When Brody pulled into Max's apartment complex the multitude of police cars that were jammed into the parking lot set off his spidey senses. Damn! He didn't need this! One police car might signal bad news such as the death of Max in some foreign country but a whole passel of police cars suggested something criminal with Max being at the criminal end of it rather than the victim end with Brody in the middle of it all.
Brody started to turn around to leave but he'd been spotted. Officer O'Neill signaled to him to park his car. Brody resigned himself and walked up to the knot of policemen.
"What's going on?" Brody asked.
"Maxwell Cantor has been officially charged in connection with the First National Bank robbery in St. Charles, Missouri," Officer Hartley announced.
" What?!" Brody was dumbfounded. A bank robbery? Max? Nowhere in the Cantor notes had there been any mention of a bank. Just when he thought it couldn't get any weirder...
"You'd better cooperate with us, Mr. Myers, or you could find yourself sitting in jail for aiding and abetting a criminal. If you know where he is or have any information that will help us find him and you don't tell us, then you're in almost as much trouble as he is. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Brody gulped, his eyes wide with fear. He wondered why they thought Max had robbed a bank in another state. St. Charles was 300 miles from Memphis, though it would be a good way to cover one's tracks to target a different city. Still, none of it made sense to Brody. A bank robbery simply didn't jive with anything he'd read so far.
Officers Hartley and O'Neill escorted Brody to the police station for questioning. They pushed him roughly into the police car and literally dragged him out of it again at the station. Once there, they steered him inside with a forceful grip on his arm, leading him to an interrogation room where they badgered him with questions.
Brody was scared. He buckled under the pressure as they had known he would. He told them everything he knew - everything - even the part about the Cantor papers. There wasn't anything in those stupid papers anyway, nothing that would link Max with a bank robbery at any rate. Brody volunteered to hand them over.
"Excellent, Mr. Myers. We'll just follow you home and pick them up. You're doing the right thing, you know. The truth will come out one way or another and it will go much better for you for cooperating. If Maxwell is innocent like you say then there's nothing to worry about, is there?"
They drove Brody back to Max's apartment to pick up his car then followed him back to his own apartment. Once inside, Brody put the stacks of papers that he had left lying on the floor back in the box and handed the box to Officer O'Neill.
"Is this all?" Officer Hartley asked.
"Yes," Brody replied. "This is all of it."
They took the papers and left. Brody had lied. There were two more boxes in his closet. He wasn't worried about the ones they'd taken because he'd read them already. There was nothing incriminating except for the weird dreams, the fascination with odd artifacts and long dead people, and nothing to prove that Max had been successful with his psychic spying.
Only Brody knew that some of the things Max had "seen" were real and weren't merely the renderings of a wild imagination. Maybe Max could use this hocus pocus stuff to get off easy if he ever turned up. People were always copping insanity pleas.
What worried Brody were the papers he still had. He needed to get them out of his apartment before they decided to come search his place next. He had no doubt that they would. He'd volunteered the papers to buy some time. Brody didn't know it but the only reason they hadn't searched his apartment yet was because they were still waiting for the search warrant. The judge had chosen this one particular day to disappear for a rather long lunch thereby upsetting the officer's plans.
Brody agonized for about half an hour over how to smuggle the Cantor papers out and where to take them. The police might be in the parking lot watching for this very thing. He didn't dare take the risk. Brody knew he had to be very careful for his friend's sake. He wasn't ready to convict Max of a bank robbery.
The front door of his second-floor apartment opened onto an enclosed hallway. They probably weren't watching the hallway, just his car. Brody opened his front door and looked carefully up and down the hall. It appeared to be empty. He crossed the hall and knocked on the door opposite his. A muffled voice called out, "Who is it?"
"Cindy, it's me, Brody."
He could hear the chain sliding in its slot and the click of the deadbolt. The door opened to reveal a petite blonde with straight, shoulder-length hair and simple bangs in the front. Even though she was wearing casual capri pants and a plain white blouse she managed to look like she was going to a fancy party. Nature had favored her and Cindy always looked sharp no matter what she wore.
Cindy's warm, brown eyes greeted Brody's anxious blue ones. Her tone was friendly. "Come on in. How's tricks? Haven't seen you around much lately."
"Yeah, I know. Cindy look, I need a favor. It's important." Brody didn't know Cindy very well. They'd said hello when they passed in the hallway and had visited each other a handful of times but they have never gotten past the small talk stage.
Cindy's face took on a wary expression at the word favor. Suspiciously she asked, "What kind of favor?"
"I need to store a couple of boxes over here for awhile."
Cindy let out her breath. "Oh sure, no problem. You had me worried there for a minute!"
"Well, there is one other thing," Brody added. "I need to have access to the boxes. I need to be able to come over and sort through them and I need to be able to do this at night."
"I usually work at night. You know that."
"I know. That's why I'll need a key."
"No! No way Brody! I'm sorry! I'd be happy to keep the boxes here for you but I just can't give you my key!"
Brody thought for a moment then countered, "Okay, how about this... would you take the boxes somewhere else for me?"
"Why can't you take them?"
Brody hesitated a moment trying to think up a good explanation. He couldn't. "I'm being watched by the police," he finally blurted out.
Cindy threw up her hands. "Oh no! I don't want any part of this then. Forget it! Sorry Brody!" She started to usher Brody towards the door.
"Cindy wait, let me explain..."
Brody told her the whole bizarre story. What choice did he have? He didn't want the police getting the rest of the Cantor papers, at least not until he could read them. They were the only lead he had on Max and Brody was not convinced that Max was a bank robber. He wanted to finish reading the papers before handing them over to the police. He owed his friend that much.
The Cantor papers were a critical factor in his search for his friend and quite possibly to Max's welfare as well. Cindy had been his only real hope in protecting those papers from the vigilant eyes of the police. Max's very life could hinge on Cindy's willingness to help. An hour later the police showed up with a search warrant.
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Rochester, New York
"There!" Ellen pointed to a picture. "That's me and Pat when we were about four years old. She hasn't changed much, has she?"
Jimmy nodded, perplexed.
"And here... me and Pat at my ninth birthday party. She's upset because some kid, oh what was his name? George? Greg? Craig? That's it, Craig! Craighead the egghead!" she giggled, winking at Jimmy. He winked back - anything to see her smile again. Ellen continued. "Anyway, this kid Craig said she had a big, ugly nose. She was crying just before they took this picture. Can you tell?"
"Yes, she does look pretty upset." Jimmy was playing along so as not to upset Ellen again but this whole thing struck him as somehow... wrong.
Ellen showed Jimmy dozens of pictures of she and this girl Pat growing up together. The most recent pictures included Greg and Jimmy. "There we are, the four of us," she mused. "Remember last summer at Letchworth Park? We sure had a lot of fun didn't we?" Ellen gazed at the photographs smiling
.
"Yeah, we sure did," Jimmy agreed, studying the photographs as if Pat had just dropped down off of Pluto for a whirl around the block. Straight brown hair parted in the middle hung down to her waist. Wire-rimmed glasses perched haughtily on her humped nose emphasized her sour expression. Thins lips drawn permanently downward toward a receding chin completed the picture. Ellen interrupted his examination.
"I wasn't sure you were going to make it, Jimmy! You about had a heart attack when Pat leaned over that railing overlooking the gorge! You grabbed at her leg, diving like a baseball player sliding into first place, belly in the dirt. It was so funny!" Ellen laughed at the memory, clapping like a child. Jimmy just looked bewildered. "Pat always was the wild one, wasn't she?"
"Yeah," Jimmy agreed. "She's a wild one, alright."
According to Ellen's photographs, he had spent a lot of time around this girl Pat yet Jimmy had absolutely no recollection of it. He was still afraid to alarm Ellen so he kept nodding with a stupefied smile as Ellen took him down memory lane - a lane he couldn't remember ever having walked.
Jimmy kept trying to figure out why his memories didn't match Ellen's photographs. Maybe Ellen was okay and it was he, Jimmy, who was "going the way of Martha." After all, Ellen had proof of her claims. There were even pictures of Pat with her parents, Fred and Norma Phillips.
"That's it!" Jimmy's look of bewilderment was replaced by excitement. He grabbed Ellen's hand. "Pat's parents! These pictures! We could go and find her father and show him these pictures! It's proof, solid proof! He can't deny Pat and Norma now, can he?"
"Yeah, you're right!" Ellen jumped up, elated. She ran to the closet and grabbed her coat, scarf and gloves. "Come on, Jimmy! Let's go! I'll write down the address of the guy on East Avenue!" She slowed down long enough to rummage through her purse in search of a pen. Unsuccessful with her search she savagely tore the page out of the phone book.
Jimmy grabbed her arm. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we can't just go barging over there. Maybe we should call him first?"
"No! No more weird phone calls! I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going to find my friend. Are you with me?"
"Okay, I'm with you. Let's go," Jimmy sighed. Although he was anxious to solve the mystery of the pictures and learn why he didn't remember someone whom he apparently knew quite well, he was also afraid. It was eerie, this not remembering. He had a funny feeling in his gut and he didn't like it. This whole situation made him very uncomfortable and he wasn't quite ready to plunge in head first.
Jimmy fished for a delay tactic, something to slow Ellen down. "Maybe we should try these pictures out on Greg first? He's in them, too. I mean, maybe we should explore the possibilities between ourselves before we go knocking on some strange man's door, especially in that neighborhood!"
"He's not a strange man!" Ellen rebuked. "And we're just as welcome in that neighborhood as anybody else." Jimmy raised an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe not. Maybe we're not rich enough to warrant a red carpet greeting but that's not the point. The point is that Pat's father is there so that's where we're going. As for Greg, if you know Pat, Greg knows her too so we know how he'll react. No, I want to show these to her father. He's the one who denied she exists."
He'd done it now, Jimmy groaned inwardly. His lie was going to get him in a heap of trouble. He should've told Ellen up front that he didn't remember Pat or these pictures but what else could he have done? Ellen had been so close to going off the deep end when he first got there. It was better to let Ellen believe that someone was on her side especially if Pat's alleged father denied her even after seeing the pictures. These pictures had been Jimmy's brilliant idea and he was sorry he'd thought of it.
She grabbed Jimmy's hand, clutching the page from the phone book in her other hand. "Come on!" she urged. Like a dominant kid dragging a reluctant accomplice on an adventure, they went hand-in-hand to Jimmy's car.
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Utica, Illinois
An angry woman barged into Chief Hunsinger's office dragging an eight year old boy by the arm. The woman had an angular face and frizzy, greyish-blond hair, some of which was pulled back into a low bun. A wrinkled blue suit hung loosely on her thin frame. The boy had pasty white skin and dark, unkempt hair. He was frightened nearly to the point of tears.
Mud encrusted the knees of his pants and the elbow of his jacket was torn. Chief Hunsinger hid a smile. A baseball through a window, no doubt. His job was to put the fear of the law into little boys like this one - boys who forgot his words the moment a new adventure unfolded.
"Tell him! Tell the police officer!" the woman demanded.
"But Mom..."
"Tell him, Donny!"
The boy squeezed his eyes shut trying to stop the flow of tears. He was unsuccessful. Police Chief Hunsinger reached his arm toward the boy. "Come here, son," he prompted. He lifted the boy until he was sitting on the desk. He motioned for the mother to close the door. When she opened her mouth to speak he raised his hand to silence her. He turned to the boy. "Now, what's your name son?"
"Donald."
"Donald what?"
The boy hesitated for just a moment. "Duckley." The boy burst into tears. Chief Hunsinger looked askance at the woman. She nodded affirmatively. He raised the boy's chin until they were eye to eye.
"What do you prefer to be called? Donald? Don? Donny?"
"Don. I like Don the best," the boy sniffed.
"Don's a good, strong name. I've got a nephew named Don. He's the star quarterback on his high school football team."
"Really?"
"Yup! Really!"
Donny's tears faded and the hint of a smile took their place. "I wanna play baseball but Mom won't let me." His smile turned into a frown.
Chief Hunsinger raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And why do you suppose that is? You wouldn't be bustin' out windows with a baseball now, would you?"
"Uh uh! No way! I never broke anybody's window! I swear!"
"So how come you're here visiting me?"
Donny looked down at the floor.
"Tell him, Donny! Tell him right now or you'll be answering to your father tonight!" His mother's cross voice ricocheted around the small room like an angry bullet seeking a target.
Donny sighed, looking much older than his years. "They were picking on me, the other kids. They were flapping their arms up and down and calling me a chicken. I'm not a chicken!"
Chief Hunsinger smiled reassuringly. "No, I bet you're not! You look pretty tough to me! Let me see that arm..." he squeezed Donny's minuscule muscle in admiration. "Yup, just what I thought. A tough guy."
"Yeah," Donny smiled proudly. "I really showed them, too!"
"What did you show them?"
"I went into the haunted house all by myself! I even got proof! I found a cigarette lighter with the initials N.A.D on it."
"You're not talking about the old Starnes' farm are you?"
"Yeah, that's the one. They dared me, only when I came out they was all gone. They ran away. The ghost chased 'em away. They left me all alone with the ghost!" Donny's lower lip quivered.
"I've been to the Starnes' farm, Don," Chief Hunsinger offered, "and it's a pretty spooky place but there's no real ghosts there."
"There is too! I seen it!"
Mrs. Duckley could no longer contain herself. "There! You see? Little boys who lie are in for a big whoopin'. God says it's one of the ten worst sins, lying. The policeman might even throw you in jail for it and well he ought to!"
Chief Hunsinger glowered at the woman, effectively silencing her. "Why don't you go outside, Mrs. Duckley, and let me talk to the boy in private." It wasn't a question - it was a command. Mrs. Duckley left the room. "Okay now, Don. Tell me about this ghost."
"He was big! He was huge! Bigger even than you. He was all white with big black eyes and he didn't have any arms or legs. Just like a big, white blob. And he chased me! He almost caught me, too! He made me drop the lighter so now my friends won't b
elieve I went in there. My arm got stuck on a nail when I was trying to crawl back out the window and I could hear him right behind me. It was awful! He was gonna kill me, I just know it!" Donny wailed, tears spilling down his chubby red cheeks.
"Hey Don, it's okay," Chief Hunsinger said, handing the boy his own handkerchief. Donny wiped his face and blew his nose loudly, handing the handkerchief back. Chief Hunsinger grimaced inwardly taking it gingerly by one corner and laid it on the far corner of his desk. He was determined to help this kid, remembering all too clearly his own bullied youth. "Don't worry, Don, the ghost can't get you here. You're safe now. You know, ghosts can't leave their houses. He can't come after you. As long as you don't go back there, you're safe."
"Really?" Donny sniveled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "How do you know?"
"I'm the Chief of Police, Don. It's my job to know these things."
"He can't get me now?"
"No, he can't get you now. But I'll tell you who can get you now... your mother and father. Sounds to me like you're in for quite a whoopin'."
"Yeah! And my Dad uses a big old belt, too!"
"Well, I'll tell you what..." and Chief Hunsinger instructed Donny on how to get out of the whoopin' that awaited him later that night. He called Mrs. Duckley back into his office, sending Donny down the hall for a candy bar. "Mrs. Duckley, may I make a suggestion?"
"What?" she asked, somewhat suspiciously. Too many well-wishers had offered advice on how to rear Donny, her only son. The advice was not welcomed.
"Have you ever thought of enrolling Don in karate classes or something? I think it would do him a world of good."
"His name is Donny and that's the most ridiculous suggestion I've ever heard! Don't you think teaching him how to beat up on other kids would get him into even more trouble?"
"No, Mrs. Duckley, I don't believe it would."
She went on as though he hadn't spoken. "A boy can get hurt taking up a sport like that."
The Cantor Dimension Page 8
