Whom Dog Hath Joined (16 page)

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. We took
US 1, the highway that stretches all the way from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West,
Florida, which my father always called Useless One, to its connection to Route
13, and headed for Bristol.

When I was a kid, we went that way all the time – my dad had
friends in Tullytown, near the Delaware, and we often visited them. During
summer school, I took swimming lessons at a pool down there, and once we ate
dinner at a restaurant made from an airplane. It made me feel good to pass
those bits and pieces of my childhood, reminding me of the connections that I
had to my parents and my community.

The Carters lived in a brick duplex a couple of blocks in
from the river. We parked on the street and walked up to the front door. Rick
rang the bell.

A bulky fifty-something man with tattoos twirling around his
arms answered the door. “Mr. Carter?” Rick asked. “I’m Rick Stemper, from the
Stewart’s Crossing PD. We spoke earlier today.”

“I told you, my father doesn’t want to talk to the cops.” He
tried to close the door.

“Mr. Carter, my name is Steve Levitan,” I said. “I’m the one
who spoke to the woman at the Friends’ Meeting in Pittsburgh, who gave me your
father’s name and phone number. Rick isn’t interested in arresting your father
for anything. We just want to ask him if he can help us identify a young man
who died back in the sixties.”

The man crossed his arms over his chest. “How can he do
that?”

Rick explained about finding the body at the Meeting House.
Carter shook his head. “I grew up a Quaker,” he said. “My parents used to drag
me and my sister to Meetings. Couldn’t wait to get away from it. Joined the Marines,
finally felt like I’d found a place I belonged.” He sighed. “Come on in. He
loves to talk about that old stuff.”

He ushered us into the front room. The carpet was frayed,
the furniture worn, but it was clean and welcoming. I liked the fact that there
was a bookshelf against one wall, stacked with hard covers old and new.

“Pop!” Carter yelled. “Come on down here.” He motioned us to
chairs. “My wife’s out at work, or I’d offer you something.”

“No problem,” I said. “Thank you for letting us come in and
talk.”

Amos Carter was eighty at least, and as frail as his son was
robust. He had sparse white hair and he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He
wore a faded plaid shirt and jeans that were a size too large, gathered at the
waist by a leather belt.

 “These are the guys who wanted to talk to you,” the younger
Carter said.

Rick and I stood back up and introduced ourselves to Amos
Carter, then we all sat. Rick looked at me, and I took the lead. “I understand
you were involved in the anti-war movement back in the 1960s,” I said. “I’m not
a Quaker, but Rick and I grew up with lots of friends and neighbors who were,
and I’ve always been interested in the Friends and the way they put their
beliefs into practice.”

Amos’s voice was quavery but he didn’t hesitate. “They were
very difficult times,” he said. “I was fortunate to be too old for the draft,
but I felt it was my obligation to help those boys who didn’t believe in the
war.”

“We found a body recently, which appears to be one of the
boys who came to Stewart’s Crossing on his way to Canada,” I said. “We’re
trying to find his name so we can contact his next of kin. We think he came from
western Pennsylvania, and that maybe he was helped along by the Meeting in
Pittsburgh. That’s why I called out there, and that’s how I got your name and
phone number.”

“We helped a number of boys pass through,” Amos said. “I
don’t know that I’ll remember all of them.”

“This boy’s name was Don,” I said. “He grew up on a farm,
and had three older brothers. He tried for the farming exemption, but he was
turned down. Unfortunately, that’s about all we know.”

“Don. Let me think.” He frowned. “I’m afraid my memory isn’t
what it used to be.”

When I got to be Amos Carter’s age, I wondered, how much would
I remember about things that had happened long before? Would I forget
everything I knew about hacking? Would my ten-year marriage disappear? Would I
remember having a dog named Rochester, and how much he meant to me?

Then Carter said, “I did take some notes back then. Maybe
the information you’re looking for is there.”

He stood up, grabbing the arm of the chair for support, and
walked over to the bookshelf. From the pattern of the wood beneath a shallow
coat of white paint, it looked handmade, someone piecing together scrap lumber,
with a strip of crown molding glued to the top of the highest shelf.

While Carter flipped through the books, I looked around the
room. A fireplace already stocked with logs for the winter, a scattering of
Reader’s
Digests
and
TV Guides
on the coffee table, a big-screen plasma TV
the only modern note. Above it hung an embroidered sampler with a picture of an
evil-looking bulldog wearing a Marine drill instructor hat and the slogan, “I
Love a Devil Dog.”

“Semper Fiber,” I said, without thinking.

Rick looked at me like I was nuts, but the younger Carter
understood. “That’s my sister,” he said. “She makes those. I think they’re
crap, but what can you do? She’s family.”

By then Amos had found what he was looking for. He opened an
old book with frayed binding that had once been navy blue. “Here they are,” he
said, pulling a few pages of lined white paper out of the back.

He handed the pages to me, and Rick looked over my shoulder.
The first was a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of Quakers involved
in the anti-war movement all over the state of Pennsylvania. Fortunately, Amos
Carter hadn’t felt the need to encrypt everything he wrote.

The second and third pages were lists of activities, books
and pamphlets. There were only four names on the last page, each followed by a
date. The last two were
Peter Breaux and
Don Lamprey, January 25,
1969.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Amos asked.

“It is,” Rick said. “Thank you very much.”

20 – Art and Mortality

On the ride back to Stewart’s Crossing, Rick looked at his
watch. “Shoot, I’ve got to scramble to pick up Rascal from his doggie day care.
If I leave him there past seven-thirty I have to pay extra.”

“Why don’t we get him and go to my house. We can order a
pizza and look for information on Don Lamprey and Peter Breaux online.”

“You think there’ll be anything?”

I shrugged. “You never know. You can log into the police
database remotely, can’t you?”

“Yeah. At least I can see if either of these names is
connected to a police record.”

“And I can look for a Lamprey family in western Pennsylvania
with four sons, one of them named Don.”

I called and ordered the pizza, our regular large mushroom
and sausage, and we picked up Rascal. It was my turn to pay, so I went into the
pizzeria, where Rick and I had been going since we were kids with our families.
It had changed hands a few times over the years. The new owners were a young
Italian couple who bought their mozzarella from one of the last dairy farmers
in the county and made their own sausage, from locally sourced beef and pork. As
I stood in line, a very large man in a triple XL T-shirt that read “I Beat
Anorexia” came in behind me.

I thought it was kind of funny. But as I was paying, a
skinny woman came through the door. She walked right up to the man and said,
“Your shirt is very offensive to all the girls and women who have fought eating
disorders.”

I wondered what she was doing in a pizza parlor if she had
food issues, but I didn’t say anything. The man said, “It’s what you call
ironic humor.” He started to explain the irony, and I grabbed my pizza and
hurried back to Rick’s truck.

“While you were inside I started thinking about Vera Lee,”
Rick said, as he backed out of the space. “Why do you think she was so
reluctant to let us see those records? Protecting Brannigan’s reputation? Or
something more?”

“I thought of that,” I said, remembering my flight of fancy.
“I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t have any evidence. But if
Brannigan was the one moving those boys around, he may have been the last one
to see this kid alive.”

Rick turned off Main Street toward River Bend. I noticed
that the license plate on the car in front of us read ALL4JUAN, which reminded
me of an Eastern student named Juan Tanamera, who’d been implicated in drug
dealing at the college. Just because someone was a student or a teacher was no
reason to eliminate him from suspicion.

“Suppose Brannigan killed Don himself – either accidentally
or on purpose, and Vera Lee helped him cover it up.” Thinking of the plate in
front of us, I added, “Or the whole bunch of volunteers could have been
involved. These were the last boys through -- maybe the kid was threatening to report
them to the police, or to break up their smuggling ring.”

“Not really a smuggling ring,” Rick said, as he pulled into my
driveway. “And if that was the case, then Edith Passis and Amos Carter wouldn’t
have been so willing to give us information. There must be something more
between Vera Lee and Brannigan.”

We carried the pizza inside and sat down at the kitchen
table to eat. Rascal and Rochester were much more interested in the pizza than
in each other. They clustered around us, waiting for crust or bits of sausage.

“You think maybe they were having an affair?” I asked. “Vera
Lee and her boss? She might have been afraid that something we found would
reveal that.”

“Brannigan’s wife was dead, and she was barely out of high
school,” Rick said. “So she probably wasn’t married herself. And she wasn’t
wearing a wedding ring this evening.”

“But still. He must have been in his forties by then, right?
And with her almost the age of a student, that would be scandalous. If
something like that happened at Eastern, even now, it would be a problem.”

“But there’s nothing that would keep you and Lili from
moving in together, right?” Rick asked. “No rules against fraternization?”

“If she was my boss, or vice versa, there’d be a problem,” I
said. “But there are lots of married couples and family members working at
Eastern. I’m just not sure that I want to be part of one right now.”

“Don’t make any rash decisions. You know as well as I do
that once you have a woman in your house it’s hell getting her out.”

“Didn’t happen that way in my case,” I said. “Remember? I’m
the one who left. For prison.”

“From what I’ve heard of your marriage, it was switching one
prison for another, with a more pleasant roommate.” He looked at me. “You
weren’t anybody’s wife in prison, were you?”

“Nope. Got a couple of offers, but they accepted when I said
no thanks. Especially when I added I could help them with their appeals if they
let me keep my pants on.”

“Smart guy.”

“Yeah, but if I’d been smarter I wouldn’t have been in there
in the first place.”

We ate in silence for a while, but as we were cleaning up,
Rick asked, “Any chance you could keep Rascal Saturday night?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Why?”

“I have a thing.”

I laughed. “You have a date with Tamsen Morgan, don’t you?”

“It’s not a date.” He looked embarrassed, which I thought
was funny. “Just, you know, dinner. We’ll probably talk about Justin and his
football team.”

“Uh-huh.”

Rick took the pizza box out to the recycling bin while I
washed my hands and then opened up my laptop. He had his own laptop in his
truck, and he brought it in and logged into the police database while I
searched for Lampreys.

At a genealogy websites, I found that Lori Lamprey, of
Zelienople, Pennsylvania, had set up a family tree that included her father,
Arnold, and his three brothers: Brian, Charles and Donald. Donald had been born
in 1950, with no date of death shown. “Looks like we found him,” I said,
pointing to the screen.

I was able to save the tree as a PDF. “Let’s see what we can
find out about Mr. Arnold Lamprey of Zelienople, Pennsylvania,” I said.

“Where the heck is Zelienople?” Rick asked.

I pulled up Google Maps. Zelienople was a small town about a
half hour north of Pittsburgh. I found an address for Arnold Lamprey on
Sunflower Road, and zooming in on the satellite view showed us it was a farming
area.

“Looks like I’ve got a call to make tomorrow,” Rick said.
“Too late to call tonight – if they’re farmers they’re already in bed.” He
shook his head. “I hate having to notify next of kin. It’s the worst part of
the job.”

We switched to Peter Breaux, who had presumably been the
last person to see Don Lamprey alive, and thus was a person of interest. His birth
certificate said he’d been born at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown; his parents
were Reynard and Joy Breaux, with an address on Fairchance Road in Cheat Lake,
West Virginia.

Rick took Reynard and I took Joy. We came up with our
results at about the same time. Reynard had died first, in 1973, survived by
wife Joy and son Peter. Joy followed in 1985, survived by son Peter. There were
no other immediate relatives listed, and no matter where we looked, we couldn’t
find anything else about Peter Breaux.

“So he was alive in 1969, and then again in 1985,” I said.
“Where was he in between? And where’s he been since?”

It was as if he’d disappeared into Canada, emerging only at the
deaths of his parents, then fading back into the dust. “I’ll have to go through
channels on this,” Rick said. “Get somebody up in Canada to search their
records. Not going to be easy, especially if he doesn’t want to be found.”

For curiosity’s sake, I asked Rick to do a quick search for
Vera Lee Isay through the police database, and I did the same through my own
sources – all legit, of course. She was born in 1950 and never married. She
belonged to several pacifist and environmentalist groups. She was a member of
the Stewart’s Crossing Friends Meeting and served on the renovation committee.