Free Among the Missing by Dan Chaon Page A

that I latched wholeheartedly on to the idea. Some of it is obviously playacting, making drama for myself, but some of it isn’t. Something about Mickleson struck a chord.
    Maybe it was simply this—
July 13: If Mickleson is your future, then you took a wrong turn somewhere. Something is sinister about him! He could be a criminal on the lam! He is crazy. You have to change your life now! Don’t ever think bad thoughts about Mom, Dad, or even Mark. Do a good deed every day
.
    I had been going to his house fairly frequently by that time. I had a notebook, into which I had pasted the Santa photo, a sample of his handwriting, and a bit of hair from a comb. I tried to write down everything that seemed potentially significant: clues, evidence, but evidence of what, I don’t know. There was the crowd of beer cans on his kitchen counter, sometimes arranged in geometric patterns. There were the boxes, unpacked then packed again. There were letters: “I am tired, unbelievably tired, of going around in circles with you,” a woman who signed herself Kelly had written. “As far as I can see, there is no point in going on. Why can’t you just make a decision and stick to it?” I had copied this down in my detective’s notebook.
    In his living room, there was a little plaque hanging on the wall. It was a rectangular piece of dark wood; a piece of parchment paper, burned around the edges, had been lacquered to it. On the parchment paper, in careful, calligraphy letters, was written:
    I wear
the chain
I forged
in life.
    Which seemed like a possible secret message. I thought maybe he’d escaped from jail.
    From a distance, behind a hedge, I watched Mickleson’s house. He wouldn’t usually appear before ten o’clock in the morning. He would pop out his front door in his bathrobe, glancing quickly around as if he sensed someone watching, and then he would snatch up the newspaper on his doorstep. At times, he seemed aware of my eyes.
    I knew I had to be cautious. Mickleson must not guess that he was being investigated, and I tried to take precautions. I stopped wearing my favorite detective hat, to avoid calling attention to myself. When I went through his garbage, I did it in the early morning, while I was fairly certain he was still asleep. Even so, one July morning I was forced to crawl under a thick hedge when Mickleson’s back door unexpectedly opened at eight A.M . and he shuffled out to the alley to dump a bag into his trash can. Luckily I was wearing brown and green and blended in with the shrubbery. I lay there, prone against the dirt, staring at his bare feet and hairy ankles. He was wearing nothing but boxer shorts. I could see that his clothes had been concealing a large quantity of dark, vaguely sickening body hair; there was even some on his back! I had recently read a Classics Illustratedcomic book version of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, and I recalled the description of Hyde as “something troglodytic,” which was a word I had looked up in the dictionary and now applied as Mickleson dumped his bag into the trash can. I had just begun to grow a few hairs on my own body, and was chilled to think I would end up like this. I heard the clank of beer cans, and then he walked away and I lay still, feeling uneasy.
    At home, after dinner, I would sit in my bedroom, reading through my notes, puzzling. I would flip through my lists, trying to find clues I could link together. I’d sift through the cigar box full of things I’d taken from his home: photographs, keys, a Swiss army knife, a check stub with his signature, which I’d compared against my own. But nothing seemed to fit. All I knew was that he was mysterious. He had some secret.
    Once, one late night that summer, I thought I heard my parents talking about me. I was reading, and their conversation had been mere background, rising and falling, until I heard my name. “Andrew … how he’s turning out … not fair to anybody!” Words, rising through the general