Carousel Book Nine, Chapter 54: Anna Interlude (Patreon)

Anna Reed was off to a bumpy start as she trudged up the steps of the fourth house in the small town of Stalagmite. If the water tower was to be believed, Stalagmite’s town motto was “Ten Miles to Carousel.” It was as if the locals knew what anyone passing through would ask and had decided to get it out of the way.

She knocked on the door of the small trailer. Someone was inside. The lights were on, and the TV was blaring. Behind her, Danny, her cameraman, was recording her every move, tracking her journey to find her missing friend, Dr. Andrew Hughes.

She had to knock five times. She was only On-Screen because Danny was recording her. The moment he stopped, she would go back Off-Screen, and the locals would start ignoring her again.

Right before she knocked for the sixth time, a woman opened the door but left the screen door closed. She wore a hairnet and a nightgown, even though it was three in the afternoon.

“What can I do for you?” she asked in a curt tone after sizing Anna up. The moment she realized Anna was an outsider, her expression changed. Anna didn’t need Moxie to recognize that.

“I’m looking for my friend Andrew Hughes,” Anna said, holding out Andrew’s missing poster. “I’ve heard he worked at the clinic down the street for some time, but he hasn’t been seen recently, and I was wondering if you might know something.”

The woman stared down at the poster. Her name was Lydia on the red wallpaper. Anna recalled that the woman at the last house had also been named Lydia. Carousel was messing with her.

“Never seen him before in my life,” Lydia number two said matter-of-factly.

“Is it normal for people to go missing around here?” Anna asked, showing enough restrained frustration to still be polite.

“People around here don’t go missing,” Lydia number two said. “People around here are just fine. It’s you people that go missing. You hikers and you college students. You don’t understand the terrain, and you end up getting lost.”

“You’re saying Andrew got lost in the woods?” Anna asked. “He worked at the clinic for two months.”

The woman scowled at her, but after a moment, the twisted contortion of her lips softened. A Kind Face was a useful trope. Sometimes it took a while to kick in.

“I said they don’t know the terrain, little missy,” Lydia said. “That ain’t got nothing to do with the forest.”

She looked left and right as if she expected someone to be spying on the conversation.

“What does that mean?” Anna asked. “Please, just help me find the next place to look. Give me anything. I’m desperate.”

Lydia looked like she hadn’t had mercy on anyone in nearly sixty years, but something about Anna seemed to get through to her.

“Well, everybody knows,” Lydia said. “If something bad happens in this town, it was those Rowes. They know better than to harass the locals. But you ain’t local.”

“Are you talking about the Rowe family? The murderers?” Danny asked, finally speaking up from behind the camera.

“The same,” Lydia said.

“But aren’t they all dead now?”

The woman scowled at the camera, then looked back at Anna, her face softening once more.

“They say the whole family’s dead. Picked off one at a time,” Lydia said. “They also say the disappearances are over. Ain’t nobody going missing anymore. You tell me if that’s true.”

She looked into Anna’s eyes for a few seconds, then backed away and closed her door.

Anna turned to the camera. “Well, at least this one talked to me,” she said with a twinge of optimism.

Off-Screen.

“Try not to take it personally,” Danny said. “Carousel had to scrounge up these actors from its far reaches. They’re not used to being on camera.”

“I’m sure that’s why they’re giving me a hard time, and it has nothing at all to do with the plot,” Anna said.

“Yeah, that might be it too. But you’ll notice she said the name, Rowe. It’s better she brings it up than you,” he said as he stowed his camera. “It makes it seem like a proper clue.”

“So do I just keep interviewing townsfolk?” Anna asked. “I don’t think that’s the direction Carousel wants me to go. That’s why it named her the same thing as the last woman. I think I need to find some actual named characters.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “So where are we off to?”

Anna thought for a moment.

“Well, this is a bit too obvious, but we could go talk to him,” she said, gesturing toward a large billboard featuring a man in a cowboy hat and the words RE-ELECT SHERIFF WADE BOONE. The man had an enormous smile and seemed to Anna to be a bit of a showboat, but she thought that was true of most people in cowboy hats.

“Oh, no, that has nothing to do with the movie,” Danny said. “That guy’s really just running for election.”

Anna laughed.

“Well, let’s go find out if we should vote for him,” she said.

-

The sheriff’s office wasn’t hard to find. It was a small building, half devoted to a few old-fashioned jail cells and the rest to the offices of the sheriff and his handful of deputies.

On-Screen.

Anna walked in and was largely ignored as she stood at reception, waiting for a woman in uniform named Yuna to turn and look at her. Eventually, she had to clear her throat.

“Yes, how can I help you?” Yuna asked. She had blonde hair braided and pulled back, reaching down to her belt. She never looked up. She was too busy thumbing through paperwork.

“Hello, my name is Anna Reed. I’m here from the Carousel University Gazette doing a follow-up on some of the missing persons stories coming out of Stalagmite. My editor should have called you.”

“Yes, they should have called us,” Yuna said, finally making eye contact.

She was a mean one, Anna realized. Maybe there was something she could do about that.

“You should find that they did call. I was sitting in the room when it happened. We spoke to an officer named Nelly. A total sweetheart,” Anna said. She was improvising, but it seemed like a small ask.

Yuna pressed a button on the intercom. “Nelly, we’ve got a journalist here for you.”

Then she took a stack of papers and left.

“It’s a good thing she didn’t ask for our credentials,” Danny said.

“Hush,” Anna said.

Moments later, a woman named Nelly on the red wallpaper arrived. She was plump and brunette and quite a bit more cordial than Yuna had been.

“Are you from Carousel University?” she asked in a sweet tone.

“Yes. Anna Reed. My editor contacted you.”

“He sure did,” Nelly said. She glanced back at Danny for a moment but then returned her gaze to Anna. “You’re doing the story on some cold cases from last year, right? Some missing persons?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Anna said.

“Well, Yuna would know more about that. Would you like to speak to her?”

“No,” Anna said. “I’m sure you can help me.”

“Well, I’m sorry. There isn’t much to say. The truth is, we haven’t had a lot of missing persons recently, so we haven’t devoted much manpower to it.” Nelly leaned forward and started whispering. “Most of these things end up being misunderstandings. Kids check in with the forest rangers and forget to check out. Suddenly you’ve got a missing person, but it’s just a paperwork issue, you see.”

“I understand,” Anna said. “But what about Dr. Andrew Hughes?” She held out the missing poster. “He was working at the clinic down the street and went missing last year. He didn’t show back up to work, and his family hasn’t seen him since. I don’t think that could be a misunderstanding.”

Nelly pursed her lips as if there were something she was afraid to say. “The thing is, young lady,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the offices behind her, “we’ve referred all these cases to the Carousel Bureau of Investigation. They’re out of our hands now.”

“You’re telling me you’re not even looking for people who went missing in your town?”

Nelly didn’t seem to have the spirit to fight back. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know exactly why we haven’t been prioritizing these disappearances. But you should talk to Sheriff Boone. Maybe you could ask him why, every six years or so, we tend to hand off a lot of cases to the Carousel Bureau of Investigation.”

“I see,” Anna said. “Is a sheriff’s term of office six years?”

“Why, I think it may be,” Nelly said with a smile. “Let me go tell Sheriff Boone you’re here to interview him. He loves talking to reporters. Although I should tell you, he is a bit under the weather. You know what, it’s fine. Come with me.”

Anna looked back at Danny and nodded. The two of them followed Nelly further into the offices.

“Just wait here,” Nelly said as she went through a door.

Moments later, she reappeared.

“He is a bit under the weather, but like I said, he loves talking to reporters, so he’ll give you a few minutes. I don’t know that he’s going to answer the questions you want, but it’s the best I can do.”

Anna took a deep breath and walked into the sheriff’s office.

The man on the billboard had put an image in her mind: a loud, energetic country boy with charisma and no shortage of hot air. But when she entered the office, all she could see of him was his cowboy hat. He sat in his chair behind his desk, turned away from her, and he didn’t swivel around when she entered.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Sheriff Boone?”

Boone grunted.

“Sheriff Boone, my name is Anna Reed. I’m with the Carousel University Gazette. We’re doing some follow-ups on missing persons cases over the last few years, and I was hoping I could get a little understanding of how those cases are processed. Maybe some status updates on a few select cases…”

She had more to say, but she stopped as Sheriff Boone began to turn in his chair.

The man before her was not the firebrand from his election poster. After seeing that ad, she would never expect to see the dull gray man sitting before her. He wore a taupe suit and one of those cowboy ties that looked like black strings with beads. He had a mustard stain on his lapel. His stare was vacant. The whites of his eyes were yellow.

She noticed at once that one of his fingers was bandaged. It looked like the tip had been severed, because it was shorter than the rest. The wound must have been fresh. A faint hint of blood was showing through the top layer of bandage.

Had someone been playing with sharp objects?

He stared up at her, and she couldn’t read his face well. Not in the natural way. But when she tried to activate her Moxie to get insight into him, it worked. He was tired, lethargic, and annoyed. Well, maybe she didn’t need Moxie to figure that out.

None of those gut feelings received the bulk of her attention. Instead, she focused on his status ailments. On the red wallpaper, he was marked as Mutilated.

She scanned back over his body, wondering if he had an injury to his legs or torso she hadn’t noticed, but nothing stood out. Mutilated but not Hobbled meant he couldn’t have an extensive injury to his legs.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff Boone,” she said. “You were saying something about how the department handles missing persons cases?”

She had been so distracted by his appearance that she had not spoken for some time. She decided to jump-start the conversation.

“We handle all of our cases with the utmost…” Sheriff Boone began. Then he looked her directly in the eye. “Care. And discretion. We don’t go blabbing to baby reporters about open investigations. You understand.”

Something about the way he spoke was odd. Not just the meanness of the words. There was a resignation to it, a distance, as if he were rolling off some half-hearted excuse he had memorized by rote. His heart wasn’t in it.

Mutilated. Anna found herself thinking about it again. How could he be Mutilated? The only injury he seemed to have, aside from some kind of vitamin deficiency, was his missing half a finger. That could never be enough. Mutilation was an injury so severe that the audience would give up on a character, either believing they could never accomplish what they were attempting or simply wishing they would be put out of their misery. A missing finger would never qualify, not even on a world-class violinist.

“Yes, Sheriff Boone. I realize it would be highly unorthodox for you to comment on an ongoing investigation. But maybe you could tell me about an investigation you’re no longer pursuing. Something you’ve passed along to the Carousel Bureau of Investigation. Something like, I don’t know, this one,” she said, holding out Andrew’s missing poster.

“The doctor,” Sheriff Boone said slowly as he stared down at it. “Ran off, most likely. Realized there wasn’t no glory in treating country bumpkins. Probably met a woman.”

His voice was distant and dreamy. His eyes were glazed over.

Anna couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

“What are you doing in here?” A woman’s voice sounded from the door. It was Yuna again. “You are not supposed to be in here disturbing the sheriff. He is a busy man, and he has enough on his mind.”

“We were told we could talk to him,” Danny said.

“Oh, you were, were you?” Yuna asked as she glared up the hall toward where Nelly must have been. “Well, that was a mistake. Gather your things. It’s time to go.”

Sheriff Boone didn’t react or speak, but as Anna was ushered out of the room, she noticed his eyes seemed to follow her. If she didn’t know better, she would say he was possessed. But she did know better, because his Infected indicator was completely unlit.

Was there a trope hiding his true status, or was something else going on?

Whatever the case, she would have to get to the bottom of it.