AHMM, April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Otherwise he did everyday stories about burglars and loan sharks and missing persons. The big series on crack cocaine was simply his last hurrah."

  "So we have dead ends at home and abroad—that's what you're saying."

  "Yes. Well, not entirely. That is ... I've been thinking about a remark you made."

  "R. J. Carr, Inspirational Speaker."

  "Quiet, please. When we were at the condominium Tuesday morning you pointed out that pranksters or zealots would not have transported Jay Tommasin to Starved Rock to make whatever impression they were trying to make, since doing so was too difficult. They would simply have laid him out in the condominium courtyard."

  "We agreed later, though, that pranksters and zealots were out of the picture."

  "But the reasoning still holds. I have ... or rather, there's an objection to it."

  I sat up and looked at my husband, who surely saw the diffidence in my expression, although he only said, “Okay. First the reasoning, then the objection."

  "The reasoning goes thus: Council Overhang was the nearest safe venue to dispose of the body in a way that would misdirect the attention of the authorities, and therefore Jay Tommasin must have died not merely in LaSalle County, but quite close to the east end of the park. The objection is that the Illinois River is right there as well, and throwing the body into the water would have been far simpler and just as effective."

  R. J. stared at me blankly for several seconds before responding, “No. Not at all. Because the body would have drifted downstream to that lock and dam below Eagle Bluff, and the local police would have started their investigation by looking upstream to find out where it came from. So logically, I think—"

  "I think we need to ignore the problem of Jay Tommasin's disappearance from Naperville until further notice. You've just convinced me that, strange as it may sound, he died not merely east of the park, but somewhere in that narrow strip between the highway and the river, which, as I recall, had some rather struggling woods and grasslands and widely spaced houses, mostly plain but a few fancy. A body in the river would have brought unwanted attention their way—I see it now—but a body laid out ritualistically in an iconic site—"

  "Whoever ‘they’ are."

  "And whatever they're up to as well, true. Whoever and whatever, they're worth investigating."

  * * * *

  Just as I was nearing my fifth driveway along Route 71 I spied my husband's athletic form about a third of a mile ahead, striding easily along the shoulder in my direction in spite of the heat. I waved in an automatic gesture, but from that distance he wasn't able to make me out with his weakened vision. My being able to see him, however, meant that there were only three or four more residences between us to test out my hypothesis, and if we converged without a positive result, then the investigation truly would be at a dead end. Not knowing at all what we were looking for had so far proved to be remarkably unhelpful.

  The waves of shimmering heat rising from the blacktop were a visible inducement to make haste, but I paused at the driveway entrance all the same, adjusting my sun visor and toying with the camera that hung by a cord around my neck. The camera, the binoculars I carried in hand, and my general appearance in khaki shorts, shirt, and hiking boots were meant to tell my tale for me: I was doing a survey of waterfowl along the river and needed access to the shore.

  As for stories, the pair of rural mailboxes I suddenly noticed at the head of the drive told a different one. This packed gravel strip was more likely a shared lane leading back to two houses, both masked from view by woods and high shrubbery.

  Twenty strides put me well into those woods, making me invisible from the road and bringing moderate relief in the form of shade from a small plot of tall aromatic pines planted years past for a reason unknowable. I halted briefly to wipe the perspiration from my face, using a handkerchief from my third encumbrance, an equipment bag slung from my shoulder, before passing on to where the lane branched right and left. The right branch, in truth, was a nearly straight continuation, running almost to the riverbank where it curved away toward a prosperous looking Cape Cod style house with a trim lawn and several shade trees. The left branch, in contrast, took a diagonal turn to a locked wooden gate about head high with metal signs attached reading NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF DOG. Chain-link fencing spread at angles from the gate, extending parallel to the right-hand lane all the way to the river about a hundred yards ahead, and as I stood there wondering a frisson came over me so powerfully that in spite of the oppressive heat I felt a momentary chill.

  Ammonia. A small wafting breeze from off the river had carried away the scent of pine needles for an instant and brought me the briefest whiff of ammonia.

  I turned to look back, thinking of R. J., but decided to scout onward in case my nose had deceived me. Following the right-hand lane seemed the logical tactic, and so I advanced looking about me as idly as I could manage but paying close attention to everything on my left, meaning virtually nothing but fence bordered by high plantings. I was halfway to the river when a dog—large and ferocious from the sound—began barking, followed by a woman's cry of “Get him!"—followed in turn by sounds of the swift approach of the dog in my direction. Then came the sight of a huge, vicious-looking animal with enormous jaws and teeth, hurtling itself against the fence and hurtling again directly at me ten yards beyond but nearly frozen in terror. Gooseflesh came out on my neck and arms as my left hand reached for the flap of the equipment bag, beneath which lay the illegally concealed target pistol I wished never to use on a living creature.

  "Hey! No trespassing! Can't you read?"

  The shout came before I saw more than a hand reaching through shrubbery to grasp the dog's collar, after which the animal ceased to bark and snarl. Then a face, the face of a woman whose comeliness had faded prematurely. She sent the dog away with a harsh command before pushing close to the chain-link where I could see her frame, tall and strapping like a teenage boy's with feminine contours. She wore shorts and a shirt, and I made her out to be thirty-five, although her features said otherwise.

  "I—” My voice quavered with the uncertainty I felt. “The sign said no trespassing over there.” I nodded in her direction. “I—I'm on the Illinois River waterfowl survey. I have to access the river to make a count."

  She glared at me for a long moment before saying, “You just stay on that side, then, to do it. And don't go snooping over here.” Before I could agree she had disappeared from view. I heard her receding voice as she hailed someone to chain the dog, and in that moment my impulse was to run back to find R. J. as quickly as I could. Logic sent me forward, nevertheless, on legs that trembled at first. I made for the shore and made a sweep of the broad river through R. J.'s field glasses, noting egrets in great number, cormorants, a few. A single great blue heron. Masses of gulls. Before turning back I took pains to write nonsense in a notebook from the pocket of my shorts, then followed along the fence on my return, and all at once caught a glimpse through a break in the foliage of an outbuilding like an overlarge flat-roofed garage, plus a man standing by one of its doors smoking a cigarette. And then, stronger than before, came the sharp, sweetish smell of ammonia. I kept on walking, though slowly, using the notebook as a prop, studying it.

  "God bless you, young woman,” said a soft voice from behind that nearly caused my heart to leap from my breast. The identification of myself as young as much as the unctuous tone of the address made me reluctant to halt, but halt I did, and upon turning saw a not quite elderly man with a serenely unlined face and plentiful white hair. He stood with the fingers of one hand locked in the chain-link just at the break in the foliage I'd noticed a moment earlier.

  "Hello,” I said.

  "Come nearer, won't you please?"

  I did as requested with a forced smile on my face, and when only a few feet separated us he spoke again, this time fervidly, watching me all the while. “Beauty. Beauty is so often evil, young woman—be warned. For one Susanna there are cou
ntless Jezebels and Delilahs. In the New Testament beauty is scarcely mentioned, but Herodias and Salome prove my rule."

  When he then held up a pocket Testament I felt chilled even more, and my mind raced, wondering how to respond. “But Mary?” I said finally, forcing myself to return the old man's fierce gaze.

  He faltered, perhaps not expecting a reply. “Mary? No, no mention is made, I think. With Mary her purity makes beauty, purity and wisdom. For virgins may be wise, but they may also be foolish! Consider the empty lamps.” He examined me with a dubious regard. “Which of the virgins are you, I wonder? Wise? Or foolish?"

  Again my mind raced. “I—my wish is to be a wise Virginia,” I said at last, “since Virginia is my name. Are you wise?"

  He waved the question aside and appeared to ponder. “Virginia, you say?” He looked up at the sky and then back. “Signs are difficult. Very difficult. Will you ... take this book and read it?” He held out the Testament. “I have marked many passages, young woman, which must be read first! Promise to read them first!"

  Just then a cry came of “Dad! You get back here!"

  Without looking behind he raised the book high and dropped it over the fence. “Hurry. She's coming!” I snatched it up not knowing quite why and retreated to the gravel drive where I slipped it into the equipment bag.

  "Dad! You old fool!” Again I saw the woman's hand first. It clutched her father's arm and drew him back.

  "God bless you young woman,” he cried out, “and read your Bible."

  The old man was replaced at the opening by the woman, who glared at me again.

  "I'm going now,” I said, putting a bold face on. “You're father's quite interesting."

  "Him? He's gone cracked.” She took me in more closely. “Through counting?"

  "Yes, along here. I've got another two miles to cover.” I gestured. “Good-bye."

  R. J. and I were back at the car at the Council Overhang parking lot before I felt brave enough to examine the old man's Testament, in part because it reintroduced the very element of fanaticism to the case that we had decided earlier was a sham. Taken together with the ammonia odor I had smelled, nevertheless, it seemed to confirm the immediate locale of Jay Tommasin's demise.

  The marked passages, when we finally looked at them, did far more.

  * * * *

  Larry Duvall

  When the call came I was leaving for home by way of a steak dinner at Tad's, but “It's R. J. Carr” forced a U-turn, and I'm still a steak dinner behind twelve years later. On a hunch I picked up in my office with the door closed and said, “It better be hot and juicy."

  "Yeah, well, let's hope you can beat the Trib into print at least. It'll be public, I'd say, in a couple of hours."

  I glanced at the clock: seven forty. “Start talking, then. I'll be recording.” He talked for half an hour or more from a phone booth in Starved Rock Lodge, a couple of times handing the receiver over to Ginny, his wife, who not only looks better but sounds better over the phone. When we hung up I was feeling shaky but also manic. Out of what he'd told me I could see three stories, and we had exclusives on two for sure and maybe the third, depending on how quick the competition was on the uptake. I phoned a few people in the building first, since commandeering the front page wasn't part of my job description, and then I quietly invited two reporters in from the newsroom, with the result that at about ten o'clock we went to press for the early morning edition and ate Billy Goat cheeseburgers while monitoring four TV channels with our fingers crossed.

  My only problem? Ginny Carr had to be kept out of the stories or yours truly would have been beaten to a pulp. Believe it.

  That was ‘94, when we were all naive and didn't know it, of course, but here in the new millennium the only surprise is how naive we were, at least about the “passages” cited in the old man's scripture. They weren't actual passages or texts, you see, just a bunch of underlined letters. And what hallowed exhortation did they spell out?

  HELP METHAMPHETAMINE LAB.

  Here's an edited version of our conversation that night to fill in the rest:

  "It's complicated and bizarre,” R. J. began, “so—"

  "Bizarre sells papers."

  "—it might be best to tell you what happened to Tommasin and then how we tracked it. Ready?"

  "The tape's running"

  "Okay—Journalism 101. On the afternoon of May 3, 1994, Jay Tom-masin took a cab from his condo in Lombard and arrived in downtown Naperville at around five, where he killed a couple of hours watching a film before he walked to a restaurant called the Haven Grill, which he was thinking of reviewing for the Angle Press papers."

  "But first he stepped into a bar—"

  "Right. He stepped into the Haven Grill bar, ordered a drink, looked around, and spotted a drug deal taking place. What he didn't spot was the fact that the dealer, who worked at the restaurant as a waiter, recognized him from old times as the crime beat reporter who'd dogged the drug trade back in the eighties. At an opportune moment, the waiter and maitre ‘d forced Tommasin at gunpoint into a small banquet room where they bound and gagged him and took away his shoes as an additional precaution. Also his identification. This is all relevant later on."

  "Great. The tape's still running."

  "At around eleven thirty Tommasin was hustled out the back of the restaurant and into a car—"

  "Without his shoes."

  "Right again. The car followed a route he didn't recognize, but eventually they hit I-80 westbound, exited at Ottawa, crossed the river and went west on Route 71 a few miles, and pulled into a drive out in the country that led back to a ramshackle old house with a large outbuilding. His restaurant captors handed him over to three men and a woman, and two of the men tied him to a chair in the outbuilding and left him till morning.

  "The next day he was treated decently—fed, allowed to wash, and allowed to sit and talk with another man who was also a kind of captive, an elderly religious fellow named Martin Knox, the father of the woman who seemed to be the brains of the group. I'll give you more on Knox later. He's the hero of the story in a way, and a lot of what I've been telling you comes from him."

  "Fine. So back to Jay."

  "Uh-huh. Jay wasn't in the best of shape to begin with, of course, and he'd gotten no sleep to speak of, and in spite of the fact that his new captors told him he wasn't in danger, he probably feared for his life. Knox described him as talkative and charming, but also overexcited and flushed in the face. At around nine o'clock that night, at any rate, he suddenly cried out, ‘Help—I need a doctor,’ and fell over dead from a heart attack."

  "Not exactly what his captors expected. I'm beginning to see—"

  "The tape's still running, remember? If they hadn't known what to do with him before, they really didn't know what to do now. Finally they devised a plan to get rid of his body in a way that would divert attention from themselves and muddy up the trail leading back to the Haven Grill. About a mile up the road was the parking lot nearest Council Overhang. In the dead of night they drove there, four strong with Martin Knox as the unwilling fifth to light the way, and carried Tommasin's body through the woods and up the bluff to the overhang, where they laid him out with candles lit all around and spring wildflowers strewn across his chest. They assumed he would be found and identified the next day, since the spot was a popular hiking destination. What they didn't realize somehow was that his original captors had hung on to his ID wallet as well as his shoes. To complicate things more, Martin Knox, the last to leave, balked at the “paganness” of the wildflowers and put his pocket New Testament in Jay's hands in their place. And that's what happened to Jay Tommasin."

  "But there's more. I smell drugs."

  "Smell's the right word. On Tuesday Ginny and I did the rounds from Jay's condo, where we inspected his shoes, to Council Overhang, where we decided the newspaper version stank, to the hospital in Ottawa, where the medical examiner told us a thing or two, including a strange fact that had been suppressed.
Tommasin's face and nasal passages showed signs of slight burning and the burning came from exposure to ammonia. It seems anhydrous ammonia is as common as seed for planting out in corn country in the spring—it's used to nitrogenize the fields—so we didn't give the fact the same weight the local sheriff had. It didn't lead in the right direction."

  "Wait a minute. I remember something about—"

  "Uh-huh. What we didn't know was that the stuff is essential to the production of methamphetamine."

  "Bingo! So how did you track it down?"

  * * * *

  For the next ten minutes I heard all about Dumpster Diver Tommy and his Magic Ventilator Shoes, R. J. at the Haven Grill, and Ginny's reasoning about why Jay's body was hauled up to Council Overhang. By the woman herself I was told of the vicious guard dog, the more vicious female who owned it, the female's religious nut old dad, and the giveaway whiffs of ammonia, not to mention a message found in the New Testament that I don't recall from those long, sleep-inducing boyhood Saturday mornings at confirmation class.

  Then the phone went back to R. J. and I got the nuts and bolts of the sheriff's six P.M. raid on the meth lab, R. J. along as observer—names, descriptions, the gist of a lengthy interview with Martin Knox, the crazy fact that not only Knox but his two young grandchildren were held virtual prisoner by the old man's daughter and son-in-law. A last fact: Jay's face had suffered the burns when he was left overnight in the outbuilding near a leaky anhydrous ammonia tank.

  What else? At ten o'clock that evening—or so R. J. gathered—Dupage County law enforcement agents were going to execute search warrants at the Haven Grill.

  So there were my three stories. What happened to Jay; how R. J. and his anonymous “operative” found it out—byline R. J. Carr; and how two drug busts resulted.

  * * * *