Here Be Monsters (Tyler Cunningham)

by Sheffield, Jamie

  It was the morning of October 17 of 2002 that I got the coke-fridge. Cynthia was teasing me about it before we sat down to eat lunch up in Smart Pig on that very same day. I had done a favor the previous month for a lab manager out at the Trudeau Institute, a biological lab in Saranac Lake most famous for their work on Tuberculosis early in the 20th century. In return, he hooked me up by bundling my order for a VWR lab-grade refrigerator (with digital thermostat, thick insulation all around, and extra thermal mass to prevent temperature swings) in with an order he was placing to upgrade one of the labs he worked with over there. I had been planning for months to combine Canadian Coke (from a friend who makes frequent trips north of the border) with the super-fridge (set to 29◦F, the perfect temperature for coke) to optimize my caffeine delivery system. Before the fridge had even cooled all the way down, Cynthia had stopped by to drop off her salad for lunch. For some reason known only to her, instead of using the dorm fridge we had been using for food since I moved into Smart pig, she chose to put the salad in the huge fridge sporting a blinking digital display showing 29◦F (target temp.) and 37◦F (actual temp.) despite the fact that it was filled to capacity with coke. The salad was frozen and wilted long before she tried to eat it at lunchtime. So she made a sign with big PINK lettering warning the world of the folly of using my coke-fridge for anything but coke. Ten years later the sign was still there, but whereas it generally made me think of her, today it made me feel nervous and edgy.

  I rummaged through the pile and started with the marbled journals for May through September 2012 first, and read through them three times: very fast the first time, looking for common or repeated names; carefully the second time, marking anything remotely interesting with tiny post-it notes and a highlighter; backwards the third time, in the hope of making connections that I missed the first two times. Most of what I read was personal or boring, lots of it was both. She kept track of what she ate throughout the day, work meetings, books and movies that she read/saw or wanted to read/see, dates and boyfriend prospects (yes, those were two different things... who knew), weather, places that she wanted to vacation, programs that she wanted to offer through the library, weird stuff that I did and said and researched (I think/hope that I come off more weird on paper than I do in the flesh, or that she was exaggerating), and the results of constant people-watching and what she likes to call “impression-based, fact-free storytelling” (she looks at people and makes up a story about them based on her first impression). She noted the people who were making frequent use of the library, made up fanciful stories about them (arranging sexual trysts, sharing roast squirrel recipes, plotting world domination, searching for lost treasures, etc.), and expanded on their stories day by day in her journals; she loved the movie, “Rear Window”, I remembered now, in passing. She noted when, and at which computers, the regulars generally did whatever they did, and that is how I think that she got into trouble; that is how she started paying attention to George Roebuck.

  Once she took note of George, she started talking about the other people she kept an eye on less and less and him more and more. She was obsessed with (and curious about) the fact that a rich guy like him would have to have at least one computer at home, but came in almost daily to use a library computer. She knew by word of mouth that he had something to do with drugs, either now or in the past. That must have drawn her attention because of her fiery hatred for anyone involved in the drug trade at even the most casual level (based, I believe, on her sister's death being related to drug use). The really interesting stuff happened about halfway through the July journal, she had torn out a couple of pages, a thing that hadn't happened in any of the other journals. She mentioned file dumping and software bought with a PayPal account (which suggested this wasn't stuff bought for/by the library). From here on through the first days of September 2012 (the point at which she disappeared), her entries got more and more cryptic but centered on a few sets of initials and towns in the portion of New York that lies north of Route 90. The towns (Plattsburgh, Malone, Potsdam, Canton, Watertown, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, and Saratoga) were all outside of the Adirondack Park and made a rough circle between 50 and 150 miles away from the Tri-Lakes region. Plugging in the USB drive, I was able to check files/documents/trash from her computer and found some files and documents and screenshots that helped me put together a picture of what she had suspected, where her research lead her, how she got into trouble, and who had likely taken her; the only problem (and it wasn't actually a problem for me) was that I couldn't prove any of it. Even if I'd wanted to dump it in his lap, Frank wouldn't have touched it with a pole of any length.

  The woods near Lonesome Bay, 4:48p.m., 9/5/2012

  I gathered all of the relevant files and notebooks and the stick drive from my trip to Cynthia's desk at the library, and hid it all in the woods in a large ammo can that I had originally purchased for geocaching, but that worked equally well for hiding all sorts of stuff in the woods. Everything was double-bagged in gallon-sized Ziplocs, and then stuffed in the ammo-can. I have caches like this hidden way back in the woods all over the place; some with camping gear or food or money or books or other things that I don't want lying around at Smart Pig where anyone could find it. For short term storage, I keep the coordinates on whatever GPS I'm currently using; for permanent storage, I send the coordinates embedded in lengthy text documents attached to, or as parts of emails to myself. I have found, in geocaching, and in establishing my other caches, that people in general stay on paths in the woods (fear of unmapped places), and if they do venture off-trail, will generally not go more than 500 meters from the perceived safety of the road and/or their car without a very good reason.

  After hiding the ammo-can, I walked back to my campsite, brushed myself clean of pine needles and twigs and spider webs, and climbed up into the hammock with a coke, some GORP, and my Kindle Fire to rest my body and forebrain, and try to process what I had learned in the last few hours. I love Donald Westlake's Parker books for this very thing; Parker is a violent criminal who moves relentlessly forward through the problems he faces in the books like a shark or bull, actively charging towards/though the obstacles in his path. I wanted a clear path, and the drive to charge along it no matter the consequences (sort of an anti-serenity prayer), so I selected a Parker novel and let the casual, but ordered, violence wash over me; as always, I enjoy the simple plots with interesting variations and explorations running throughout... like jazz with a brutal band of thugs playing their victims delicately with lead pipes. When I had finished the coke and Ziploc bag of GORP, and the book, I had made some useful leaps, bridging gaps in my information with guesses and suppositions that I couldn't easily fault or poke holes in; nothing a jury would like, but most of it good enough for me. I put the can in the Ziploc, dropped them both on the ground beneath my hammock for retrieval later, tucked the Kindle back behind my head and closed my eyes to let my brain finish the puzzle while I took a nap.

  I came back to the world in full dark and a damp coldness that let me know that it had rained; surprised that I had slept for more than five hours. I groped for my headlamp, stepped down onto the ground, found a tree to water, and then started my stove to make some oatmeal. I knew what had happened to Cynthia with as much surety as if I had watched it, and the enormity of what I knew made my head spin. I had spent a decade in Saranac Lake and the woods nearby, making it my home, remapping my world with people and places completely new to me after the upheaval of 9/11; it felt as though it had all been swept away... again... during the course of an afternoon. I focused on making my oatmeal, angry and scared and sad, and so bewildered by the presence of these emotions that I couldn't, for the moment, look beyond a snack in the dark to what lay ahead of me.

  50 feet from shore in Upper Saranac Lake, 11:17p.m.,

  9/5/2012

  I floated on my back, feeling the water beneath me and the sky and stars above. After finishing my oatmeal and a drink of Gatorade, I noted that I felt more than a little grimy
and stiff, and so made my way down to the water's edge, stripped to my boxers, and went for a swim. It made me feel better, the water pressing on my body from all sides like a hug, warmer than the air, but not warm. I raised and lowered myself in the water with deep inhalations and exhalations, feeling control and comfort and calm return; after a few minutes of just breathing and floating, I rolled it all out for my inner moron observer.

  First, Cynthia had heard that George Roebuck was a drug dealer. She hated the drug culture and all involved in it because of her sister's death as a result of drugs. She noted with increasing suspicion over time that George used the SL Free Library computers with some frequency, despite the fact that he was clearly wealthy enough to buy/own as many computers as he wanted. She began to suspect he was using the library computers to support/enhance his drug business. So, she purchased and installed a net-nanny program suite (including software called “eBlaster”) which tracked his online activity (to an astounding and illegal and unethical and unexpected extent, given my previous judgments about Cynthia's moral boundaries), including: copies of emails sent and received, screenshots of pages visited, chat logs, searches, uploads/downloads, and more. Using the information gained through the use of the net-nanny software, she figured out that he had cleaned up his act in his own backyard so that he could use the idyllic wilderness surrounding the Tri-Lakes to produce methamphetamine, for delivery and sale to bigger towns ringing the Adirondacks.

  I was initially shocked at the volume and quality of information that she had managed to intercept by installing eBlaster on the Library computer: names, places, times and dates... all were listed in detail. The truth is that people want (need) to assume that if they use a throwaway email address and clear the history and cookies of the browser that they're using, that the information disappears as completely as a mess on a kitchen counter; but as soon as his fingers did their walking, either in emails or Google or Facebook or IM or on websites, Cynthia had him. I resolved to work on ways to avoid this form of surveillance as soon as I had finished my business with Cynthia and George and the methamphetamine that he seemed to be making in my home.

  From what I could decode, George had four teams of two guys working for him. Each team worked a couple of towns then rotated around to different towns, and into the meth-lab, every week or so. They would connect with buyers for the meth in each town, and make deliveries as they rotated through. By rotating the team, they could work through all of the drugstores in their towns, buying the legal maximum daily amount of pseudoephedrine at each before moving on to the next store. The other supplies and precursor chemicals could apparently be purchased even more easily, according to Cynthia, from Walmart, Home Depot, and a few online sources. Based on the information Cynthia had in her computer on the production of methamphetamine, working at this rate, and assuming a reasonable rate of conversion, they could produce and sell about 30-40 kilograms of meth each month. Her research seemed to indicate that George would gross somewhere around two to four million dollars per month, less whatever expenses his business incurred.

  There were descriptions, and even GPS coordinates of potential locations for their factories, which probably were a couple of trailers and RVs back on clear-cut timberland, leased for next-to-nothing while the forest regrew. There were also some pictures of one site that I think Cynthia must have taken with her digital camera (this made me shiver, the thought of her sneaking through the woods to take pictures of these people). I think that she had been trying to build up a supply of evidence against George Roebuck and his cottage meth industry, to dump into my lap to either break up in some way or bring to Frank. My assumption is that she wanted to build a bridge from the factories in the woods to the cash in the cities to George Roebuck, and that she got tripped up or showed her hand at some point along the way, and been kidnapped. The story, as I told it, made sense, fit the facts and information footprint that I had, and seemed plausible. It also left me with a hollow feeling in my stomach as I swam back to the shore of my camp with a giant looming lack of a plan.

  She had wanted, had asked for, my help in working this problem; a problem ridiculously outside of her skillset. She was more suited to data-mining or making those silly amuse bouche things she filled her weekends with, than slogging through the woods to spy on drug-dealers and break-up multi-million dollar crime rings. I could have helped, should have helped, would have helped; but the Amish seemed more interesting on the day that she asked, so I put her off. I would have helped her eventually... today... but she couldn't wait, and now she was in some serious trouble, and I would have to see what I could do to get her out.

  I dried off, cleaned up the campsite a bit, put up a tarp and prepared my gear for the stormy weather that was due to come in the next day or two. The gear and campsite would wait for me if I got delayed in town for as much as a week, and it was nice to know that it was ready; not as nice as a plan, but better than nothing. I grabbed the garbage and my electronics, and headed back into town, still in the dark; stopping on the way to fill up the Element and grab some hot fat and protein at McD's on the way to Smart Pig to try and live up to my name.

  Smart Pig Thneedery, 12:35a.m., 9/6/2012

  I parked in my spot behind the building, and snuck in like a ninja, using ambient light to find my way upstairs and in through the door; once I was inside, I switched on a small working light at the desk I have by the bookshelf. I could see the end of what I had to do, and was already past the beginning, but had no clear idea on how to get from where I was to where I needed to be at the end of the process; the middle was entirely unknown to me. I knew what had happened, not with enough certainty to satisfy the police, but I wasn't the police, so that was OK. I knew why it had happened, and who had done it (within reason... I didn't know exactly who kidnapped Cynthia, but I knew who ordered it done). I didn't care much how they had done it. I had to find out where they were keeping her, and how to extricate her. A coke from the coke-fridge helped both chill and improve the function of my brain as I settled into the different “quiet” of Smart Pig at night... the hum of the fridges, buzz of the light, pipe noises of the old building moving heat and water around, the occasional creak or pop of wood and metal and glass expanding or contracting at different rates.

  By the time I finished my second coke and gotten a third, noting that I should call Alek (my Canadian Coke Connection) to see if he could bring a couple more cases the next time he went through town, I had zen-ed down enough, listening to the sounds of the Smart Pig Building, to have a couple of ideas float through my head; a few bad ones, a few horrible ones, and a few slightly less bad ones. I had to restore balance to my life and world, and doing that would require shifting the balance of other peoples' lives and worlds. I would need to adjust George Roebuck's cost/benefit equation for his life and work in such a way that harming either Cynthia or me was perceived as being more costly than releasing her (and leaving us alone). I was not more powerful than him, but I needed to find a way to exert sufficient force over him to force a change in his behavior that went against his previous inclinations. Altering his world, and/or his perception of the world, and/or the way that he interacted with his environment, in such a way that he would choose to release Cynthia and also leave both of us unharmed at the end of the day required either a highly complex or a really simple solution; as always, I tried to work out a simple solution.

  At some point in every investigation that I undertake, I get reminded by things that pop up, or that I miss (and later wish had popped up), that I don't really understand human emotions and motivations as well as I should (especially in my line of sometimes dangerous work). I can track information and actions, and draw conclusions based on what I've seen and heard in the past, but I often end up being surprised by what people do. I don't understand their actions, even when/if they explain it to me later. People often don't act in their own best interest, and worse still, sometimes they act differently under similar stimuli based on mood or greed or sexual drive or sl
eep-deprivation or any of a thousand other factors that I don't seem to have installed; or that are installed differently in my operating system than in other people’s.

  My first idea was to talk to George Roebuck directly, explain what I knew, and that I had no interest in sharing my knowledge with anyone provided he return Cynthia to her (and my) life unharmed, and post-haste. On the surface this might seem like a stupid plan, but I think there's an underlying wisdom in the simplicity of a bull in a china shop approach; a lack of subtlety implies a lack of guile, and hopefully the chance for trust and a straightforward resolution to the issue (hopefully without violence or upset). I like plans that can be explained to a six year old without graphs and charts and maps; based on the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid)... if something can go wrong, it will, so do what you can to reduce the number of chances for things to go wrong where and whenever possible.

  Plan B involved my finding the current locations of George Roebuck's active meth lab(s), his four teams of chemists/drivers, and the money that this enterprise was generating, and then alerting the authorities to these facts, along with the warning that he had kidnapped Cynthia to protect all of the above. I wasn't crazy about this option, as it relied on lots of things coming together neatly, including multiple raids by people that I had to (but didn't) trust to put Cynthia's safe return ahead of a mediagenic drug bust, complete with perp-walked hoods and tables piled high with baggies of white powder and cash (and probably guns... those pictures always had some guns on the tables in front of smiling white cops in tac-gear). It also seemed unlikely that even if I could give them the package complete with George, they would be able to get everyone and everything without exposing Cynthia to extensive risk in either a “she's seen our faces” body-dump, or a “we want a fueled plane, no cops visible, and the letter P stricken from the English language” hostage scenario... neither of those appealed to my sense of neatness, but seemed potentially worth the risk, if I couldn't find a better option.