Page 18

After my call to Bess, I placed one to Jon Flanders.

“Hey, you must have ESP because I was just about to call you,”

he said when he answered.

“Are you saying you believe ESP exists?”

“I’m open to many things,”

he said in a mock creepy voice.

“Have you ever looked into it?”

“Not me personally, but my parents did once.”

“Of course, they did.”

His tone was teasing with a soup?on of sarcasm.

“I went along with them, though all I did was watch from the sidelines.”

“What was the situation?”

“Someone wanted to know if a particular prognosticator was for real.

The woman claimed she could read minds or rather receive thoughts from people, even when they weren’t nearby.”

“And who was it that wanted to know if she was for real?”

Before I could answer, he said, “Wait.

Let me guess.

It was the adult child of some rich elderly person who was spending the child’s inheritance on predictions.”

The amusement in his voice made it clear he thought the situation had been farcical at best and a bad con at worst.

I hated to burst his bubble.

No, wait.

That’s not true.

I didn’t hate it at all.

“It was someone in the CIA.”

My answer was met with several seconds of silence before Jon said, “The CIA?”

“Yep.”

Another silence.

Then: “You’re yanking my chain now, aren’t you?”

“I’m not.

But you have to swear you’ll never tell anyone.

That’s the deal.

Not that anyone would believe you anyway.

Heck, you don’t believe it yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t believe in giant lake monsters either until a few weeks ago. Tell me.”

“This woman named Sylvia claimed that she was picking up the thoughts of two foreign men who were plotting against the United States.

She had visions of giant aerial bombs raining down on New York and Washington, DC.

These thoughts also involved threats to attack our emergency systems and shut everything down.

Sylvia put her visions in a letter addressed to the man who was president at that time and stated that she often received random thoughts like this, but never any so destructive or threatening.

The date of her letter was August 23, 2001.”

I paused, waiting to see if Jon would figure it out.

He did quickly, which I liked.

“And then 9/11 happened,” he said.

“Yes.

Sylvia’s letter wasn’t read until weeks after that.

As you can imagine, letters to the president don’t arrive on the actual president’s desk very often, if at all.

In fact, there’s no way for me to know if he ever saw this one.

Plus, there was the whole anthrax-in-the-mail scare that followed, slowing mail down even more.

But when someone on the staff finally got and read Sylvia’s letter, it was sent up some chain of command and the FBI showed up on her doorstep. They did an in-depth investigation into her, checking out all her contacts and acquaintances, interviewing neighbors and old school chums, digging through her computer files and every paper in her house. There wasn’t a single connection they could find, or any hint of involvement with the culprits, though there were several people more than willing to label Sylvia as a kook. But given the perceived accuracy of her prediction, apparently someone in the CIA wanted to know if there was any way Sylvia was legit.”

“Perceived accuracy?”

Jon said, and I had to smile.

He didn’t miss much.

“Yes.

It’s easy to make the pieces fit in hindsight, particularly if you’re looking for them.

But Sylvia’s prediction was based on common sense and logic.

If a terrorist wanted to cause maximum disruption and chaos to our country, the two ideal primary targets are our financial center and our government.

Most high school kids know that New York City and DC are the most likely terrorist locations for that very reason.

There was a lot in Sylvia’s prediction that was wrong. There were no aerial bombs raining down, but on the heels of 9/11, it was easy to interpret that statement in a way that fit what happened. And her comment about the disruption of the emergency systems—another commonly considered target for terrorists—was later interpreted to mean nine-one-one.”

“Did Sylvia claim that was the meaning behind these thoughts?”

“Of course, she did.

She capitalized on it right away.

She took the stigma of the FBI visits and turned it into positive advertising, claiming that she was so good, the US government used her.

She started traveling and doing these shows all over the country where she supposedly picked up the thoughts of people in the audience.”

“Did your parents debunk her?”

“They did, as much as anyone could.

They uncovered a host of hired helpers who mingled with the audiences before and during the shows, picking up bits of conversation that could then be used by Sylvia to claim she was reading someone’s thoughts.

They had tiny microphones, and Sylvia wore an earpiece that was virtually invisible.

And again, if you watch these charlatans at work, you’ll see that they’re great at reading people’s body language and facial expressions while they make vague generic guesses as to the meaning of the thoughts they’ve supposedly picked up.

Sylvia was quite good, one of the best.

But she wasn’t good enough to fool my parents.”

“Did they run her out of the business?”

“Heck no.

There’s an endless supply of gullible, desperate, and lonely people out there who are more than willing to plunk down their hard-earned cash in order to visit one of these frauds.

Sylvia kept at it for another nine years after that.

Then she had a stroke and lost her ability to speak.

She spent the last five years of her life in a nursing home.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

“I suppose, though it’s hard for me to feel sorry for people like Sylvia who prey on people’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses.”

“Understandable.

It seems we got sidetracked here.

I’m guessing the life and times of Sylvia aren’t the reason you called me.”

“No, it’s not.

But first, I’m assuming there’s no news regarding Marty since I haven’t heard anything?”

There was an uncomfortably long hesitation before he said, “Sorry, no.”

“Okay.

Then I’m wondering if the police checked the GPS on whatever cars Will and Oliver were using when they were here.”

“Checked it for what?”

“For where they went.

Did they have GPS capabilities?”

“I think so.

Both victims had newer model cars. Why?”

“I want to know if either of them drove to Plymouth, Wisconsin, recently, not necessarily while they were here in Door County but in the weeks or months before that.”

More silence and my mind filled in the sound of wheels and cogs spinning inside of Jon’s head as he tried to deduce the meaning behind my request.

I could have filled him in and explained myself, but I was rather enjoying being one step ahead of him.

“Okay, I give,”

he said finally.

“What’s so special about Plymouth, Wisconsin?”

“Well, for one thing, they make a lot of cheese there.

Did you know they are the Cheese Capital of the World?”

“I did not.

And somehow, I don’t think that has anything to do with why you’re interested in the city of Plymouth, though I do love cheese.

It’s been one of the best things about my move here.”

“I love cheese, too.

We should go there sometime and check it out.”

“It’s a date,” he said.

Another awkward silence followed wherein I suspect both of us were contemplating the hidden meaning behind his comment.

I cleared my throat and then told him about the piece of envelope I’d found in Marty’s truck.

“You were in Marty’s truck?”

he said.

He didn’t sound at all happy about it.

“It was unlocked so it’s not like it was a secure site or anything,”

I lied, hoping he wouldn’t know if it had been or not.

“I’m sure you or the local guys have already been in it, haven’t you?”

He sighed and then cagily avoided answering my question.

“Just because Marty wrote a word on a piece of paper doesn’t mean it has any significance,” he said.

“Except Oliver’s girlfriend told me that she thought Oliver might have been having an affair, and recently, when she was sweeping in the room he used as an office, she found a torn piece of paper that also had the word ‘Plymouth’ written on it.

No other words, but she said there was a W after the word and an S before it.

She assumed the W meant ‘Wisconsin’ and deduced from that that the woman he was seeing was from there.

I know it’s not the greatest of connections but it’s more than I had yesterday.

So I was wondering if it would be possible to check the GPS on Oliver’s car and see if he’d been to Plymouth.

And maybe you could check his phone records to see if he called anyone from there? Then we could check the same things for Will to see if he has any connections to the city or maybe to this mystery woman.”

I paused, a little out of breath from talking too fast, and said, “There has to be a connection between these two guys, don’t you think?”

“Morgan, you’re supposed to be finding out if there is a lake monster out there that could be responsible for these deaths, not doing police work.

If either of the men had a cell phone with them, it’s presumably at the bottom of the lake now, because no phones were ever found.”

He paused, sighing.

“And I’ll check to see if the lab can access the GPS in Oliver’s car.

But you need to leave the police work to the police.

That’s not what I’m paying you for.

And if you’re not careful, you could end up compromising the investigation.

You need to stay in your lane.”

“Stay in my lane? Is that some sort of lame police metaphor?”

“Morgan . . .”

He sounded tired and cautious.

But I wasn’t ready to give in yet.

“I happen to think that finding a human cause for what happened to those guys, if there is one, is in my lane,”

I argued.

“Can you tell me that the police have anything better in the way of clues?”

There followed a telltale silence, and I knew I had him, though it didn’t give me quite the level of satisfaction I’d hoped for.

“I admit, what you uncovered might be useful,”

Jon said finally.

“I spoke to Oliver’s girlfriend myself back when it happened, and she didn’t tell me she suspected him of having an affair.”

“That’s because you’re a man,”

I told him.

“And a cop.

That’s a bad combination for soliciting female confidences.”

“Hunh.

Maybe that’s why . . .”

He drifted off, not finishing the sentence, though I desperately wanted him to.

I started to prompt him but before I could, he said, “Reviewing any GPS history in the cars will take a while.

I think they already have the phone records though, so that one should be easy.”

“And their computers,”

I said.

“Do you guys have their computers?”

“I think the sheriff’s department has them,”

Jon said, “though they might have gone with the evidence techs to their lab.

I don’t have much storage for that kind of stuff on the island.

I know they said Oliver’s laptop was password protected and none of his relatives knew what the password was.

I don’t think anyone pursued it because it didn’t seem relevant to what happened.”

“Any way you could get ahold of Oliver’s laptop and let Devon take a crack at it? The guy is a wonder when it comes to that kind of stuff.”

“Why?”

“We can search through his emails and internet history to see if there’s anything related to Plymouth.”

Jon sighed.

“I’ll see what I can do, Morgan, but I think you’re putting an awful lot of stock into something kind of random.”

“I don’t think it’s random at all that both Oliver Sykes and Marty wrote down the word ‘Plymouth.’ Besides, do you have any better ideas?”

He did not and I mentally added a point to my column in the scoreboard I kept in my head.