Of all the founding fathers, James Wilson gets no respect. Wilson was one of the signees of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected twice to the Continental Congress and was a major force in drafting the US Constitution. As a leading legal theorist, he was one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to America’s first Supreme Court.
Still, there are no major universities named after him, and his story hardly ever comes up in a US history class except as part of a list. There’s a bust of him somewhere in the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School but no statues. He doesn’t even have a toilet on the New Jersey Turnpike named after him.
Wilson’s only real legacy was a town at the end of the Wallenpaupack Valley that bore his name. In 1926 Pennsylvania Power and Light bought up the entire town for $20 an acre and either moved or razed every house and farm in Wilson’s last legacy. Wallenpaupack Creek was dammed and the entire valley was flooded, making it, at the time, Pennsylvania’s largest man-made lake. Locals swear Wilsonville’s old church is still down there and at low water the bell in the tower breaches the surface and can be heard chiming.
As he showed his ID to the receptionist Harry wondered why he was there. Harmony had said that one of the reasons she liked Billy was because he was good to his mother. For some reason that statement was pressing on Harry’s mind but for the life of him he didn’t know why. The only outcome he could imagine from this trip was him getting arrested for using the temporary ID he should have returned to the state police when they canned him.
He was led through the brightly painted halls of the Lake Wallenpaupack Care Home where the residents spanned the full mental spectrum from lucid to catatonic. Many were in electric carts which apparently had the absolute right of way. After dodging half a dozen, he arrived at a room with a large picture window overlooking the massive lake. A white-haired woman sat staring out at waterskiers.
The nurse knocked on the frame of the open door. “Dottie, this is Mr Cull, he’s with the state police. He’d like to talk to you.”
Dorothy Thomson turned, then smiled as if she was flattered. “With me?” she said.
“Hi, Mrs Thomson, my name is Harry and I-I’d like to talk to you about your sons.”
Her smile vanished. “What have they done?”
Harry looked to the nurse, who whispered: “Some days she doesn’t remember.”
“What are you whispering about?” Dottie demanded. “Is this about Billy? He really is a good boy. He just has bad luck. I’m convinced he does no more stupid things than any other child. He just… he just seems to get into trouble for everything.”
Harry came in and sat. “Do you remember the last time you saw Billy?”
Mrs Thomson laughed and waved her hand at Harry. “Oh, sonny, I can’t remember anything, didn’t they tell you that? That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you remember Billy coming here with a girl?”
The old woman’s face showed how hard she was trying to concentrate. “Sara?”
“That’s right.”
Dottie was very pleased with herself. “She said she was a dancer. Billy told me that she was making him clean his apartment and balance his checkbook. I liked her. The best thing about her was how she looked at Billy.”
“Yes, I’ve met her, she is very nice.”
“Bossy though. I remember she said that he had to ‘Do business in a businesslike manner’. I’m not complaining mind you, Billy needs a firm hand. She persuaded him to go back to school. Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am. He was enrolled in a real estate course.”
“Was?” the old woman said then let out a fast breath like she had been punched. “Frankie said… Frankie told me Billy was dead.” She covered her mouth as if just saying it made it so. “First Jonny and then Billy.”
Harry pulled his chair closer to her. She dropped her head on his shoulder and wept. “Oh, Mary, Mother of God,” she keened.
What the hell am I doing here? Harry thought, except making a sweet old woman miserable.
The crying slowed and Dottie pulled a crunched-up paper tissue out of her sleeve. More tissues followed, like a bunch of magician’s flowers, and spilled onto her lap. Harry stood and shook Dottie’s hand. “Apologies for disturbing you, Mrs Thomson, and I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Mr… oh I really can’t remember anything.”
“Cull,” Harry said.
“Mr Cull,” the woman said to herself seemingly trying to force it to stay in her head. “Will you be seeing… Sara soon?”
“I don’t think so, ma’am.”
“Oh, OK.” She reached over into her bedside table and brought out a manila envelope. “Will someone else be coming for this then?”
When the world’s first fully electric streetcar system was installed in 1886, Scranton Pennsylvania earned itself the nickname Electric City. After that, Scranton’s fortunes only rose as it became the premiere anthracite coal provider for the Mid-Atlantic states and beyond. Unfortunately, after the Great Depression and World War II, the nation moved the majority of its energy needs to oil and natural gas. America was no longer buying what Scranton was selling. The death knell of the Scranton coal-mining industry happened in 1959 when the Knox Coal Company illegally instructed its miners to dig below the Susquehanna River. The shaft, only six feet below the riverbed, caved in on January 22nd resulting in the death of twelve miners. Water then rushed into the mine. It took three days of dumping culm, debris, and even full-sized box cars to plug the whirlpool. And people wonder why Pennsylvanians are suspicious of fossil fuel companies?
Inside the envelope Mrs Thomson had given Harry was a CD with “BUSINESSLIKE MANNER” hand-written on the face in a permanent marker. He tried it in the CD player of his car but was told by the dashboard that the disk was unreadable. Harry’s laptop didn’t have a CD slot so he drove for the better part of an hour to Scranton in order to find a place where he could read the disk.
* * *
Harry placed the unlabelled CD into one of the laptops on display in the Best Buy electronics store in the Steamtown Mall. As soon as he did a salesman asked him what he was doing. Harry quickly explained his predicament and the salesman just as quickly explained that Best Buy wasn’t an Internet café and if he wanted to read CDs on his computer, he could purchase an external drive.
Ten minutes and $50 later, in the corner of a nearby Starbucks, Harry finally slotted Big Bill’s CD into his computer. The screen told him that he didn’t have the software to read this type of file.
“Fuck,” Harry said, louder than he should have in a coffee shop.
This drew an icy stare from the woman with the two children, but also a, “Can I help you?” from a man wearing a red sports shirt at the next table.
Harry held up his hands as if about to surrender. “Do you know anything about computers?”
The guy chuckled, turned fully, and pointed to the “Best Buy Computer Tech” logo on his shirt. “Is there something wrong with the drive?”
“No, well, I don’t know.” Harry took out his wallet, handed the guy his purloined state police ID then counted all of his bills in the fold. “There’s eighty-seven bucks in it, if you can tell me what’s on this disk.”
The guy looked at his watch and said: “OK, I can give you a half an hour.” He reached into his satchel and produced a much more substantial laptop than Harry’s. While it started up he held out his hand and said: “Hi, I’m Jonathan.”
Harry shook and said: “For $87 you can only give me a half an hour? Do they pay you $174 an hour at Best Buy?”
“I only got a half an hour left on my break, and over there they don’t pay me that but they do pay me regular.” He put the CD into a drive on the side of his machine, hit a few keys, then turned the monitor towards Harry and said: “And there you are.”
“You opened it?”
Jonathan shrugged. “It’s an ISO disk.”
“ISO?”
“ISO 9660 Compact Disk File System to be exact.” Jonathan looked up and shrugged. “Yes, I am that much of a nerd. It’s a file system protocol that many backup programs use. Whoever owned this disk is obviously a fan of Mike Sooth’s book.”
“Who?”
“Mike Sooth. He wrote Business in a Businesslike Manner. Surely you’ve heard of that?”
“Actually I have,” Harry said, remembering that Harmony had told him she made Big Bill read a book with that title. “But what’s that have to do with this?”
“Sooth spends a whole Chapter on how important it is to back up your hard drive and keep a copy of the backup off premises in case of a fire. And this is the software he recommends.” Jonathan pointed to Harry’s laptop. “When was the last time you backed your computer up?”
“Ah, never. So what’s on the CD?”
“It looks like a complete user file from a Windows system.” He clicked on his trackpad. “Yeah, Word, Excel files and downloads.”
“Any emails?”
He clicked some more. “No, most folk’s emails are in the cloud these days, you know, Gmail and Hotmail and stuff. He didn’t save the program folder so I don’t know what email he was using. There might be some files deep in the registry that could tell you, but your boys would be better at finding that stuff than me.”
“‘My boys’?”
“In the state police computer lab.”
“Oh yeah.” Harry thought he’d better stop flashing around his defunct ID before he got himself arrested. “Can you get that stuff on my computer so I can read it?”
Jonathan took out a key fob. Among the keys was a little figure of Spiderman hanging from a chain. He removed the superhero then pulled back its head to reveal a USB stick. He plugged it into the computer and transferred the CD’s files onto it. When it was done, Jonathan handed Harry the little Spiderman USB drive. “I feel bad taking so much money for this, so you can have my Spiderman as a gift.” As Harry reached for it Jonathan held it back for a moment and said: “Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.”
* * *
The contents of the disk were just like the My Documents file on Harry’s own computer. There were folders for Favourites, Photos, Desktop, Documents, Music, and Downloads. Most were empty. The Downloads folder was filled with documents from the real estate course Billy was taking: assignments and PDFs of state and federal regulations. Other than that there was one folder labelled, “INCENTIVE TO STUDY”. Inside it were three photos of Harmony in sexy underwear. Harry found himself involuntarily mumbling, “I’d study for that.”
Harry was disappointed to find that all of the folders were almost exclusively devoted to real estate coursework. Harry skimmed every file and folder but found nothing until he read the last document. It was a letter dated four days before Billy’s death.
Dear Mr Strickling
My name is William Thomson. I am a new real estate agent based in Ice Lake Pennsylvania. I found your address in the land registry files. I live near your home at 8 Lakespur Drive. I visited it yesterday and noticed that spiky vines have grown on the porch and across the front door, so I assume no one lives there. If you ever wish to sell the property, please get in touch as I would be delighted to broker a good deal for you.
Sincerely
William Thomson
Billy had decided to get to work even before he took his exam. Harry frowned as he imagined Billy saving this to show Harmony as proof of his initiative. “Lakespur Drive,” he said out loud. He had heard that before. Harry’s and MK’s houses at Ice Lake were on Lakeview Drive. He took out his phone and found the message that Cirba had sent him listing the mayor’s address. Charlie’s house was on the corner of Lakeview Drive and – Lakespur Drive.
The last thing Big Bill wrote was a letter about an abandoned house. Then four days later Big Bill was killed and his computer erased.
Harry picked up his phone and found Cirba’s number. He started to press the keys then stopped. The captain had been serious about Harry leaving town, so throwing himself back into the investigation and colluding his friend into what probably was just nothing, might get both of them into trouble.
Harry got back into his car, started the motor and then sat, deciding which way to go. The longer he sat the more ashamed he was for leaving with his tail between his legs. He hadn’t even said goodbye to MK. OK, she was mad at him, but he didn’t even give himself a chance to explain his side of the story. Finally, out loud, he shouted: “Fuck the captain, it’s a free country last time I looked,” and headed south, back towards Ice Lake.