The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 19

Back in D.C., I consult my notebooks and throw myself into the pursuit of my “leads,” such as they are.

The dimes. If Emma’s friend Amalia was correct about the connection with voodoo, I know where to start. One of the producers at the station – Scott – did a piece about voodoo last year. He was somewhere down in Florida, where there’s a significant Haitian population.

“Hey, Alex! Miss you, man. How’s it going?”

“I’m hanging in.”

“If I can do anything, you-”

“Matter of fact, that’s why I called. Remember that piece on voodoo? I have a question and I thought you could tell me where to go with it.”

“A voodoo question? Sure. If I can’t answer, I’ll know where to point you.”

“The person who took the kids left some mementos behind in my house.”

“Wait. Weren’t your kids abducted from some fair?”

“The kidnapper brought them back to the house and he left some things behind. I’m not sure the police ever released any of this.”

“Voodoo mementos?”

“Some of them. I think so, anyway.”

“Jesus! Dolls?”

“No. Coins. A row of coins. And a bowl of water, placed up high.”

“You know – that reminds me of this case at a nursing home in Cocoa Beach. The SEIU was trying to organize some of the help in a series of nursing homes down in that area. In one of them, the nursing home management retaliated by leaving voodoo… messages, I guess you’d call them… all over the facility. The janitorial staff was mostly Haitian, right? And these warnings, or whatever they were, took the form of patterns of coins and bowls of water in weird places. Ended up the management was charged with unfair labor practices! Intimidating the workforce, you know? Because those coins – they were curses. And those bowls of water – those were for the spirits to drink – implying that there were spirits around, you know. Thirsty ones.”

“No kidding.”

“The coins in your house – were they dimes?”

“Yes.”

“Winged Liberty dimes – with the wings sort of coming out of Liberty’s head?”

“How did you know?”

“Because those dimes are the coin of the realm in voodoo. I couldn’t squeeze any of this into the program, but it was fascinating stuff. First off, because of those little wings, most people call the things Mercury dimes. So it’s possible all of these superstitions are based on a misunderstanding. Because the head on that dime is supposed to be Lady Liberty. Anyway – Mercury was the Roman god of crossroads, of messages, of games of chance and sleight of hand. The god of magic. The way that fits is that Haitians believe some of the houngans have supernatural power – can do magic, in other words.”

“What’s a houngan?”

“That’s a priest, a voodoo priest. Getting back to those Mercury dimes, the voodoo equivalent of Mercury is called Legba.”

“The voodoo equivalent? There’s an equivalent?”

“Voodoo’s a very syncretic religion. It just appropriates bits and pieces from everywhere. Probably why it’s still rolling on. So Legba, he’s also related to St. Peter – guardian of the gates, right? This figure – Mercury, Legba, St. Peter – it’s all about access and thresholds.”

“So how do these coins get to be curses?”

“Now that, I don’t really know, but those nursing home workers would not even go into some of the rooms, they were that spooked.”

“Hunh.”

“I guess the Mercury dime can go either way luckwise, because people down in Louisiana and Florida wear the things around their necks on chains. Supposed to attract money.”

“Really.”

“Plus the dimes are used in mojo bags.”

“Mojo bags?”

“Don’t knock it. I got one made up when I did the story and maybe it’s coincidence, but my life’s been happening ever since. So for a mojo bag, you need a Mercury dime. You need a couple of roots – the kind would depend on what the houngan decides. Mine had a St. John the Conqueror root. I remember because I liked the name.”

“Hunh.”

“Anyway, the houngans, they know the right kinds of roots. So you get the Mercury dime, the roots, some sugar; you wrap it all up in a two-dollar bill; you wrap that up in a red flannel bag; you tie it all tight. Then to get your mojo workin’, as it were, you have to anoint the bag with the menstrual blood or urine of the woman you love. That part was a little tricky with Christine.”

“I’ll bet.”

We talk a little longer, and I thank him, and in case I need to know more about voodoo, he gives me the name of an academic at Florida State.

I compile a list of medieval festivals. I know from previous forays that there are more of these things than you might think.

Lucky for me, the very first site Google kicks out – a Directorie of Faires – turns out to be a huge help. By clicking on the center of the elaborately tooled leather cover of the “book” that constitutes the homepage, I get access to an extensive list of events: Faires, Festivals, Reenactments, Feasts, Pageants, Jousts, and so on. Listed in chronological order, the faux parchment pages inside the “book” provide a wealth of information. Each separate fair or festival has links that contain details about the year in which the event or festival is “set” (1567, 1601, etc.), how long the particular venue has been in operation, the number of stages for performances, the number of booths selling goods and food, maps, weather information, hours, and admission prices – along with telephone numbers and other contact information about the management. There is even a “weapons policy” for each event, declaring whether or not weapons should be “peace-tied” (whatever that means).

Apart from two hundred and nine “major events,” the directory also lists the artists and companies that drive these festivals, a mind-blowing catalog that encompasses everything from “birds of prey demonstrations” to fire-eaters and “baudy” comics.

Craftsmen and vendors have their own “page”; among the listings are purveyors of leather drinking vessels, “chaine maille,” and juggling sticks.

Using the directory as a guide, my routine is to spend a few hours every day on the telephone with people who run the events. Most have to be won over, coaxed away from the instinct to be defensive and uncooperative. I understand why they don’t want to talk to me. I’d definitely dodge calls from some desperate guy floating the notion that my fantasy world is the stalking ground of a kidnapper.

But mostly, I win them over, at least to the extent that they agree to post the Wanted poster in private employee areas.

I made the poster at Kinko’s. Under the classic banner WANTED, it displays an array of the different sketches of the Piper (including the one created by the police artist who worked with the Sandling twins). Beneath the sketches is a brief description of the abduction of my sons, the circumstances and date, along with what’s known of the Piper’s physique, costume, and dog. Finally, there’s contact information and the promise of a reward.

I send several packets a day – a cover letter and several copies of the poster. I use FedEx – even though it’s expensive – for the sense of urgency implied by overnight delivery. I log the mailings into my computer, in which I’ve set up a file for each venue, so I can track follow-up calls and e-mails, responses, and the actions taken. Links to my calendar remind me when to follow up.

As soon as I finish with all of the events in the Directorie, I plan to tackle the vendor and artist lists. In the meantime, I take breaks from the medieval world to plan a similar campaign in the canine realm.

Maybe I can get to the Piper via his dog. I’m shocked when my first Google search – whippet – produces more than thirty-seven thousand cites. Lots of redundancies, but still, there are more whippet breeders, whippet clubs, and whippet fanciers than I’d ever imagined.

“Oh, yes,” gurgles the woman from Whippet World, “they’re wonderful pets, energetic but pliant, and so… just great looking, don’t you think? Can I help you find a puppy? Is that why you called?”

My simple explanation – that I’m trying to find someone who was seen with a whippet – just confuses and worries her.

“This is all you know about the man, then – that he had a dog? Did the dog attack you?”

I explain who I am and why I’m trying to locate someone via his whippet.

“Oh,” she says, her voice gone flat, all the enthusiasm evaporated. “Oh, dear. Well – I don’t know. If the man doesn’t compete, it will be awfully tough to find him. If he does compete, or even if he once did, then maybe there’s a chance. But if he just bought a whippet from a puppy mill or even from a breeder, or acquired one through adoption – I don’t know.”

“Compete? You mean at dog shows?”

“Well, that’s a possibility. Whippets are really, really on the upswing in hounds. We have great hopes for one of the boys at this year’s Westminster, as a matter of fact.”

“How many dog shows are there?”

“Oh, my dear, you can’t imagine. But I think you’d be wasting your time looking in that direction. I wouldn’t guess that an individual such as you’re describing – well, one wouldn’t think he’d seek out the spotlight by going to dog shows, particularly if he used the dog as – it’s so painful to even think of this – as some kind of lure.”

“So-”

“What might be worth a go is to look at other types of competition. No danger of press coverage there. Lots of whippet owners compete – we just seem to relish the battle, you know! And if your fellow was one of the these, someone might recognize him. You did say you had a sketch you could distribute?”

“Yes.”

“You might try that, circulate it amongst some of these groups.”

“What are we talking about? You mean racing around a track?”

A fruity laugh. “Good Lord, not much of that going on these days. Mind you, I don’t say you can’t find old-fashioned oval racing if you really look for it, but coursing is far more popular – that’s a form of racing in which the dogs chase lures. They’re sight hounds, you know – whippets are – they chase on visual cue. Coursing usually involves obstacles and a convoluted path. We use white plastic bags for lures – mundane but humane, as we say. Whippets are also great Frisbee dogs, and they truly excel at flyball and flygility and…”

I let her go on… and on… and at the end she promises to put a link to my poster on her website and to send me a list of whippet groups and breeders.

The packet arrives two days later by Priority Mail. The list inside provides the names of four hundred thirty-four groups and more than two hundred websites she suggests I might contact. There will be some overlap, of course, she notes on a Post-it. Whippet owners are real joiners!

I’ve still progressed through only forty-two events in my list of the medieval events. Now it would seem that exploring the whippet angle will require another huge effort. I feel overwhelmed, daunted, depressed. This is obviously the kind of manpower-intensive activity the police should do. Should have done. In my opinion.

The Elizabethan neck ornament known as the ruff provides another avenue for research. From my roster of vendors, I pull down a list of those involved in sewing and selling Renaissance garb – ruffs, bumrolls, doublets, farthingales. The catalog of dealers expands every time I talk to one of them. The market for ruffs extends beyond Renaissance festivals to drama companies, minstrels, troubadours, jesters, choirs, and circuses (where clowns and various animals wear ruffs). Not unlike the amazing number of medieval festivals and whippet fanciers, ruff-making turns out to be a cottage industry in its own right. You can buy them by mail or over the Internet or at the festivals themselves.

“I’m sorry, but we do most of our trade in cash,” a woman from Carpe Diem Rags tells me. I make a few calls a day, but what looked like a narrow and promising angle now looks like it could consume months of my time.

I wake up in the middle of the night and think: gym equipment. How many people have ropes hanging from their ceilings?

Whatever the answer may be, I find out the next day that you can buy ropes anywhere. The same rope suspended from ceilings for upper-body work is also used to tie off boats, to scallop along the edge of floats and docks for “impact cushioning,” as handrails on gangplanks, for decoration in nautically themed restaurants. It can be purchased in marine supplies stores, also online and through mail order. It’s available at Lowe’s and Home Depot. An ordinary rope can be converted to a climbing rope with the addition of a cable-bight at one end, from which it can be suspended from the ceiling. And old climbing ropes seldom die. They migrate from first-rank health club and big, well-funded high school or gymnastics academy to church-sponsored gymnasiums and community center gyms… and from there to every kind of gimcrack fitness palace.

Emma comes through. The Corvallis police send their files on the Sandling case, which include copies of relevant files from Eureka. I pore over these for hours, and they do supply a few leads – names of fellow residents of the park where Emma and the boys lived in their tent, Dalt Trueblood’s CV, names of the parents of Connor and Chandler’s friends. I follow these leads, I talk to these people, but I find nothing new. How did Shoffler put it? I’m chasing smoke.

I spend hours a day, grinding away at my lists, working the telephone, getting my packets ready for FedEx. I go online at least four hours every day, too, following up on the e-mails still coming in via findkevinandsean.com.

The trouble with these computer sessions is that they wear me down. Hope flares and leads abound, but they all deteriorate into what Shoffler calls “Elvis sightings.” It’s a tightrope walk – trying to remain open-minded and alert without being too hopeful. The continuum of disappointment is wearing me down.

In the first three weeks, the findkevinandsean site was a great source of positive energy. There was a kind of buoyancy in knowing so many people out there were pulling for us. A vigilant public was anxious to help and we got a constant supply of reinforcement and even potentially useful information.

I still get well-wishers every day and the occasional query as to where contributions should be sent. The boys are the subjects of thousands of prayers and prayer chains. But apart from these and daily postings from a few women who have made it an avocation to troll missing children’s sites looking to enable miracle reunions, the website has devolved into a magnet for wackos.

Well-intentioned wackos predominate, amateur and professional psychics mostly, along with practitioners of more eccentric forms of divination – all of them eager to offer their services, some for a fee, some for free. There are writers who want to write books about the boys, earnest types who’ve received messages in their dreams, adherents of various religious sects offering a spiritual haven to me and Liz.

And then there’s what Liz calls “toxic spam.” Badly spelled and syntactically twisted, these are e-mails that bristle with dark hints and bizarre innuendos or, worse, spin out some deeply disturbed fantasies in which the boys star as victims in nasty psychodramas.

There are death threats, too, for Liz and myself, along with cynical offers to market artifacts of the boys’ childhood: artwork, clothing, baby teeth. We always turned over to the FBI the ones that seemed downright threatening, and I continue to do so, but just going through them on a daily basis is depressing.

Days pass when I hardly go outside. I spend fourteen, sixteen hours a day toiling at my lists. On the phone, sealing up packets, trudging through cyberleads. Despite my earlier intentions to be healthy and keep the house organized, I’m living on pizza and bagels and beer. The house is a wreck. My clothes are loose and the face in the mirror is haggard and gray. And disheveled. I’m letting my beard grow, and my hair. My gums bleed. My right hand – my mouse hand – develops a persistent cramp. Most of the time, I work with a kind of mindless determination, but once in a while, a bleak mood settles over me and I admit to myself that none of this work seems likely to get me one step closer to Kevin and Sean. The day comes when, for a moment, I allow myself to think about what it would be like to just… give up.

And that’s worse – the chasm of emptiness – much worse than the feeling that I’m mining blind veins. Maybe what I’m doing is useless, but I’m doing something. I keep at it, working with the despairing energy of an underprepared student cramming for finals.

Because I can’t shake off the feeling that time is running out.