt Scotch. He visited porn sites and downloaded photographs, which he attempted to delete the next day. His teeth were perfect. He had a gun room with antique pistols and rifles in glass cases, a music room with astonishingly expensive sound equipment, and a screening room with a big flat-screen plasma TV. The screening room speakers had cost him $250,000. He belonged to no club or social organization. No church numbered him in its congregation. He had never voted. This multimillionaire owned the house in Old Point Harbor, a two-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue and East Seventy-eighth Street, a great little farmhouse in Périgord . . . and the house on Michigan Street, the first property he had ever purchased.
The only photograph Tom could find of this man was his high school graduation photo. “Before it gets dark, I think we should take a little spin out to Old Point Harbor, don’t you?” Tom asked.
“He has a great sound system and a mountain of CDs. This guy really is the Sherman Park Killer. We have to call the police.”
“First we get a look at Ronnie, then we call the police. I don’t want to tell the Millhaven Police Department, especially not Sergeant Franz Pohlhaus, what I just did here. You remember the police sketch pretty well, I hope?”
“Pretty well,” I said.
“Sounds like probable cause to me,” Tom said.
Ten minutes later, I was driving Tom Pasmore up Eastern Shore Drive in my rented Town Car. Twenty minutes after that we had passed from the farthest outposts of Millhaven into Old Point Harbor. The landscape had opened out into gentle hills sprinkled with a lot of oak trees and tamarack pines. Hidden far back from the road, big houses flickered like mirages among the tree trunks.
[After reading a section of an early journal of mine, Maggie Lah said, “You write your journal like it was fiction.” I said, “What makes you think it isn’t?”]
There were very few street signs. It was one of those communities that do not wish to induce comfort in visitors or deliverypeople. In its mild, slightly wayward northern course, Loblolly Road intersected two apparently anonymous streets before crossing a slightly wider road called Carriage Avenue. Either one of them could have been Tamarack Way.
“Keep going,” Tom said. He had a map of Old Point Harbor in his head, as he had maps of a hundred different cities and towns, large and small. “Two streets ahead, you take a left, and Tamarack Way is the first corner you come to.”
“Do I turn right or left?”
“How the hell should I know?” Tom said. “I don’t memorize addresses.”
At the unmarked intersection with what Tom said was Tamarack Way, I turned left and began paying attention to the numbers on the mailboxes. Someone had made a fortune selling rich midwesterners on the idea of oversized mailboxes painted with New England themes: lighthouses, lobster boats, s
altbox houses, beach dunes. We passed 85, 87, 88, 90.
“As the waiters at the Fireside Lounge are fond of saying, good choice,” Tom said.
“You’re nice and relaxed.”
“I love this part,” Tom said. “I get to see if I was right.”
We drifted up Tamarack Way, watching the numbers on the mailboxes get higher.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “what do you intend to do when we get to 159?”
“I intend to sit in the car. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and find him outside, uprooting dandelions.”
He was dressed in one of his typical Tom Pasmore outfits, a light-gray windowpane plaid suit with a dark-blue vest, a forest-green patterned tie, the most beautiful crocodile shoes I’d ever seen in my life, and big round sunglasses. He looked like a Danish count masquerading as an architect.
“What do you envision me doing while you sit in the car?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
The number 159 appeared on a standard-fare Old Harbor Point mailbox, an aluminum shell large enough to hold a fleet of toy trucks and embellished with a painting of a steepled old church and a few rows of tilting headstones. Nice touch. A wide black driveway wound in from the road on a long loop toward an immense gray two-story house. Through the trees, we could just make out the glint of a huge circular window set high above the baronial front door. The lawn gleamed an unnatural-looking green.
“Well, he’s not doing any yardwork,” Tom said. “Turn in and drive up to the house.”
I stepped on the brake. “He’s probably watching everything we do. Remember that security system. He’s got cameras all along this drive.”
“But you don’t know that. You’re a tourist in a rented car, and you got lost looking for your cousin’s house on Loblolly Road.”
“You want me to ring his bell?” I was incredulous.
“Can you think of a better way to get a good look at him?”
