A crowd of people had formed around the turnoff that had been dug into the side of the road by Baxter the week before. A white sign with blue lettering lay in the middle of the street. As Delaney rode by, she saw that the sign said “BAXTER CONSTRUCTION.” She’d assumed as much when she heard the call.
She saw Ruiz up ahead, leaning against his squad car next to a short man with black slicked-back hair. The man was pacing between oversized yellow construction vehicles which made him look miniature. The man, she assumed, was somehow connected to Baxter Construction. At a glance, she knew it was not the infamous Bart Baxter who had developed half of Boston after the Big Dig. The man’s phone rang. He pulled it out and barked a greeting as Delaney approached Ruiz.
Ruiz approached Delaney’s cruiser and she lowered the window. “Javier, good to see you in the light of day,” she joked.
“Maybe this will put an end to all those vampire jokes you guys make at the Christmas party,” he said.
“I doubt it. So, what’s going on here? You called for another unit?”
“Yeah, sorry. This Baxter guy is out of control. He says that the protesters over there keep trespassing on his property. I spoke to the crowd but it didn’t calm him down at all.”
“Baxter? The Baxter?” Delaney was surprised such a mighty man came in such a bite-size package.
Ruiz shook his head and laughed. “Not the tycoon. That’s Bart Baxter. This shmuck over here is his son, BJ Baxter. Half the size, twice the bite, but he’s got pull. So, voila. Here you are. A higher-ranking member of the force, as Baxter demanded.”
Delaney stepped out of the cruiser and extended a hand towards BJ Baxter. She saw that his hair gel had congealed and formed a small pool of wax just above his right ear. She was half-surprised nobody told him, but enjoyed being in on the joke. Baxter stepped up towards her and ignored the outstretched hand. “Lady, are you going to arrest that girl who was on my property or what?”
Delaney kept her smile in place. When she had to hold a forced smile for more than a few seconds she often internally paused to thank her father for the money he’d invested in her braces during middle school. Despite her best objections and attempts to pry them off, they still had managed to create an impressive pearly-white smile.
“I’m Detective Delaney Shepard. Want to try and ask that question again with some respect sprinkled in?” She said calmly, flashing every tooth that once held a brace.
He shot her a glare and then sarcastically restated. “Detective Delaney Shepard, are you going to arrest that girl, or do I need to call your boss?”
“Now, which girl is this?” Delaney crooked her neck so she could see the protesters. Four of the nine were women. She didn’t see a girl but wasn’t surprised to find that Baxter’s lack of respect toward her was just a symptom of his larger disrespect for women in general. She wondered how that fared with his attempts to date but assumed his general appearance was a larger hindrance.
“That one. In the blue top. She was walking around the equipment when I pulled up. Your homeboy over there wouldn’t do anything so I insisted he call you.” His stumpy manicured finger pointed to the group.
“Let me go and speak to her. Get her side of the story. I’ll leave Officer Ruiz here to keep an eye on you, Mr. Baxter.” Delaney flashed a grin at Baxter and trotted over towards the protesters. Delaney looked at Ruiz who had tacked on a wide-eyed grin and given her a nod of appreciation for pushing back on the ‘homeboy’ term. She approached the culprit Baxter had pointed out.
“Melanie?” Delaney had met Melanie Strong on more than one occasion because they tended to run in the same circle of friends. They’d downed IPAs together one night at the Woodshed and commiserated over the awful Beatles cover band which the rest of the group seemed to tolerate. Delaney had found Melanie singing along and teased her. She’d shouted back over the noise, “If you close your eyes, it’s still The Beatles!”
Melanie was a transplant from Boston who spent most summers out on the Cape, crashing with friends and working remotely for some tech firm back in Cambridge. Delaney had also heard she was a vocal opponent to the Baxter construction plan that would destroy the Punkhorns, which fit her understanding of Melanie’s values.
“Hey, Delaney,” Melanie’s gap-tooth smile was bracketed by deep dimples. She tried to adjust her face to better fit the seriousness of the moment but struggled. “I mean, Detective. Are you going to arrest me?” She asked. Melanie held out both of her wrists for Delaney to handcuff.
“No,” Delaney smirked. “I didn’t plan to.” She shifted her stance so Baxter couldn’t see her face, which was biting back a smile. “In fact, we haven’t finished painting our holding cell and I thought, well, maybe we could just settle this here and now.”
“Happily. Is the little big man over there claiming I did something illegal?”
“That depends. Did you walk onto the property?” Delaney kept her tone sober. She avoided the thought that if Baxter pushed hard enough, he could force an arrest, or at least a fine.
“I did. But I was just walking through the Punkhorns. One of my favorite trails is just behind that bulldozer over there.” Melanie pointed over to a parking lot full of equipment. Delaney eyed Melanie’s spotless flip flops but decided not to press the issue.
“Plus, it’s not his property. Yet,” a gray-haired woman from the back of the group interrupted. The other protesters nodded in unison. “The property is his on Wednesday. Until then, the Punkhorns still belong to the people.”
Delaney didn’t know any of the other protesters but surveyed the crowd. Her lack of knowledge indicated these were not hardened criminals, but just environmentalists and advocates pushing for preservation. She wasn’t even sure that they were all from town but she was glad somebody was standing up for her favorite running spot.
“That’s a good point. Okay, it sounds like a misunderstanding to me. I’ll assure Baxter that it won’t happen again. Okay?” Delaney turned to the rest of the protesters. “Keep fighting the good fight, please. Just do it on your own land so we don’t get called. Deal?” The protesters responded with a muffled cheer. Delaney saw them hug Melanie as she spun back to face the barren construction site.
Delaney did her best to wipe any expression from her face as she turned toward BJ Baxter. A pickup truck slowed to a stop on the street next to the protestors and Delaney circled back as she heard shouts from the crowd.
“What’s going on here?” Delaney barked.
Melanie was using the bottom of her t-shirt to wipe at her face. An older woman from the crowd stepped out and pointed toward the truck that was now speeding down the street. “That asshole just spit on us.”
“Melanie, you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. If you’re still looking for somebody to arrest, I’ve got a name for you.”
“I’ll take the name. Can’t promise an arrest but I’ll make it a point to follow up. Who is the hothead in the truck?”
“Morris Hanifin. That asshole has been showing up at every protest just to tell us to go to hell and cuss at us.”
Delaney had been hoping the mess would somehow manage to skate by without anybody mentioning Morris Hanifin’s name, but it was like trying to quiet the crickets at night. Some things just ran together. Peanut butter and jelly. Spaghetti and meatballs. Morris Hanifin and trouble.
Delaney made a note in her pad and thanked the protesters once again. She went back to Ruiz and walked with him over to Baxter. He had continued pacing around the small dirt lot as he watched Delaney interview the protesters. “We’re going to call this one even. No harm, no foul.”
Baxter’s face turned a shade of pink, often reserved for a young girl’s first backpack. Delaney put up her hand to stop him as his mouth shot open. “Sir, I know the paperwork is complete, but I believe the construction isn’t supposed to start until mid-week. So, technically, you’re the one trespassing not them. Now, I don’t want to get into all this, and Ruiz here, he hates paperwork, so
we’re going to head home and we ask that you do the same.”
Baxter spat on the ground and stomped over to his Jeep. His round face grew as red as an overripe tomato. Delaney wondered if his anger was always as vicious and vengeful. He peeled out past the protesters and onto the driveway. Thick clouds of dust left all the protesters to cough and gasp.
“Well, I guess he’s headed back to, well, I don’t know,” Ruiz said.
“Don’t know what?”
“I don’t know what type of structure goblins live in. Are they the ones who sleep upside down? Could at least explain how he got that stick up his—”
Delaney chuckled. “Now, should I let the rest of the squad know that the accused vampire is calling somebody a goblin?”
Ruiz put his hands up in innocence and stepped to his vehicle. Delaney followed him out of the lot and lowered her passenger window as she approached the protesters.
She winked at them and said with a grin, “Stay safe, y’all!”
EIGHT
Sunday, August 5th
As he approached the worn front door, Casper heard the shuffling of paws on the scratched linoleum floor. Hoagie jumped and stood on his back legs, licking every inch of Casper as he tried to shimmy into the narrow doorway. He kneeled to let Hoagie love up on him for a few minutes before ushering him back into the house.
Casper had moved into his one-floor condo six years prior and somehow found the money to pay the rent each month, despite annual price-hikes that pushed his bank account towards the red. There just flat out wasn’t much work for a PI these days. Oddly enough, the online dating experience had reassured him that there would always be some interest in answers involving the unknown. Real cases, however, were far and few between. The phone, when Casper had paid the bill and it was on, was not ringing.
Casper sat in bed and heard his upstairs neighbor hollering unintelligibly about some soccer match. He considered banging a broomstick on the ceiling to mirror the neighbor’s celebratory stomps. Sports had never of great interest to Casper; whether that be playing or watching them. He had made middling attempts to fight off the paunch forming above his beltline but running felt far too much like punishment and failed to keep his interest.
Life after four years of college at SUNY, New Paltz, had been harsh and Casper had hardly been prepared. An entry-level job at an engineering firm came with sixty-hour workweeks and mind-numbing tasks. Conveniently, the recruiters who’d sold him on the role, forgot to mention how boring the entry-level tasks were. He quickly learned that burn out was not just a made-up excuse that middle-aged people used to write off their apathy.
After he finally worked up the nerve to quit his first job, he had fortunately stumbled into his first case. The book soon followed and Casper thought he was on the right track. Unfortunately, A Haunting in Harvard Square had barely brought in a trickle of royalties, despite the statewide book tour. Still, the press was positive and most of the stories led with a sterling photo of Casper confidently beaming at the camera.
That confidence waned over the years. The plucky twenty-something in those press clippings soon grew weary, and his eyes had become sunken. The bills piled up more than the interview requests, and Casper was soon scrambling for cases. When clients hired him, they expected the bright-eyed man from the newspaper but instead were introduced to a thirty-three-year-old skeleton with t-shirts that clung to his bony arms like a child’s pajamas. If a stranger overlooked all of that, his hairline filled them in. It was receding like the bay at low tide.
The walk to Casper’s psychiatrist’s office was barely four blocks, but he still managed to break into a sweat. Progress had remained fleeting despite his best efforts to curb his anxiety and overcome his crippling fear. During their first visit, the doctor had attempted to ease Casper’s mind about partaking in therapy by explaining that claustrophobia was one of the five most common fears in the USA. Somehow, it felt like the doctor wasn’t taking Casper seriously when he explained that public speaking was near the top of the list.
There is no worker’s compensation or health insurance for a self-employed private investigator, let alone one that spends most his time on cases that involve ghosts, ghouls, and the unexplainable. So, when he’d found himself trapped in an old coffin with no means to escape, his anxiety to afford therapy compounded the paranoia he already felt.
“Can you describe the feelings you get?” The doctor asked.
“Which feelings?”
“When you think about being trapped again,” he said like it was a certainty to happen again. Casper did his best to push down his anger.
“I don’t like to think about that or talk about that.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here for.”
“Have you ever experienced it? Have you heard this a hundred times before?”
“I’ve never lived it myself, but yes, I’ve heard descriptions. That doesn’t matter much here, though. Your experience is your own. It’s unique to you. I know it’s not something you want to relive, but I can’t help you without evaluating what we’re facing.”
“Fine,” Casper sighed. “It’s dark. Like, darker than when you close your eyes. I think it’s less that I’m afraid of the lack of space, but terrified of the lack of light. I try to tell myself it’s natural. We’re not meant to be cooped up in little boxes, and we’re creatures that need space and light. And fresh air. But no matter what words I choose to whisper to myself, I can’t hear them over the silence. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but the silence roars like a lion protecting its young on the prairie. It fills and consumes my eardrums like a song that I’ve got stuck in my head. And then I panic. As if that wasn’t panicky enough,” Casper heard the ticking clock and the scribbling of the Doctor’s pen on a notepad. When the hour hand hit, Casper felt a freedom unlike many he’d known prior. Somehow, he was becoming claustrophobic in the very place that was meant to cure him.
Casper had struggled with the very idea of such a damning diagnosis, particularly because there didn’t seem to be anybody in his life that understood. His parents just pitied him and offered help with bills. His few friends had completely fallen off the map driven away by his crippling fear of everyday situations and anxious feelings.
Instead, Casper found support in one of the least likely places: the internet. A cousin had mentioned that there is a community for all sorts of weird things on Reddit, and Casper discovered he was right.
The online claustrophobic community wasn’t as technical or official as his conversations with doctors and therapists, but it served as a place of understanding. There was common ground. Every post fit his experience, and he felt some fear recede as he realized he was not alone. There was a beauty in his community of people he’d never actually met.
For months after the incident, cars were an issue. The coffin he’d had been stuck in was far different than a car but he’d still found the need to open the car door at random intervals to remind his brain that he was in control. After all, that was what mattered. If Casper was in control of it, he wasn’t trapped. In any new place, it was essential to find the exits. Eventually, for the car at least, he’d learned to distract himself with music or a podcast. Still, he preferred to walk whenever possible. As an added bonus, that meant he could take Hoagie along for a jaunt.
There were small tricks that he’d learned to control most of the fear, but it crept in from time to time. He had to face the door whenever he was in a new place. He had to breathe; in through his nose and out through his mouth. He had to pay attention to his thoughts and meditate his way back to a calm state. It hadn’t quite become second-nature, but it was becoming easier.
Casper flipped through the channels and settled on an old re-run of The Fugitive. He did his best Harrison Ford impression to Hoagie, who just whined and walked in a circle to readjust his sleeping position.
“Aw, even Hoagie is bored with another night of watching TV. Don’t worry, I’m sure something is headed our way and we’ll
be rolling in dough and lining up new cases for the next six months!”
Hoagie gave Casper a side-eye that made it clear he had heard this bit before. A sigh blew air through his snout and he drifted off to sleep while Casper settled into his couch for another night alone.
NINE
Monday, August 6th
Ann was sweeping away the piles of whirler wings that carpeted the back deck when she paused to observe the glimmering waters of Seymour Pond behind her. Through the tall oaks that bordered the back of her property, she could see half of the pond and half of the Punkhorns. She’d always found the juxtaposition funny. This gloomy forest in no way belonged right next to this crystal-clear pond where families swam. She felt grateful for the sunshine that snuck through the thick clouds above her.
Ann checked the lilies nestled behind the rocks marking the end of her driveway, and then stretched out the hose to water the pink impatiens that lined the side of the cottage. A kink in the hose seemed to derail her watering more days than not, so she’d insisted that Peter invest in one of the ‘un-kink-able’ hoses that don’t jam up. Ann wondered if they made a real-life version of it where it would stop her life from getting kinked and jammed along the way as she made plans.
Ann heard a distant car approaching and assumed it was a neighbor returning from a trip into town for errands. As it neared, she saw that it was a police cruiser, and the sight that seemed to bring fear into most people instead made Ann’s heart warm.
“Frank. What a lovely surprise. Come on in,” Ann held the screen door open and waved the Chief of Police through. He ambled in, squeezing through the doorframe.
“Thank you, Ann. Peter didn’t tell you he asked me to come by?” the chief asked out of breath from the short walk. The rotund man’s belt was tight and split his overflowing gut in half. Ann respected that he still squeezed into uniform each morning despite the weight gain.
Welcome to the Punkhorns (Shepard & Kelly Book 1) Page 5
