A/N: Those of you who have read The Story of Us will recognize the character of Arthur Sills, the intrepid junk collector of Hazzard, but he's never been 'fleshed' out before. Enjoy!

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Chapter 11: Pandora's Box

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,
only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

April 18th, 1988

The hospital in Luce County, Michigan, was the largest medical center within 150 miles of Tamarack, which wasn't saying much. It was small, but efficient, and quiet. Enos saw only three people between the main lobby and the elevator bank. He pushed the down arrow beside the elevator door. It opened with a ding, and he stepped in and hit the button for the basement. Polka music played softly in the background, making the enclosed space even less enjoyable. He realized he was picking at his nails and stopped himself. Since leaving Hazzard, he had made a conscious effort not to fidget in front of others, knowing it made him look vulnerable and nervous. When he was finished here, he promised himself he'd go fishing.

The door opened into the basement, and he only had to follow his nose to find the morgue.

"Sorry I didn't already have him out, Sheriff," the medical examiner apologized as he entered. "I'm sorta behind the eight-ball here. It's already been a busy spring." She pulled one of the handles in a wall of cubbies, and Mr. Spione rolled out on a slab with a metallic clatter.

"That's alright," he told her. "I didn't know how early I could get away this morning."

He looked down at the body, now unclothed and stitched neatly back together at the midsection. It was the first time he had seen the victim since they had cut him down from the tree and packed him off to await an official autopsy.

It seemed Mr. Spione was a connoisseur of unique tattoos. He looked up at the doctor. "Did you get pictures of all of these?"

"Absolutely, and the clothes are bagged and labeled for you, too. as well as the rope that was around his leg. There's a folder with the pictures on the counter." She pointed to the vivid eyes tattoed just below each clavicle. "Kind of Orwellian, eh? Like Big Brother."

They were crudely done with an ink pen and a needle suggesting prison or back alley, but the artist had talent. The eyes were lifelike enough to imagine the spirit of some demon might rise up from the dead flesh at any moment, and an ornate cross spanned his chest. "Any local gangs use eyes like these?"

"No, and I saw plenty of tats down in Detroit when I did my residency. If I had a guess, I'd say organized crime, but I'm no expert. There's a guy down at the Illinois Crime lab in Chicago who might be able to help you; Herbert Douglas is his name. He wrote a couple of books on tattoo analysis. I can probably find his number for you."

"His merchant mariner card listed his birthplace in Hungary, but he lived in Chicago," he recalled. That had explained the abandoned car at the motel in Paradise with expired Illinois tags registered to a Maria Spione that now sat inside their impound fence. "I've gotta take a trip down there and talk to his mother day after tomorrow, so I'll take the pictures and see if I can get in touch with the crime lab. I haven't gotten very far into his past, but I'll see what I can dig up about the area he grew up in."

She nodded and picked up the folder with his pictures and pulled out one. "This is what his back looks like."

An Eastern Orthodox style cathedral with three domes spread across his upper back with the face of a Madonna and Child above it on one shoulder and a tiger head on the other. Enos had seen a fair number of tattoos at the LAPD, but most had been associated with various gangs or sex traffickers in the area. She was right, these had more of an organized flair.

He put the picture back into the folder she handed him. "Was there anything else? Toxicology report?"

She shook her head. "All negative. The only other interesting thing I found was how bad his lungs were. This guy must have smoked like a chimney and unfiltereds, judging by the amount of tar in him. He had the lungs of someone who had chain smoked for forty years."

"Lots of the men who work ships smoke." He walked around the body, trying to make out some of the smaller tattoos on the man's arms. Dying hanging upside down meant the blood had pooled in his arms, hands, and head; the dark lividity obscuring any marks on the skin. "Could you make out anything on the darker parts?"

"A couple of small tattoos showed up on his hands under infrared. There's a picture."

He looked through them and pulled out the one of the man's right hand...and froze. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the nightmare from his thoughts, but his hand found the edge of the metal slab and he leaned on it.

"Recognize something?"

"Maybe," he murmured. "Have you seen this kind of star before?"

She shook her head. "Not with so many points," she said. "It's similar to a nautical star, though, and with him working a ship..."

"Could be." He aimed for nonchalant and failed as he put the picture away. The smell of the room was back, pressing in around him like a fleshy hand, and he knew he had to get out. He glanced down at his watch. "Ding dang, it's already past eleven. I'd better get back to Tamarack, you said you had some evidence bags for me?"

"Sure do, let me grab them for you, and I'll find the number for that crime lab."

It was after lunch before Enos arrived back at the sheriff's station in Tamarack. He wedged the door open with his shoulder, trying not to drop his armload of evidence bags.

"Sheriff, the good Lord didn't mean for you to carry everything in one trip," Joy chided him, jumping up to help him. "Is this all the stuff from Mr. Spione?"

He dropped the rest of the bags on his desk and lay the package of pictures beside his phone. "Yep, this is it. Did Pete get a box made up on this fella, yet?"

"Sure did. Top of the second shelf."

He walked down the hall, past the restrooms and into the closet sized room they used for evidence storage and a makeshift kitchen, and retrieved a banker's box labeled 'Gino Spione'. There was no sense in putting it away; he'd be working on this until the cows came home or until it was solved - whichever came first.

What he really needed was to talk to the crew of the Elcid Barrett, but it wouldn't be back in port until September. It irked him to have to suspend his investigation for six months, but such was the nature of Great Lakes shipping, and the radios on the ships were used only in emergency situations. All he could do in the meantime was try to shed some light on Gino's past and get a better idea of what he was dealing with. He hoped talking to the man's mother would help.

He put the lid on the box and set it on the floor behind his desk, then grabbed an empty evidence bag and a pair of gloves from a drawer. "I'm gonna go take a closer look at that car of Ms. Spione's out yonder," he told Joy. "Let me know if anyone calls."

Their impound yard was a 50' by 100' graveled area surrounded by a chain link fence behind the station, and right now the dark blue Escort with a missing hubcab was the only car inside. Enos unlocked the door and pulled it open, smelling old french fries which were undampend by the tree shaped air freshener hanging from the mirror.. Supporting himself by one knee on the front seat, he moved both it and the passenger side all the way back and began feeling underneath, looking for anything his deputies had missed during their initial search.

It was pretty clean, just a few straw wrappers and bottle caps that he threw onto the passenger seat. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, just a scrap that would tell him more about Gino, he supposed. Giving up, he climbed out and pulled up the lever on the bottom of the driver's seat to move it forward again.

His fingers brushed against something wedged into the springs of the seat.

He pulled it out and looked it over, not sure what it was. The size and shape reminded him of one of those little wrapped up bars of soap they had in hotels, only it was an empty box and smelled like burnt matches. He couldn't read the printing on cover, but the letters CCCP clued him in on what language it was. There was handwriting under the flap, presumably also in Russian.

Dropping it into the empty evidence bag, he shut the door. There was only one person around Tamarack who might be able to read that writing and he was anxious to find out what he could as soon as possible. He looked up at the sky; there was no hint of rain, and the weather seemed almost balmy in the mid-70's. It was as good a day as any to visit the Point.

There were two yellow buses and almost a dozen cars in the parking lot of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, owing to the beautiful day and the history of the old lighthouse. Bells chimed against the door as Enos entered and he moved off to the side to let his eyes adjust, out of the way of the visitors milling about the small gift shop. Business was good this time of year, and the museum brought in almost seventy percent of the county's revenue. It was a place steeped in lore, dedicated to the memories of all those who had lost their lives on the lakes. A crowd of school-aged kids brushed past him, laughing and running towards the parking lot. He waited until they disappeared and then made his way into the museum.

He had been here dozens of times, and yet each visit captured his attention just as much as the first. His fingers trailed across the plexiglass box containing the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald as he thought of the twenty-nine men who had gone down with the ship. It had happened only twelve years ago, making it the most recent freighter claimed by Superior. He had an awful feeling it wouldn't be the last.

Melinda sat behind the information desk, her dark hair spilling across her shoulders, unaware of his presence. He leaned his elbows onto the counter and cleared his throat.

She gasped and looked up, startled. "Enos!"

"Sorry! I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

Her hand pressed against her breast to slow her breathing. "I wasn't expecting you today," she said. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I know you're awful busy, but do you have a minute?" He gestured outside towards the bay. "I've got something I'd like you to take a look at." She gave him a strange smile, and he wondered if she had taken his offer the wrong way, after all English wasn't her first language.

"Sure, I'd love a walk."

They walked up the hill, past the lighthouse, and down to the shore where he gulls wheeled and cried above rocks. She laughed as two of them landed beside a crawdad and fought over it like a pair of toothless old men.

"They remind me of some old friends of mine," he laughed. "Sounds a lot like Bo and Luke when they've got their eyes on the same girl."

She sat down in the scrub grass on the side of a large sand dune, and he followed her, leaving a respectable distance between them.

"Do you miss them?" she asked.

"Who?"

"Your friends, Bo and Luke, and the other people in Georgia. You never talk about them."

He shrugged and looked out over the waves. "Sure, I miss them," he answered. "I practically grew up with them."

"And yet still, here you are."

He didn't answer. She had tried to wheedle information out of him before. It wasn't her fault that he wasn't ready to move on, and he waged another internal battle over how much he should tell her. He didn't want to push her away, but he hated being put on the spot.

"I lost someone," he told her, at last. He felt her turn to study him, but he kept his eyes on the water.

"Someone you loved?"

"I thought I did once," he said, softly. "Maybe I didn't understand what love was." Here, at the other end of the world where no one knew Daisy, it was easier to admit.

They watched the gulls together and listened as the tide rushed in and out. She drew her knees up underneath her chin and folded her arms around them.

Melinda was as much of an enigma here as himself, and she had divulged precious little of her childhood and adolescence to him. How she had come from a Russian province to find herself caretaker of the Great Lakes Museum, he didn't know, only that she had been adopted at five and taken away from her homeland. He wasn't even sure of her age - younger than him to be sure, but her eyes seemed old, like someone who had seen a little too much of the wrong side of life. He'd come to know that look while working in LA, and he knew better than to pry.

"Did you have something to show me?" she asked, interrupting his thoughts. "I need to get back to the museum."

"Possum on a gumbush! I nearly forgot what I came for." He pulled the evidence bag from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. "I think it's Russian, but I can't make heads or tails of it. I thought since-"

"Since I was born in the Soviet Union, I could read it?" She laughed. "I'll take a look, but I remember very little Russian."

"I don't even know what I'm looking at."

She turned it over, front to back. "This was a pack of cigarettes," she said. "That much I know. My father smoked and these are what the Soviet government issued packs looked like."

"What about the handwriting under the flap?" He had put it in the evidence bag with the flap up so he wouldn't need to touch it. "I'm more interested in what that says."

"That's not Russian," she said, shaking her head. "It's similar. Maybe Polish or Czech?"

"Hungarian?" he offered.

She stood up and handed him the evidence bag before shaking the sand from her skirt. "It could be. I can't read Hungarian, either." She stepped closer to him, drawing his attention into her eyes. "I have a dictionary, at home. Why don't you come for supper Friday night, and we'll see if we can decipher it."

"I'm much obliged for the offer," he said, not sure it was the writing Melinda was intent on deciphering. "I've gotta be down in Chicago later this week, and I'll have to play catch up after that. I'll have to take a raincheck."

"That's alright," she assured him. "I'm sure I'll ask again."

I'm sure you will, he thought to himself.

Daisy pulled the car into the gravel drive off Cedar Point Road, listening to the choppy idle of the unremarkable brown sedan which Cooter, bless his heart, had loaned her. She was grateful to have the freedom to come and go as she pleased, even if she didn't understand how her brain still remembered how to drive.

The day was hot, already in the upper 80's, and a fine spray of yellow pollen coated the hood. The neat, single story house with white siding was bounded by an eight foot tall fence on either side which hid the back of the property. The front lawn was cluttered with and assortment of various objects; metal guttering lay beside stacks of worn tires and piles of rusty farm implements. She supposed that most people would have equated it with a junk yard, except for how neatly trimmed the lawn was, and the house itself stood in good repair.

She walked around the piles and up the porch steps, ducking under a collection of wind chimes before knocking on the door.

It opened with a creak, and a bald headed man with a white handle-bar mustache smiled jovially at her. "Hey there, Daisy, come on in and sit a spell, wontcha?" He pushed the door open wider and motioned her inside. "I couldn't believe it when Mr. Amos called the other day saying he wanted me to be in your new column. They must be running out of interesting stories!" His face reddened with pride. "You did a mighty good job with Cooter Davenport and Paul Rhuebottom."

"Thanks, Mr. Sills, that's real kind of you to say. Cooter was easy, but Mr. Rhuebottom turned out to be a man of few words."

The older man chuckled. "You shoulda heard Paul back in his school days," he said. "He'd like to never shut up."

Daisy ducked into the house, expecting to see the same hoard displayed inside as out, and was taken aback by the neatness and normalcy of it. There were no piles of anything anywhere, just a cozy little living room with a free-standing gas stove in one corner, a couch and easy chair and a small television on a rolling cart. She almost forgot what she was doing there. "It was Cooter who suggested I come talk to you."

"Well then, girl, you can call me Art, like everyone else does. Mr. Sills makes me sound too old." He rubbed his bald head. "And I've got more than enough to make me feel that way already."

She grinned, taking an instant liking to him. "Art then," she agreed, shaking his hand. "I'm surprised. I thought I'd see more of your collections inside."

"You mean my junk?" he laughed. "Well, my wife Doris has been gone nearly thirty years come this June, God rest her soul, but she had her standards. The house still feels like her domain since I'm outside most of the time. It just felt right to keep it tidy. If you don't mind, I thought we'd go sit out yonder on the back porch." He motioned towards a door at the other end of the kitchen. "Got some lemonade waiting out there."

They walked through the tidy kitchen, wallpapered in white with prim pink roses, and out the screen door to the back porch. Daisy stopped halfway out, so surprised by what she was seeing in his back yard that the door whacked her on the shoulder.

"Mr. Sills!...I mean, Art! Why, this is incredible!"

The area behind the fence, shielded from passersby, was bigger than the Hazzard fairgrounds and filled from one end to the other. This was no junkyard, though. It was... It was a menagerie. There were animals and monsters; spaceships and strange machines; all cobbled together using things he had gathered over the years.

Art waved aside her compliment, though he looked proud as punch. "Oh now, it's just tinkering, but it's kept me busy," he said. "I've always loved to collect junk, but things got a little out of hand when I started using my welder to put it all together. I reckon it ain't bothering no one."

"Bothering!? Are you kidding?" She couldn't take her eyes off of the yard. "You should go into business!" She pointed to a six foot tall chicken made from what looked to be forks and egg beaters. "Why, I'll bet some big city people in fancy houses would pay a fortune for that!"

He laughed until he began to cough, and she patted him on his back and handed him a glass of lemonade from the table. "You're awful kind, Daisy," he wheezed, taking a sip. "You don't think folks would call the men in white suits if they knew I had a thirty foot dinosaur made out of pie pans in my backyard?"

"I think everyone would be blown away to know what you've been doing back here all these years." She uncapped the lens of the camera slung around her neck. "Do you mind if I take some pictures?"

"Shoot, you can take as many pictures as you like," he told her. "Help yourself to a glass of lemonade, and then I'll take you on a tour."

After a glass of lemonade and a couple of basic questions about Art's childhood and family, she followed him off the porch and into a land created by his imagination. She tagged along happily, feeling like a kid on a school field trip.

The sculptures weren't all that was hiding out on his property. Several sheds were tucked amongst the odds and ends, each with their own theme. One was filled with hubcaps, each hung horizontally with fishing line from the rafters at different levels. Another held an immense ball of phone line as tall and wide as the shed with only feet to spare around it.

On and on they wandered, uncovering more welded oddities crammed in around piles of rusty bicycles, golf clubs, and more tires. At last, they came to the far corner of the property and a larger shed with a double wide barn door in the end. The air smelled musty and old as he pulled the latch and opened it. Fine particles of silty dust blew out into the sunshine.

"I'm afraid this barn ain't as imaginative as the others are," he warned her. "But I do love the cars."

She stepped in after him. Automobiles, ancient ones from before they were known simply as 'cars', sat in neat rows bearing names of Pierce Arrow, Rolls Royce, Packard, and Studebaker. Their lavish hood ornaments gleamed in the sunlight, and beneath the fine dust, she could tell their chrome was as beautiful as the day they rolled out of the factory. The names of the cars didn't sound familiar to her anymore, but it didn't matter. She loved them immediately.

Her fingers trailed reverently over a winged seraph standing proudly atop the Packard's radiator. "I feel like I'm overusing the word 'amazing'," she apologized, "but each time I think I've seen the best thing out here, you show me something even better." She craned her neck to see over the cars. There were more cars behind them. "Do you mind if I scoot back there and look at those?"

"Oh no, make yourself at home," he said. "I wish more people could see the cars. I used to take them to shows, but I can't get them out of my yard anymore."

Daisy squeezed between fenders and made her way back towards the back wall where more cars rested under dusty canvas covers. She lifted the corners of each, one after another. The first was a cherry red Mustang, another a blue Javelin with white racing stripes, then a wood-paneled van. The heat was terrible in the back of the barn away from the open door, and she brushed at the sweat running down her face. There were three cars left, and she moved quickly,

The next canvas revealed an anomaly. All the cars so far had been pristine, if dusty, but the fender of this one was dented and the front quarter panel scarred through to the metal. Giving the canvas another tug, it slipped onto the ground.

She reached out to steady herself, her hand flat against the roof of the little red race car. It was beat up, rusty, and plastered with faded stickers with a large 31 on the side in cracked, white paint. And yet something about this car made her heart feel as though it might burst from her chest it was beating so hard. The feeling of deja vu made her eyes swim with tears.

"Daisy, you okay?" called Art.

"I...," she whispered, hoarsely, standing there with her thoughts scattered and her eyes glued to the car.

He laughed when he found her. "You know, I plum forgot this was back here," he mused. "This here's the most famous car in this whole shed. Say, Daisy, are you alright? I thought maybe you'd tripped on my mess."

Daisy looked over at him and shook her head. "No, no, it's not that." He was going to think she'd gone crazy. "I think I should explain," she said. "Even though I can't remember anything about the past, sometimes there are things that...well...I guess the best way to say it is that my heart recognizes things sometimes, even though I don't remember anything about them." She smoothed her hand across the faded paint. "There's something about this car that's special to me, but I don't know what..."

Art patted the hood. "Like I said, Daisy. This here's the most famous car in all of Hazzard County. She won the Choctaw County 500 on her first run and then the Chattanooga White Lightning Series in 1970, 1972, and 1973, and the Georgia State Championship in 1972."

"You must be one heck of a driver, Art." Could it be that she was remembering the car for itself? A point of pride for Hazzard County having won so many races? She had been so sure it was more personal.

"Oh no!" he told her. "It wasn't me driving. This was Enos' race car. Why, when he and his dad, Otis, bought it from me back in 67, the motor had seized up and, if I recall, there was a family of angry squirrels living in the backseat. They worked like the dickens for six months putting her back together."

"Enos...," She recognized the name from Christmas. "Uncle Jesse mentioned him once. Said he used to be a deputy here in Hazzard." Art's face fell and he looked so confused that she was afraid she had said something wrong. "Mr. Sills, are you okay?"

He gave her an uneasy smile. "I'm fine, Daisy," he said, but studied her for a moment before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I know if ain't my place to pry into your business, it's just that I can't feature you forgetting Enos. That boy thought you hung the moon and stars, I reckon."

His words made her palms sweaty and she wiped them off against her jeans. "Would you tell me about him?" The words were out of her mouth before she could think. "What you can, anyways?"

"I don't know much more than what anyone else could tell you."

"That's okay, just...tell me what you can?" She felt like she might be sick soon, but she wasn't sure if it was the heat or nerves. "Uncle Jesse and the boys don't tell me a lot about my past. They're worried it'll confuse me, but I'm finding it's worse not to know."

"I 'spose it's your business what you want to hear. Let's get out of this heat first, though." She covered the car with its canvas, then followed him back through the maze out into the yard. "The Strates lived up yonder a piece," he began, as they walked back towards the house, "about half a mile. His mother's still there, I reckon, although I don't see much of her. She's a mean old bat," he confided. "I'm not sure what would have happened to that boy after Otis died if your Uncle Jesse hadn't taken him in. His mother took off out west and left him to get chased by the orphans' home."

"So, he lived with us Dukes?"

"For a year or two, until he went to the Police Academy down in Atlanta. He'd make it back up every now and then, but after his mother left, he had to spend the weekends racing to earn money to pay the mortgage on the homeplace."

"Were we close, me and him?"

He shrugged. "You never came up here," he said. "So I only know from the times I came to visit your uncle, but he mentioned once or twice that the two of you were putting gray in his beard. I gathered the pair of you were prone to mischief, but you were just kids then." He shrugged. "I don't get out to town much, or the Duke farm since they stopped running shine, so that's all I know."

"Well, it's more than I knew before. I'm awfully glad I asked." She looked up at the sky where the sun was bearing down directly overhead. The sculptures behind her shimmered in the heat. "I guess I oughta be getting home, it's coming on dinner time pretty soon." She gave him a quick hug. "Thank you so much for showing me around, Art."

"It was my pleasure, Daisy. You come back anytime," he said, opening the back door into the kitchen for her. "I'll see you out."

She drove slowly down Cedar Point, thinking over all that Mr. Sills had said about Enos Strate, and as she turned onto Mill Creek Road, just shy of the Duke farm, she reminded herself to write everything down in her journal just as soon as she got home.

But it was a long time before she thought of Art Sills or Enos again.