Down the Rabbit Hole

by Peter Abrahams

  “Nigel!” He pressed his head against her leg, almost knocking her down, slobbering over her clothes, moronic, loyal. What was she supposed to do with him? Through the plate-glass window, an old man watched. “You’ve got to be good, Nigel,” Ingrid said. “Look at me. Your very best.” She opened the door and went in, Nigel beside her, looking right at her as instructed, head at a strange angle and tail wagging violently.

  There were lots of smells inside the Echo office—ink, wax, dust, mold. The walls were covered floor to ceiling by shelves of yellowed newspapers. Behind a low wooden railing stood five desks, all empty but the middle one, where the old man was now sitting. He wore a green eyeshade and a short-sleeved white shirt with a brown necktie and yellow sweater vest.

  “Mr. Samuels?” Ingrid said.

  “That’s right,” said the old man. He had a high, scratchy voice.

  If there’s an Echo Falls historian, it’s Mr. Samuels. “Hi. I’m—”

  “That your dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a leash law in this town.”

  “I know. See, what—”

  “The Echo was instrumental in getting that law passed,” said Mr. Samuels. “I wrote seventeen editorials.”

  “It’s a good law,” Ingrid said.

  “But you’re not obeying it,” said Mr. Samuels.

  For God’s sake: She couldn’t even get started. “The problem is the dogs didn’t vote,” Ingrid said. “So it’s a constant struggle.”

  Mr. Samuels sat back in his chair. She saw how small he was, a tiny guy with a long nose, big ears, and alert little eyes, probably hardwired to be a reporter. “What did you say?” he said.

  “It’s a struggle.”

  “No. Before that.”

  “About the dogs not voting?”

  “Yes. Say it again.” He took out a notebook.

  “The problem is the dogs didn’t vote,” Ingrid said.

  He wrote it down. “And your name?”

  “You’re planning to put this in the paper?”

  “Be a nice kicker at the end of the Heard on Main Street column,” said Mr. Samuels. “The award-winning Heard on Main Street column,” he added. “Name, please?”

  “Ingrid.”

  He wrote it down. “Last name?”

  Sherlock Holmes never got into situations like this, so out of control. Why was that? On the other hand, who would know? No one read the stupid Echo, except her, of course; she was funny that way.

  “Levin-Hill,” Ingrid said.

  “That hyphenated?” said Mr. Samuels.

  “Yes.”

  He licked the tip of the pencil, paused. “Any relation to Aylmer Hill?” he said.

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Good.”

  “Still raising hell out there?”

  “I don’t think so.” Was Grampy a hell-raiser?

  “Wouldn’t mind one of those free-range chickens of his,” said Mr. Samuels. “Pass that along next time you see him.”

  “There are no more chickens,” Ingrid said. “No animals at all.” She glanced down at Nigel. He was sprawled on the floor, fast asleep, drool pooling under his jaw.

  “No more animals, huh?” said Mr. Samuels. “Tell me something, off the record if you want—is he ever going to sell that place?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope not. He’s a pigheaded old mule, but just this once it might do the town some good. The Ferrands want that land so bad they can taste it.”

  “Why?” said Ingrid, trying to picture a pigheaded mule.

  “Why?” said Mr. Samuels. “So they can develop it, of course, make more money.”

  “What would they put there?”

  “You name it—condos, mall, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, whatever comes along. But something’s bound to come along. Look what’s happening to the whole valley, going to ruination acre by God’s little acre.”

  There were pink spots on Mr. Samuels’s cheeks now, and his breath whistled in his throat.

  “Is it true,” Ingrid said, “that the Ferrands got rich by marrying the Prescotts?”

  “Where’d you come across a fact like that?” said Mr. Samuels.

  “So it’s true?”

  “More or less,” said Mr. Samuels.

  “What happened to the Prescotts, anyway?”

  “The last one, Philip—” Mr. Samuels began, but Ingrid interrupted.

  “How did they even get to where there was just a last one?”

  Mr. Samuels did that sitting back in the chair thing again, as though getting pushed by something invisible. “You active on the student paper?” he said.

  “Student paper?”

  “Newspaper,” said Mr. Samuels. “At your school.”

  “We don’t have one.”

  “No student paper? What school?”

  “Ferrand Middle.”

  Mr. Samuels pounded his fist on the desk, much harder than she’d have thought him capable of, hard enough to raise a puff cloud of dust. “Damn prop three,” he said.

  “What’s prop three?”

  “Prop three? You don’t know prop three? That’s how all the selfish empty nesters capped property taxes in Echo Falls, why the school board’s starving for cash, why there’s no pool at Echo High, no gifted program, and now no paper at Ferrand Middle. It’s an absolute disgrace.” He scribbled furiously in his notebook. After a minute or two he looked up, blinked at her, as though he’d forgotten where they were in the conversation and who she was exactly, which suited her just fine.

  “What happened to Philip Prescott’s parents?” Ingrid said.

  Mr. Samuels blinked again. “Perished in a boating accident.”

  “Where?”

  “They went over the falls in a canoe.”

  “Our falls?”

  Mr. Samuels nodded. “This was before the park rangers strung the boom across.”

  “So Philip was an orphan after that, all alone?”

  “I suppose so, but he was grown up, in graduate school at the time.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far—down in New Haven.”

  One of those top schools of Dad’s was in New Haven. “At Yale?” Ingrid said.

  Mr. Samuels nodded. “The School of Drama. Philip Prescott loved the theater.”

  “Did he start the Prescott Players?”

  “No. That goes way back. But he returned from Yale and took it over. Plus the Hall and all the Prescott assets, of course.”

  “What assets?”

  “Still considerable, at that stage of the game,” said Mr. Samuels. “But it took Philip only a few years to squander most of it.”

  “How?”

  “Time-honored method,” said Mr. Samuels. “Philip loved the theater, as I said, but didn’t really have a lot of talent for it. What he had was a lot of money, so he started hiring professional actors to perform at Prescott Hall, and before you knew it he was backing Broadway plays. Those Manhattan sharpies fleeced him PDQ.”

  “Is that why he took off for Alaska?” Ingrid said.

  “Might have been part of it,” said Mr. Samuels. “He wrote a letter to The Echo, kind of famous at the time, claiming it was about finding himself and all that hooey.”

  “Why didn’t he take Kate Kovac with him?”

  “Good question,” said Mr. Samuels. “One I haven’t actually considered be—” He stopped himself, his gaze narrowing on her. “You seem rather well informed on all this. I don’t recall if you’ve explained what you’re doing here.”

  “School report,” Ingrid said.

  “On what?”

  “Pretty much anything.”

  “Figures.”

  “I’m doing ‘The Life and Death of Kate Kovac.’”

  “Well,” said Mr. Samuels. “Well, well, well. And what did your teacher say about that?”

  “You know teachers,” Ingrid said.

  “Not anymore,” said Mr. Samuels.
“The kind of teachers I knew are long—”

  At that moment, Nigel farted, ridiculously loud, as though he had an amplifier inside him. She glanced down at him. “Nigel!” He was still totally conked out, his plump chest rising and falling peacefully. Ingrid felt herself blushing like she was the culprit. She was surprised to see that Mr. Samuels looked embarrassed too. That was kind of nice.

  He cleared his throat. “So you’ve come for information on Katie Kovac.”

  “Yes.”

  He reached for a folder. “Your timing couldn’t be better. It just so happens I’m preparing her obituary. Know your way around a copy machine?”

  “Yes,” said Ingrid.

  “Then you can make copies of everything in here for yourself.” He pointed to a copier in the corner.

  Ingrid opened the little railing door and approached his desk. “Thanks, Mr. Samuels.”

  He handed her the folder. “She seems to have begun on a promising note. Philip Prescott met her at the drama school. Evidently she was an early experimenter with performance art.”

  “What’s that?” said Ingrid.

  “Hooey,” said Mr. Samuels.

  Ingrid took the folder over to the copier. There were only four clippings inside, all small and yellowed, three of them from old issues of The Echo, the fourth from the New Haven Register. The headline on the fourth clipping read BUTISITART? The accompanying photograph showed a pretty young woman standing beside—what was this?—a hanged man made of balled-up and twisted audiotape. Just like—oh my God.

  Ingrid scanned the article, faster and faster as she went along:

  Katherine Kovac, first-year student…exhibit entitled “for the record”…audiotapes of what she calls “confessions” find “appropriate shapes”…at the same time the confessions are played in the gallery…sound distorted…“like all inner thoughts in the harshness of the outside world.”

  “Hey!” said Mr. Samuels. “Where are you rushing off to?” Ingrid, clutching the copies with one hand, returning the originals with the other, heading toward the door, barely heard.

  “Don’t forget your dog.”

  She heard that. Alarm of that magnitude was hard to miss.

  “Nigel!” He opened one eye, unmotivated, uninterested, unaware. A nonvoter, and with good reason.

  eighteen

  THAT’S WHAT YOU CALL doing your best?” Ingrid said.

  Nigel, trotting along beside her, gave no sign that he’d heard.

  How did this go, exactly? She tried to relate Main Street to the Flats in the picture of the town that was taking shape in her mind. She was concentrating so hard, she barely noticed Coach Ringer pop out of a deli two doors ahead, brown bag in hand. Ingrid almost passed him, probably would have if she hadn’t caught that hard-to-miss slogan on the back of his Towne Hardware jacket: SCREWS FOR YOUSE SINCE 1937. She hit the brakes, her Univega squealing to a stop. But not too loud: Coach Ringer kept going without a pause.

  So did Nigel. Ingrid watched helplessly as he followed at Coach Ringer’s heels, tail wagging, bonehead determined and why not say it?—yes—dogged. They crossed Bridge Street. Towne Hardware stood on the corner. Coach Ringer, still unaware of Nigel, went in. The door closed in Nigel’s face. He stood outside, one forepaw raised in that characteristic way of his, a parody of a smart, pointing dog.

  Ingrid rode across the street. “Nigel!” she called to him in a stage whisper. His head swiveled around in that strange slow way he had; poised on three feet, he gazed at her without recognition.

  “You moron,” she said, pretty loud.

  He lowered that fourth paw and trotted over.

  Left on Bridge, then right on Hill, a long, gentle descent with train tracks at the bottom. The next street should be—

  And it was. Packer. A minute or two later, Ingrid pulled up outside 337, Nigel panting beside her. She leaned her bike against a telephone pole.

  Trash barrels lined the street. Garbage day. There was only one barrel outside 337, aluminum, with empty liquor bottles on top. The house itself was quiet and—

  Oops. She no longer had the key, so cleverly put back in Mom’s pocket, or so she’d thought at the time. A little late for realizing that now. Ingrid was turning over several plans for getting into 337, none too promising, when the garbage truck rumbled up. The guy hanging on at the back, who wore a pirate-style bandanna, jumped off, hoisted the trash can, and dumped its contents in the mouth of the truck. The bottles and all kinds of junk went crashing in, including—

  “Hey!” Ingrid said.

  The man in the bandanna turned to her. Now she had a better view. Lying on top of all the trash from 337 was a big clump of audiotape, no longer in the shape of a hanged man, now just a basketball-size tangle.

  “That’s a mistake,” Ingrid said.

  “Huh?” said the man in the bandanna. He banged on the truck body. Some machine inside started up. A big metal arm began to move, squashing up all the trash.

  “No,” Ingrid said, rushing past the man in the bandanna, reaching in, inches ahead of that metal arm, and grabbing the audiotape.

  “What the hell?” said man in the bandanna.

  “This wasn’t supposed to go,” Ingrid said.

  “Coulda got your stupid arm caught in there.” The man’s eyes went to the tape and his face scrunched up in a combination of puzzlement and anger. A question was forming on his lips when a voice called from the front of the truck.

  “What’s the holdup?”

  The man in the bandanna said a word he shouldn’t have in front of her and jumped up onto his narrow platform. The truck moved on.

  Ingrid picked up an empty plastic shopping bag, left behind in the gutter, and got the squiggly mass of tape inside, trying not to mush it up any more. Then, the bag hanging from one handlebar, she headed for home, Nigel beside her, his pace brisk at first but falling off fast. They got about a block past Benito’s Pizzeria, maybe a third of the way home by Ingrid’s calculations, when a passing car slowed down, began driving along beside her, just a few feet away.

  Ingrid glanced at the car. A white car with big writing on the side: ECHO FALLS POLICE: TO PROTECT AND SERVE. What was this? The driver was motioning for her to pull over. Ingrid pulled over, straddled the bike. The cruiser stopped in front of her. The driver got out. A big guy with lots of decorations on his uniform: Chief Strade.

  “Any idea why I stopped you, young lady?” he said. And then, coming closer: “Ingrid?”

  She knew damn well why he’d stopped her. He’d figured it out, understood everything, the whole twisted chain of events, and now she was in big, big trouble. Trial by jury.

  “Sorry, Mr. Strade,” Ingrid said.

  He glanced at Nigel, back to her. “You’re a smart girl,” he said. “I’m surprised.”

  She hung her head. Tears were on the way. In seconds she’d be blithering, her mixed-up story flooding out.

  “Our helmet law is strict for very good reasons,” said the chief.

  Helmet law? Ingrid actually reached up and touched the top of her head, maybe the dumbest thing she’d ever done, like a circus clown. “Oops,” she said, the tide of tears ebbing fast. “I left it in the garage.”

  “Won’t do you much good there, will it?”

  She gave the right answer.

  He nodded. Maybe this would turn out all right. The very moment she had that thought, Nigel got the notion to raise up all the hair on his neck and growl at Chief Strade. The chief looked at Nigel with distaste and said, “Isn’t this a school day?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ingrid. “I’m actually working on a project.”

  The chief opened the car door. “Hop in,” he said. “You can tell me all about it on the way back.”

  “On the way back where?” Ingrid said.

  “To school,” said the chief. He popped the trunk and laid the bike inside, the shopping bag still on the handlebar. “Can’t let you ride without a helmet.”

  “What about Nigel?”

&n
bsp; “They let you take him to school?”

  “He…um,” said Ingrid. “Waits outside.”

  “I suppose he can ride in back,” the chief said.

  “In the caged part?” said Ingrid. “Where the prisoners go?”

  The chief opened the back door. Nigel climbed in without being asked, almost jumped in, really, except he was too fat for jumping. A model prisoner.

  Dad drove with one hand on the wheel, sometimes just a finger. Chief Strade drove like Mom, both hands on the wheel in the proper ten minutes to two position, the difference being the size of the chief’s hands, almost touching at the top.

  “What’s the project?” he said.

  Yikes. “Oh,” Ingrid said, “nothing worth mentioning.” A handy phrase she’d heard recently. From whom?

  “Try me,” said the chief. “It’s been a boring day so far.”

  “Mine’s about…littering on the bike path,” Ingrid said; the best she could come up with. “Not very interesting, like I—”

  “You’re pretty far from the bike path,” said the chief.

  This was getting so hard. “Took a little pizza break,” Ingrid said.

  “Benito’s?” said the chief.

  Ingrid nodded.

  “Best pizza in town,” he said. “Of course Joe prefers Domino’s. You know Joe.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he working on a project too?” said the chief.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He didn’t mention it,” the chief said. “Not much of a talker, in any case. He did tell me you’re quite the soccer player.”

  “Oh?”

  He turned onto River. The driver ahead checked his rearview mirror, slowed down right away, also seemed to sit up straighter, as though the chief could ticket for bad posture. This would have been fun, except for how nervous Ingrid was feeling, that suffocating tightness in her chest.

  “Which reminds me,” said the chief. “Did you ever see Kate Kovac at one of your soccer games?”

  “Kate Kovac?” said Ingrid. “No.”

  Chief Strade didn’t say anything for a while, maybe only a minute or two but it seemed much longer. Ingrid felt a weight pressing in the pit of her stomach, and nervousness changed to dread.