Lost Boy Lost Girl

Maugham in old age.

“Jimbo Monaghan saw pictures of you and other people socializing with Kalendar at a lakeside tavern. He said it looked like quite a party.”

Hillyard’s face relaxed. “How in the world did that boy come across those photos, anyhow?”

“He and Mark found them in the house.”

“Those pictures were taken at a neighborhood party, except it was up at Random Lake, not far from Milwaukee. Someone had a cabin up there, near a little tavern with a pier and a beach. That must have been one of the few times Kalendar did something to make his wife happy. He had a good reason to keep her happy, but all the same, he was Joseph Kalendar. He did his best to enjoy himself, but it was all an act. He hated being there. And the feeling was more or less mutual. Kalendar had the power to kill all the pleasure in his vicinity. I actually felt sorry for him. You could see him going up to people and trying to join in the conversation, which meant he just stood there, until one by one the other men peeled away and left him by himself.”

“What do you mean, he had a reason to keep his wife happy?”

“Myra Kalendar had a big, big belly. She must have been seven or eight months pregnant.”

“With their son, the poor devil.”

“I don’t think so.” Hillyard seemed irritatingly smug. “The party at Random Lake was in 1965. In 1965, Billy Kalendar was four years old.”

“I don’t get it.”

Omar Hillyard continued to smile at him. “A month after the party at Random Lake, Kalendar put out the word that his wife had miscarried. They wanted no calls or notes of sympathy, thank you. You can draw your own conclusions.”

22

From Timothy Underhill’s journal, 27 June 2003

There he was, Omar Hillyard, annoyed with me but still handing me the secret, the key that unlocked the last, inmost door. I remembered Philip telling me that Myra Kalendar had one day appeared at their house in Carrollton Gardens begging Nancy to do something for her. Help me save my child’s life. Did she say, Take her from me?

I explained all of this to Tom Pasmore shortly after I turned up at the big old house on Eastern Shore Drive, but he refrained from comment until we were climbing the stairs to get to the room that contained his computers and computer paraphernalia. He said, “In your view, then, your nephew met Joseph Kalendar’s daughter in that house. She somehow managed to appear before him in physical form, made love to him day after day, and finally talked him into joining her in a kind of spirit-world?”

“Put that way, it sounds absurd,” I said.

He asked me how I would put it.

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “But remember this sequence. Joseph Kalendar really does have a daughter he conceals from the world. Early one morning when she is three years old, she slips out of the house and hides, probably in the back garden or the alley. Kalendar rushes outside to find her and sees that the house next door is burning. Two little girls live in that house. Isn’t it likely that Lily would have watched those girls through the windows, that she would have yearned to play with them? Kalendar thinks so, because he races into the burning house. After rescuing everyone, he charges back in, looking for her. After that, he builds an enormous wall at the back of his garden to hide the next thing he builds, a horrible annex alongside his kitchen. In that room, he tortures his daughter.

“Three years later, his wife makes a desperate attempt to rescue her daughter, but her husband’s cousin, Nancy Underhill, turns her down flat. Philip would never have let her interfere, and he would certainly not have let Kalendar’s daughter move into his house.

“Then comes Kalendar’s meltdown. He murders a lot of women, undoubtedly including his wife and daughter. In 1980, he is arrested and convicted. Five years later, Kalendar is murdered by a fellow inmate, and the story seems to be over.”

We had reached the computer room. Tom walked around turning on the lights and hearing me out, nodding as he went. I didn’t want him to agree with me, I just wanted him to see the pattern.

“This is the interesting part,” I said. “About three weeks ago, my nephew, who has no conscious knowledge of this story whatsoever, suddenly becomes obsessed with Kalendar’s house. His mother forbids him to go near the place. A few days before, a pedophile murderer snatched a boy from Sherman Park.

“My nephew becomes increasingly obsessed with the Kalendar house, and one night he lies to everyone about his plans for the evening and he goes around the block and attempts to break in. He is repulsed by a kind of horrible negative energy. The next day, his mother kills herself.”

“Well, well,” Tom said.

“She’s picking up something from her son. Her guilt comes back to her, and what’s happening in the neighborhood makes it worse. She can’t bear it. The next day, her son finds her body in the bathtub. What do you think that would do to a fifteen-year-old boy, finding his mother’s naked corpse in the bathtub?

“Then Mark returns again and again, finding all the creepy modifications Kalendar made to the house. After two days, he tells his best friend that he senses the presence of a young woman, and on the fifth day, she appears, calling herself Lucy Cleveland. Lucy is hiding from her father, a figure Mark has been calling the Dark Man, and whom he has seen on at least two occasions. Mark says Lucy has a plan, she wants him to do something, and he needs time to think about it. He goes off to the park to think, and is never seen again.”

“Very suggestive,” Tom said. “So you think that while he was in the park, he made up his mind to join Lucy Cleveland and—am I right?—protect her from her father? And after his mind was made up, he went back to 3323 and gave himself to her.”

“Joined her,” I said. “But gave himself to her, too, yes.”

“Do you think he will ever be seen again?”

“I’m sure of it,” I said. Even then, I could not bear to tell Tom about the e-mail I had found, via a program called Gotomypc.com, on my computer at home. “Because he isn’t dead, he’s just elsewhere.”

“You love your nephew, don’t you, Tim?”

Suddenly, my eyes burned with tears.

“How much of what you told me do the police know?”

“As much as they could understand. I tried to get them interested in that house, but they blew me off.”

“Well, I think it’s worth a good, long look. Let’s see what we can discover.” Tom had placed himself before a computer wired up to a machine that resembled an enormous toaster equipped with rows of small red lights. It said VectorSystems on the side, not that I know what that means. Thick cords led from the giant toaster to a number of enigmatic black cubes, some of which clicked and whirred.

“I’ll see him again,” I said to Tom Pasmore.

“If she lets him be seen.”

“There’s always that,” I said. “She will, though. I’ll never talk to him again, but I’ll see him.”

“And that will be enough?”

“Almost enough,” I said.

“When it happens, will you tell me about it?”

“I’ll have to tell someone.”

He smiled up at me, glanced at the screen, then back up at me. “Do you really want me to do this?”

Of course I wanted him to do it.

“Then come around behind me, so you can see, too.”

I moved behind him and watched him type 3323 N. Michigan Street into a blank form he had called up from some municipal office with no idea that Tom Pasmore was roaming through their records. He hit ENTER.