Chapter 15

In the Sixteen years since he packed wife and child into the station wagon and drove west from Columbus to take the California job, Brian Kettering had flown over the midwest half a dozen times as he traveled from one coast to the other. But except for a Christmas visit to Milwaukee ten years ago, he had not touched down there. As for Prescott, the town where he was born, the town of terrible memories, Kettering had thought nothing could induce him to return, even for a single day. He was wrong.

The landscape below looked harmless and peaceful from the DC-10 at thirty thousand feet. The neat squared-off sections showed varying shades of green and brown, with tiny speckles of towns breaking the symmetry. Kettering glanced out the window only occasionally as he concentrated on the notebook in his lap. In it he had written:

Check out Jessie's baby
1. Hall of records
2. Hospital
3. Post Office
4. Newspaper
5. School
6. Friends/neighbors

Missing persons was not Kettering's department, but he remembered enough of the basics to get started. If the trail was there, he would find it.

He rented a Chevy Nova at O'Hare and drove south from Chicago through tough Gary and along I-65, which bypassed most of the towns he remembered.

When he turned east on Indiana 16 he felt a quickening of his pulse as he drove unhindered through the rich farm country. There was no way ... no way he could think of Prescott as home, yet there was an unmistakable twinge of homecoming as he covered the last twenty miles.

Entering the town was no big deal. A sign announced the population and elevation, Another displayed the symbols of the local service clubs. He passed a junkyard, a nursery, a Burger King, a Shell station, and suddenly he was in Prescott.

The streets, the trees, the buildings, the people all looked smaller than he remembered. A matter of perspective, Kettering supposed. The buildings were the same, some with new facades, but most of the stores he remembered from his childhood were gone or replaced. Where his mother had her card and gift shop, there was now a computer store. The times had not completely passed Prescott by.

Despite some new electric signs and a flashy new Cadillac dealership on Main Street, Prescott remained hopelessly small town. To other eyes it might have been charming rural Americana. To Kettering it was bad memories.

One thing had not changed. On every available wall and pole that would support one was mounted a basket. Some had nets, some had backboards, some were naked iron hoops. None of them was idle. Boys of all ages dribbled, passed, shot, rebounded, shot again. The state religion: basketball. A curious parallel to the blighted neighborhoods of the big eastern cities, with one major difference: all of the young Indiana players he saw were white.

Before getting down to business, Kettering took a quick tour of the town he had known. Quick because there was not all that much to tour in the first place; even quicker because much of what he remembered was gone.

Hoosier Park, for instance, scene of the long-ago church picnic. In its place was what appeared to be a junior college, somnolent in the summer, with a scattering of students strolling along the paths between the buildings or lounging under the trees.

His father's church remained. The sign out in front announced the subject of Sunday's sermon:

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
GENESIS IV : 9

Good question, Kettering thought. I'll bet the answer hasn't changed since my father's day.

He drove slowly along Bailey Street. Most of the same houses were still there, repainted and relandscaped, but recognizably the same houses. They built things to last in those days. The street itself was in good repair, the neighborhood seemed to be holding its comfortable middle-class status.

He pulled to a stop in front of the house where he was born, where he had spent his first thirteen years, boyhood, and where his childhood had ended abruptly. He got out of the car and stood on the parking strip. The solid brick structure looked good for another hundred years. There were lacy curtains in the windows and a fresh coat of paint on the porch and trim around the windows. A tricycle waited at the foot of the steps for a rider.

The front door. Kettering had trouble focusing his vision on it. Dark inlaid wood with a heavy brass handle. It was, of course, not the same door. He squinted. Did the early morning light play tricks, or was there a shadow on the wood? A roughly man-shaped shadow? Kettering shook his head, annoyed with himself. No way. It was a trick of the light. Had to be.

As Kettering stood staring up at the porch of his childhood home, a chill seized him and he shuddered violently. Some impulse made him spin and look behind him.

Nobody there. Nothing.

He let an exasperated breath hiss through his teeth. Of course there was nothing there. He was losing it.

Kettering climbed back into the Nova, gunned the engine, and headed downtown.

The Prescott Municipal Hall of Records was located in one of the town's new buildings. A clean, colorless block of pink-tinged limestone, it also housed the city hall, police department, municipal court, and most other functions of the city government.

The lobby was clean and businesslike and smelled faintly of detergent. He located the Department of Vital Statistics on the lobby directory and climbed the marble stairs to the second floor.

The woman in charge of records, Mrs. Ludden, was rail-thin with carroty hair and glasses that tilted up at the corners. She clasped her hands in what appeared to be honest regret when Kettering told her what he wanted.

"I'm really sorry, but all the birth, marriage, and death records from those years were destroyed in the fire."

"Fire?" Somehow Kettering was not surprised.

"In 1975 the old Civic Building burned down. If you used to live here, you probably remember it."

"I remember it," Kettering said.

"It happened in the middle of the night. Place went up like a torch. The police thought it might have been deliberately set, but nothing was ever proved. It's a mercy no one was inside at the time."

"Yeah, lucky." Kettering thanked her briefly and walked out.

***

The hospital had suffered no fire. However, birth records were kept on the premises for only two years. At the end of that time they were turned over to - where else? - the hall of records.

Kettering did manage to obtain the name of the doctor who was head of pediatrics thirty years ago. He was retired now, living with his wife on the north side of Prescott. That was where the houses were bigger, the shade trees greener, the lawns lusher, and the people richer.

Dr. Robert Kohler and his wife lived in a Victorian house set well back from the street, surrounded by carefully groomed shrubbery. A driveway edged with box alder curved up from the street. Kettering drove up and parked behind an old, well-kept Lincoln. He approached the front door, rang the bell, and listened to the melodious chime inside.

A uniformed maid answered the door and after some persuasion led him back through the house to a sun porch where the doctor was working on a stamp collection with tweezers and a magnifying glass.

Dr. Kohler was a big man with pale skin, a sharp nose, and cloudy blue eyes. His eighty-some years showed in the slight tremor of his hands.

"Kettering," he repeated. "I know that name. Harlan Kettering. Minister, wasn't he?"

"That's right."

"You his boy?"

"Yes, sir. I'm Brian."

Dr. Kohler shook his head sadly. "The years do fly by. Your father died sudden, as I remember. Mother too. Unlucky family, the Ketterings."

Kettering was in no mood to reminisce. "What I wanted to ask was about my sister Jessica. She had a baby thirty years ago, when you were head of pediatrics at the hospital."

Kohler leaned back in his wicker chair, making it crack. He did not invite Kettering to sit.

"Jessie Kettering. I remember. Unmarried. Not much more than a baby herself. Bad business, that. She came in to us more dead than alive."

"The baby," Kettering said. "What do you remember about her baby?"

The doctor pulled off his wire-rimmed glasses and massaged the loose flesh around his eyes. "The baby. I get kind of hazy there. Strange little tyke."

"Strange how?"

"I'm not sure I could tell you. It's just an impression. It was thirty years ago, you know."

"Do you remember its name?"

"Never had one. Your sister was in no condition to be naming a baby. Or anything else. How'd she finally make out?"

"Not so good. What happened to it? The baby?"

"The court put it in a foster home."

Kettering sagged. "I suppose those records went up in the big fire of 'seventy-five too."

"Most likely. What is it you're after, anyway?"

"I'm trying to trace the child that was born to my sister. If I had the name of the foster parents, it would help."

"Shoot, you don't need records for that. I can tell you what their name was."

"You can?"

"Don't look so surprised. I'm not senile."

"I didn't mean to imply that you were, Doctor. It's just that it was so long ago."

"When you get old you remember some things, others you can't bring back for love or money. Don't ask me how it works. Some chemical action in the brain."

"The foster parents?" Kettering prompted.

"Isenbarger. Carl and Pauline Isenbarger."

"Do they still live here?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Never knew either of them personally." Dr. Kohler picked up the tweezers and magnifying glass, and Kettering might as well have turned invisible.

Kettering thanked the old man and left him with his stamp collection.

***

Back on the block that comprised downtown Prescott, Kettering went into Patty's Cafe and ordered coffee, a sweet roll, and the local telephone book. The book seemed not to have thickened any in the past thirty years.

He leafed through the pages rapidly to the Is. The only Isenbarger listed was Merle on River School Road. Kettering swallowed the last of the coffee, paid the cashier, and drove out to the address on the edge of town.

River School Road was well away from the suburblike neighborhoods Kettering remembered. Out here it was still farm country. He found the Isenbarger house by the name on the mailbox. It had been a farmhouse not too long ago, but now appeared to be separate.

Merle Isenbarger was a ruddy man who looked to be in his mid-forties. His polite expression frosted over when Kettering mentioned the names Carl and Pauline.

"They were my aunt and uncle," he said. "Why are you asking?"

"They adopted a baby thirty years ago. I'm trying to trace him down."

"Dorcas."

"Pardon me?"

"Dorcas. That's what they called the kid. It didn't involve me. I was living back in Pennsylvania at the time. Never was too close to my uncle Carl, but I had to come back here to settle their estate. Once that was done, it just seemed like too much trouble to leave." Merle Isenbarger looked as though he'd like another chance at that decision. "So here I still am."

"Do you know what happened to the child?"

"Dorcas?" Isenbarger looked at him closely. "I guess you don't know about my aunt and uncle."

"No." Kettering tensed, getting ready for something he did not want to hear.

"They were killed. Murdered in their home."

"What happened?"

"They came in and surprised a burglar, so the police decided. Had to be a damned vicious burglar, if you ask me."

"And Dorcas?"

"Disappeared. There was quite a to-do about it at the time, but after a couple of months it died down. Nobody ever found hide nor hair. People figured the burglars must have killed the kid someplace else and hid the body. Doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned, but nobody came up with a better theory."

"What about you?" Kettering asked. "Do you have a theory?"

"It happened fifteen, sixteen years ago. Most people around here forgot all about it. What difference does it make what I think?"

"It could help me find the child."

Isenbarger looked down at his feet for a moment, then up into Kettering's eyes. "I think the kid killed them, chopped them up then lit out. Don't ask me for a motive."

"Do you have any pictures of Dorcas?"

"That's another weird thing. Uncle Carl was crazy about taking pictures. Snapped anything and everything. Aunt Pauline stuck 'em all in albums. They must have had a couple thousand pictures, but not one of Dorcas. A lot of the pictures in the albums looked like they'd come out bad. Just a big blank. I can't figure out why my aunt would want to save them. Can you?"

Kettering could not. He left Merle Isenbarger, feeling a dark sense of futility. He spent only a little time tracking down people from the school, shopkeepers, friends and neighbors of the Isenbargers. No one, it seemed, had any clear recollection of the child known as Dorcas. It was as if their memories were blank, like the photographs in the Isenbargers' album.

On the flight back to Los Angeles Kettering pulled the shade down and tried to catch up on some of the sleep he had missed. No good. A tall, long-armed figure danced inside his head the moment he closed his eyes. His inner ear echoed with mocking laughter. Laughter of the Doomstalker.