Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 01 - Death Is Clowning Around (13 page)

“Tony, I feel weird.
I’m not sure I’m going to be able to help you with the kids.”

He took off his mask and handed it to me.
“This filters the air.
It should help.”

I put the mask on and within a few seconds my head was clear.
But Tony’s eyes were fully dilated and he was starting to dance.
I handed him the mask.
“Why does this work?
What’s in the air?”

“Stuff to help everyone relax.”
He rocked his head back and forth to the music.
“It’s harmless.”

“Should the kids be breathing this?”
I said quietly.

“I said it’s harmless,” he bellowed back.
“They told me so.”

Idiot!
This man believes everything people tell him.
“Who told you?”

“One of the top level clowns.”

“Carl?”

“No, his
boss.”
He handed me back the mask.
“I’m going to go party.
You take care of the kids.”

I put the mask on and kept an eye on the children the best I could.
They were all running around, riding the bikes and having a great time.
Some of it was the drug-induced euphoria but most were just kids being kids.
Without the drugs in my system the entire Evening Extravaganza was laughable.
It was just a bunch of adults acting foolish.

Most of the members had removed their masks and had joined in on the fun.
I only saw four or five who still had their masks on.
They were standing, arms crossed, in front of the exit doors.
Like unmovable objects they barred anyone from escaping into the fresh air.

Several hours later the kids started to slow down.
A few sat at the tables, and I found one little girl asleep under a table.
Was I supposed to round them all up myself?
No way.
I went over to the four-clown statue at the door.
“I need your help.”

They stepped forward.
“What do you need?”

“Start rounding up the children.
Tell them I need them to meet me at the front door.”

“Okay.”
They split apart and went in search of the kids.

I waited at the door.
Every few minutes they’d bring a few of them to me.
A few were screaming and being carried, but they brought them anyway.
I took off my mask so the kids would see me when they came over.
Then I thought of something.
I had no idea how many kids there were.
In school I’d count them in and then count them on the way back.

“Kids!”

They turned and looked at me.

“Sit down, right here.”

They did it, probably due to the drug.

I left one of the clowns in charge and went in search of Tony.
I found him all over Tina.

“Tony.”

They kept dancing.
If you could call it that.

“Tony!”

He snapped his head toward me.
“Yeah, Liza.”

“How many kids are there?”

“Huh?”

“All together, how many kids?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Thanks.”
I went back to the front door and Tony went back to Tina.

I started counting.
Only twenty-six.
I sent the clowns out again.
They found a few more.
I kept sending them back until we had thirty-six kids.
Then another arrived.
Thirty-seven?
Oh damn it!
I went back and found Tony again.
He and Tina were still bumping and grinding to the music.

“Tony!”

“Yeah?”
His eyes were so dilated I wasn’t sure he was even on the same planet as me.

“Tony.
I just got my thirty-seventh kid.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about little
Cindy
.
She was added on at the last minute.
Thirty-seven, yeah, that’s the number.”
His words were slurred.

I shook his shoulder.
“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.
I’m sure this time.”

I went back to the kids and re-counted them.
Exactly thirty-seven.
Okay.
I pointed to two of the clowns.
“You and you come with me.”

They nodded and helped with the kids.
As soon as we got out of the building, they removed their masks.
I recognized them as the two men I’d seen loading the boxes of videotapes in the back of the kid’s dorm this morning.
I took off my mask too.
I wanted them to know that I was the one in charge.
That way if they saw me again, they’d think twice before telling me I couldn’t do something.

They both looked at me.
The surprise on their face was obvious.
I’d forgotten I had on Tony’s mask.
They’d thought it was him giving orders the entire time.
They wouldn’t have been able to recognize my voice because of the drug-filtering system on the mask.

“Hey!” he shouted.
“When did you become in charge of the kids?”

“Carl put me in charge this afternoon.”

“Oh.”
They nodded and we walked the kids to their rooms.

“You two go and help the boys get settled into their beds.
I’ll help the girls.”

Getting nineteen girls ready for bed took a while.
They all needed a shower but it was just too late to do it tonight.
Besides, they were wandering around like zombies.
I supposed it was the drugs wearing off.
I tucked each of them into bed.
They went to sleep immediately.

When I went over to the boy’s room, I stuck my head in.
They were all asleep, too.
I didn’t see either of the two men who’d helped me walk the kids to the dorm.
I wanted to thank them.
Bad guys or not, I still appreciated their help.
I wouldn’t have been able to get the kids all over to the dorms by myself.

Then I went in search of the cameras.
They had to be somewhere.
If they were taking pictures of the kids without clothes on, chances were it was happening in the bathroom or shower area.
I needed to check there, but how would that look?
If they were taking pictures or videos of the kids, they’d have me on tape, too.
I’d look like a snoop, which I was, but I didn’t want them to know that.
Should I act like a mom?
I wasn’t one, but I’d been with kids for the last ten years.
It was enough experience to pretend.
Mother Clown?
Here I go!

Chapter 15

How does someone find a hidden video camera?
I wandered through both the boy and girl dorms, pretending to check on the kids.
There weren’t any obvious blinking red lights or video cameras sticking out of the wall.
Next I went into the girl’s bathroom, walked to the sink and washed my hands.
Glancing around, I thought, what would my mother have done?
The place was a mess.
She’d start cleaning.
I grabbed some paper towels and began wiping off the counters.
That way I could look around the place while I cleaned.

The stalls were worse than the counters.
I flushed a few toilets.
They weren’t clean, but I wasn’t about to take this cleaning disguise that far, not without gloves anyway.
As I worked I didn’t notice anything obvious, other than several room deodorizer units attached to the walls.
There seemed to be two or three in every room.

Every shower stall had a deodorizer unit.
The camera had to be behind the rectangular cover.
They’d notice if I went over and took one off of the wall.
Besides the rooms really did smell nice.
Maybe they were
just what they appeared to be –
room
deodorizers.
I went back to the girl’s bathroom.
If I stood on one of the toilets I might be able to get a better look at them.
Close up, each had a little red light inside.
Did that light indicate the camera was working?
While I balanced myself on the toilet, trying not to fall in, I heard the footsteps.

“What the hell are you doing?”
An angry voice shouted from behind me.

I kept fiddling with the deodorizers as I lied.
“I was curious about what brand these are.
They make these rooms smell so nice.
We need these at my school in our bathrooms.”

“Get down!” he said coldly.

I turned toward him.
He was one of the men who’d helped me with the kids earlier.
Out of his clown costume, he was dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
“I just want to know who makes them.”

“Get down, lady.”
He reached his hand toward me.

“Not yet.
There’s got to be a name or phone number up here someplace.”
I was trying desperately to pull the cover off of the thing and see what was behind it.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me down, almost knocking me into the toilet.
“I can get you the name and phone number of the company, lady.
All of the boxes are tied together.
If you mess with one it throws the whole deodorizer system off.”

“Oh, sorry.
It’s just that they do such a great job.
You should smell our bathrooms at school.
Yuk!
It’s an old building in serious need of remodeling and the bathroom tile is old.
I think it’s absorbed the smells of thirty years of kids.”
I rambled on.
I tend to do that when I’m nervous or lying through my teeth.

He put his hand up.
“It’s okay lady, really.”

“Thanks.
By the way, these bathrooms are filthy.
Who’s in charge of cleaning them?”

“I don’t know.
I’ll find out and make sure they clean them up, okay?
Will you go now?”

“Sure.”
I stretched my hands over my head.
“It is late and I’m exhausted.”
I waved as I left the room.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”

That had been close, maybe too close.
I kept forgetting that I wasn’t some hotshot PI, just a kindergarten teacher dealing with mind-controlling clowns, pornography, drugs and a child’s kidnapping.
I laughed out-loud.
When my friends ask what I did over Spring Break, won’t they be surprised?

I really was exhausted.
It was time to go to bed and figure out what to do tomorrow.
At least, I think I might have figured out how the pictures of the kids were being taken and the drugs and mind-control was obvious.
Tomorrow I’d turn my attention to Tina.
Following her should lead me to the adult videos.

But what about Jessie?
I was n
o closer to finding her than I had
been two days ago.
If I wanted to learn what happened to her, I would have to work my way up the clown organization.
What level were the two clowns that had helped me tonight?
They never participated in the drugs during the Evening Extravaganza that I could see.
Could someone elevate up to that level without being involved in the pornography, drugs or mind-control?
Probably not.
But I only had two more days of camp to find out.

Tina wasn’t in bed when I went into our room.
I wasn’t surprised.
I took the bag out from under my bed and had a diet Coke and a handful of Peanut M & M’s, the perfect bedtime snack.
I skipped the stupid headphones, climbed into bed and fell asleep quickly.

In the morning, I covered Tina with a blanket, changed into my jogging suit and went running.
I saw the two men in the back of the kid’s dorm.
We waved to each other and I kept going.
Things were pretty much the same as yesterday.
The workers were filling up the air-conditioning unit with their bottle of purple liquid.
We waved to each other, too.

A few people were wandering out of a set of cabins located on the right perimeter of the compound.
There were about ten of them.
I wondered if that’s where the adult videos were made.
The people looked hung over.
They were walking slowly and holding their heads.
Morning meditation was in less than an hour.
They probably all had the same “wake-up” vitamins that Tina used.

Another two trips around the compound revealed nothing new at clown camp.
Back in my room, Tina was already in the shower.
She came out dressed in her clown costume.

“Did you have fun with Tony last night?”

“Oh yeah.
He’s the bomb.”

I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Remember much from last night?”

She shrugged.
“No, not really.”

“Do you think it’s wise to have blackouts like that?”

“I always wake up and I’m fine.”
She smiled wistfully.
“What’s the problem?”

“You’re losing whole sections of your memory,” I said, pointing out the obvious, even if she couldn’t see it.
“Don’t you want to remember having fun?”

“Maybe.”

“How long have you been coming to this camp?”

“I came in the kids group when I was twelve.
I had so much fun that when I turned eighteen, I could come as a participant rather than a kid and I signed up.
This is my second year as an adult.”

I wanted to tell her that being nineteen didn’t make her an adult, but I knew she wouldn’t agree.
These clowns were careful.
“Over eighteen” meant consenting adult, not statutory rape.
I learned that from TV.

“Do your parents pay for the camp?”

“No.
Since I came as a child, I get to come free until I’m twenty-one.
Then I’ll have to start paying.”

First they exploit her as a child by taking pictures of her and then they let her come back free so they can make videos.
These clowns were going down and I was going to be there when they did!

I went into the bathroom and put on my clown costume.
I still had Tony’s mask from last night, so I carried that with me.
Tina and I walked to morning meditation.
Tony was waiting outside with his hand out.
I knew what he wanted.

“You have one of these for me?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not giving this one up.”
I pulled it back.
“I have to go and get the kids in an hour or so.
How am I supposed to do that if I’m not wearing a mask during morning meditation?”

“I don’t know.”
He took his mask out of my hand.
“But, I’ll go ask.”
He turned and left.

Tina went into the auditorium while I waited outside.
I wasn’t going in without a mask.
The doors shut and I could hear the meditation starting.

Several minutes later, Tony came back.
“I couldn’t find the boss, so I borrowed one of the other worker’s mask.”

“The boss?
Isn’t Carl inside?”

“Not him,” Tony said with a grin.
“His boss.”

“Who is his boss?”

“Who else?
His wife.”
Tony laughed and went into the auditorium.

I put on the mask and went in.
The morning meditation was in full swing.
Music pounded, lights flashed and the blue fog flowed.
I felt like one of the guard clowns as I stood in the back and watched.
The scene lacked its usual appeal.
I guessed you needed to be high on drugs to really enjoy it, otherwise it was boring.

Around eight-thirty
,
I went over to the kid’s dorm.
A few were starting to wake up.
When they saw me, they smiled.

“Why don’t you go and shower?”
Then I thought about what I was asking them to do.
They couldn’t go another day without taking a shower but I didn’t want them to have their picture taken either.
“Wait!”
They stopped and turned.
“You don’t really have time for a full shower.
Just use some towels and clean yourself up a little bit in the sink.”
I asked the older kids to help the younger ones and they agreed.

Thirty minutes later everyone was ready to go.
They were hungry so it was easy to keep them in line with the promise of food at our destination.
I knocked on the door of the auditorium and Tony opened it.

“Good morning, kids,” he shouted at them.

They all shouted back, “Good morning, Tony.”

I rolled my eyes at him and led the kids into the room and over to their mats.
They got right to the food.
I sat down and grabbed a piece of fruit, then tried to convince a few of them to have fruit instead of donuts, but they weren’t buying it.
I could understand that.
Who wants a banana when you can have a chocolate donut covered with sprinkles?

I left the kids for a few minutes and went in search of Tina.
She
sat
in her usual spot in the front of the room.

“Hey Tina.”

“Tony?”

I took off the mask.
“No, it’s me.”

“Oh, sorry. Hi, Liza.”

Tony was over six feet and I was barely five feet tall.
And he had to weigh at least two hundred pounds.
I put my hands on my hips.
“Do I really look like Tony?”