Whom Dog Hath Joined (13 page)

He wolfed down the burger, bread and all, and sat back
against the front seat. He yawned, and his pink tongue rolled out. When we got
home, I crumbled the remaining burger into a bowl of chow, and he ate his
dinner as I ate mine. Then I turned on my computer and opened the email from
Rick. I used a photo program to enhance the first image and then printed it
out.

I began to look for patterns, as I’d pointed out to Rick. A
single letter had to be either A or I, and the statistical frequency of “and”
and “are” combined was a lot higher than “its.” By that method, I was able to
figure out and identify all the uses of the letter A – which was represented,
in the cipher text, by the letter G.

It was a lot like working with computers, the same
application of logic to a problem. It was something I was good at, and it was
nice to find a legal application for those skills.

With all the “A”s accounted for, the other single instances
had to be the letter I, which was represented by in the cipher text by F. I
began compiling a list of letter parallels, working my way through the
recurring words.

Lili called as I was working. She told me about the class
the night before, how much fun it had been to be out taking pictures again.
“And how was your day today?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.

“Another meeting with Peter Bobeaux. For a half hour he
talked about falconry in the Middle East, how when he was working in the United
Arab Emirates he knew people who used falcons, but he preferred a hunting
rifle. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a rifle with me in the conference room. What
did you do today?”

I told her about driving up to George School, and what Rick
and I had found.  “I’m still thinking about you moving in here,” I said.
“Rochester wants you to know that he’s all for it.” I hesitated then plunged
in. “After living in close quarters in prison I really loved having my space.
The whole house just for me. I know sounds selfish, but it was such a joy not
to hear some other guy snoring or farting. It took me a long time to get
accustomed to having Rochester around.”

“I get that,” Lili said. “After my divorce from Phillip, I
took a bunch of assignments that kept me moving from place to place.” Phillip
was Lili’s second ex-husband, a magazine editor who had cheated on her. “One of
the first things I did was go to a tanning salon so I wouldn’t have a tan line
on my ring finger. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially anybody who
knew I’d been married. I just wanted to be on my own.”

She took a deep breath. “But I got over it, and I know you
will, too. And if it’s not this year, then I’ll sign another lease and we’ll go
on.”

“Don’t sign anything yet,” I said. “Give me another few
days?”

“I won’t sign until they threaten me with eviction.”

“You won’t have to go that far,” I said.

We talked about a few other things, and then, after mutual
endearments, we hung up, and I thought that it would be nice to be able to have
these conversations with Lili in person. To be that much more a part of each
other’s lives.

I went back to my puzzle. It was like solving a cryptogram
in the newspaper, only there were a lot of short words I couldn’t decipher at
first. It was a long, slow process. I’d think I had one letter solved, but then
using it in conjunction with another would create something that couldn’t be a
word or a name, and I’d have to wipe them out and start over again. Around
eleven I got sleepy and Rochester nudged me for his bedtime walk.

What was equally frustrating, I thought, as we moseyed down
the darkened streets of River Bend, was that Brannigan’s notes might have
nothing to do with the case—the body could belong to someone who had no
connection whatsoever to Brannigan or his efforts to help boys avoid the draft.
But the only way to know if the information would pan out was to follow it to
its natural conclusion.

Wednesday morning dawned rainy and dismal. I bundled up in a
yellow slicker with a hood, left a towel by the front door, and took Rochester
out for a walk. He nosed ahead, always in search of the next thing to catch his
attention. He and I were a lot alike that way.

The dampness made the air seem chillier, but the dog didn’t
seem to mind. Goldens have two coats: a soft, water-repellent outer layer, and
then short, downy hair beneath that serves as insulation, protecting against
both cold and heat. It’s great, I suppose, if your dog is regularly chasing
after ducks. To me, it was a huge pain, because when Rochester got soaked it
was a chore to dry him, especially when he chose to whack his wet, plumey tail
against me.

He did his business, I cleaned it up, and then we hurried
home to get out of the rain. By the time I finished toweling him dry, which he
treated as a big game, he had transferred most of the water to me. I showered,
dressed and ate a couple of croissants while Rochester wolfed down his
breakfast chow. Before I left the house, I copied the images of cipher text
that Rick had emailed me onto my flash drive.

The rain had intensified to a downpour by then. The Delaware
was rising, and parts of the River Road were already under water. I was
relieved when I turned inland that the country road to Friar Lake hadn’t
flooded yet.

As I drove up the winding road to the abbey, the rain sluiced
down beside me. I made a note to move up the improvements to the road before
the winter came and made it into an icy slide.

Rochester and I scampered from the car into the office, and
he dried himself by rolling on the carpet in the lobby, waving his legs in the
air like a dying cockroach. I went into my office, and after logging in and
checking my email, I began to print enlarged copies of the rest of the cipher
text.

I went back to the first page of Brannigan’s notes.  I was
sure that I had figured out the ING pattern at the end of a couple of words –
but using that logic, there were also several words that began with Ng, and
there were no words in English that fit that beginning.

I was puzzling over that when I heard the sound of paper
crunching. I looked up to see that I’d forgotten to flip up the plastic stop at
the end of the paper tray, and my pages were tumbling to the floor. Rochester
had his paw on one of the sheets.

Fortunately it wasn’t one of the pages of cipher text, but a
newspaper clipping that Rick had found that mentioned Brannigan. I tugged it
out from under Rochester’s paw and read the headline, about South Vietnamese
president Nguyen Van Thieu.

“Of course!” I said to Rochester. “Brannigan is including
Vietnamese names. Dog, you’re a true Sherlock!”

That clue enabled me to figure out the last letter matches.
The page, which was dated January 27, 1973, included some stuff about Thieu and
his administration, but the interesting part read, “The Selective Service
announced today that there will be no more draft calls. Men and women no longer
will have to defy the law to follow their consciences. Though our active part
in this service ended with the last two boys who passed through our hands, we
can now turn our thoughts and prayers toward healing.”

The phrase “the last two boys” rang in my head. Who were
those boys? And had they both left Stewart’s Crossing – or had one of them
remained behind, hidden in the Meeting House?

I started working backwards, applying the cipher I had
decoded to Brannigan’s notes. I found a line that interested me – that
Brannigan was writing this diary to preserve a piece of history, though he
hoped no one would decode it until after the war was long past. The cipher worked
fine for two pages, mostly political rants – but then it changed. I cursed out
loud, causing Rochester to look up from his sleep.

My phone rang around eleven. “Are you building an ark up
there at Friar Lake?” Lili asked. “Because it looks like we might need one.”

“Is it pouring in Leighville, too?” I asked. “It was
miserable driving up from Stewart’s Crossing this morning.” I looked out the
window toward the abbey, an imposing two-story building of gray native stone in
a Gothic style. Water was cascading from the roof, bubbling over clogged
downspouts. Something else to be fixed. I made a note.

“It’s gloomy and dismal here,” she said. “But I went out
this morning and took a bunch of pictures of the rain sheeting down through the
trees. Very cool effect.”

“That’s my Lili,” I said. “Finding sunshine even in a rainy
day.”

“If I could only find some sunshine in Peter Bobeaux,” she
said. “This afternoon we have a faculty forum about curriculum changes. I
swear, he’s like a dog who has to pee on every single thing in the humanities
to mark his territory.”

“Lovely image. I have some good news, though. I cracked one
of Brannigan’s codes and it worked on a couple of pages – but then he switched
ciphers. I’m going to be decoding his notes until my eyes cross.”

“Could be a good look for you,” she said. “I’d have to see
to be sure.”

As we hung up, Joey Capodilupo came inside to dry out,
shaking water from his rain jacket like Rochester did. We discussed gutters and
downspouts, and then I asked, “You talk to Mark about those pews?”

He smiled. “Called him last night to see if we could talk
about it over dinner. Took some pushing to get him to agree.”

“To selling the pews?”

“That was the easy part, once I convinced him to have
dinner.” He paused. “You know anything about a guy named Owen?”

“Yeah. My neighbor’s son. Worked for Mark for a little
while. I think Owen took advantage of him – pretended to be interested, but all
he wanted was to rip Mark off.”

“He’s out of the picture?”

“Definitely.”

Joey smiled. “Good to know.” He looked out the window, where
the rain was tailing off. “Got to get back to work. See you later.”

When he left, I went back to Brannigan’s papers, moving
backward and trying to find more information on the last two boys. I had a
feeling identifying them would be the key to figuring out whose bones Rochester
had found.

It looked like Brannigan had used a similar cipher, though
with different letter correspondences. I found myself longing for a decoder
ring like the ones you could get as a kid by sending in bubble gum wrappers. I
even took a quick look online – but the ones I could find were too simple for
my purposes.

It was hard to concentrate, because once the rain ended, the
crew outside got noisy, the phone kept ringing, and there were emails to
answer. Late in the afternoon, after the demolition crew was gone, I walked
around outside with Joey to survey the water damage. Rochester romped along
beside us, getting his paws muddy and his undercoat wet again from brushing up
against bushes.

Back at the office, I was wiping the dog’s paws and drying his
fur once again when my cell rang. “Yo, yo, Rick,” I said, putting on my best
Jersey accent. “How’s it hanging?”

“I got the results back on the bones. From damage to the
skull, it looks like the cause of death was an impact with a blunt object. The
victim was a Caucasian male of between seventeen and twenty-one, which fits the
profile of a boy trying to avoid the draft.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“Height was between five-eight and five-ten. Good dental
care, including exposure to fluoridated water. Once we find a record of someone
missing who fits that description, we can compare dental records. Now that I
have that information, I’m going to dive back into the missing persons reports.
How are you doing with decoding that diary?”

“I’m working on it. But Brannigan changes his code every
couple of pages so it’s going to take a while to crack it all. I’ve found one
clue, though. Brannigan mentions 'the two last boys'  they helped. I’m thinking
that if there is a connection to the Vietnam era, then the bones have to belong
to one of those two.”

“It’s a working hypothesis,” Rick said. “I’ll keep looking
on my end. Let me know as soon as you find anything.”

I promised that I’d get back on it as soon as I got home. I
felt the same kind of thrill I had when I was on verge of breaking into a
protected site. At least this was legal work.

16 – Breakthrough

I closed up the office and drove home. The streets were
littered with downed leaves, and the bare trees showed the first signs of the
approaching winter. River Bend smelled fresh, after the wash of negative ions
from the rain. After dinner, I sat at my desk with the pages of Brannigan’s cipher
in front of me and thought about his determined opposition to involvement in
Vietnam. Part of it came from his Quaker faith, but an equal part arose from
his work as a teacher and headmaster. He could see no sense in educating young
boys only to send them off to die.

I was fascinated by his passion, and by this brief exposure
to a part of history I had lived through, but been too young to understand. I
remembered the last traces of the anti-war movement in the 1970s, and the
conflicts, even in a small town like Stewart’s Crossing, between veterans’
groups and hippies. Headlines about people spitting on men in uniform, songs
like “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

Jerry Vandeventer, the son of the local vet, had gone to
Vietnam and come back with what today we’d diagnose as PTSD. His father’s
office, Crossing Critters, was at the far end of the shopping center in
downtown Stewart’s Crossing, between the State Store  -- Pennsylvania’s
state-run monopoly on liquor sales— and a little card and knickknack shop
called Gertie’s Gifts, where I often spent my allowance.

I remembered coming out of Gertie’s once and seeing Jerry Vandeventer
blast out of the State Store, yelling an inventive stream of curses about their
refusal to sell him the vodka he wanted. Now I realize he must have been drunk,
but back then I was amazed to see an adult act that way.

A heavyset black woman came out of the Laundromat on the
other side of the State Store toting a packed basket of clean clothes.  She shook
her free hand and told him to shut the F up, because he was just a g-d baby
killer.