The Dead Caller from Chicago

Eight

I switched on my computer first thing the next morning. Endora’s boss had e-mailed at 3:17 A.M., probably about the time I finally found sleep:

Dek, It’s too damned late, or too damned early, to be sending e-mails. I’m still in my office. For the last hour, I’ve done nothing but sit. And think. And now, at last, I’ve summoned a vague conclusion that begs for another conclusion, which will be up to you to provide.

I combed every newspaper, television, and law-enforcement Internet archive available to us here at the Newberry. As you can imagine, I found numerous citations for men named Evans-under almost every given name you can think of. There were thousands!

And now, I think I found him in a regional summary of tiny newspaper clips from central Illinois. Attached is the death notice from the Center Bridge Bugle. It reports that Edwin G. “Snark” Evans, of that town, died many years ago.

Center Bridge is two hundred miles southwest of Chicago. It has fallen on hard times since the John Deere assembly plant, fifteen miles away, closed. The local funeral home and a number of Center Bridge’s businesses have also folded, along with the Center Bridge Bugle, presumably, since I can find no other references to it. I would imagine many of the town’s inhabitants have moved away, though someone might remain who remembers your Mr. Evans.

Now, as to that conclusion that begs for another conclusion: Though the death notice appears to be straightforward, something about it feels wrong. And that’s what’s kept me up until this late (or early) hour.

First, who would use the nickname “Snark” in a death notice? Certainly, nicknames appear in news reports and in obits, but they’re more of the garden variety-a “Bud” or a “Bob” or a “Skip.” To me, something about the nickname “Snark” seems, well… a little “snarky,” if you’ll allow my joke. The nickname seems pejorative, a little distasteful.

I consulted an online dictionary and found the term was coined by Lewis Carrol in 1874, to refer to an imaginary animal. Certainly, there’s nothing distasteful about that. Still, the nickname bothers me.

Then there’s that lack of detail in the obit. Contrary to custom, the death notice does not report how he died, only that he was survived by a sister, whose whereabouts are not mentioned. Nor is there any mention of a wake, service, or funeral, or where he was buried. Again, I got my information from a summary, so perhaps that’s their practice. Still, it feels bothersome.

Finally, there’s the Center Bridge Bugle itself. As I’ve written, I could find no other mention of that newspaper itself. It’s not listed in any of the reference sites for defunct Illinois newspapers. That’s more than odd, and it’s triggered an outrageous thought: Was Snark Evans’s the only death they ever reported?

I told you: It’s late (or early) and I’m probably making no sense at all.

If it weren’t for worry about Endora’s safety (and of course Leo’s, and his mother’s), I would have enjoyed my little sleuthing assignment. One enjoys a challenge away from Chaucer, my current project. Sorry I didn’t find out more.

I stared at the screen. He’d uncovered almost nothing… and perhaps so much more.

Fifteen minutes later, I was pointed downstate. The sky was dark, the wind was strong, and the Internet weatherman offered the likelihood that more snow was headed right across my path. Still, I figured the first hundred of the miles to Center Bridge would be an easy cruise, since it was an interstate.

I figured wrong. The wind advancing ahead of the snow was too riled. A hard wind can test patience in any car, but in a Jeep, it can summon frothing lunacy. Jeeps present a stubborn, flat wall to the road; there’s nothing aerodynamic to part the wind around them. Add a semitattered vinyl top that’s been poorly patched with silver tape, and a Jeep becomes a bucking, flapping mess, akin to a sailing ship in a hurricane the moment the sheets give way. The noise was deafening; the cold coming in, freezing; and the wind resistance so strong that I couldn’t get above forty-five miles an hour. I endured it only by tucking in behind several semitrailer rigs as they came up to pass me. I was relieved when I finally got off the interstate south of Champaign.

I figured wrong on that, too. The second leg was two lanes of bad asphalt, cratered by potholes and sheeted in the smooth spots by invisible black ice. The storm had found full strength by then, raining down fine bits of semisleet and hail the size of tiny marbles. Even in four-wheel drive, I was Barishnikov at the ballet, gliding and occasionally pirouetting toward the west.

Single pairs of headlamps popped up behind me now and again, but they quickly disappeared. No one had need, that day, to go to Center Bridge. Nor did any lights at all come toward me. I wondered if that meant that those who’d intended to leave had done so, years before.

That seemed all the more likely when I finally arrived, at three fifteen, a full five hours after I’d left Rivertown.

The business district, both blocks, had been vaporized by hard times. One car and four pickups were angle-parked along its main street. A tavern and, strangely, a Salvation Army resale shop were the only places showing light. The rest of the storefronts were dark, or boarded up.

I went into the tavern. The bartender and his two patrons looked up.

I ordered a Diet Coke and asked, “Any of you know Snark Evans?”

“He’s dead,” the bartender said.

“Good riddance,” one of the patrons on the stools said.

“Never finished high school,” the other patron said. “Took off freshman, sophomore year. Folks were surprised he even bothered to start.”

“What do you want to know for, anyway?” the bartender asked.

I handed him one of my cards. “A minor insurance policy was taken out a long time ago. One of their managers heard I’d be driving past Center Bridge and asked me to stop in to update his records.”

“How big is the policy?”

“That’s not my department. Any of Snark’s relatives around?”

All six of their shoulders shrugged. “None of that damned family is left,” said the second patron.

“They was all bad apples,” the bartender said. “The father got killed in a bar fight in Champaign, early on. The daughter was trashy, strutting herself while she was still in grammar school. The mother, she just plain wore out and died.”

“The girl is gone?”

“Finished high school, at least. But then she took off, pregnant, most likely.”

“Snark was bad news?” I asked the bartender.

“Burglaring, breaking into cars and houses. Everybody knew him and disliked him.”

The second patron stood up quickly and went to the window. The sound of a car engine came from outside. “Damn fool, running without lights,” he said.

The first man got up and went to join his friend. “I can’t see who it is,” he said, peering out the window.

“Damn fool, that’s who it is. He’ll get run up on, if he doesn’t turn on his lights.”

The engine noise moved on and disappeared.

“The funeral home is closed?” I asked the bartender.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Official death record, for the file.”

“Never was no funeral home in Center Bridge. Closest one was ten miles north, but it closed in the nineties,” the bartender said. “Now we got to get shipped almost to Champaign upon expiration.”

“Don’t matter. He didn’t die here,” the bartender said.

“Somewheres out west, or down south,” the first patron said.

The other two men laughed at that, moving back to the bar.

“The newspaper’s gone, too?” I asked, when the mirth subsided. “The Center Bridge Bugle?”

“The what?” the first patron asked.

“It might have been that ad sheet down at the Super Food,” the bartender said. “It folded ten years ago, with the Super Food.”

There was nothing left to ask. I went out into the snow.

Before starting the Jeep, I called Jenny. “I need a favor. I’d like you to call your police contacts, see if anyone has anything on an Edwin G. ‘Snark’ Evans.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m striking out on something I’m looking into.”

“Does this have something to do with why you’re keeping an eye on Leo’s place?”

“Haste will be appreciated,” I said.

The wind and the sleet were endurable for five miles, and then a key piece of silver tape gave way, freeing my vinyl top to billow like a brake chute on a dragster. I pulled off to the shoulder on a side road, cut the engine and the lights, and got out with one of the rolls of duct tape I carry.

I’d just stepped up on the doorsill when I heard an engine sound above the wind. A vehicle passed on the highway. It was running without lights, and I couldn’t see it for the storm. It was heading east, though, and I had the chilling thought its driver might have been hoping to run unseen behind the lights of a red Jeep.

I took my time retaping the roof, straining for the sound of the engine returning. There was only the wind, swirling around me. After a decent amount of time had passed, I drove back up onto the road.

I’d poked at a nerve, picked up a tail.