Welcome to Night Vale - Unlicensed Ep 2 - Lost Boy Found

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Unlicensed, the new show by me, Joseph, and my Night Vale co-creator Jeffrey Cranor has been out for a week. Thank you to everyone who listened. We are presenting today the second episode “Lost Boy Found”, in its entirety. We didn’t write this series alone, by the way, we brought in some of our best Night Vale guest writers, including Brie Williams and Glen David Gold. This episode was written by Brie and it introduces the case that will become the main story for this season. And you might notice, along with the voices of Molly Quinn, Lusia Strus, and TL Thompson, the voice of Dana on Night Vale and Keisha on Alice Isn’t Dead, Jasika Nicole. All twelve episodes of the first season are available right now only on Audible. There is a free trial, so please do use that to listen to it at audible.com/unlicensed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlicensed, the new show by me, Joseph, and my Nightfail co-creator, Jeffrey Kraner, has been out for a week, and thank you to everyone who has listened to it. We are presenting today the second episode, Lost Boy Found, in its entirety. We didn't write this series alone, by the way. We brought in some of our best Nightfail guest writers, including Brie Williams and Glenn David Gold. And this episode was written by Brie, and it introduces the case that will become the main story for this season. And you might notice, along with the voices of Molly Quinn, Lucia Stras, and T.L. Thompson, the voice of Jaseka Nicole, who played Dana on Nightfail and Keisha on Alice isn't dead. Again, all 12 episodes of the first season are available right now only on Audible.

There is a free trial, so please do use that to listen to it. However, there are a ton of really interesting shows on Audible, so I will be sharing some of my own recommendations of other Audible shows after this episode if you want them. Get your free trial of Audible and listen to the entire first season right now at audible.com slash unlicensed. That's Audible.com slash unlicensed to listen to all 12 episodes of this show right now. And now, here is episode two of Unlicensed. I know how it sounds.

My mom thinks, son, Not crazy, but she doesn't like me saying this. I can't pretend like nothing's happening, though. He left. Was gone a day. He returned. He looks the same. He has the same voice, same smile, same everything.

Except, and I'm not crazy, but I ran into him in the hall late at night. And the way his face looked in the shadow, I had never seen that face. He looked just like my brother. But he was not my brother. I knew that he couldn't be. The boy who came back is not the boy who left. The boy in my house is not my brother. Unlicensed.

Episode 2. Lost boy found. 40,000 years ago, a saber-toothed cat ran a cat, across a marshy landscape, chasing something that looked like a large rabbit. The rabbit slipped into a refuge of thorny vegetation, and the cat went hungry that night. Sometime long after that, a Spanish priest had a vision in this very same spot on the banks of a stream, and it prompted him to go forth into the wilderness, a tangle of forest that is now a tangle of factories, to seek the meaning of his faith.

He was never heard from again. Later, this was a popular grazing spot on a booming cattle ranch. Before that, it was a patch of dormant sludge beneath a subtropical sea. Today, it is a construction site for a land redevelopment project in the city of Industry, California. An old bay of warehouses sits half demolished. Excavators and backhose and bulldozers wait silently to be used. called into action. One area is cordoned off with yellow tape. Near the yellow tape, a bouquet of flowers has been left in the dirt. Three days ago, the lifeless body of 38-year-old Adam Gregorian,

city transportation employee, veteran, husband, wildlife advocate, owner of a condo in Van Nuys, was found crushed here beneath a chunk of concrete debris. Today, the site is deserted. Tomorrow, work will resume. Somebody died here. I don't want to look too hard at the ground because I'm afraid I'll see blood or something. I try to look at other things, anything but the details of the area

that's been taped off by yellow police line, as if the tragedy can be confined to the borders of a neat rectangle. As long as I don't get too close to those magic borders, I'm safe. I am outside, looking in. I am not touching death. I ask, what are we doing here? Not because Lou hasn't told me what we're doing here, but because I don't want to be doing anything here. Investigating. She says, then she ducks under that yellow line, crosses that magic border, and enters the

realm of the dead without so much as batting an eye. That's the piece that killed him, Lou mutters. She puts her hands on the chunk of concrete, making my stomach roll over. It's not as big as I thought it would be. She looks up at the crumbling wall it fell from. Frowns. I don't know what the frown means. I have a pad of paper, but I don't know what to write down.

She's muttering other things that I can't hear. We're subcontracting again on a McGoverns' service. security case, Lou's friend Grady. Trying to help them prove the owner of this property and client of McGovern is not liable for the death. As far as we know, no one has even filed a claim, but the insurance company wanted to get a jump on it. We take some pictures, write up some notes, make sure it all matches what McGovern already knows. It's not an important or urgent case. That's why it's ours. Not important, not urgent. Only a man's life. Only a man's life. life. Before I left the church, we used to do baptisms for the dead. There was a youth group that

would meet in the temple basement on Saturdays, where we would be given a list of names, get dunked in a tank of water, and release each departed soul from their spiritual prison. Afterwards, we were given pizza. Death hadn't seemed frightening to me in those days, but righteousness and salvation are the drugs of religion. It's still the hardest detox I've ever done. A car pulls up to the curb. It's long and black. And for a second, I think it's a hearse. But that wouldn't make any sense.

Not here at an empty construction site, days after the body was already removed. The car is a good distance away, but I can see the conspicuously plain black and white government-issue license plate. It reminds me of those plain-label beer cans that were popular in the 70s. A man in dark sunglasses emerges.

a two large man in a too small suit, and he just stands there in front of his car, staring at us. Uh, maybe we should get out of here, I say to Lou. She's still poking around in the dirt near the concrete slab, unaware of the man watching us. I can feel the man's eyes on my back. Police officer, health inspector, mafia boss? Maybe he's a refurb.

Formed smoker who quit nicotine, but not the ten minutes he gets to stand alone outside during a dreary workday. I walk a few steps closer to the rectangle of death, where Adam Gregorian's body was found. It's not pleasant, but it's preferable to being in the line of sight of that hearse of a government car in its hulking undertaker. We're going to be late for that appointment in Encino, I insist. Loo stands, wiping her dusty hands on her pants. Okay, okay, she says, and ducks back under the tape, reentering the land of the living. North up Mulholland, tucked into the foothills past an abandoned missile base, lies the man-made Encino Reservoir. It once provided drinking water, but soon became polluted with algae bloom.

It now functions as a three billion-gallon watering hole for local wildlife and, on days like today, a place for for firefighting helicopters to dip their buckets. There is a brush fire burning in the Santa Monica Mountains. It is not a large fire. It's already mostly contained and will likely be extinguished by nightfall, but it's important to catch small fires early. They don't stay small for long. Beyond the reservoir, a shopping district nestles against the hill,

surrounded by a residential neighborhood crowded with McMansions. Behind one of these homes, a kidney-shaped swimming pool shimmers in the heat. A dead cockroach floats on the glassy surface. Two unlicensed investigators and a well-dressed middle-aged woman sit on patio furniture drinking iced tea. This is the backyard of the Albrecht home. Kim Albrecht. I vaguely remember her face from real estate bus stop ads in the 90s. The odds had a theme, some kind of gimmick. Wizard of Oz? Yeah, yeah, that was it. She had worn a blue gingham blazer and held a small terrier in her arms. The slogan read, there's no place like Albrecht Holmes. There was something about the way she held that dog that

always made me think it wasn't really hers, that she had only rented it for the photo shoot. Anyway, now she owns Coastal Dreams Realty, one of the largest commercial and residential development firms in the city. She also owns, among many other things, a plot of land upon which sits a construction site where someone was crushed to death under a chunk of concrete. She seemed surprised when I inform her of this. Apparently no one had told her yet. Was it a construction worker? Ms. Albrecht asks, as if this isn't the first time something like this has happened. No, he was a state employee, I correct her, worked in transportation, I think. Adam Gregorian, interim chief of system safety, security, and compliance.

My new assistant recites looking at her notebook. What was he doing there? Did someone give him permission to be there? Ms. Albrecht asks me, as if I'm the one running her company. It seems he was there after hours, I tell her. Do you think he was trespassing? I wouldn't feel comfortable accusing the man of a crime. She draws out the word dramatically. Ms. Albrecht stands suddenly and walks to the edge of the swimming pool.

She kneels down and snags a dead cockroach from the water. using the ends of her pearl manicured nails like forceps, flinging its little corpse into the square manicured bushes. She turns back to us shading her eyes from the sun with one hand. You're here about insurance? She asks in a tone that implies we should get to the point. What is my point? I'm trying to find out how the guy died?

Why he was wandering around a construction site after hours? No, that's not. not it. I mean, yes, I'm interested, but it's not why I'm here. I'm here about the... We're here about liability. We're here about liability, I repeat after Molly. We're trying to establish that Mr. Gregorian's death wasn't the fault of the property owner, namely you. For fuck sakes, Miss Albrecht sighs, making the swear word sound elegant like an exhaled puff from a long cigarette. Now comes the fun part where I convince her that taking partial responsibility for the death is a good idea for her. Most people have such a knee-jerk reaction

against taking responsibility for anything negative that they fail to see how it could actually benefit them in the bigger picture. I hope the new assistant is ready to take notes. There's a boy watching us from Miss Albrecht's upstairs window. A young woman. A young teenager, maybe 14 or 15, his expression is serious. When he notices me noticing him, he moves away from the glass. It seems like everyone is watching us today. I don't like it. Maybe this whole private detective thing isn't the best lifestyle choice for me. I get ulcers too easily, although the ulcers were probably from the drinking. I miss drinking. Still, I remember seeing an ad for a laundromat technician.

No experience necessary. I've always found the sounds of washing machines to be soothing, meditative even. Maybe I should give that a try instead. I don't know. I don't have long to wallow in my doubts. Kim Albrecht is shouting, You want me to admit some kind of fault? That's insane!

Shit, I must have missed something. Not in a legal sense, Lewis. saying, trying to calm her. I stare down at my notes for clues, as if maybe a part of me was still writing things down while another part was tuned out in my mental laundromat. No look. Thankfully, Lou explains to Kim and I start writing. Ms. Albrecht. Your insurance company doesn't want to pay liability. That's why they hired us. But if they don't pay out, that means you, Kim Albrecht, could get hit with a lawsuit later on by the deceased's family. Then you're paying out of pocket on a larger settlement when you could have just had your insurance company do what you hired them to do in the first place.

It's my opinion that you should call your insurance agent start making waves now, or they're going to take advantage of your complacency and not pay out, putting you in a very vulnerable position. Does that make sense? Kim doesn't say anything. Neither do I. It does have an odd kind of logic, except... Why are you telling me this? Don't you work for the insurance company? Kim asks the very thing I was wondering.

Lou shrugs. Technically, is all she says. That seems to be enough for Kim Albrecht, but I've already learned a few deductive skills of my own. You're just trying to keep the Gregorian case open longer so you can keep billing the insurance company, right? The new kid accuses me as we walk down the street back to where I park. I never like to park at my exact destination.

Five blocks away is a good minimum. Yes, I agree. That's true. But there are clients, she argues. I can almost physically see her trying to wrap her mind around the idea. Remember this, I tell Molly without slowing down. We don't work for the insurance company. We work for ourselves. And if we don't extend cases and hustle work as much as possible,

The office goes under, and if that happens, we don't work for anyone. Molly looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn't. Hungry, I ask? She nods. I'm thinking about what to get for lunch when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around. Too quickly. I hate it when people sneak up on me. Sorry is the first word spoken by the teenage girl. Her hand still outstretched. It drops to her side. I'm Kaylee Albrecht.

She introduces herself. You were just talking to my mom? I instinctively sweep my pockets to see if I left something behind at the Albrecht home. Keys, wallet, phone. I do that sometimes. I need to talk to you. Kaylee says, your private detectives, right? My hand halts its search for missing items.

Her anxiety is so palpable, I can feel it triggering my own like a contact high. Is this about the construction site death? Molly asks. Kaylee looks confused. No, she says. It's about my brother. I'm not in the mood to discuss anything about anything standing on a hot Encino sidewalk with a grumbling stomach. So instead of inquiring further, I ask her the same thing I asked Molly, hungry? Kaylee looks between the two of us, still confused.

Yeah, I guess so, she says. I open the car door as an invitation to lunch. Molly springs into action, stacking boxes and files and moving things around to make room for the girl, because, of course, there's no way anyone is going to just slide into the back seat that I use as a storage unit. I notice Molly is actually organizing things as she moves them, more points for the new kid. Fifteen minutes later, over burgers and shakes at an umbrella table outside the weiner-schnitzel,

Kaylee Albrecht, this seemingly average upper-middle-class college student, tells us one of the strangest stories I've ever heard. A couple of weeks ago, she says, my little brother Preston went missing. None of his friends knew where he was, she tells us, and his phone had been turned off. Kaylee and her mom Kim were frantic. Eventually the cops were called,

but after 24 hours, Preston simply returned home. He had a story about doing a solo camping trip in Griffith Park, claimed to have not told anyone about it because he was afraid that his mom or Kaylee would have said no. He apologized for not calling, but his phone died, and it was too late to hike back out of the park. He would accept the punishment. Neither Kim nor Kaylee really believed his story, but they didn't press him on it either. They were just happy to have him back and that he seemed fine. And this is where it gets weird, Kaylee warns us. She looks almost ashamed as she

forges ahead. I don't think he's my brother. I think my brother is still missing, and I think the boy in my house is a totally different person. There is no appropriate response I can think of for what Kaylee Obrecht has just said. Luckily, no response seems necessary. Kaylee continues on like a train picking up speed, her half-eaten burger long forgotten. No one believes me, of course, she says. Not my mom and not the police, but Preston and I are extremely close. I know him better than anyone. My mom's always been really busy, so I practically raised Press. I fed him as a baby, changed his diapers. I drive him to meet friends. I check in on him if he's late. I go to his parent-teacher conferences. But besides that, we're friends.

The phrase besides that is doing a lot of work, Kaylee, I say. Well, like, we hang out, she retorts confidently. Even if we're super busy, we always leave Sunday nights open so we can get takeout and watch the new episode of Kingdoms of the Wall together. Or at least we used to. Now he locks himself in his room and barely speaks to me. It's like he doesn't even know who I am. He uses weird words and phrases that he's never used before.

He's just... He's not my brother. She stops to see how Lou and I are reacting. An image is beginning to form in my mind, but I'm not sure of what. Like when you fit a few pieces of a puzzle together, but it still doesn't look like any part of the picture on the box. What kinds of words and phrases, Lou asks? ideation, Kaylee supplies, stickability.

There's others I've written down. Oh, and green beans. Uh, he talks about green beans, I ask, with a raised eyebrow. He used to hate green beans, Kaylee clarifies. But the other night, he took two helpings at dinner. I can't understand why the police aren't taking this seriously, I think to myself, sarcastically. and then I immediately feel like an asshole because I can see that Kaylee is in genuine distress.

Did you talk to your mom about all this? I ask finally. Of course, Kaylee says. She told me it would be good to talk to my therapist about it. I nod, of course. Honestly, I was worried it was all in my head too, Kaylee says, lowering her voice. I even found this disorder where people are,

suddenly convinced their close friends or family are impostors. Sometimes they even think they've been replaced by aliens or robots. There was this one story where a guy attacked his mother-in-law with a knife to try to, quote, get the batteries out. It's really scary stuff. She looks at me, I think, for reassurance. Do you think you have this disorder? Lou asks. Kaley shakes her head. No, she says simply. Partly because of swim practice. What about swim practice? I ask. Preston's swim coach called me and said he's missed every practice since he's been back.

He might get kicked off the team. The real Preston would never miss practice. He wanted to compete in regionals this year. But the thing is, he leaves the house at practice time and doesn't come home for hours. So where's he going? I've thought about following him, but he knows my car. car. Lou and I don't have an answer for Kaylee, but I'm starting to see more of the picture that my mind was already putting together. Drugs, maybe, or an addiction of some kind. The behavioral changes,

the loss of interest and activities, the unexplained disappearance, these are familiar symptoms. That's not really me. How many times did I think that while looking into the bathroom mirror, trying to fill in the gaps of exactly what happened the night before. At what point did Tommy look at me and say to himself, that's not the person I married. At what point did I know what addiction had done to me? I want to hire you to find my real brother, Kaylee says, breaking my heart. And before I can comprehend what I'm hearing,

Lou has agreed to take the case pro bono. We'll just bill some extra hours under the Gregorian case, she tells me later. Sometimes we have to bleed the insurance cases a little to help the people who need it more. I'm starting to understand Lou's business strategy. On one hand, there's a Robin Hood ethic that I can't help admiring. On the other, it's messy, and I'm trying to stay away from messy. We are once again sitting in a parked car outside the Albrecht home. It's 3.50 p.m., approximately 24 hours after our work.

Weiner-Schnitzel meeting with Kaylee. Preston Oldbrecht is expected to leave the house in 10 minutes and take a lift to swim practice. Our motor is running. I'm trying not to let that bother me. Molly felt it was necessary to our survival to keep the air conditioner going and to keep listening to some true crime podcast called Small Town Stranger. She even started it over for me at episode one. which was very sweet, but also incredibly boring because by episode two,

it's completely obvious who the killer is. I won't spoil it for her, but it's definitely the guy who runs the bait shop. Personally, I don't love sitting in an idling car. It draws attention. I don't mind the heat or the silence, but I'm learning to compromise. I think it probably won't last. but I'm trying. 359.

The lift has pulled up in front of the Albrecht house. Here comes Preston Albrecht, right on schedule, wearing basketball shorts and flip-flops and carrying a small gym bag. He looks like a prototype of a 14-year-old California boy going to swim practice. We wait until the lift disappears around the corner, then follow. Molly is concerned we've waited too long that will lose them. I tell her, don't worry.

I already know where they're going. 425. The lift pulls up in front of the high school and lets Preston Albrecht out. He immediately turns off his phone and walks around the corner to the bus stop. This is where things might start to get interesting, I think. Why did he come to the school at all

if he's going somewhere else? Molly asks. in case his family is tracking him, I say absently. His lift history, his phone GPS, any average kid knows how to cover their virtual tracks these days. After a long drive through valley traffic, the bus lets him off near the end of the line outside a business park in Silmar.

He's leading a double life as an account executive, Molly jokes. Then we see the van. It's unmarked. not even a license plate. And it's idling. Like I said, an idling vehicle draws attention. Preston Albrecht walks directly towards it. The sliding door opens by an unseen hand or an automatic button,

and without hesitation, the boy disappears inside. Seeing a teenage boy get into an unmarked van is as alarming as you think it is. My mind jumps to a lot of places where that van. could be going, and none of those places are good. I try to gauge from Lou's face if she's as worried as I am. She just waits for the van to leave, then follows casually behind. We travel along the outskirts of Silmar, smoggy olive orchards and barren dirt hills to our left, and 1940s bungalow houses to our right. At one point, we get lost down a street called Kismet Avenue, but then we see the van again and catch up. What color do you think that?

is. This is the first thing Lou has said since we left the business park. I know she's referring to the color of the van. I've been wondering about it myself. It's not yellow, I say. Not yellow isn't a color, she says. Tawny, I say. That's not a color either. That's the name of my hairdresser. Dead grass, I say. That's it, she says. That's it exactly. And for a split second, I feel proud. I feel like I've cracked the case. We follow the dead grass-colored van out of Silmar into the dead grass-colored hills. This is Kagle Canyon, Lou tells me.

I grin a sophomoreic grin and ask. Kegel? Like the exercises? Different spelling, she says, with a smirk that indicates she's heard the joke before. At first, there are houses. We pass some people riding on horseback. There's a small bar with, old west lettering on it, set back in the woods. As we wind deeper into the canyon, it's

significantly less populated. The road becomes dirt, then it becomes a switchback, with potholes like moon craters. We have to slow down so we don't pop a tire. We've lost the van. We lost it a long time ago, almost the moment we entered the canyon. But Lou keeps driving as if it will reappear at any moment. Maybe we should head back, I finally suggest. after 20 minutes of aimless searching. Lou doesn't answer. We occasionally pass smaller roads that diverge from the one we're on. The van could have gone anywhere.

On top of that, I've lost all sense of direction. I check my phone, but there isn't any signal here either. No GPS. Do you really think we'll find it again? I ask Lou. I don't know, she says, with no sign of turning back. Even though I'm disoriented, I'm sure we're going in circles now.

I'm about to tell her I really need to be getting home when something large steps out into the road. Tani, the word again flashes through my mind. Lou slams on the brakes. Through the windshield, I find myself face to face with a lion. Not a mountain lion, which I'm told roam these parts, but a giant, king of the jungle, main blowing in the breeze, lion.

He looks me straight in the eyes, then takes a step toward the car. Eleven miles away. Outside the Super King market in Van Nuys, a dog stops suddenly and bays into the hot afternoon sky as if he senses a primal threat on the wind. The dog's owner, a man with a ball cap pulled low on his brow to hide puffy eyes, waits for his pet's commentary to pass. This man's husband was killed three days ago on a construction site in the city of industry. He walks the dogs a lot more since it happened, five or six times a day. Their home is too loud with silence, too crowded with emptiness now. It feels like living inside a giant stomach, constantly gurgling with hunger. The noise of the outside world is quieter.

The dog stops banging and they continue on, past the drugstore and the cinema megaplex, disappearing around the corner. Behind them, back near the market, an old real estate ad on a bus stop features the face of Kim Albrecht, 20 years younger. The poster torn and yellowed with age.

Beyond the bus stop and far to the southwest, the last helicopter pours the last tank of water on the brushfire in the mountains. It wasn't even big enough to make the news. The flames are extinguished. For now. This episode of Unlicensed was written by Bree Williams with Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranner. It stars Molly Quinn as Molly, Lucius Struss as Lou, and T.L. Thompson as our narrator, with Jessica Nicole as Kaylee.

Hear the rest, get your free trial of Audible at audible.com slash unlicensed. Now, I have been listening through Audible Originals over the last two years, and as promised, here are three more personal recommendations of shows that I have enjoyed if you want to keep exploring what's on Audible. No one asked me to do this. I actually didn't even get a free membership to do this. These are just some of the shows I chose to listen to and personally liked. Okay, here we go. Eminent Domain is a sci-fi adventure recorded on location in New Mexico. that dives deep into the history and culture of that area and has some great sound design. The Vanishing Negative is a beautiful monologue piece by the famous playwright and director Adam Rapp,

in which a successful psychic has decided to record her memoir, but all is not as it seems. There are a number of ulterior motives at play. This one has a lot of great twists. The Big Lie is a historical fiction starring John Hamm and Bradley Whitford about the very real attempt by the FBI to shut down the filming of a movie they deemed too communist. You won't believe that this all really happened, but it all really did. Here, all episodes of Unlicensed, and a bunch of other cool shows at audible.com slash unlicensed, and use your free trial to listen to the whole series right now. We're very proud of it.