20th Century Un-limited

by Felice Picano

  DEPOSITION

  Mrs. Beverly Freneau, 11 Lakeview Ave. Fulton’s Pt., WI

  I do swear it… Actually, I was born here in Portage County, over at the hospital in Monroe, and I grew up here in Fulton’s Point and went to school here, graduated high school and even dated Joe Weyerhauser before I met my husband Jake and we moved to Madison, where he was finishing up at the University there. Our son, Josh, was born in Madison. And I got work in the Post Office in Madison while my husband did his internship and residence there, since we needed money to live on, which was how it was that I managed to get work in the P.O. back here after Jake died and I returned here. Janet Martin was retiring. That was about two years ago that I came back. Hodgkins lymphoma it was. Went through Jake in five months. One day he was exhausted, next day he had this horrible diagnosis. It seemed like there was nothing inside Jake at all to stop it… No, I’m okay. Just every once in a while I naturally think about how…you know, how unfair it all is.

  I met Neal Bartram I suppose the first time the P.O. was open after Memorial Day when he came in for his mail and for any mail going to Ingoldsby. I could see the old ladies were frowning and scandalized and the younger girls tittering and excited just because he’d taken his shirt off and had strung it through the belt loops of his shorts. Neal had been on the swim team as an undergraduate and he still swam and kept in shape, so clearly he was the best thing to hit Fulton’s Point in years according to some women. Tonia Noonan at the library for one. She was completely ga-ga. But me, I’ve been married and saw naked men, so I guess I wasn’t either so easily scandalized nor so excited either.

  Over the next few weeks Neal and me got to see each other more often, either at Joe’s lunch counter or at the P.O. when he came in, and we chatted if there was no one else waiting. Even sometimes at the library, and my opinion of him changed a lot. For one thing, the attention he paid to his body, which could be seen as superficial and just vanity. Turns out that when he was twelve he had one lung collapse and as he was recuperating, the surgeon who’d helped him survive told Neal that if he exercised and kept his abdomen and torso hard and rigid enough, that it would keep him alive should he ever have a lung collapse again. Also the swimming helped build up his lungs.

  Despite the way Neal dressed, which I’d characterize as Big City college imitation Hip-Hop, Neal Bartram was a serious young man, more serious than any I’d ever met, and that included my husband Jake. Neal was intelligent, thoughtful, and even philosophical. And in point of fact, it was Joe himself who threw Neal and me together to go see some older foreign movies playing once a week at the multiplex on Rte. 18 headed toward Junction City. We’d have dinner after at Wen Young’s place there and talk about the movies and about, you know, all sorts of things.

  Neal didn’t fit into the town very well, and he felt he didn’t fit into our time and place very well either. He was always talking about how much better this country had been thirty, forty, fifty years ago, and how much better he thought he’d fit into that time, that America. He did seem very discontented, even though there was no outward reason for that. He expected to be done writing his doctoral thesis by the end of summer and he was pretty certain he’d do well defending it, that would be around Thanksgiving, and that he’d receive his Ph.D. by Christmas. So no worries there. He’d begun looking into teaching positions at some Wisconsin and Minnesota universities that were on track to lead to tenure and he’d gotten some solid offers already. Even so, he wasn’t completely happy. I always felt he was miles away.

  I felt that more and more as the summer went on. He began to become interested, even a little obsessed about Ingoldsby. Every once in a while he’d begin asking me odd questions about the place I couldn’t answer. That I don’t think anyone could answer who’s alive today.

  I know other people have been in here giving depositions, including Ashley and Amanda, and I’m sure they told you their suspicions about Neal and myself having an affair. It’s true. We did have an affair. It was my doing entirely, and I think Neal was pretty surprised by how aggressive I was at first, but after all he was a healthy twenty-four-year-old man and I don’t believe I’m so terrible to look at.

  The terrible thing is, I thought it would bring us closer, and it ended up doing just the opposite. Neither one of us wanted it to be public knowledge. Me because Josh would be starting kindergarten soon, and also because people in town here had always assumed that now that I was back in Fulton’s Point that Joe Weyerhauser and I would take up again. You know, high school sweethearts and all that bunk. And Neal, well Neal because that’s the way he was, very considerate of others, and also very private about himself.

  So once we started sleeping together we no longer saw each other during the day except when he came into the P.O. for his mail, or if we happened to run into each other at the food mart or pharmacy or video store, and we cut these meetings short. We stopped going to the movies or Chinese restaurant. It’s really all my fault. You know how word gets around small towns. Neither of us wanted my reputation hung out to dry.

  In a sense I believe I failed Neal exactly when he needed me most. I knew from the way he’d begun asking me questions about Ingoldsby that something had started to happen between him and the house. I don’t know how else to put it. It wasn’t as though it were haunted. Not exactly. But you know, growing up here in town, I naturally heard all kinds of things about the place, true and mostly false, and it did have a weird reputation. When I was a teen, guys would dare each other to stay there overnight and stuff like that.

  Not one of the guys I grew up with ever brought up the name of Ingoldsby without meaning to cause a shudder. And it always did. Except not for Neal. He treated it as a special place, but never with any sense of fear or revulsion or anything like that. Incomprehension at times, but also an abiding curiosity to find out more about the place and the people who’d lived there. Especially during the past few weeks he was dropping hints just before we’d fall asleep or just as he had to leave in the morning before Josh woke up, and I got the impression that Neal was being drawn more deeply into the house somehow, into its past and its secrets, and that he wasn’t in any way unhappy by that. Only he wanted to understand it better.

  So it’s ironic that just when we got physically closer to each other, we drifted apart personally, me and Neal. Of course, from the beginning I knew I’d never be able to hold him. That was a foregone conclusion from the very first time we met. You see, I handed him an official letter of some sort from the State Teaching Board, certifying him, I suppose it was, and it had his full name on it, Neal Percival Bartram… You don’t get it? Percival was the name of one of the Knights of the Round Table. He was the noblest and purest Knight of King Arthur and he went out in search of the Holy Grail. The composer Wagner called him Parsifal and wrote an opera about him. And Parsifal, or Percival? He alone found the Holy Grail.

  In some strange way I believe that Neal found his own Holy Grail and that it has something to do with him vanishing into Ingoldsby. You see, Chief, I believe that although we can’t see him, that Neal is in Ingoldsby somewhere…somehow. That’s something my so-called woman’s intuition tells me for certain. That he hasn’t fallen into harm of any sort, but that he’s in a place we cannot ever find him any longer. And that he’s content somehow. I don’t know where exactly and I don’t know how. And I guess I don’t know how to search the right way to actually find him.

  Or maybe that’s what I want to believe because he’s gone and I’m alone without the loveliest young man I ever met and I’m just saying any old crap.

  WITNESSED: A. Estes-TRANSCRIBED: A. Nichols, 9/4/00

  * * *

  7.

  PORTAGE COUNTY, WI

  Office of the County Sheriff

  172 Elm Street

  Portage, WI 53901

  RE: Missing Person: Neal P. Bartram

  October 1, 2000

  Report on Missing Person: Neal P. Bartram

  Pursuant to the complaint/report
filed September 1, 2000, by A.J. Torrington of the Ingals Trust in Chicago, received by Officer Jeremy Schaeffer, investigated by the same on September 2, 2000; with a follow-up investigation by Chief Abner Estes of the Fulton’s Point Police Department, and following no sign of apparent foul play nor of the M/P.

  Action Taken: September 4, 2000, Chief Estes requested this office to utilize a large number of personnel to conduct a full sweep of the property surrounding the main houses and garage at Ingoldsby. To this end, County Sheriff Griffith A. Angeles did call on six experienced men in addition to the four working for this office, deputized them for the period of the search, repeated instructions as to what we’d be looking for, and we drove in four vehicles to the estate to begin a full, clean sweep of the entire fifteen and a half acres. This lasted 11 a.m. of September 4th to 7 p.m.–nightfall; 11 a.m. through 4 p.m. of September 5th, 2000.

  Results: Neither M/P Neal P. Bartram nor any of his personal belongings or clothing were found on the property except where he had left them inside the estate’s gate-house caretaker’s cottage. We did find sneaker prints closely marked around the house at various locations, mostly windows, terrace stairs, and doors, that matched the pattern of M/P’s shoes. But no other such prints. No signs of struggle or violence. Nothing out of the ordinary at all on the property.

  Sheriff and his team then entered the garages and main house and conducted a thorough search of the interior until 7 p.m. Again we found no signs of the M/P or any of his personal belongings.

  Conclusion: The disappearance of Neal P. Bartram is not connected in any material way to the Ingoldsby Estate. Any further investigation must be focused outside the estate and its grounds.

  Date Signature

  Hey Ab -- this conclusion should

  make you and the Trust happy.

  It’s off to the D.A.’s

  office now — Griff

  * * *

  8.

  PORTAGE COUNTY, WI

  FULTON’S POINT POLICE

  39000 Rte. 18

  FULTON’S Pt., WI 53908

  TO: Madeline Eiche, Esq.

  STATE of WISCONSIN, District Attorney’s Office

  Government Center, Building C

  Madison, WI

  October 13th, 2000

  Report on Missing Person: Neal P. Bartram prepared by Chief Abner Estes with additional reports (enclosed) by Portage County Sheriff Griffin A. Angeles

  Dear Ms. Eiche,

  Enclosed find all generated reports on the Missing Person. Although both this office and that of Sheriff Angeles will continue to pursue all and any new leads as they may happen to develop, at the moment there are no further possible procedures or lines of investigation to follow.

  We are however requesting that your office put this case at the head of the line in your national hotline so that should any leads develop out of state we can receive information immediately.

  Upon your validated, dated, signed return of a copy of this report, this office will forward all of the M/P’s property left behind to the Ingals Trust, which shall handle it thereafter.

  Regretfully,

  Abner Estes, Chief

  cc: G.A.A / A.J.T. records

  WISCONSIN STATE POLICE

  Cold Case Department

  Linklatter Mall, Bldg. E

  Eau Claire, WI 54701

  Detective-Sergeant Annabella Conklin

  TO: Wayne G. King, Asst. D.A.

  STATE of WISCONSIN, District Attorney’s Office

  Government Center, Building C

  Madison, WI 53711

  May 17, 2001

  Dear District Attorney King,

  In re. your letter to this office of May 13th, 2001: I received all of your materials except the journal noted in the newspaper reports and allegedly written by the M/P Neal Bartram, and while they tell a disturbing story indeed, we can’t really proceed without that journal. In order for this office to work toward settling what appears to be so unsettled, please send a complete facsimile, or better yet the original of the journal to this office a.s.a.p.

  Also note that this office rapidly accessed the National Police Network System and has already received a “strike” on the name of the M/P Neal P. Bartram since his disappearance. It appears to be in some way connected to a bank ATM card of the M/P found in the possession of another person detained and then apparently let go. Will get back to you with more when that data is processed here.

  Also note that in light of the extreme mystery involved re: the M/P, this office has taken what might be seen as an correspondingly extreme action in requesting the M/P’s name from all and any official, state, interstate, and national records going back in time to the date of the Time Capsule. I don’t expect anything but…just checking. This may all take some months.

  WISCONSIN STATE POLICE

  Cold Case Department

  Linklatter Mall, Bldg. E

  Eau Claire, WI 54701

  Detective-Sergeant Annabella Conklin

  TO: Wayne G. King, Asst. D.A.

  STATE of WISCONSIN, District Attorney’s Office

  Government Center, Building C

  Madison, WI 53711

  May 22, 2001

  Dear Mr. King,

  I received the material sent from your office re: M/P Cold-Case, reopened as Case #324-01. In other words, the alleged journals of Neal P. Bartram. I glanced them over and will read it in greater detail with notation.

  One thing is for sure, the part that was printed on typewriter paper was undeniably printed out by a computer printer. Our in-office expert confirmed it was a Hewlett-Packard Deskjet, probably a 500 to 600 class printer. Further, the watermarking on the paper confirm that it is Williamette brand, 8 1/2 by 11 inch white “letter-sized copy-paper.” The paper is widely sold around the U.S., and Williamette confirmed that the sample of paper we sent them “cannot be over eight years old or it would curl at the edges and yellow” as it is a very inexpensive paper, usually sold by the ream.

  Our expert also confirmed that the lined notebook pages of the some of the journals are contemporary: They come from National Brand: it’s Science and Laboratory Notebook #43-571, 128 numbered pages, pale yellow with green lines. Although this has been in National’s catalogue for over four decades, the numbers printed on the upper outer corner here match the Verdana typeface, which National informed him only began to be used in 1998. These notebooks are sold primarily through university bookstores.

  Enclosed is a copy of the report we received from the Sheriff’s Office of West Hollywood, California. This was the only “strike” this office has received from the National Police Network System, although the M/P’s name remains current. The findings are ambiguous. Who knows who the Caucasian Male was? Can we get another, color photo of M/P?

  As per my last letter, inquires have been processed to a dozen different agencies of the U.S. Government re: Neal P. Bartram.

  * * *

  City of West Hollywood

  Sheriff — Dan P. Bellardo

  2900 San Vicente Blvd

  West Hollywood, CA 90046

  RE: Suspicious Person: 4:30 a.m.

  November 24th, 2000

  Report:

  While on ordinary midnight to eight a.m. patrol, Officers Rob Adkins and Mario Gutierrez noticed Caucasian Male approximately 20 years old behaving oddly at three ATM windows of a Washington Mutual Bank set somewhat apart from a strip mall at 8100 Sunset Blvd.

  Officers drove around a curving block onto Crescent Heights Blvd. and pulled into parking lot from that street and continued to observe C.M. attempt to use the ATM. Officers theorized that C.M. was probably inebriated, which would explain why he was unable to utilize card.

  Officers pulled up to bank and approached C.M., asking him to step away from ATM window.

  C.M. was surprised by officers’ approach, but complied. Tall young gentleman, dark eyes, dark hair, pale skin, well-dressed, well-spoken with an American accent not from California. Officer Adkins asked what
the trouble was. C.M. said he was unable to get money out of the bank for some reason. Could we help? Held out typical ATM card toward us.

  Officers approached more closely. As C.M. was wearing a close-fitting leather jacket and black denims with dark cowboy boots, there was no reason to expect a revolver. Even so, Office Gutierrez remained apart with one hand on his weapon. Officer Adkins looked at card, which read Chicago Union Bank, confirming C.M.’s accent and being a stranger. Card was in the name of Neal P. Bartram. Officer asked if card belonged to C.M., who said that was him, Neal. P. Bartram. When asked for other ID he produced a wallet with one VISA credit card, library card for Northwestern University, but no driver’s license and no picture ID. C.M. told officer this was his “second wallet.” The “other one” was where he was staying, a block away, 1765 Havenhurst.

  On closer inspection, C.M. was not inebriated. As he was courteous and in need of aid, Officer Adkins sought to help him. First ATM machine was not working at all. Second and Third machines, when accessed using card, replied “Sorry! We’re Out of Cash” on screens. C.M. asked, “How can that be? They’re a bank, aren’t they?” We explained that on holiday weekend like now, Thanksgiving, ATMs often ran out of cash since many people access them. We suggested he try again after the holiday. His reply was “Well! I guess I’ll just have to.”

  Officers offered to drive C.M. to where he was staying. He replied, “I’ll walk. It’s such a lovely, balmy, night. Don’t you just love Los Angeles at night? I never guessed it would so amazingly wonderful!” C.M. walked off in correct direction toward Havenhurst Ave.