The Enigmatologist (17 page)

Cardboard boxes were stacked in the van. He tossed the
lids back, looking for something he’d missed the other night, something that
might explain the Air Force’s interest in
Leadbelly
.
And Rosa. Most of the boxes were filled with trash, food wrappers, unread mail,
women’s phone numbers. John flipped open another box.
Leadbelly’s
wall photos, the ones labeled ‘Area 51’ and ‘Los Alamos’. Digging through
aerial shots of military bases, John found more photographs. Not photos linking
Leadbelly
to the Air Force. But of something else.

Photographs of John.

John leaving his mom’s place last Sunday. The photo was
dated and labeled in the same hand as the aerial shots. John graduating high
school, playing catch in the front yard, his mother watching from the porch,
John in junior high, going to a Halloween party as Colonel Nathan Norris from
Cape
Canaveral
. He still had the outfit.
Leadbelly
even had a photo of John kneeling behind a tree and photographing Randall
Neilson getting slapped by his girlfriend at
Genesse
Mountain Lookout four nights ago. John had heard a cracking sound that night.
He thought it was tree limbs breaking, but it had been
Leadbelly
moving to get a better shot.

He kept digging, and found pictures of his grandpa. Pictures
going back sixty years. His grandpa as a young man, standing on the porch of a
small home, his arm around a young, pregnant woman, John’s grandma.

And buried underneath these were pictures of another man.
John recognized him from dreams he’d had every night since childhood, since the
man disappeared. They were pictures of his father. Photos John had never seen.
His dad as a child, then a teenager, and as an adult. And photos of John and
his dad. In one photo, John is sitting on a Transformers Big Wheel, laughing,
while his father is pushing him down the street. His father is laughing and
smiling, playing with his young son. With John.

The last time he saw a picture of his father outside of
his mom’s billfold was his sixth birthday, when, in an ice-cream-cake-induced
rage, he threw out all the pictures of the man. That night, he heard his mother
go to the trash and pull them out. The sound of the metal lid being lifted, the
framed pictures scraping against Coke cans, juice boxes, and snack cake
wrappers made him roll over and cry into his pillow. How could his mother still
love someone who’d left them? who’d denied a child a lifetime of his love? How
could he not have been there for his birthday?

John gripped the photos. He crumpled them, then smoothed
the glossy pages’ ridges and depressions, his hand accidentally brushing over
his father’s face. He wanted to wad them up, step on them, crush them until
they were nothing, not even a memory. He wanted to save them, put them in
simple, black frames and hang them in the living room next to pictures of
family vacations and graduations. Holding the photos, he experienced eighteen
years of anger and regret and yearning. But mostly, he felt paranoid.
Leadbelly
, or someone, had been following him and his
family, photographing them over the decades, and he’d never suspected.

John scanned the trailer park, trying to catch the glint
of sunlight off a camera lens, hidden in rusted sheds or behind tipped trash
cans or in windows with broken screens. He laughed at his sudden paranoia and
wondered if this was what the people he photographed felt like when they saw
pictures of themselves dressed as pandas, having three-ways with people dressed
as giant tacos and grinning dolphins.

He searched the box, looking for some reasoning behind the
collected images from his family history. At the box’s bottom, he found it.

A book.

The leather cover was faded, stained, and split along the
spine, but the binding still held. John opened the first page and read:
Contained within is the personal journal of
Archibald Abernathy, chronicling the years 1862-1901.

John recognized the name from the genealogy project he did
for Sidewalk Stencil 204, spray painting his family tree all over Pearl Street.
It was a branch whipping him in the face. Archibald Abernathy, John’s
great-great-great-grandfather.

Leadbelly
had kept the one-hundred and
fifty year history of John’s family, the journal and photos, hidden among dirty
clothes, empty beer cans, pornography.

A loud pop behind him. Glass breaking. The blast forced
him against the van and to the ground. Green flames from
Leadbelly’s
trailer windows burned holes in the tent. The photos flew from John’s hand and
were scattered on the ground like discarded big top ads from his Survey of
Dadaist Circus Sideshow Posters 101. John scooped up the photos of him and his
dad, put them and the book under his shirt, and zipped up his hoodie. He tossed
the rest of the pictures in the box. There were some pictures he’d like to
keep, photos of his father as a child sitting on his grandfather’s lap. His
grandmother would want them. But there were too many photos, and John couldn’t
keep them all. No one could. He put the lid back on the box and lifted it from
the van’s floor. John faced
Leadbelly’s
burning
trailer, the green flames rising from the windows and caressing the outside
walls, and heaved the box inside.

The cardboard box quickly caught fire. It blackened,
shrinking under flame. Satisfied no one would see the pictures again, John put
one hand in his hoodie pocket and held the book and photos in place. Even
though he was breathing freely, he covered his mouth with his other sleeve and
blended in with the distracted crowd.

John and Sheriff Masters leaned against the sheriff’s car
and watched NASA scientists run to their vans, wanting to save as much data as
they could for later study, like it was a once-in-a-lifetime find, while
Colonel Hollister stood in the turn lane, the gap between the dotted yellow
lines dividing South Grand Avenue, watching the fire consume
Leadbelly’s
trailer, the Air Force’s crime scene.

And suddenly, it was over.

The fire burned itself out. The whole thing lasted a few
seconds.
Leadbelly’s
trailer was the only one
damaged.

“He burned his way out of Las Vegas again,” John said. He
would have laughed, but journal and photos pressing against his stomach
reminded him that there was something more urgent than trailer park arson.

Crossing South Grand, Colonel Hollister motioned for his
men to get back in the tent and see if they could salvage scraps from the
trailer’s skeleton. The wreckage still smoldered, but the fire was out. A hole
had been burned in the tent’s roof. Its edges were shriveled and peeled back,
having retreated as it blazed.

“John,” Sheriff Masters said, “what the hell’s going on
here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Elvis,
Leadbelly
,
what he’d found in the burning tent, John didn’t know how they fit together. As
much as he hated to admit it, there was someone better qualified to help them.
“But I think I know someone who might.”

“Yeah?”

“Mrs. Morris,” John said, shuddering. He’d hoped to return
to Denver and Mrs. Morris would be nothing more than a funny story to tell at
bars or parties. Instead, he’d have to risk returning to her home of
collectibles and bondage paraphernalia. “The woman who took the photo of
Leadbelly
, I talked to her when I first came to town. She
seemed to be an expert on Elvis. Among other things. She might know some
oddball Elvis theories, something that might help us out.”

The sheriff turned to the wreckage. Smoke still rose from
the holes in the tent, but men in protective suits were inside, inspecting the
charred frame of
Leadbelly’s
trailer. One of them
held a small, black box, wires falling from it.

“Alright then, let’s go see what this Morris woman knows.”

“You think there’s anything to what the colonel said about
the two from last night not being in your jail?” John asked, getting in the
car, knowing that the men from the bar were far away, someplace outside of
Sheriff
Masters’s
shrinking jurisdiction.

“God help us if there is.” The sheriff removed his Stetson
and placed it on the dash. He picked up the radio. “Shirley, you there? How’re
our two guests doing?”

“Didn’t Jimmy tell you? They checked out last night.
Someone came in with a court order. Came from pretty high up, too. Had to
release them.”

“
Lemme
guess, it was a military
man, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“‘Cause we’re up to our asses in goddamn military men.
Have you heard from the sheriff in Truth or Consequences?”

“I talked to him this morning. He said they have an open
homicide investigation regarding some poor kid who went and got himself shot in
the desert, but no leads.”

“I think our two biggest leads just flew the coop,”
Sheriff Masters said, putting the radio handset back in its mount.

John rolled down his window, let his elbow hang out. Warm
air filled the car as they drove away, leaving the Air Force to clear the
confusion
Leadbelly
created.

Unzipping his hoodie, John removed the photos and book
from under his shirt.

“What are those?” the sheriff asked, looking over.

“Something I pulled from one of the boxes they were taking
from
Leadbelly’s
.” John guarded the pictures, putting
them between random dates in the journal. “Let me ask you something. You said
his place was a mess, right? blood everywhere?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say that it’d been tossed.”

“
Leadbelly
had something they
wanted.” John’s fingers rapped against the book. “Colonel Hollister’s had
Leadbelly’s
place under surveillance for a while, since
Mrs. Morris took his picture. I think he got impatient, sent those two from
last night to toss
Leadbelly’s
.
Leadbelly
walks in on them, they kill him when he doesn’t talk. Then they go to the bar
looking for Rosa.”

“He had
Leadbelly’s
place under
surveillance? You didn’t think to tell me this?” The sheriff jerked the car
right, onto New Mexico Avenue. “You know how much trouble you
coulda
saved me?”

“I didn’t think they’d…I thought I could get
Leadbelly
to leave town, avoid something like this.”

“
Goddamnit
, John, if there’s
anything you’re keeping from me, now’s the time.”

“Nothing that pertains to this case.” John moved the book
to his right, between the seat and car door. He didn’t know what was in it, or
how it connected him to
Leadbelly
, or why
Leadbelly
had pictures of him. He knew he’d tell the sheriff
everything. Once he’d figured it out.

The
journal was written on yellow paper. The black ink had faded, and now the words
were light blue.

February 22, 1862

I
just returned from my meeting at the White House. I was quite surprised when I
received a letter from President Lincoln requesting a meeting, but I was more
surprised at the nature of the discussion and its participants.

Secretary
of State William Seward met me at the White House doors and ushered me into a
private sitting room where a woman sat before a fire. Of course, I knew who she
was, Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln, the First Lady. She wore a black dress and
matching bonnet. In her hands was a small lithograph. I couldn’t see who the
lithograph depicted, but I knew by the way she held it, it was someone
important.

Without
turning, Mrs. Lincoln told Secretary Seward to leave us. He nodded and backed
out of the room.

Mrs. Lincoln turned and faced me. She was
short and stout. Her dark hair was pulled tightly behind her head, exposing her
round features. Her mouth was severe and down-turned. Her eyes were bloodshot
and looked as if they had been aged by several personal losses.

She
reached over and put the lithograph on the mantle next to a flickering lantern.
It was then that I could see its image. It was of a young boy in a dark suit.
His light hair was neatly combed. He had an expression on his face that said he
hated standing still. I had read the papers and knew who the boy was, and why
Mrs. Lincoln was in mourning.

She saw me looking at the lithograph and said
it was the second child she’d lost; then she asked if I had any children.

I
was stunned that the First Lady would address me so casually.

I
told her that I did not have any children. She suggested that I should have as
many as I could, so they could find new ways to break my heart every day.

The
conversation made me uncomfortable, so I asked if President Lincoln would be
joining us, and referred to the invitation, although it was vague in nature.
Mrs. Lincoln said the president would not be joining us, that the death of
Willie, that’s what she called their son, had taken a heavy toll on him.

She
then veered the conversation in an unexpected direction. She was rambling and
mostly incoherent due to grief, but I followed her as best I could. Mrs.
Lincoln said her son was still with her, that he was with all the other spirits
the White House attracts. She said their late son Willie had visited her during
a dream, and told her to find me, or more specifically, someone like me, and to
send me on a quest.

I
told her I didn’t understand what she expected of me. Mrs. Lincoln simply said
that we lived in troubled times. She handed me some pages and asked that I read
them.

They
were entries from a journal written by a Colonel
Azeriah
Standish stationed in Indian Territory. He described an attack on his garrison
by unknown creatures that resembled men, but turned into animals when
approached. Colonel Standish said the attack was over quickly, but when he
looked at his pocket watch, over six hours had passed. Everyone was unharmed,
but all their food and horses were missing.

When
I had finished reading, a faint smile spread across Mrs. Lincoln’s tired face.
She was excited and asked me if I knew what Colonel Standish had discovered.
Spirits, she said, not letting me answer. Mrs. Lincoln then startled me by
saying she wanted me to go and find them.

I
wanted to protest, instead I asked why I was chosen for the task, and suggested
that there might be someone more qualified for this expedition.

She
said I was chosen because I was an attorney, like her husband. I replied that
my abilities as an attorney were questionable. In fact, I hadn’t won a case in
over a year, and had recently lost my license to practice law.

Mrs.
Lincoln ignored me and called the steward to the door. She said Secretary
Seward would have all the details regarding my mission. Then she proceeded to
berate me until I left the room.

The
young man escorted me to Secretary Seward’s office. Mr. Seward started by
apologizing for having to send me on what he considered to be a fool’s errand,
but with the war going on, President Lincoln felt they needed to explore every
possible advantage, no matter how obscure. He then proceeded to tell me what
was expected of me. He told me President Lincoln wanted me to go west in search
of the spirits mentioned in Colonel Standish’s journals, and to convince them
to fight for the Union. He gave me the journal entries and money to buy
supplies. He said I was supposed to send correspondence to them when I could,
and then sent me on my way.

John ran his hands through his hair and groaned. He
bookmarked the page with a photo of his father playing tee-ball.

“So?” the sheriff asked. “What’s in the book?”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

“Everyone’s got a right to their secrets, and I’m trying
to respect yours, but
goddamnit
, John, if this leads
to something…”

“I’ll let you know before that happens.”

* * * *

They pulled up to Mrs. Morris’s house, walked up the
gravel driveway past the Pinto and camper. John shuddered with each step,
recalling her dry hands searching his body, her tongue forcing its way into his
mouth.

“Sheriff, do me a favor. No matter what happens, don’t
leave her alone with me.”

“You scared of an old woman?”

“Something like that.” John put his hands in his pockets
and drew his elbows close to his body.

They were halfway to the house when Mrs. Morris threw open
the front door and ran toward them.

“Mr. Abernathy! Sheriff Masters! Oh my, this is exciting!
You’ll have to forgive my enthusiasm. I saw you walking up the drive and I
couldn’t help myself, I had to come out here. Oh, I’d been dreaming of seeing
you again, Mr. Abernathy.” She lunged toward John and hugged him. His arms at
his side, John pulled his head back, wincing as she put her cheek on his chest.

The sheriff cocked his head to one side, mouthed, ‘Okay?’

“So, did you find him?” Mrs. Morris asked, releasing John.
“Did you find my Elvis Presley?”

“That’s what we’ve come to talk to you about, ma’am,” the
sheriff said. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“Yes, yes. Let’s go inside,” Mrs. Morris repeated, shaking
with excitement. “I’ve just made some lemonade. Would you boys like some?”

“We would love some, ma’am.”

They followed Mrs. Morris into her house. John saw the
Elvis bowtie in the glass display case, steam cleaned. Mrs. Morris coughed and
winked, startling him. He didn’t want to be in the congested living room where
Mrs. Morris had attempted to seduce him. Having been there before, he knew what
to expect, from both the room and from Mrs. Morris. John ran his hands through
his hair, determined that no matter what she did or said, he wouldn’t unravel,
and defiantly marched into her sitting room like he was immune to Elvis fever.

But at the sight of the room, the Elvis memorabilia
decorating every wall like an interior designer’s nightmare, Sheriff Masters
skidded to a stop at the door. John imagined the sound of screeching, stacked
leather boot heels and black boot prints across Mrs. Morris’s entryway. The
sheriff gawked at the keepsakes and collectibles, wide-eyed, his mouth hanging
open. Then he turned to the fireplace, to the painting of naked Elvis with a
comically large erection hanging above it. Unable to contain himself, the
sheriff bent over and laughed, slapping John on the back.

“Whew, that is something,” he said catching his breath,
wiping a tear from his eye.

“What do you think of my collection, Sheriff?” Mrs. Morris
asked from the kitchen. She poured lemonade from a glass pitcher, decorated
with Elvis singing into a microphone, into matching glasses. She put them on a
tray depicting Elvis in a cage, being lowered into a pool of sharks.

“Well, it’s something, ma’am. I’ll definitely say that. I
thought places like this existed only on talk shows. I never
woulda
guessed we had something like this in our here
town.”

“I’ve spent a lifetime collecting everything I can, but I
think the picture I sold your newspaper is my new prize.”

“Not the painting?” the sheriff asked, pointing to the
black velvet. “That seems like a prize to me.”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Morris said, smiling. “I do love that
painting. Sometimes I stare at him for hours.”

“Sure,” John said. “All you do is stare.”

“So, I’m so excited. Tell me all about him. Is he a nice
man? He seems like such a nice man,” Mrs. Morris said, carrying the tray into
the living room.

“Well, Mrs. Morris,” John started.

“John,” she interrupted, “after everything we’ve been
through? You know you can call me Elizabeth. You could even scream it if you’d
like.”

“Well, Elizabeth,” John said with a perturbed wince.

The sheriff put his hand on his knee and squeezed it,
trying not to laugh.

“About the picture,” John continued, like the sheriff
wasn’t struggling with hysterics, “I’m sorry to say it wasn’t Elvis.”

She almost dropped the tray, spilling some of the
lemonade.

“Oh, pooh. I’m so sorry to hear that. I was really hoping
it was him.”

“I know you were. The good news is there was an Elvis
connection.”

“Oh, do tell.” Her face beamed as her spirits were lifted
again. She handed them two glasses of lemonade. The sheriff guzzled his. John
sniffed his first, checking for
roofies
. He set it on
the coffee table, pushed it away from him, the ice rattling against the side of
the glass.

“Turns out the man you photographed was an Elvis
impersonator,” John said.

“An impersonator? Well that explains everything. What
exactly did he do? Did he tell you?”

“He didn’t say much, just that he ran a chapel in Vegas,
officiating marriages.”

“Oh my, a religious man doing good works.” She held her
hands over her heart.

“That’s
Leadbelly
, Patron Saint
of Hasty Marriages.”

“So, is this man, this ‘impersonator’, around? I’d love to
talk to him, maybe bake him some cookies.”

“Unfortunately, ma’am,” Sheriff Masters said, “it appears
that Al
Leadbelly
, well, it appears that he met with
some foul play.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“Ma’am, sometime last night this
Leadbelly
fella was murdered.”

“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. Morris collapsed into her chair. An
Elvis throw pillow fell to the ground. She dutifully picked it up, brushed some
dust off, and clutched it to her chest. “This is shocking news. Do you think
this had anything to do with my picture? I’d hate to think that my photo was
responsible for that poor man’s death.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, ma’am. We believe
this is unrelated to your photo.”

“You’ll have to forgive me. This type of thing doesn’t
happen everyday. I’m sure you’re used to it in your line of work, Sheriff, but
it’s new to me.”

“Fortunately, ma’am, it doesn’t happen to me everyday,
either.”

“That’s actually why we came to see you,” John said.

“Is that the only reason?” Mrs. Morris asked, crossing her
legs.

“We were hoping you could help us out.” John ignored her,
determined not let her ruffle him, at least not in the way she wanted.

“I’d be happy to help, John, in any way I can. And I mean
any way,” Mrs. Morris said, her finger rimming her glass.

The sheriff smirked at John.

“Uh, yeah,” John said. “So, this morning, after Sheriff
Masters discovered
Leadbelly’s
trailer, he came and
got me. When we went back, the Air Force and NASA had commandeered the crime
scene, investigating as well. Now, can you think of any reason why the Air
Force or NASA might be interested in an Elvis impersonator?”