Fact Checking
Monday 5 December 40 PY
Dear Diary,
Mr. Jennings picked up the hotel tab. I opened the door to my room as he left. I wanted to get the full story, but stayed silent when he turned to wave goodbye. He'd aged twenty years in a single night. Shortly afterward, I walked Fanny to the station. She leaned heavily on my arm. I also refrained from asking her any questions.
I spent the weekend organizing my documentation and outlining my report. I tried to make sense of it, but Jennings's confession made the case feel surreal. Why would he allow me to tail? And why turn himself in?
I needed to know more.
On Sunday, I hit the pavement again. There were gaps, and my job was to find them. He had disappeared and his trail had grown cold. He had been affable to acquaintances, but kept no friends. I endured a fifteen minute lecture from the flower lady about snooping, but she gave me nothing. By Sunday night, I decided to stop skirting my most reliable source.
I returned to the track on Monday afternoon. Fanny worked in a daze. She looked around often, probably for Mr. Jennings, but he never showed. Her face lit up when she saw me. I offered to take her to a coffee shop after work. She readily accepted. Once there, Fanny apologized frequently for keeping me. The small woman chain smoked and patted my arm, assuring me that Mr. Jennings would get over her niece Renee Rorschach. Perhaps she mistook me for an admirer of Mr. Jennings. Perhaps the only reason she needed was talking itself.
Fanny raised Renee R., who was her big brother's only child. Fanny had worked in a shirt factory at the time. She was a bright student who passed an entrance exam into secondary school. She excelled and was offered a contract from Brightmore Power & Electric to study engineering at the City College. After graduating, RR went on to work in a research lab for Brightmoore. Fanny showed me a picture. RR stood proudly cloaked in a black robe and capped by a mortarboard; she was plain and tall made radiant by an open smile. The story was common enough that I had heard it before, but infrequent enough to be noted. I could not tell if the graduate was the same as the wasted woman in the hospital.
RR fell ill a few years later, Jennings appeared like a knight errant to help the stricken family. Fanny teared up when she spoke of her niece's illness. I gathered that Jennings and RR met as children. They had lived at the same boarding house where the sweatshop workers lived. When it became late, I walked Fanny to the station again.
I wondered more than once if the whole mess was an elaborate ruse, but the grief and tears seemed real. I had a feeling that this was just beginning.
R. Dorothy Wayneright
Tuesday 6 December 40 PY
Dear Diary,
Early Tuesday morning, I called Central General posing as an insurance agent. They confirm that RR had suffered from protracted leukemia and that Jennings had paid the bills. Brightmoore Labs (a subsidiary of Brightmoore P&E) had been bought out by Paradigm Grid, which refused to speak with me. A visit to City College library confirmed her attendance and her subsequent employment with Brightmoore.
I located the Fanny's old neighborhood from the yearbook and Fanny's descriptions. The block sat at the base of the Central Dome. A drainage canal separated the dome from the tenements. On rainy days, acres of run-off collected into culvert and turned it into a rushing river. From the housing, I could see the massive concrete plinth supporting one of the steel ribs. I experienced a moment of vertigo before my eyes adjusted to the vast sweep of the dome curving into the sky.
The narrow shirt factory was grungy and gloomy as expected. Hundreds of sewing machines whirred away at full tilt. Even from across the street, I could hear the racket of pret-a-porter being steamed pressed and readied for Dome department stores.
The workers' tenement across the street from the factory was abandoned. The front double doors were boarded shut and matted with old fliers. RR had promised to lift them from this ramshackle building, and it had collapsed a short six weeks after they escaped. The Dome drainage system had been expanded, leading to excavation from the adjacent lot. The earth removal placed the building at the face of a precipice. The contractor claimed to have reinforced the slope, but the sheer downcut collapsed after a hard rain. Nearly half of the dorm slipped into the rushing canal. Twenty residents, including nine children, had been swept away that night. None were found alive. Fortunately, most of the inhabitants had fled the deafening construction. I tried to imagine the past inhabitants, but only saw the gouged out windows staring back at me. I left to head to the factory.
As I turned, I saw that a gaunt man had been waiting for me at the foot of the dorm stairs. He was past middle age and held with a small grocery bag in his arm. He wore a shabby suit and held a hook cane, which he pointed at the cloud cluttered sky. It would raining soon, he warned. He asked why I was interested in the old dorms. I introduced myself as an acquaintance of Fanny's and Mr. Jennings.
The man introduced himself as Father Kavanagh. Most of his congregation came from the shirt factory. He talked to me as if we were old friends and invited me to his church office. Kavanagh had performed the ceremony for RR. As for Mr. Jennings, the Father had seen him once about two years ago.
Paul Jennings was the clown whether in school or in church. The boy had been bright, but unfocused. He dropped out of school halfway through secondary school and then made his way as a day laborer. Young Paul always had a crush on Renee. She had stood up for him when the other school children picked on him for looking different.
"Different?" I asked. "Some would call him quite handsome."
"Yes, search and you will find beauty in all of His children," Father Kavanagh answered. He seemed pleased with my answer.
I was confused by statement. I asked for him if he had a picture. He found a photo amoung his shelves. As I studied the black and white photo, the priest busied himself making coffee. The congregation crowded in church lawn. Kavanagh pointed out a frail boy sitting at the front of the group. His bowl-shaped haircut obscured his eyes. I focused on him with my built-in magnification. His head was misshapen, as if it had been dented by a sledgehammer. His upper lip was split into a definite harelip.
"About the time you last saw Paul," I asked Kavanagh.
He asked me to bear with him as he told the story. The events hadn't made sense to him at the time, but they had stuck because that meeting had been so strange. One night in late November, Jennings burst into his office. Not only had Kavanagh not seen Jennings for years, the younger man kept his face hidden under a yarn hat and scarf and wouldn't remove them. Kavanagh did not recognize him until he identified himself.
"Father, if someone were dying, would you make a bargain with the devil to save that person?" Jennings blurted out. "Hypothetically speaking, of course."
Kavanagh taken aback by the suddenness of the question. He decided to play along. "If I knew it were the devil, no, because his nature is to do evil. No good could come from it. Why, has someone offered you such a bargain?"
Jennings laid a card on the priest's desk, it had a pair of theatrical masks embossed on the front. There were no words, only the false faces. Jennings explained that Renee had fallen ill and her husband had skipped when she had taken a turn for the worse. He was the only one who could help, if he accepted the bargain. The catch was that the devil would collect when Jennings "had no need of it any longer". The term "it" was left vague.
Paul did not explain exact nature the bargain, but Kavanagh had seen the duo masks before on graffiti. It was the symbol of a local boogieman Dr. Faces. Mothers scared their little children into behaving by mentioning his name. Kavanagh was incredulous, but someone dangerous could have adopted the symbol and name. He tried other lines of inquiry, but could not get more details from Paul. The more he tried to calm Jennings down, the more agitated the younger man grew.
The Father had a suspicion. The urban legends usually talked about Dr. Faces stealing faces. When he reached to pull away the scarf, Jennings violently drew away.
Jennings desperately restated his question. "If it were someone you loved, would you make the bargain?"
Flustered, the priest answered honestly. "If it is His will to recall a loved one to His side, I would not side with the Devil to thwart it."
"Then this, too, must be His will," Jennings answered before running from the room.
I told the priest that I had heard of Dr. Faces before, but had nothing to add. I asked to see the church's records and confirmed that Fanny, RR, and Jennings had lived at the dorm. I thanked him and left.
I stopped by the empty dormitory again. The front double doors were plastered with the rain-blurred handbills. I could barely discern the now familiar symbol. On impulse, I tore away the matted mess. A spray painted black and white pair of masks were revealed, weeping and heckling. A staring eye reigned over the false faces.
Curiouser and curiouser.
R. Dorothy Wayneright
Morning Wednesday 7 December 40 PY
Dear Diary,
While I was at church, the devil demanded his due. The neighborhood blotter on page 8 of the Sun read "Mr. Paul Jennings, aged 27 years, leapt from a thirty-story office building in broad daylight." He had left a suicide note.
He was from outside the Domes; for the MP, it was an open and shut case. For me, the case must go on.
R. Dorothy Wayneright