Here Be Monsters (Tyler Cunningham) (5 page)

Tri-Lakes Animal
Shelter (TLAS), 9/5/2012, midday

Dogs like me. Cats do not like me. I don't understand the reasons behind it, but I like dogs too; maybe because I find them to be more interesting animals. Dorothy says it's because dogs like me preemptively, and cats look inside me; I don't know what cats see inside me (
maybe nothing?
), but they don't like it… Dorothy Bouchard runs the TLAS. She saw through my initial efforts at friendliness instantly and dealt with it in the only way she knows, honestly and straightforward, like tearing off a Band-Aid. “You're using us, you don't want a dog.” were the first words that she ever said to me, which might have scared me off if she hadn't followed that up with, “That's OK, they know it and they're using you for walks.” I nodded, smiled (
#2, friendly/gentle/clueless-ish
), handed her the leash of the dog I'd been exercising, and walked out; but I came back later that week, and every few days since then.

I mostly walk the big dogs that live in the back (
isolation
) room; the ones too big or aggressive or jumpy or crazy from long-term internment to be likely adoptees. Entropy is the tendency of systems to move towards homogeneity; in the TLAS entropy is illustrated by the various species of dogs present in the outside world homogenizing in the shelter toward a dark brown pit bull/lab/shepherd mix that weighs 125 pounds and is trained to digest babies whole by the drug dealers that breed, and then quickly get bored with them (
we call them Saranac Lake Specials
). I've yet to meet a dog incapable of being (
much
) better at loving other dogs and humans than I am, once they get a chance to run around a bit and get to know you. I come here to think and walk and watch and try to learn from the dogs; Dorothy was right, I'm using them and they're using me... it's an honest and straightforward arrangement that benefits everyone involved.

“Hi Tyler!
Long time, no see... since last week some time. Did you come to drop off leashes, walk dogs, or solve crime?” Dorothy's plainspoken, one of thirteen things that I like about her.

“A bit of each, if that's OK...
who needs a walk?” I ask handing her the box of leashes I'd finished along with the donuts hidden inside the box... they brought a happy squeal form behind the desk ten seconds later. Dorothy teases that I consult with her dogs about the cases/jobs that I work on, which is at least partially true. I sometimes come by to walk a dog or two when I've input a metric crap-ton of data into my brain, and I need to give the forebrain a break, while the ancient lizard bits at the top of my spine figure things out; there's nothing like a walk in the woods at the other end of a chain from a Saranac Lake Special that hasn't seen sky or smelled squirrels in two weeks to clear complex thoughts from your head. I hadn't had time to digest the stuff I grabbed from Cynthia's desk and computer at the library, so this was just a walk, no crime-fighting. Dorothy ran through her mental list of the dogs in the back, and came up with Peggy, a pit bull mix with black and white coloring that somebody had, in a dim or hopeful moment, described as a Dalmatian on the website. Peggy and I got along quite well after the first few minutes of excitement and jumping and “kisses with teeth”. After a few well-timed treats, she calmed down and walked (
almost
) at heel along the trails behind the shelter for a while; we sat on the steps outside the shelter talking about Cynthia (
and my worries about her
), neither of us wanting to go back in.

I brought Peggy inside, with a promise to her (
and any people in the hall that assumed that I might be talking to them
) to take her out again soon. Dorothy trundled Peggy back into her dungeon in “isolation”. The fact that the isolation room is so much better than the alternative says a lot about the world we live in; Dorothy was back behind her counter and at the computer a minute later. She gestured me back behind the counter, but as always, I leaned across the counter to talk with her; I'm a guy very much aware of which side of the counter I belong on, and I keep to the correct side. We talked a bit about the latest group of leashes, about an idea for a harness that I had, about the dogs (
the new dogs, the dogs that had found homes, and the dogs that had been there forever
), about the gigantic mastiff that Jacob Hostetler had at their farm up in Madrid Springs, about a trashy novel that she had loaned me (
and that I had enjoyed despite myself
), and about a few other areas in which we shared an interest... but not my concerns about Cynthia (
they were still uninformed, maybe even unformed... unfounded
).

In most cases, about most things, my trust-circle is very sm
all, about the size of my belt. I sometimes talk with a limited number of people about some aspects of my work; even more rarely, about my personal and family life and history. Dorothy is one of those few people, Cynthia is another, Meg, Mickey (
to some extent, as he has known me longer than anyone on the planet
), Rick (
a guy that I connected with online, and who goes camping with me every month or two
), and... oddly enough... Frank. Frank was a surprise to me because he came as a package deal with Meg, and although we don't have a lot in common, I actually spend a significant amount of time/energy either misleading or outright lying to him, we do enjoy and trust each other (
within specific parameters
). I didn't mention Cynthia, either my concerns or my actions in support of those concerns, to Dorothy because I don't know enough yet, and also because I have concerns about how either/both of us will react if it turns out that Cynthia’s disappearance is something more than a death in the family and unannounced leave.

Dorothy and Cynthia are two completely different types of human females, perhaps different species; I am the only thing that they have in common.
Dorothy might be upset if Cyn was missing because she knows that I am fond of Cynthia, but she also might fake upset, for my benefit, which would be off-putting. I don't yet know what my actions or reactions might be to the information waiting for me at Smart Pig, or to any information that I may gain in the coming days about Cynthia; by not talking with Dorothy about it now I am reserving the right to discuss the matter with this friend of mine whom I find to be interestingly amoral.

Dorothy is by no means an immoral person, but I have found that she operates her life based on attaining and preserving what she wants, or thinks is best, for herself and those nouns that she cares about; there are
things that she cares about, and standards of behavior that she follows, but the moral compass by which normal society navigates day to day was not installed when Dorothy came from the factory. I've known her to accept dog food and toys that must have been stolen, along with venison and bear scraps from families that poach year round; and seen her dose dogs and unpaid/underpaid human TLAS volunteers and staff with the steroids and antibiotics on site without benefit of a vet or doctor. I once helped her break into a farm way out in the country to steal some twenty various animals that were starving and neglected; six were near death. We were too late to help three that we buried in the woods behind the farm, using time we couldn't spare (
but did anyway
). She works eighty-plus hours per week, stretches the lifespan of her work-shoes with duct-tape and gorilla-glue, and plows lots of cash (
some from her salary, some from less reputable sources
) back into the TLAS to keep things running. I like the way that she thinks, the way that dogs act around her, and I like to use her as a sounding board when the brain-trust at Smart Pig is in the weeds on a sticky problem.

On my way out, I grab the Tupperware container (
which looks as though it has been finger-squeegeed clean
), promise to check back in a couple of days, and avoid the nasty cat guarding the front door as it hisses and swings a lazy claw in my direction as I walk by. On my way to Smart Pig for an afternoon of reading and coke and snacks, I stop at the good Chinese place (
as opposed to the shitty Chinese place
) for a to-go box of hot and spicy and greasy goodness. I'm ready to get serious about Cynthia, threading my way through the minefields of secrets and people to get my life back on track (
normalized
) again.

Smart Pig Thneedery, 9/5/2012, 1:28p.m.

I grabbed a pair of cokes from the coke-fridge, a fork from the clean-stuff mug on the counter, and sat down at the table to fuel up with the Chinese food. I could feel the spice and fat and protein and caffeine from this nearly perfect meal fine-tuning my mind and body for an afternoon of productive work.
They know that I like my food hot, and by the time I was done and cleaning up, I was both sniffling and gently sweating, in spite of the cool breeze that ran from the window fronting Main Street to the one at the back of the building. I washed my hands and face, opened the coke-fridge for one more to drink while I was working, saw the mocking sign that Cynthia had made for me, and sat down heavily with all of her stuff, determined to find something that would allow me to get a grip on her being gone; to help me find her.

It was the morning of October 17 of 2002 that I got the coke-fridge. Cynthia was teasing me about it before we sat down to eat lunch up in Smart Pig on that very same day.
I had done a favor the previous month for a lab manager out at the Trudeau Institute, a biological lab in Saranac Lake most famous for their work on Tuberculosis early in the 20th century. In return, he hooked me up by bundling my order for a VWR lab-grade refrigerator (
with digital thermostat, thick insulation all around, and extra thermal mass to prevent temperature swings
) in with an order he was placing to upgrade one of the labs he worked with over there. I had been planning for months to combine Canadian Coke (
from a friend who makes frequent trips north of the border
) with the super-fridge (
set to 29
◦
F, the perfect temperature for coke
) to optimize my caffeine delivery system. Before the fridge had even cooled all the way down, Cynthia had stopped by to drop off her salad for lunch. For some reason known only to her, instead of using the dorm fridge we had been using for food since I moved into Smart pig, she chose to put the salad in the huge fridge sporting a blinking digital display showing 29
◦
F (
target temp
.) and 37
◦
F (
actual temp
.) despite the fact that it was filled to capacity with coke. The salad was frozen and wilted long before she tried to eat it at lunchtime. So she made a sign with big PINK lettering warning the world of the folly of using my coke-fridge for anything but coke. Ten years later the sign was still there, but whereas it generally made me think of her, today it made me feel nervous and edgy.

I rummaged through the pile and started with the marbled journals for May through September 2012 first, and read through them three times: very fast the first time, looking for common or repeated names; carefully the second time, marking anything remotely interesting with tiny post-it notes and a highlighter; backwards the third time, in the hope of making connections that
I missed the first two times. Most of what I read was personal or boring, lots of it was both. She kept track of what she ate throughout the day, work meetings, books and movies that she read/saw or wanted to read/see, dates and boyfriend prospects (
yes, those were two different things... who knew
), weather, places that she wanted to vacation, programs that she wanted to offer through the library, weird stuff that I did and said and researched (
I think/hope that I come off more weird on paper than I do in the flesh, or that she was exaggerating
), and the results of constant people-watching and what she likes to call “impression-based, fact-free storytelling” (
she looks at people and makes up a story about them based on her first impression
). She noted the people who were making frequent use of the library, made up fanciful stories about them (
arranging sexual trysts, sharing roast squirrel recipes, plotting world domination, searching for lost treasures, etc
.), and expanded on their stories day by day in her journals; she loved the movie, “Rear Window”, I remembered now, in passing. She noted when, and at which computers, the regulars generally did whatever they did, and that is how I think that she got into trouble; that is how she started paying attention to George Roebuck.

Once she took note of George, she started talking about the other people she kept an eye on less and less and him more and more. She was obsessed with (
and curious about
) the fact that a rich guy like him would have to have at least one computer at home, but came in almost daily to use a library computer. She knew by word of mouth that he had something to do with drugs, either now or in the past. That must have drawn her attention because of her fiery hatred for anyone involved in the drug trade at even the most casual level (
based, I believe, on her sister's death being related to drug use
). The really interesting stuff happened about halfway through the July journal, she had torn out a couple of pages, a thing that hadn't happened in any of the other journals. She mentioned file dumping and software bought with a PayPal account (
which suggested this wasn't stuff bought for/by the library
). From here on through the first days of September 2012 (
the point at which she disappeared
), her entries got more and more cryptic but centered on a few sets of initials and towns in the portion of New York that lies north of Route 90. The towns (
Plattsburgh, Malone, Potsdam, Canton, Watertown, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, and Saratoga
) were all outside of the Adirondack Park and made a rough circle between 50 and 150 miles away from the Tri-Lakes region. Plugging in the USB drive, I was able to check files/documents/trash from her computer and found some files and documents and screenshots that helped me put together a picture of what she had suspected, where her research lead her, how she got into trouble, and who had likely taken her; the only problem (
and it wasn't actually a problem for me
) was that I couldn't prove any of it. Even if I'd wanted to dump it in his lap, Frank wouldn't have touched it with a pole of any length.