Chapter 10 #2
woman gave us a dirty look, so I cleared my throat and stopped as we got in line.
“Jeez, Malone. You’re almost as embarrassing as Punkin,” Seb whispered playfully. “What’re they teaching you out in Massachusetts?”
In good spirits, we waited for the attendant to take our tickets before moving past a red rope into the museum proper, into
the town’s former police station lobby, where it was substantially darker. Polished wood and brick made up the bones of the
space, where a jaunty sailing tune played on a loop over the museum’s speakers.
“Well, here we are again,” Seb said, glancing around. “Been a few years. Guess this isn’t the kind of museum you were planning
on visiting in Europe this summer, huh?”
“Not quite,” I admitted.
The museum itself was once Haven Beach’s only police station, jail, and courthouse and had been built before the turn of the century.
We strolled past interactive displays: “Pirates of the Great Lakes,” a map that tracked routes of various ne’er-do-wells who regularly stole lumber and booze from ships all across Lakes Michigan, Superior, and Erie.
And: “Lawmen of Michigan,” which allowed patrons to match up old turn-of-the-century black-and-white photographs of police detectives and special agents in the coast guard who tracked down criminal vessels on the lake.
Seb stopped in front of the display and gazed at the photo in the middle. “There he is, Boatswain Nicholas Jansen. The man
who caught Wyrd Jack Malone.”
This is why we were always the “primary Wags,” as Seb put it. My great-great-grandfather was Wyrd Jack, and Seb’s great-great-grandfather was the coast guard detective who took him down.
“Holy crap, Seb. You’re beginning to look a hell of a lot more like him than I do Wyrd Jack.”
It was the dimples.
“Maybe I should take up the mantle of my ancestors and become a cop. Think they drug test?”
“The Haven Beach cops are so crooked, you’d probably fit right in. We need to concentrate. We’re looking for something that
fits this key or another clue. ‘Under their noses’ . . .”
“There’s nothing old out here. Let’s go farther in and try the offices.”
We wandered through families with rambunctious kids and a lot of white-haired seniors who must’ve been on some kind of group
tour, and entered an arched doorway that led into the detective offices.
This part of the old police station was set up as a living history museum.
Historically costumed volunteers roamed the original offices, which were re-created to look as they did in the 1920s, when Wyrd Jack was incarcerated here.
In the police chief’s office, a newspaper and a china teacup sat on the desk alongside a vintage black candlestick phone and old photos of the real police officers who worked here, back in the day.
Visitors could walk through each office as long as they adhered to the gold-plated signs that read: historical display, do not touch.
“‘Under their noses’ . . .” Seb mused as we stepped around the police chief’s desk. When the other visitors in the room with
us exited, Seb ducked behind the desk to inspect the drawers. “Only one with a lock, but it takes a tiny desk key, not that
big ol’ skeleton key.”
“The cameras are new,” I said, glancing at one in the corner. “Don’t want to get kicked out. Let’s not touch anything.”
Seb touched the desk with one finger. “They have to catch me first.”
I rolled my eyes and exited the chief’s office to head next door into Deputy Canter’s office. This one wasn’t as fancy—no
china teacups—but it had a chalkboard with lists of crimes that were being investigated in 1929. Rum-running. Gangs. Stolen
lumber. Chicken theft.
“Don’t think we’ll find any locks in Barney Fife’s office. None of his desk drawers require keys, and the only thing else
in here that would are those metal lockers,” Seb said, gesturing toward the back corner. “And those give me the heebie-jeebies
because they remind me of boot camp.” He shivered and made a cross with his fingers.
Much like the chief’s desk in the room next door, the lockers required a different kind of key.
Still, I waited until a family of three left the office, then quickly tried to open the locker while looking around for cameras.
The locker squealed open, but there was nothing in it—nor the one next to it.
“You know, we’ve never talked about it, really. What was it like?” I asked Seb. “Marquette Troubled Teens Boot Camp.”
He shrugged. “About what you’d imagine. There was a rule for everything, even blowing your fucking nose. You either obeyed
or got kicked out.”
“The Seb I used to know would never obey.”
“Well, the man you see before you now has been screamed at, shoved into mud, slapped, and gone without dinner so many times
that I finally decided obeying was the easiest way.”
That sounded awful. “We looked up stuff about the camp when you got sent away. Reviews were solidly in the one-star range.
Lots of complaints about abuse.”
“I’m not sure if you’d call what I went through abuse, but some of the other kids had it worse. The people running the camp
did a superior job at making all of us believe that if we didn’t adhere to their routine, we’d end up dying on the street.
One kid killed himself.”
“Oh God,” I said. “Were you friends?”
He shook his head. “Camp wasn’t a bonding experience. We were all there to survive and get the hell out in one piece.”
“Did you tell your dad?”
“Ironside Captain Jansen? Come on. You know he applauded their methods. I was stuck, and there was no way forward but through.
So I just hunkered down and did what they asked.”
A tense silence hung between us.
“What about classes?” I asked. “Did they actually teach? You graduated, or . . . ?”
He nodded. “Graduated top of my class, if you can believe it. Not sure why Harvard rejected my application. Guess ‘being tortured by retired army drill sergeants’ wasn’t on their list of acceptable extracurriculars.”
His words opened up a hollow space in my chest that ached for him. I may not have known the new Seb all that well, but I still recognized the core of him. And I knew from the way he avoided my eyes that he wasn’t lashing
out at me. He was putting himself down, trying to make me believe he was jaded. And could I really blame him if he were? God
knew I’d be if I had to endure what he had.
But I couldn’t help but think that the boy I once knew wasn’t cynical. A smart-ass, yes. But he’d always looked toward the
brighter side of things.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through all that,” I told him very seriously.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I’m okay, for real. That’s all in the past.”
“We were in the past, you and I, but look at us now, solving ciphers together. Some things don’t stay in the past.”
“Want to know a secret?” he asked in a low voice. “Being separated from all of you was the worst part of boot camp. Not any
of that other stuff.”
This surprised me. “But we weren’t even speaking at the time.”
He nodded. “I know. I guess it was sort of a wake-up for me. Camp finally gave me time to think about everything—about Pretty
Paul and the Vanderburgs. The Wags. All the mistakes I’d made . . . I just wanted my friends back, that’s all.”
His revelation caught me by surprise, and I felt a tenderness toward him that I hadn’t in years.
“Oh, Seb,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Coward, I guess.”
I shook my head. He was a lot of things, but not a coward.
His hand hesitantly reached for mine. I looked down between us as our fingers intertwined. One thumb made a single, slow stroke
down the back of my hand, causing a riot of pleasurable tingles to rush across my skin.
Uh-oh. Not again.
His hand squeezed mine briefly, then he released me. And I was left speechless and a little afraid of my own feelings.
“No need to spoil our day thinking about depressing shit when we have treasure to find. Come on,” he said, brightening as
he headed out of the office. As if his thoughts couldn’t be further from mine. “Miles to go before we sleep. Let’s check out
the jail cells.”
I schooled my features to relax. The last thing I needed was him teasing me about having schoolgirl feelings toward him after
all this time.
Seb poked his head into the office across the hallway, but there was a small group of people inside. He shook his head at
me, and we continued through the old police station, stopping in an evidence room lined with wooden crates that were all staged
to look like confiscated goods and stolen property from the 1920s. A lot of generic rum and plastic tommy guns. It was the
least exciting part of the museum, merely a recreation. But I also spent my time sneaking looks at Seb instead of paying attention
to our surroundings. And while we were walking through, I began to feel as though the other museum patrons were staring at
us.
Or maybe I was still ruffled by Seb’s confession. I tried my best to put it out of my mind.
At the end of the hall were the holding cells.
All of them were re-created scenes, much like the evidence room.
The cell at the end was where Wyrd Jack was held while he awaited trial and transfer to the state prison, and inside was the same small bed in the other cells, same toilet and sink.
But the walls were lined with various drawings, bizarre notes, and photos cut from magazines.
They were all bolted to the wall under plexiglass because some treasure hunter from Ohio tried to steal them in the late 1970s.
Hanging above the bed was the original copy of “Prison Poem.” A camera pointed down at it. Several people gawked into the
cell from the hallway while a couple others crammed themselves into the cell to inspect it up close and personal.
“Nothing’s changed here,” Seb noted quietly. And when the woman in front of him moved forward, he took out the skeleton key
from his pocket and discreetly stuck it inside the jail cell door. “Whomp, whomp,” he said softly. “Not even remotely the