The Man from Primrose Lane: A Novel Page 6

  He pulled a couple white boxes from the June ’08 drawers of the Beacon archives and sat in front of an empty machine. His fingers had not forgotten how to wind the stiff film. He began to motor the film forward, scanning headlines as he went. He instinctively paused for a second when he saw his name.

  “Writer’s Wife Commits Suicide; A ‘Heartbreak,’ Says David Neff.” Though he’d been quoted, he had never actually seen the article. He’d never seen this photograph of her car, a mangled mess of metal jutting out of a brick wall. It threatened to unravel him. He continued forward.

  He stared at the front page of the June 23, 2008, edition.

  “Who Was the Man from Primrose Lane?” the above-the-fold article demanded to know. “And who wanted him dead?” went the subhead.

  There was a photograph in the center of the paper, once a lovely color photo of the hermit’s house, preserved after publication in the black-and-white purgatory of microfilm, lending it a dense and palpable essence of evil, of dark.

  The author was Phil McIntyre, a staff writer whom David had met once or twice, and whose beat had been crime until he was promoted to politics. David scanned the article for prescient details.

  At long last we know the name of the Man from Primrose Lane—Joseph Howard King. But who was Joe King?

  “He was always nice to me and my brother,” says Firestone sophomore Billy Beachum, who delivered essentials to King. His brother has been appointed executor of King’s estate until next of kin is located. “That’s all I really want to say. I don’t know how he could have made any enemies.”

  “I always thought he might be a radical terrorist,” says neighbor Lucille Youtz. “One of the Weathermen, like that Bill Ayers guy.”

  “Probably an old gangster laying low,” figures retired FBI Special Agent Dan Larkey, who has consulted on the case. “The past has a way of catching up with these guys.”

  Further in the story, a hint of more clues kept from the public eye:

  Yesterday, Akron homicide detectives were seen carrying several boxes from King’s house but refused to discuss the contents. “This is an ongoing investigation,” says Lt. Detective Mark Gareau. “The material taken from his home suggests a possible motive for his murder and may provide details that only Mr. King and his killer are privy to.”

  David combed through the front pages and local sections of a year’s worth of Beacons. In September ’08, McIntyre wrote a brief follow-up: “West Side Murder Still Has Officials Stumped.” Not much in the way of new details, other than this cryptic statement from Gareau: “While it’s true a young woman was recently interviewed by detectives, there is no indication she had anything to do with the crime. She is certainly not a suspect.”

  The real story came on May 17, 2009. It was a McIntyre special, a five-thousand-word Sunday feature that officially turned the Man from Primrose Lane into the stuff of legend. The headline read: “Police: ‘Joe King Is Not Joe King. The Man from Primrose Lane Lived a Lie and Died a Millionaire.’”

  David jotted down the salient facts of the case, circling each name as he went along. Before contacting any sources, he typically did a poor-man’s background check on everyone, Googling their names, seeing if they had any criminal histories or weird hobbies. He had once written a profile on a local chess wizard without realizing the man was once roommates with Jeffrey Dahmer and had always kicked himself for the missed opportunity to play with that, thematically.

  As he read on, he could feel the mystery surrounding him, comforting him like a new drug. Somewhere in his brain a switch flipped “on” and instructed his adrenal glands to release epinephrine into his bloodstream. But the serotonin reuptake inhibitor—his daily dose of Rivertin—made sure he didn’t feel the sudden rush he so desired. No downs, no ups for David. Just the mellow in-between.

  Patrolman Tom Sackett discovered the body in the living room … shot in the gut … his fingers chopped off … the doorknobs and walls wiped of fingerprints.

  “… died with at least $3.4 million in stocks and bonds,” says Mike Weger of Confidential Investigations, the private investigative firm hired by Albert Beachum. “And another $700,000 in a personal savings account.”

  Weger tracked King’s birth certificate to a hospital in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Using the city’s birth records, he located a possible relative, another King born to the same parents listed on Joe King’s certificate, at the same hospital, in 1928, two years before King was delivered there. The woman’s name was Carol. She has since married and has changed her last name to Dechant. Weger found her in Pennsylvania. “And that’s when things got really weird,” says Weger.

  Dechant informed the investigator that her younger brother had died in a car crash, along with their parents, in 1932. Whoever the Man from Primrose Lane was, he wasn’t Joe King.

  Later:

  Detectives were shocked to discover, inside the dead man’s home, a box of composition notebooks that detailed the life of a young woman named Katy Keenan from age six to her eighteenth birthday. According to a source close to the investigation, Keenan claims she has never met the Man from Primrose Lane. She refused comment for this story. However, she posted this message on her Facebook wall: “I’d like people to respect my privacy. Something that hasn’t been respected, apparently, for the last twelve years.”

  Though police do not consider Keenan a suspect, one detective, who asked to remain anonymous, believes she holds the key to this unsolved murder. He points to a passage from the notebooks in which the writer admits to following her into a movie theater because he wanted to protect her from other men who might be interested in her. In another, he admits to being in love with her. “I don’t believe that the killer’s motive was money—there is no relative who stood to inherit his fortune—so what is the motive? One possible motive might be someone close to Keenan finding out about those notebooks and confronting the man about it and then things escalated and got out of hand,” says the detective.

  … Keenan’s father has refused to speak with investigators.

  But that still doesn’t answer the question on everyone’s mind—just who was the Man from Primrose Lane to begin with? “Look, that’s not my concern,” says Lt. Gareau. “My job is to find out who killed this man. I don’t care if the guy was running from the law, or from creditors, or a nagging wife. Someone murdered him. And we’re going to find out who did it.”

  When David finished reading, he reached into his breast pocket for the pack of mental cigarettes he’d brought along. He placed a Marlboro between his lips and rewound the microfilm to the beginning so he could read it again.

  “Sir, you can’t smoke in here,” warned the man sitting behind the room’s reception desk. David noticed the man was reading a copy of The Serial Killer’s Protégé. The thing about being a nonfiction writer, he’d discovered, was that most of your readers don’t look at the author’s photo on the back flap, the way they do with novels. Nonfiction readers seem to be less interested in the author than they are in the story.

  “I’m not smoking,” he said.

  “Oh,” the man said. “Well, good.”

  “What do you think of the book?” asked David. “I was thinking about picking up a copy.”

  “It’s pretentious. Wordy.”

  “But you’re almost finished.”

  “Well, I have to see how it ends.”

  David nodded and turned back to the newspaper article. “Fair enough.”

  * * *

  Katy Keenan was not hard to find. Facebook. For a woman who claimed to covet privacy, she did nothing to help her cause. At least she didn’t keep pictures of herself on her public profile—her avatar was a box of Count Chocula cereal. Katy Keenan was at the center of this mystery. He wanted to meet her tonight, while the thrill of the hunt was still strong. If he could win her trust from the beginning, the rest of his job would be a cinch—and he would have started with an exclusive interview, the best of omens.

  At five after eight, Dav
id stepped into the Cuyahoga Falls Barnes & Noble. He always left a little bit of chance to his reporting, and so he had not called ahead to see if she was, in fact, working that night. It wasn’t that he believed Katy would be there if he was “meant to” or “destined to” meet her. He enjoyed the gamble, the randomness and luck of it. He liked the risk of fucking up.

  It didn’t smell like a bookstore, this Barnes & Noble. It smelled like a Circuit City or a Target, that regulated-air and nothing smell. He missed the indie bookstore in Kent, where he’d gone once a week to pick up the latest issues of Powers and Ultimate Spider-Man, the one on Main Street that kept its door propped open even in the middle of winter—the aroma of binder glue, of cloth covers damp with humidity, of newsprint turned to dust.

  He made his way toward the coffee nook. Behind the counter was a short man with a bad beard.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. “Triple-snozzberry low-fat chocolate scone?”

  “Is Katy working tonight?” asked David.

  “Nah, Katy’s not here, man,” he said gruffly.

  David turned away and wandered back through the aisle, toward the nonfiction shelves. His book wasn’t turned to face out, like new releases and popular books were, but there were at least ten stacked in there.

  Not really thinking—he was in a zone, a sort of autohypnosis that accompanied his early reporting, leading him to wander about in search of a narrative—David took a Bic blue from his pocket, pulled a copy of Protégé from the shelf, and autographed it. He took another one and did the same. If they wanted to, one of the managers could sell these copies on eBay for some beer money. He was signing his fifth copy when he got caught.

  “Holy fuck, what are you doing?” the woman said.

  He looked up to find a young woman staring at him, her face a mixture of alarm and disgust. For a second he was sure he was looking at the ghost of his wife. Then his mind cleared and he saw that this woman was younger. Brighter, somehow. Her bone structure was more angular. Still the resemblance was unsettling. The young woman was dressed in All Star high-tops, patched jeans, a red-and-white-striped WHERE’S WALDO? sweater. A pair of white kitten ears held back her shoulder-length straight-as-satin red hair. On her shirt was a name tag. KATY.

  “Uh,” he said.

  “What did you write in there?” she asked. “Are you the guy who writes all that Christian shit in the Harry Potter books? Fuck, man. We have to refund those things.”

  Katy snatched the book from David’s hands.

  “Stay there while I call security.” She turned toward reference.

  “Wait,” he said, reaching out for her arm and gently pulling her to a stop. She felt like velvet, like warm. “Look, this is really stupid. I don’t … look … I don’t … this is really awkward, but…”

  “You’re blushing,” she said.

  “Well, I’m a little embarrassed. I can explain about the book. I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” said Katy, a smile slipping over her face, pulling back to reveal her teeth in a decidedly Cheshire Cat, childish way. “I was just joshing you.”

  “Oh,” he said, reaching out for the book. “Have we met?”

  Katy rolled her eyes. “We’re Facebook friends. You sent me an IM once. Don’t you remember?”

  David nodded. He had set up the Facebook account at his publisher’s urging right before Protégé came out. He didn’t maintain it anymore. But he knew who did.

  “Matt said you were looking for me?” said Katy. “After the stuff came out in the papers, some TV reporters came in here and tried to get me on camera. Everyone was told to say I’m not here, if someone asks.”

  David nodded. His mouth was dry.

  “In the back of my mind, I always wondered if you’d track me down,” said Katy, tilting her head to the side to consider him. “I think I knew that one day you’d come walking back through that door.” She paused. “Karen Allen. Raiders. Get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Except I don’t give interviews,” she said. “I fucking hate reporters. They made my life a living hell.”

  “I’m not a reporter,” he said. “I was an English major.”

  “That line usually works for you?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  She gave him a once-over; shoes to his ruffly hair. “Where ya been, anyway? Where have you been hiding, David Neff? You write the best true crime book since In Cold Blood and then you disappear, pull a Dave Chappelle.”

  “Grieving.”

  “She was somethin’ else, huh?”

  He nodded. “She was.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you if you want. But not here, okay? Come by my place tomorrow night. Six o’clock. Pick me up. Take me out to a nice dinner, maybe the Diamond Grille or something. You can afford it, right?”

  Katy swiveled back on her feet, chasing a stray strand of red red hair away from her eyes. Can anyone wear that much black eyeliner and not be goth? he wondered.

  “You ever get that feeling when you meet someone that your life is about to take a strange detour that maybe you’d be better off avoiding?”

  He nodded again. “Couple times.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I bet.” Katy reached behind David and pulled a book from the shelf. As she brushed by, he felt the whisper of her body. He smelled the lilac on her neck. These things should be making him feel light-headed and jittery, but he felt hardly anything. The meds were keeping this moment, this first real moment in four years, in check.

  She grabbed the Bic blue out of his hand and began writing in the book. A moment later, she handed it to him.

  “My cell phone and address,” she said. “Call if you’re going to be late. I mean it. I fucking hate waiting. For anybody. If you’re late, I’m going to go to the movies with my toolbox fiancé. We’ll go see something really crummy, too.”

  He stood there for a moment, just looking at her looking back at him.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “You’re just not what I expected.” He started toward the checkout. He couldn’t help a half-smile from forming. There it went. It was a particular smile he’d forgotten, one he hadn’t used in a long time.

  “And fucking don’t beat off to my Facebook pictures when you get home,” said Katy from behind him, loud enough for the woman flipping through Better Homes at the magazine rack to glance over at him as he walked by.

  Tanner was asleep by the time he got home. He paid Michelle and walked her to the door. Then he slipped back to his office, closed and locked the door, and did indeed spend the next twenty minutes jerking off to the Facebook pictures of his latest subject. When he was done, he felt spent and weird. But not guilty. Not even a little bit.

  EPISODE FOUR

  HIS SHERLOCK RUFFIAN

  Once Elizabeth committed to the idea of getting married, a sucker’s bet if there ever was one, she became enchanted by all the little ways she could gain control over the chaos of wedding planning. She saw the logistics of hosting a large party on their humble budget as a worthy challenge. There was not a cake-maker or caterer in all of Akron that she did not work over to some extent, no priest or minister she did not haggle with until their jaunty demeanors were frayed. One DJ, whom she instructed to meet her at a Wendy’s in Cuyahoga Falls so they weren’t on his home turf, was so insulted at her initial offering and rigid song list that he stood up and left without saying a word, leaving behind a tall Frosty and most of a cheeseburger. But what she put together out of five thousand dollars and persistence was more than either of them had imagined.

  The ceremony was held at a Unitarian Universalist church in North Hill, on November 20, 2004. David arrived early, alone, in a slim tux, hoping to find a quiet place where he could review his vows. He started, for only a second, at the sight of smoke billowing from behind the podium. The air reeked of pot. But this was not weed. At least not that weed.

  “Mom?” His mother’s head popped up from behind the podium. She was a beauti
ful woman. Dark, raven hair. High cheekbones. Black-as-coal eyes. When she saw him, she stood quickly, the burning knot of wrapped leaves like a thick cigar in her left hand. “Hi, Davey.”

  “Sage?”

  “I’m smudging the church,” she said.

  He nodded. She had done this for his high school graduation, too. Lynn Chambers, née Freemantle, was a reformed hippie with a ten-year sobriety token in her purse and the serenity prayer on a laminated square she kept in her shoe. She had learned sage-smudging at the annual AA Founders’ Day powwow in Akron some years back.

  “Come here,” she said.

  “Ah. I don’t want to smell like weed.”

  “It doesn’t smell like weed. Don’t be a baby. Come here.”

  David walked to her. She placed a hand on his shoulder and waved the other, which held the smoldering sage, around his head. “Anything not here for the highest and best good, be gone,” she said. “You are not welcome. You are not wanted.”

  And there really was something, a gentle shift in the air, he thought. But perhaps that was just his imagination.

  His heart was conflicted about his mother. The booze and the drugs had possessed her when he was young, spirited her away, left him to mature with his father and an abusive stepmother. But there had been moments of such wonder during sober lulls. Trips to museums and symphonies and cheesy horror movies. Sometimes she had even fought for him—once she had kidnapped him from his grandmother’s front yard while he played, some misguided attempt to regain custody. For all the drama she invited into his life, he loved her fiercely and did not care to understand or even to ask himself why.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She kissed him lightly on the cheek and then walked down the aisle, waving the burning sage in the air, trailing a veil of smoke behind her.

  By two o’clock, the church had filled; a hundred people, nearly all David’s friends and relatives. Elizabeth’s aunt was there, sitting with some of Elizabeth’s high school chums. Some Red Hats, too. But her parents were not invited.