by Neil Plakcy
“What exactly are we looking for?” I asked Rick, as he pulled the lid off the first box.
“Anything related to moving those draft dodgers through Stewart’s Crossing. Their names, where they came from, where they went. Anybody who helped Brannigan, had contact with the boys, or might have known about that false wall at the Meeting House.”
Rochester sprawled on the concrete floor beside me. I lifted the lid off the first box and began flipping through faded bills and copies of personal correspondence. Brannigan had been a social studies teacher, like my own Mrs. Shea, and I wondered if that was a field that attracted Quakers. In addition to running the school he had taught a senior seminar each year, focusing on the Civil War, and I scanned through his syllabi and class notes.
The bottom of the box was lined with books. I pulled the first one out of the box, an ancient text Brannigan had annotated. I quickly went through a few more, then lifted them all out and stacked them on the floor.
Rochester got up from beside me and began prowling around the room. He stopped beside a box on the far wall, and kept nosing at it and scratching it.
“What is it, boy?” I asked. “Is there something in that box?”
“Probably dog biscuits,” Rick said.
“You never know with this dog. Could be a clue to the identity of the dead body.” I pulled the box, from 1992, off the shelf and popped it open. “We won’t tell Vera Lee that we looked in here.”
Rochester was right on top of me, sticking his big nose into the box. “Back off, dog,” I said, elbowing him aside.
I found a folder of Brannigan’s research on the Underground Railroad, particularly those stops in Pennsylvania. He had written several pages about the Meeting House in Stewart’s Crossing and how it had been a way station for escaping slaves. At the end of the folder was a diagram of the Stewart’s Crossing Meeting House – including the location of the false wall.
“You think Vera Lee would let us use the copy machine in her office?” Rick asked.
“Don’t need to.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “You have one of these, don’t you? She said we couldn’t take anything away. She didn’t say we couldn’t take pictures.”
“You’re awfully sneaky,” Rick said. “But you’re right. She gave us access to the building, didn’t stick around to watch us, and didn’t say we couldn’t take pictures. I could make that argument with the D.A. Of course, my only witnesses are an ex-con and a dog.”
“Take the pictures,” I said.
There was nothing else of use in the box, and after Rick photographed the diagram and the pages of Brannigan’s notes, I repacked the box. “At least we have evidence beyond Edith’s word that Brannigan knew about the existence of the wall,” Rick said.
The bottom was scattered with dry crumbs, but I wasn’t going to let Rochester eat them. Who knew what they could be. He stared at the box as I put it back, but then padded back to my chair and settled behind it.
“You didn’t believe Edith?” I asked Rick.
“Not that I didn’t believe her. But it’s always good to have corroborating evidence.”
I went on to the next box. Rick and I worked in silence until we had each gone through three boxes.
“You find anything at all?” he asked me.
“Nothing.” I stood up, dislodging Rochester from his position behind my chair, and stretched. “What they were doing was illegal, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if he destroyed all the records after the war. If he even kept any records at all.”
“Crap. Another dead end. We’d better get these boxes packed up again.”
Rochester was nosing around the stack of books on the floor, and he swiped his paw at them, and they tumbled into a haphazard pile. “Rochester!” I said. “How are we going to know which books go back into which boxes?”
“I doubt it matters,” Rick said.
I leaned down and picked up the book closest to me. It was a personal journal, the first few pages filled with newspaper clippings about the Vietnam War. “Look at these,” I said. “Maybe there’s something in one of these articles.”
“You read while I pack,” Rick said.
I sat and began to read. It was fascinating to see the news through the lens of history, and I admit I got too caught up in the articles.
It must have been a half hour later when Rick said, “All right, professor. I’m ready to go.”
I flipped through the rest of the articles. After the last one, the next page was written in what looked like a foreign language. “This is weird,” I said, showing it to Rick.
“What language is that?” he asked.
It took me a moment to figure out that what I was looking at was a substitution cipher, a means of encrypting information by substituting a different letter. I had done some of those puzzles as a kid, and enjoyed them.
I explained the basic principle. “This looks like a simple one, because he’s maintained the integrity of the units,” I said. “See here? This single letter? Probably either ‘A’ or ‘I.’ And the three letter word there – maybe it’s ‘and,’ or ‘the.’”
“Why go to all this trouble?” Rick asked.
“It was the sixties, and people were paranoid back then,” I said. “Remember, they were smuggling kids out of the country to avoid the draft. I’m not surprised he was careful.”
“If we have to solve this cipher, we’ll be here all night,” he said.
“Time for the camera phone again,” I said.
I held the book flat while Rick took high-def pictures of each of the ten encrypted pages, then emailed them to himself and to me. We replaced the journal in the last box and walked outside. It was full dark and the air had cooled. Rochester hurried to a bush to pee again, dragging me behind him.
“Do you think you can decipher Brannigan’s notes?” Rick asked.
“I can try. It’ll be easier if I print the pictures out and then write on them.”
We walked back to where we had parked. “Do you ever think about what you’d have done if you’d been eligible for the draft back then?” I asked.
“I probably would have gone. Maybe even volunteered, because that’s what my Dad did for Korea. You know I wasn’t the greatest student in high school. So it could have been a real option. How about you?”
“My parents were determined that I go to college, so I’d have done that, and had a deferment for four years. But after that? I don’t know. My great-grandfather left Russia to avoid serving in the Czar’s Army, so I have that heritage of draft resistance.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t a cop in the sixties,” Rick said. “Talking to Bob Freehl about it, there were a lot of problems in families, between neighbors, everything from drugs to the war to guys with long hair.” Bob was a retired cop who lived down the street from me, and I’d spoken to him occasionally about his work.
“Looking back, it’s easy to see that the whole conflict was one big blunder, but back then? Would we have known?” I asked. “Would either of us had the strength of conviction that these boys did?”
“Don’t forget fear,” Rick said. “The guys who went to Canada were the ones who couldn’t get CO status. They may just have been afraid of dying.”
We walked the rest of the way back in silence. For one of those boys, that fear had been realized.
15 – Decoder Ring
I stopped at a drive-through on my way home, picking up a couple of plain burgers for Rochester and one of the pre-made salads for myself. He couldn’t wait until we got home, though, and kept nuzzling at me, so I gave him one of the burgers when we were stopped at the single traffic light in Stewart’s Crossing, at the corner of Main and Ferry.
“That’s all you get,” I said, snatching my fingers back before he chomped on them. “You can wait til we get home for the rest.”
He wolfed down the burger, bread and all, and sat back against the front seat. He yawned, and his pink tongue rolled out. When we got home, I crumbled the remaining bur
ger into a bowl of chow, and he ate his dinner as I ate mine. Then I turned on my computer and opened the email from Rick. I used a photo program to enhance the first image and then printed it out.
I began to look for patterns, as I’d pointed out to Rick. A single letter had to be either A or I, and the statistical frequency of “and” and “are” combined was a lot higher than “its.” By that method, I was able to figure out and identify all the uses of the letter A – which was represented, in the cipher text, by the letter G.
It was a lot like working with computers, the same application of logic to a problem. It was something I was good at, and it was nice to find a legal application for those skills.
With all the “A”s accounted for, the other single instances had to be the letter I, which was represented by in the cipher text by F. I began compiling a list of letter parallels, working my way through the recurring words.
Lili called as I was working. She told me about the class the night before, how much fun it had been to be out taking pictures again. “And how was your day today?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
“Another meeting with Peter Bobeaux. For a half hour he talked about falconry in the Middle East, how when he was working in the United Arab Emirates he knew people who used falcons, but he preferred a hunting rifle. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a rifle with me in the conference room. What did you do today?”
I told her about driving up to George School, and what Rick and I had found. “I’m still thinking about you moving in here,” I said. “Rochester wants you to know that he’s all for it.” I hesitated then plunged in. “After living in close quarters in prison I really loved having my space. The whole house just for me. I know sounds selfish, but it was such a joy not to hear some other guy snoring or farting. It took me a long time to get accustomed to having Rochester around.”
“I get that,” Lili said. “After my divorce from Phillip, I took a bunch of assignments that kept me moving from place to place.” Phillip was Lili’s second ex-husband, a magazine editor who had cheated on her. “One of the first things I did was go to a tanning salon so I wouldn’t have a tan line on my ring finger. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially anybody who knew I’d been married. I just wanted to be on my own.”
She took a deep breath. “But I got over it, and I know you will, too. And if it’s not this year, then I’ll sign another lease and we’ll go on.”
“Don’t sign anything yet,” I said. “Give me another few days?”
“I won’t sign until they threaten me with eviction.”
“You won’t have to go that far,” I said.
We talked about a few other things, and then, after mutual endearments, we hung up, and I thought that it would be nice to be able to have these conversations with Lili in person. To be that much more a part of each other’s lives.
I went back to my puzzle. It was like solving a cryptogram in the newspaper, only there were a lot of short words I couldn’t decipher at first. It was a long, slow process. I’d think I had one letter solved, but then using it in conjunction with another would create something that couldn’t be a word or a name, and I’d have to wipe them out and start over again. Around eleven I got sleepy and Rochester nudged me for his bedtime walk.
What was equally frustrating, I thought, as we moseyed down the darkened streets of River Bend, was that Brannigan’s notes might have nothing to do with the case—the body could belong to someone who had no connection whatsoever to Brannigan or his efforts to help boys avoid the draft. But the only way to know if the information would pan out was to follow it to its natural conclusion.
Wednesday morning dawned rainy and dismal. I bundled up in a yellow slicker with a hood, left a towel by the front door, and took Rochester out for a walk. He nosed ahead, always in search of the next thing to catch his attention. He and I were a lot alike that way.
The dampness made the air seem chillier, but the dog didn’t seem to mind. Goldens have two coats: a soft, water-repellent outer layer, and then short, downy hair beneath that serves as insulation, protecting against both cold and heat. It’s great, I suppose, if your dog is regularly chasing after ducks. To me, it was a huge pain, because when Rochester got soaked it was a chore to dry him, especially when he chose to whack his wet, plumey tail against me.
He did his business, I cleaned it up, and then we hurried home to get out of the rain. By the time I finished toweling him dry, which he treated as a big game, he had transferred most of the water to me. I showered, dressed and ate a couple of croissants while Rochester wolfed down his breakfast chow. Before I left the house, I copied the images of cipher text that Rick had emailed me onto my flash drive.
The rain had intensified to a downpour by then. The Delaware was rising, and parts of the River Road were already under water. I was relieved when I turned inland that the country road to Friar Lake hadn’t flooded yet.
As I drove up the winding road to the abbey, the rain sluiced down beside me. I made a note to move up the improvements to the road before the winter came and made it into an icy slide.
Rochester and I scampered from the car into the office, and he dried himself by rolling on the carpet in the lobby, waving his legs in the air like a dying cockroach. I went into my office, and after logging in and checking my email, I began to print enlarged copies of the rest of the cipher text.
I went back to the first page of Brannigan’s notes. I was sure that I had figured out the ING pattern at the end of a couple of words – but using that logic, there were also several words that began with Ng, and there were no words in English that fit that beginning.
I was puzzling over that when I heard the sound of paper crunching. I looked up to see that I’d forgotten to flip up the plastic stop at the end of the paper tray, and my pages were tumbling to the floor. Rochester had his paw on one of the sheets.
Fortunately it wasn’t one of the pages of cipher text, but a newspaper clipping that Rick had found that mentioned Brannigan. I tugged it out from under Rochester’s paw and read the headline, about South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu.
“Of course!” I said to Rochester. “Brannigan is including Vietnamese names. Dog, you’re a true Sherlock!”
That clue enabled me to figure out the last letter matches. The page, which was dated January 27, 1973, included some stuff about Thieu and his administration, but the interesting part read, “The Selective Service announced today that there will be no more draft calls. Men and women no longer will have to defy the law to follow their consciences. Though our active part in this service ended with the last two boys who passed through our hands, we can now turn our thoughts and prayers toward healing.”
The phrase “the last two boys” rang in my head. Who were those boys? And had they both left Stewart’s Crossing – or had one of them remained behind, hidden in the Meeting House?
I started working backwards, applying the cipher I had decoded to Brannigan’s notes. I found a line that interested me – that Brannigan was writing this diary to preserve a piece of history, though he hoped no one would decode it until after the war was long past. The cipher worked fine for two pages, mostly political rants – but then it changed. I cursed out loud, causing Rochester to look up from his sleep.
My phone rang around eleven. “Are you building an ark up there at Friar Lake?” Lili asked. “Because it looks like we might need one.”
“Is it pouring in Leighville, too?” I asked. “It was miserable driving up from Stewart’s Crossing this morning.” I looked out the window toward the abbey, an imposing two-story building of gray native stone in a Gothic style. Water was cascading from the roof, bubbling over clogged downspouts. Something else to be fixed. I made a note.
“It’s gloomy and dismal here,” she said. “But I went out this morning and took a bunch of pictures of the rain sheeting down through the trees. Very cool effect.”
“That’s my Lili,” I said. “Finding sunshine even in a rainy day.”
“If I could only find some sunshine in Peter Bobeaux,” she said. “This afternoon we have a faculty forum about curriculum changes. I swear, he’s like a dog who has to pee on every single thing in the humanities to mark his territory.”
“Lovely image. I have some good news, though. I cracked one of Brannigan’s codes and it worked on a couple of pages – but then he switched ciphers. I’m going to be decoding his notes until my eyes cross.”
“Could be a good look for you,” she said. “I’d have to see to be sure.”
As we hung up, Joey Capodilupo came inside to dry out, shaking water from his rain jacket like Rochester did. We discussed gutters and downspouts, and then I asked, “You talk to Mark about those pews?”
He smiled. “Called him last night to see if we could talk about it over dinner. Took some pushing to get him to agree.”
“To selling the pews?”
“That was the easy part, once I convinced him to have dinner.” He paused. “You know anything about a guy named Owen?”
“Yeah. My neighbor’s son. Worked for Mark for a little while. I think Owen took advantage of him – pretended to be interested, but all he wanted was to rip Mark off.”
“He’s out of the picture?”
“Definitely.”
Joey smiled. “Good to know.” He looked out the window, where the rain was tailing off. “Got to get back to work. See you later.”
When he left, I went back to Brannigan’s papers, moving backward and trying to find more information on the last two boys. I had a feeling identifying them would be the key to figuring out whose bones Rochester had found.
It looked like Brannigan had used a similar cipher, though with different letter correspondences. I found myself longing for a decoder ring like the ones you could get as a kid by sending in bubble gum wrappers. I even took a quick look online – but the ones I could find were too simple for my purposes.
It was hard to concentrate, because once the rain ended, the crew outside got noisy, the phone kept ringing, and there were emails to answer. Late in the afternoon, after the demolition crew was gone, I walked around outside with Joey to survey the water damage. Rochester romped along beside us, getting his paws muddy and his undercoat wet again from brushing up against bushes.
