The Enigmatologist Read online

  BEN ADAMS

  THE ENIGMATOLOGIST

  by

  Ben Adams

  Copyright © Ben Adams 2016

  Cover Copyright © 2016

  Published by Devil’s Tower

  (An Imprint of Ravenswood Publishing)

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher and/or author.

  Ravenswood Publishing

  Raeford, NC 28376

  http://www.ravenswoodpublishing.com

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  For Shelby

  John Abernathy watched them from behind the bushes, the man in the car wearing a rubber ducky mask, an e-cigarette between the orange and latex beak, the woman’s head bobbing in his lap. John didn’t know the woman’s name, but the man was Randall Neilson, his client’s husband. Mrs. Neilson had walked into McGullicutty and Sons Private Investigations a week earlier, needing her suspicions confirmed. Rooftop, John’s boss, gave him the case, thinking it’d be easy, photographing a cheating husband in the act. John had been following Mr. Neilson for a couple of days, sitting in the Village Inn next to his office, waiting for him to leave work. Usually, he went straight home to John’s client, but tonight, Mr. Neilson headed to the Genesse Mountain Lookout parking lot just outside of Denver to meet his girlfriend.

  John pushed his glasses back up, adjusted the zoom lens as the couple moved to the back seat. For the first time since she got in the car, John saw the woman’s face. She flipped the hair out of her eyes, tolerating Randall grunting behind her. She put her hand against the window, bracing herself. Her palm slipped on the slick glass, her fingers getting snagged in the latch. The door popped open. She tumbled out, but caught herself, skinning her hand on the ice and gravel. A can of Axe body spray rolled from the car, clinking against the frosted asphalt. The dome light glowed dull yellow, giving John a clear shot of their faces. He started taking pictures again.

  She dragged herself from the car. Her navy blue skirt was bunched around her waist and she pulled it down. Randall crawled out after her, holding his unzipped pants. He tore off the mask and tossed it in the back seat. She brushed crisp ice from her palms, tears building. Randall tried to grab her, soothe her, but she twisted loose.

  “Is this ‘cause I asked you to wear those Care Bear pajamas?” Randall asked, zipping up his pants. “Because that was a one-time thing.”

  She spun and slapped him. And walked to her car, barefoot, shoes in one hand, holding her shirt closed with the other.

  Randall Neilson picked up the can of Axe body spray and spritzed some on his bare chest. The wind carried the fumes to John, the gag-inducing smell of teen exasperation, moose testicles, and entitlement. He put his hand over his mouth, suppressing the coughs building in his throat. Randall tossed the can in his car, leaving the cap on the pavement, and drove away shouting at the woman through his open window.

  She gripped the top of the steering wheel, rested her head on her hands, and cried.

  John stopped taking pictures.

  He felt the urge to go to her, console her, but heard Rooftop’s voice, reminding him that he was there to observe and record, not to get involved, that he needed to remain separate, in the shadows.

  She lifted her head from the steering wheel, started her car. The car exhaled gray exhaust into the night. She backed out, paused for a moment, then revved her engine and sped from the lot, tires spraying loose snow.

  John tugged his wool hat down around his ears. He wiped May snow and mud from the knees of his secondhand corduroys, and put his bare hands in the pockets of his black pea coat, drew it closer to his slender frame and slogged to the empty lot. Melted ice had seeped into the gap between the loose rubber sole and tip of his left black Converse All-Star, soaking his sock and toes, and John stopped intermittently to kick snow from it.

  The lot was quiet. The only sound came from trees bending, trying to hold against the wind. And John’s crunching shoes. He stooped and picked up the cap Randall had left in the parking lot and tossed it in the trash.

  The breeze shifted, whispering in his ear. It chilled John through the layers of wool and cotton. Standing in the ice-covered parking lot, he felt uneasy, like someone was behind him, watching, their eyes pushing against him.

  A branch cracked near the set of trees where John had been hiding, like someone stepped on it. Startled, he jumped. John tried looking through the tangled brush. Stars were starting to appear, competing with Denver’s evening glow, and his eyes were only beginning to adjust to the oncoming night, but every shaded trunk and overgrown bush looked like something sinister hid behind it.

  Another branch snapped.

  John stood upright, stiff. Up until then, he had thought he was alone. But he wasn’t. Someone prowled the forest, observing him.

  John took a step back, fumbled in his pants pocket for his keys. His car was just down the road. A quarter mile of ice and slush. He’d have to run for it. He didn’t think he could outrun whatever was back there, especially over tire-crushed dirt and snow. Giant trees and lack of streetlights had darkened the road. John pivoted toward it, digging the rubber tips of his Chucks into the ice.

  Snow fell from the trees, crashing and breaking limbs. John sighed. That’s what it must have been, heavy snow on a dead branch.

  * * * *

  “Well, Mrs. Neilson,” John said, sitting behind a desk in the Blake Street office. She sat in a wooden chair across from him, fogged in perfume that nearly strangled him. “As you know, I’ve been following your husband for the past couple of days.”

  Rooftop stood behind him. He leaned against the windowsill, observing his young assistant. He was a squat man, like the gravity of his profession had compressed him. His bald head, the tufts of gray hair ringing it, barely reached the window sash.

  “Yesterday,” John continued, “I witnessed him leaving work shortly after five. As you can guess, he didn’t go straight home.” He tapped the manila folder on the desk. “There’s no easy way to say this.” John slid the folder over to her, proud to be showing Mrs. Neilson his portrait of her husband.

  Mrs. Neilson opened it, started flipping through the photos like a magazine at the hair salon.

  John had witnessed Rooftop give this same speech several times over the past year. He had memorized and internalized it, knew what to expect. And right then, he expected her to start crying, disbelief and grief taking over. He dropped his arm and opened the desk drawer. Without looking, he reached for a box of tissues, readied to offer them.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “Like I said, I followed your husband.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part. I mean this.” Mrs. Neilson pulled out a picture, pointed to the woman in it. “That’s my goddamn cousin! Wearing my clothes!”

  “That’s the first thing you noticed?” John asked, looking at the rubber ducky mask.

  “In every single picture! Look at this! That trailer park bitch is soiling everything. Is she wearing my jewelry? Now I have to go home and wash that skank’s stank off everything.”

  “I think we need to focus our attention on what’s important. You now have evidence that your husband’s been unfaithful,” John said, trying to remain professional.

  “No shit! With my slutty cousin! You know she got fired from the DMV for fucking her manage
r? They photographed the whole thing with the photo ID camera. An old man had a heart attack when he realized his new license photo was someone’s balls.”

  John slammed the tissue drawer closed. Behind him, Rooftop cleared his throat.

  “And you, this is how you tell me? with pictures of my husband fucking in the backseat of the LeBaron? That’s where we put our car seat for Christ’s sake. No wonder my baby’s getting sick.”

  “She’s probably allergic to skank stank.”

  “What are you, a fucking doctor? Of course she’s allergic to skank stank. She’s a classy baby.”

  “She obviously takes after her mother.”

  “What the fuck did you just say?”

  “John,” Rooftop interrupted, his hand on John’s shoulder, “why don’t you go make us some coffee?”

  “Whatever.” John went into the storage room, brewed coffee among the filing cabinets, hotplate, cot, and spare suits hanging from nails driven into the wall.

  Rooftop sat behind the desk. He barely peeked above the wooden plane, his bald head like a rising moon. The storage room windows were thick and John struggled to hear the few words Rooftop said. Mrs. Neilson wiped her fingers under her eyes and started crying. Rooftop pulled the tissues from the desk and offered them.

  “Un-fucking-believable.” John shook his head in disbelief and ran his hands through his thick brown hair.

  The phone rang.

  The caller ID said the number was from California, although John didn’t recognize the area code. He turned off the ringer and lowered the answering machine speaker volume.

  John returned with coffee. Mrs. Neilson nodded her head, agreeing with something Rooftop had just said. She blotted her eyes, sniffling.

  “Thank you, Mr. McGullicutty,” she said, digging in her purse. She put a check on the desk. “This has been very enlightening.”

  “I’m sure it has,” John said.

  “And you, Mr. Abernathy,” Mrs. Neilson said, “I’m definitely talking about you in my Yelp review.”

  She slammed the door. John and Rooftop listened to her walk away, her high heels clicking against the marble floor of the hall.

  “John,” Rooftop said, “what was that?”

  “She was just…” John looked at the door. “It’s not what I expected.”

  Rufus McGullicutty had been a good friend of John’s grandfather. His grandfather had given Rufus the nickname ‘Rooftop’ when they were kids, because ‘he was so short he’d never see the roof of his own house.’ When John’s father disappeared, Rooftop looked after John like a son, even offering him a job as his assistant when John graduated from The Boulder School of Esoteric Art and Impractical Design, a job John always told himself was temporary.

  “You’re going to have difficult clients. It’s part of the job. Got it?”

  “This whole thing, it’s not what I expected.”

  “I told you, this is what we do.” Rooftop gripped the pictures, shook them at John. “We’re paid to take pictures. That’s it. This isn’t anything glamorous like the movies. There are no car chases or shoot outs. You never get the girl. If you want excitement, go do something else. If you want a regular nine-to-five behind a desk, go do something else. This job is not fun. Got it?”

  “It shouldn’t be like this!” John gestured to the photos Rooftop held. When he started working for Rooftop, he thought it’d be easy, take a couple of pictures, design crossword puzzles in his free time. He never anticipated the reaction he’d have, the anger and hopelessness he felt when he photographed grown men taking their pants off.

  “Did they teach you that in that fancy art school?”

  “They never told us we’d be working some shit job that'd make us miserable.”

  “We all got to do something,” Rooftop said, tossing the folder onto the desk.

  “That’s just it. I don’t think I can do this.”

  “You quitting on me? Is that it? What are you going to do? go back to The People’s Republic of Boulder, work in a coffee shop?”

  “That’s where all the Advanced Pictorial Ceramics majors work. I can’t work with them. They’re cliquey.”

  “Cliquey? What the hell’s ‘cliquey’? Look, kid, you got a good job here. I know it’s not enemagraphy or whatever.”

  “Enigmatology. Writing puzzles. You know this.”

  “Enigma shmigma, whatever,” Rooftop said. “Look, you got it pretty good here, kid. The work is steady. The money’s good. More than what those Ceramics kids are making, I bet.”

  John tapped the waste basket with his toe. The few crumpled tissues inside the can moved slightly, then settled back into place.

  “You’ve been doing this for a long time,” John said. “How do you deal with it? with people like that?”

  “Heavy drinking.”

  “That’s great advice.”

  “Look, some people can do it, some can’t. Got it? John, you’re a good kid, a little sensitive, but a good kid. Something this business needs. Why don’t you backup the photos you took in case we need to send them to her attorney? Take the rest of the day off, think about it.”

  By the time John had backed up the files, Rooftop had listened to the voicemail. He was on the phone, swinging his stubby arms around. He got like that when he was excited, usually about a client. John put on his coat and stood at the doorway, waiting for Rooftop to look at him so he could say goodbye.

  “John, come here,” Rooftop whispered, putting his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “I got a big job for us. Pays a thousand dollars a day, plus expenses. You want to go out of town? All expenses paid?”

  “Sure, I guess,” John said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Great, hold on,” Rooftop took his hand off the phone. “Rex, I’m putting you on speakerphone. Got it?” He pushed the speakerphone button. “Rex, you’re on with John Abernathy.”

  “Hello, John,” a confident voice said. “I’m Rex Grant, the editor-in-chief for The National Enquirer. We’d like to hire you and Rooftop.”

  “I’m a little old for a paper route,” John said, “and Roof hasn’t been on a bike since the sixties.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rex said, almost laughing, “we already have people for that. I want to hire you to investigate a photograph, see if it’s legit. A few weeks ago a woman contacted us saying she had photographic evidence that Elvis was alive. We talked to her on the phone and looked at the photo. I’ve seen a lot of Elvis photos, but this picture’s different. It’s arguably the best documentation of an Elvis sighting to come across our desks. A once-in-a-lifetime find.”

  “Why are you calling us?” John asked. “Don’t you have reporters for this sort of thing?”

  “Normally, yes. Especially for Elvis sightings. Shortly after Elvis’s death, we offered a reward for anyone who could prove he was alive.”

  “That sounds like responsible journalism.”

  “Yeah, it was great. We were inundated with phone calls and letters from people saying they’d seen Elvis. Some were obviously a waste of time, but a few seemed credible. So, we hired investigators from different parts of the country to authenticate them. Rooftop was one of the people we hired. Unfortunately, none of them panned out, I’m sure he’ll tell you about that, but this photo, it’s the real deal.”

  “Yeah, but…” The window blinds were tilted, one side higher than the other. John tugged the cord, but they wouldn’t align. “Why don’t you just publish it?”

  “There’s…there’s a really good chance that there’s, well, something more to this story.”

  The only time anyone ever called them was when something had gone terribly wrong with another person.

  “You sent someone down there already, didn’t you?” John asked on a hunch.

  “Yeah, we…”

  “Rex,” Rooftop said, “you need to be straight with us if you want our help. Got it?”

  Rex sighed. “When the photo came in, I thought we should send someone to investigate, but we don�
��t have the budget we had in the eighties, so I decided to send an intern. The kid…the kid never checked in. We called his cell phone, the motel where he was staying. Nothing. A few days ago, the New Mexico State Police found his body in the desert just south of Truth or Consequences. He’d been shot. He was…he was just a kid. His parents keep calling, asking if we’ve heard anything. The police don’t have any leads. He was only eighteen. Just a kid.”

  “What the hell, Rex?” Rooftop said. “You want us to risk our lives for a photo of Elvis? No. This is not what we do. We do not risk our lives for photos of Elvis. We don’t risk our lives for anything. Got it?”

  The kid. He probably went to a prestigious school like John, majoring in journalism, interning at the tabloid, getting coffee for people who Photoshop celebrities’ heads onto obese bodies. Like John, the kid had waited for his big break. But when it came, a chance to travel to New Mexico, do some investigative journalism, his art school dream, it got him killed.

  “I’ll do it,” John said, his voice hushed.

  “This is why we have police. This is why…Wait. What?” Rooftop glared at John, his bald head turning scarlet.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll go down there.”

  “Like hell you will! Rex, I’m putting you on hold. Got it?” Rooftop hit the hold button, rubbed his hand on his bald head. “Jesus Christ, John. What would your dad say?”

  “My dad hasn’t been around for…” John did the math for an equation he’d performed every day since age five, “eighteen years, so he can’t say much.”

  “He wouldn’t want you doing something dangerous.”

  “This job is already dangerous. Last night, that Neilson guy, if he’d seen me, he probably would’ve pulled a gun on me if he had one. Besides, someone needs to do this.”

  “This is not what we do.”

  “Since I’ve been working for you,” John said, throwing his coat on the chair where Mrs. Neilson had sat, “all I’ve done is help people get divorced.”

  “This is why we have the police.”