Chapter Twenty-Three

Craig made a quick check of the carnival’s itinerary. It showed Dimitri Brothers had been as far south as Arkansas in the past month. Its next stop was at the Cook County Fairgrounds in Illinois, not far off the turnpike in Skokie, south of Chicago. He could make it in four or five hours. On the drive to Skokie, his GPS was hardly necessary since the signs on the highway were so clearly marked. He kept the GPS running anyway. He liked the machine’s gentle female voice. It made him feel like he had company. The instrumental music he favored seemed melancholy today.

Flyers attached to telephone poles touted the carnival at the fairgrounds. A billboard above the front gate advertised the Dimitri Brothers Carnival Featuring the Most Amazing Spectacles in North America. Craig could see a Ferris wheel and a roller coaster from the crowded parking lot. He was ten the last time he went to a carnival. As he locked the car, he could already smell the cotton candy and roasted almonds. His mouth started to water. He wondered if they still made corn dogs. The tinny music blaring over the rush of the roller coaster and shrieks of the riders made him smile.

He decided to just wander the carnival lot and observe before he approached the manager and started talking to the staff officially. He had heard Carnies were an insular bunch. He wanted to get a feel for the people before he talked to the fortune teller. He had found a news article where she had talked about being descended from a Salem Witch. Later, there had been what the paper called a riot and the police report described as an unlawful assembly. The carnival moved on before the situation escalated. If the killer was interested in killing the descendants of Salem witches, she would be his target.

He hadn’t done too well on the phone with the manager. He needed to work on his interrogation style. He wished he could just explain his theory about the serial killer. It would help get them to open up. It might also cause a panic and damage any case he would have to build when the killer went to trial.

Craig paid his entry at the gate and followed the crowd into sensory overload. Noise, smells, heat, and chill all vied for his attention. He stopped at a stand and got a corn dog. He leaned over to keep the mustard he had added from dripping on his suit. A large paper cup of lemonade washed down the corn dog.

He was getting unusual looks and realized his suit wasn’t exactly standard dress for this venue. A stand selling T-shirts solved his problem. A brown shirt emblazoned with “Aim to Misbehave” was the least offensive outfit he could find as camouflage. He found a restroom to change. The mirror showed him the shirt didn’t exactly go with his black pants and shiny black shoes. He shrugged at his reflection. No one at the carnival was dressed in the height of fashion anyway.

Back on the midway, the Rat Race game drew his attention. A round table had radiating sections, each painted in a different bright color. In the center sat a cage containing a fat white rat with bored red eyes. A hole at the end of each section dropped into darkness. The customers put a token on their chosen color. A buxom woman with red hair, which would have looked natural on a character in a Disney cartoon, lifted the cage off the rat. No longer bored, the rat scurried to drop into one of the holes. The color it chose determined the winner. He played a few times and won once. Just enough to make back his investment. During a lull in the play, he struck up a conversation with the redhead.

“You seem to get all kinds here,” Craig said.

“Oh, Honey. If you only knew.”

“Have you been with the carnival long?”

“About five years.” She tossed her hair, primping gently with her right hand behind her neck.

He blushed fiercely, realizing she was flirting with him. “You ever play up near Cleveland?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I live over in Akron, and my wife went to the fair without me. She got hassled by a creepy guy with a big, droopy mole on his face.”

“We got nobody like that on the lot.” She gave the rat a piece of kibble. She lost her flirty aspect and was now all business.

“I know. She said it was a local guy, not a Carney. I was wondering if anybody might remember him.”

“Geez, buddy. You know how many people have been through the carnival since then?”

Craig felt stupid. He knew the story was lame as he said it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just wish I could find the guy and kick his ass. He really scared my wife.”

Well, there is nobody like that here. I’m going on break now. I’ll see you later.” She stalked off carrying her cash box, the rat on her shoulder.

“So much for my interrogation plan,” Craig muttered to himself.

For his next attempt, he struck up a conversation with a grandmotherly woman, wearing bib overalls and a little flat cap. She was running a stand where the customers threw ping-pong balls onto little cup-sized goldfish bowls. If the ball landed in a bowl, you won a goldfish. A ball in the top of the pyramid of bowls in the center of the table won a stuffed animal. It seemed a simple enough game. Craig bought four balls for a dollar. He threw his first ball. It bounced off the rim of a bowl and fell to the canvas along the edge of the table. He asked the woman, “You been with the carnival long?”

“All my life.”

“Are there a lot of different carnivals working in the Midwest?”

“There’re a few. The business isn’t what it once was. The corporations are buying us up and ruining the whole idea of a carnival.”

“My brother got divorced in June. He said he was going to run away and join a carnival or a circus. I wonder if you might have seen him.”

“We haven’t had anybody join up lately, but we always have a wobbly or two hanging around looking for work every show.”

Craig threw another ball. “He’s easy to remember. He’s tall, thin, and has a big mole next to his nose.” The ball bounced two, three times before it bounced off the table.

Her eyes narrowed. “Can’t say as I’ve seen anybody like you described. You ought to talk to Mister Dimitri. If anybody saw him, it would be Mister D.”

Craig’s third ball bounced up, bounced again, and plopped into a fishbowl.

“We have a winner.” The old lady poured the fish from the bowl he had won into a plastic bag and tied the top shut.

As he accepted the bag, he said, “I always wanted a pet.” He handed his last ping-pong ball to a slight blonde moppet about eight years old. She thanked him, looking up with ardent green eyes. He didn’t care how cute she was. She wasn’t getting his fish.

His new pet in hand, he worked his way to the fortune teller.