White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2)

by Jeff Van Valer

  “It’s just a simple suture job. You don’t need it.”

  Ted shrugged. She was right. They walked again.

  “Absent-minded professor,” she said. “Too many important things swirling around in that noggin to remember the everyday stuff.”

  Ted thought about meeting Joni again for work in just over twelve hours. All their shifts seemed to occur together. Was it a coincidence, or was she setting it up? Was she availing herself, or did she just like working with him? Or both? Had the staff noticed the overlap? He’d bet a dollar at least Betty had. At the end of the shift, Joni might just accidentally-on-purpose end up leaving the department at the same time as Ted. That’d squirt a little jet fuel on the fire. Maybe someone would tail them to make sure they didn’t leave in the same car.

  “Even if it is a short weekend,” Joni said, “I’m excited.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ted asked. In the rounded mirror above them, Betty faced them, chewing something. “Sounds promising. How come?”

  “The Amber Waves bookstore downtown has my copy of the newest Loon Lake Sloth book, and—”

  Ted stopped dead on his next footfall.

  “The what?”

  Her eyes widened. “Loon Lake Sloth book? What’s the matter?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought you said something else.”

  It was a lie, of course. Joni’s mention of the Loon Lake Sloth gave him a paradoxical chill. A fictional beast of innocent summer-camp lore, The Sloth was the number one legend from the forest fire place. Joni didn’t fit anywhere near Ted’s age-twelve world, nor would he want to subject her to it. How she could ever combine syllables into the phrase Loon Lake Sloth was anyone’s guess. How could she possibly know? Even the trapdoor spider seemed afraid to come out.

  “Some kind of book, you say?” Ted asked.

  “Yeah. A whole series. My son likes them.” Joni’s boy was maybe eleven. She was twenty-eight, a single mom who’d had a whoopsie! in high school and figured things out. She liked to buy her son books. Ted felt a little tenderness for her, and more than a modicum of respect.

  “I’ll have to check that out,” he said, sipping his coffee sludge. “Who’s the author?” Karen. It has to be Karen.

  “Karen,” Joni said. “Karen… Din-something.”

  Dinwiddie. Karen Dinwiddie.

  “Karen Dinwiddie.”

  The space-time disconnect made him shiver. Joni shouldn’t be speaking the name Karen Dinwiddie any more than Abraham Lincoln should have driven a Ferrari.

  “Let’s go sew us up a drunk driver,” he said. “Want to?”

  They rounded the corner. Ted tossed his coffee into a trashcan and saw an all too familiar face. Frank Bruska.

  Hell’s he want?

  “Morning, Ted,” said the detective.

  “Frank.”

  “Hoping to be able to question this fine patient if you think he”— Frank floated air quotes—“satisfies your criteria for”—air quotes a second time, “coherence.”

  “His alcohol level’s still pending from the lab, but I hear he’s pretty drunk.”

  “Yep,” Frank said. “My guess is this particular specimen would be more coherent drunk than sober. Anyway, there’s been a”—air quotes—“crime. Heard about it on my way into work this morning and that he was in here. All I need is for you to say he’s alert and oriented so I can ask him a few questions.”

  “I’ll give it an opinion,” Ted said.

  He and Frank had a history that also happened to date back about thirty years. It was five in the morning, and already, Friday was off to a poor start. Age twelve opened its mouth when Ted heard Joni mention the name Karen Dinwiddie. It positioned its teeth on his rear end when Frank Bruska’s irritating face appeared…

  CHAPTER 4

  McDaniel Security Headquarters

  St. Louis, Missouri

  January 17, 2000

  Monday evening

  “Hello, Paul.”

  “Hugh,” Paul Weatherby said. He was tense, as though riding a manic horse down the side of a mountain. Hugh McDaniel stood next to a door that looked like a coat closet.

  “Shut the door,” Hugh said, motioning to the one Weatherby had used to enter the secretary’s workspace.

  As a friend and contemporary of Senator Denton McDaniel, Weatherby went back several years and several gatherings with the family, including with Denny’s uncle, Hugh. But he’d never been invited to Hugh’s office. What was he doing over there by the coat closet? Weatherby shut the door he was told to shut.

  The latch echoed through the space. It was quarter past five, and Hugh’s personal secretary had gone home.

  “How’s our new Director of Marketing?” Hugh asked.

  “I’m well.” Weatherby nearly lost his hand in Hugh’s crushing, nuts-and-bolts grip.

  “Scotch is on the table.”

  Hugh’s “closet door” led to a palatial private office made to look like a coat closet from the outside.

  “My goodness, Hugh,” Weatherby said, looking around. Rumors of the office circulated, but none of them did the space justice. Most of the walls were bookshelves, the carpet hunter green. A small grand piano adorned one corner. The place seemed half an acre in size, a hell of a retreat. He could almost smell the cigars and brandy. It could have been a movie set, needing only cobwebs and a pipe organ for a perfect, haunted-house scene. The windows provided a view of the Mississippi River, the Gateway Arch, and a good portion of downtown St. Louis. The Old Courthouse Rotunda and Busch Stadium stood in the foreground. “This office is beautiful.”

  Hugh gestured toward two plush-looking leather chairs facing a fireplace. Flames snaked their ways through knotholes in the logs. A few sparks popped out of something in the fire.

  “So how you been, Hugh?” Weatherby asked. It seemed like a lame ice-breaker.

  “Never better. Have a seat.” Hugh’s repeat gesture toward the chairs, this time, seemed more commanding. His never-better-hava-seat had a bit of a sit-your-ass-down ring to it. Hugh stepped to his desk. “Got a package you wanna see.”

  Weatherby sat in front of the fire. How much money—dirty, skimmed-off-the-top money—flowed through this place? He was convinced McDaniel’s CEO—a milquetoast but educated yes-man carefully chosen for having a surname other than McDaniel—had never set foot in this office.

  Hugh ran security for the company, but Weatherby was convinced the man held far more power than his title suggested. All other family members of note were politicians and no longer had stock in the company. Since around 1980, when allegations of McDaniel Security and mob ties nearly destroyed the company and family both, all McDaniel business and politics had been kept separate. In the modern popular culture, McDaniel Security and the McDaniel politicians didn’t seem related at all. But the financial benefits were still far more than a trickle. If Senator Denton McDaniel became president, the company’s stock prices would soar, and its mountain stream of income might start to look like the Mississippi itself.

  Weatherby scanned the office. Where could you hide a camera or a bug?

  “Get a look in here,” Hugh said, handing a large manila envelope to Weatherby and sitting down. He poured two straight-up scotches. “I’ve already taken a little peek.”

  “You really think we’re going to need this stuff?”

  “Yes, I do. The president’s going to cave in. We’re talking campaign suspension, okay? Maybe even this evening. Rest assured, Paul, it’s going to happen.”

  Weatherby opened the envelope and pulled out a shield-shaped piece of plywood. At the top, painted thickly, it said

  white birch camp

  cabin 7

  1970

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, trying to be nonchalant. “The cabin plaque.” Printed on it were all the names. Paul Weatherby, San Diego, CA. Willard Cartwright, St. Louis, MO. Denny McDaniel, St. Charles, MO. Cornelius Shepherd, Ann Arbor, MI. Etcetera, etcetera. Covering the plaque were at least ten coats of—whatever t
hey call that clear, sticky stuff he’d had to use in high school shop when they made those bookends. Remembering only half his cabinmates’ nicknames that summer, Weatherby couldn’t recognize the real names at all. Still, he could hardly stand to look at the plaque.

  The nicknames became an opportunity to Hugh. Around the beginning of January, when the president’s scandals erupted, Weatherby approached Hugh with Denny’s little skeleton-in-the-closet. The story did more than just entertain. When Uncle Hugh heard the news, he looked like a shark with chum in the water.

  Nobody from that camp’ll even know anybody else’s real names? Hugh had asked. And they live all over the country? It’s perfect.

  When Weatherby asked what, exactly, was perfect, he didn’t like the answer. But still, here he was, in Hugh’s secret lair. Riding the crazy horse down the mountainside.

  Hugh took the plaque, looked at it thoughtfully, and tossed it into the fireplace. Weatherby reached into the envelope again and pulled out ten identical, letter-sized photographs with a picture of nine boys and one counselor—Lloyd; how they’d hated Lloyd—standing in front of a dark little building. CABIN 7, the building said, stenciled in white above the door. The picture was infinitely worse to see than the plaque.

  “Is this everything?” Weatherby asked.

  Hugh crossed his arms. “Everything from the camp office and the cabin.”

  “Are you completely sure?”

  The Director of Security glared and spread his arms. “Yes, Paul. I’m sure. Got any other questions?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Look, Paul. And listen. It’s not too hard. The camp has ten copies of each of the cabin’s pictures, okay? When someone buys one, say at the end of the summer, for all the happy memories and what-not, the camp marks his name down in a ledger—”

  “Ledger?”

  “Yeah. A handwritten record. Time-tested, Y-two-K-compliant, pencil and paper stuff. You remember when people used to use pencil and paper, don’t you? The camp keeps track of who bought a copy of the pictures and when. The ledger listed no takers for these pictures. And we have all ten copies. Count them if you want.”

  No need. Weatherby knew no kid in that cabin that summer wanted a picture. No one would ever want a tangible reminder of that summer. He put down the pictures and pulled out a quarter-inch stack of papers he recognized immediately. Camper contact information and director’s reports.

  Hugh gulped at his whisky and said, “The camp office has filing cabinets with these records. One file folder holds the reports and pictures. And there’s the ledger. No Cabin Seven names are recorded in it. The cabin had the plaque. We got it all. You satisfied?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you completely sure?” Hugh said with biting sarcasm.

  “Yes, Hugh. I am.”

  Hugh stood, held one of the cabin composites and threw the other nine on top of the burning plaque. He sat back down and sipped his scotch. Weatherby wondered why Hugh saved one of the pictures but didn’t dare ask. He took the last bound stack of papers from the envelope. Photographs of the men as adults. He flipped through the photos and stopped. “Hugh. This one. Hoss. Er… Willard Cartwright. His picture’s old.”

  “Hoss?” Hugh said. “Nice nickname. What’d you call the senator? I forget.”

  “Buck.”

  “Buck.” Hugh swirled his scotch.

  Weatherby left his scotch alone. He didn’t want to go fuzzy-headed next to a scheming, occult mobster like Hugh McDaniel.

  Hugh said, “You know, the nicknames, now that you remind me, give me an idea.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Just thinking about ways to find your buddy. Hoss.”

  “You haven’t found him?”

  “Not yet,” Hugh said, swirling his glass. The fire popped again. “But have a little faith. We’ll get him.”

  “How?”

  “We have our ways.”

  Of that, Weatherby had no doubt. “May I ask you something, Hugh?”

  “Why not?”

  “How do you know all this about the camp?”

  Hugh drew his lips tight but kept his teeth hidden. He took another sip and made an obnoxious, satisfied aaaaaahh sound as he swallowed. “Man named Mr. Gray.”

  “Mr. Gray.”

  “Yeah. He got into the camp’s office the other night and poked around. Didn’t take him long to figure out how the place does things.”

  “And lifted all the documents he could find.”

  “Lifted all the documents, period. He found them all.”

  Are you completely sure?

  “Then one of my boys picked up the envelope from a coffee shop in Traverse City and drove it here to me.”

  “Do these men…”

  “No. They don’t know each other, Paul.” Hugh leaned toward Weatherby and studied him closely. “Can you imagine that I might’ve thought of those things?”

  “I’m sorry, Hugh. I’m just a little uneasy.”

  “You have nothing to be uneasy about.”

  “Who’s the contact?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  Weatherby picked up his scotch, sure he had enough to worry about for both of them.

  “Mr. Gray’s on his way down to Ann Arbor to pick up an associate.”

  Weatherby tried—and was sure he failed miserably—to hide a grimace of anxiety.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Paul.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  Hugh reclined in his chair and propped up his feet. He focused on his crystal glass and appeared to admire the thin pool of scotch on the bottom. “You’re thinking about loose ends.”

  Weatherby nodded.

  “Stop thinking about that, Paul.”

  Hugh had at his fingertips first-world technology and endless money.

  This is really going to happen.

  Weatherby had run Denny’s campaign for senator, and now he would run the campaign for president. There was just one more thing, but he decided not to ask:

  If you don’t want me involved in this part of things, Hugh, why did you have me come to your office?

  The phone rang, and Hugh stood immediately. He slipped over to his desk and snatched up the phone. “Yeah,” he said into the mouthpiece, listening for five seconds. “No fooling…? Good news indeed.” He hung up the phone and returned to his chair. Weatherby didn’t like Hugh’s look. The man was positively radiant.

  “Short phone call,” Weatherby said.

  “President just called it.”

  “Out of the race for sure?”

  “Press conference tomorrow. Now it’s impeachment or resignation.”

  This is really, truly, going to happen.

  They’d announce Denton McDaniel’s candidacy in a week.

  “It’s Dick Nixon all over again,” Hugh said, draining his scotch. “This’ll be good for the company and good for the family. Oh. And the country, too, if that’s something you’re concerned about.”

  Weatherby felt more sick than exhilarated.

  Hugh looked ready to dance. “Oh, yes. And one more thing, Paul.” He opened a drawer in the little table between the chairs. Inside sat a rolling, micro-cassette recorder. Hugh picked it up and tested it.

  “Oh, yes. And one more thing, Paul,” the recorder said. Hugh pressed the rewind button for a few seconds, then hit play. “I’ll be damned,” the recorder said. “The cabin plaque.”

  Hugh walked the recorder, the recent photos, and the tenth cabin picture to an open safe behind a small, potted tree. “Tell me, Paul. How’s your wife like her Audi?”

  “What?”

  Hugh put the items in the safe. “You think the sandalwood and tan leather match her hair?” he asked, locking a steel-bladed gaze on Weatherby and uttering the car’s license plate number.

  Weatherby’s bowels loosened. He faced the picture window. The Gateway Arch gleamed in the light of the city but was otherwise almost invisible against the January sky. “Yes,”
he said absently. “It’s a good color.”

  Hugh shut the safe and twisted the latch home, ending Weatherby’s entire life as he knew it. “Welcome, my good friend,” he said, “to the McDaniel Campaign.”

  CHAPTER 5

  …and the teeth of age twelve sank into Ted’s butt when he walked into Exam Room 1. Lying on the cart was the husk of a former man named Carl J. Stupe. Ted first read the name in the Blue River Bugle on Saturday, October 18, 1969.

  Ted dived straight into his medical training and the intake form before trying to speak. Fifty-eight-year-old white male, history of long-term, heavy alcohol use, motor vehicle accident, laceration to the upper lip. Face versus steering wheel. And a case of emphysema a first year medical student could diagnose from across the street. The man looked eighty, lacked several teeth, and distilled the pallor of malnutrition and chronic disease.

  Stupe leered at Joni. “Glad you brought her back in with ya, Doc.”

  Joni didn’t respond. In truth, she didn’t so much as react, and that made Ted proud. Stupe looked Joni over. His split lip tightened across his gapped, yellow teeth. He winced when his grin stretched the open wound.

  The man reeked. Ted recognized a certain, age-old chemical smell. Alcohol’s primary metabolite, acetaldehyde, wafted from the drunk’s pores and breath. Its sickening sweetness took Ted back to medical school at Wishard County Hospital in Indianapolis. It also took him back to camp in 1970. His cabin counselor, Lloyd, smelled the same way every morning after his Tuesday nights out.

  “How many stitches, Doc?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ted said, donning his sterile gloves. “Ten? Twelve? We’ll know when we get there.”

  More election and president stuff played on the television. Frank mumbled about it, and Ted ordered the set be turned off. He threw in four well-placed sutures in no time, estimating six or seven more to go.

  The aging man’s newest laceration had cut an ancient scar in two. Ted knew where the old scar came from, and when. Stupe was twenty-eight, and Ted sat on his Schwinn Lemon Peeler bike, watching the man survey the damage to his upturned car. Stupe was drunk then, too, and he appeared mindless that he’d hit another vehicle. Standing next to Ted at the time, straddling his own banana seat, was none other than a fourteen-year-old Frank Bruska.