A Fragment Too Far

by Dudley Lynch

  It took a moment for all this to sink in. I was too busy processing my awe. I’d just had a near-brush with death. If Gideon’s Trumpet hadn’t called at the exact moment he had, I’d have done the same thing I did to start every day at the office. Had my morning iced tea.

  It had become obvious in the ED that no one had briefed them yet about Tres Pasitos. By the time they would have figured out they needed to inject me with pralidoxime, or maybe the doctor’s atropine, it was not stretching the facts to fear that it would have been too late.

  It almost had been. Cassandrea Caraballo had been a hapless bystander to the intended outcome of these events.

  My sense of awe dissipated almost as fast as it had arrived. The Grand Canyon it left behind was of a different kind. An abyss opened up by my own ignorance. Few of my assumptions about the murders at Professor Huntgardner’s house held water any longer.

  As I entered the courthouse, one look at the visitor waiting for me at the door to my department told me more of them might be about to spring a leak.

  Chapter 62

  Garrick Drasher had traded his natty GQ-worthy outfit for duds more suitable for a country courthouse. Faded jeans. Checkered long-sleeved shirt. Ordinary T-shirt. Wide black belt. Scuffed western boots. And a plain straw cowboy hat.

  The fact that he was holding the wide-brimmed hat in his hand as he watched me approach made me clue into something I’d not seen in him before.

  Humility, maybe?

  The thought was reinforced by his jeans. It was as if the pants had seen honest labor. They showed wear. His change in appearance lowered my defenses. A little. He still had an expensive laptop case sitting on the step beside him. He put his hat on and picked up the case. He held it sideways in front of him with both hands, making it look like he was wearing a fraternal lodge’s ceremonial apron.

  His first words were spoken like he was taking great care not to be overheard. It didn’t matter. Our cavernous half-granite courthouse hallways amplified all voices, in particular male voices. Drasher might as well have used a megaphone. “I need to tell you who I really am.”

  That made me curious. But it was not enough to convince me he needed to be a priority. Not on a day when I needed to be ten places at once.

  He noticed that and upped the ante. “I need to tell you about something. Or rather, someone. I’m not sure, but I might be able to shed some new light on your murder investigation.”

  It seems he still didn’t see reassuring signs that he had my attention, so he appealed to my sense of duty. “Do you really want this kind of nonsense to keep happening, Sheriff?”

  He didn’t seem to be aware of the events in our department kitchen this morning. If he’d known of the attempt on my life and the near-fatal consequences for one of our county administrators, he’d not have reduced our Abbot County turmoil to “this kind of nonsense.”

  I pointed down the hall to the other entrance to our offices. “Ten minutes.”

  “We’ll need privacy.”

  I steered him to my interrogation room.

  He took his seat. Leaned his laptop case against a table leg. Placed his hands on the tabletop with the fingers on both spread wide. Went silent. And stayed silent. Then said, “Thought I had most of this figured out.”

  In normal times, I might have been more patient. Forbearance during interrogations can pay off. But this wasn’t an interrogation. This was an indulgence. And letting a person who had elbowed his way into my schedule decide when to tell me what “this” meant wasn’t going to cut it. Not on a day teeming with this-es.

  I made no effort to mask my growing irritation. “Eight minutes.”

  This time, the part of Drasher’s anatomy he thrust at me over the table wasn’t his hands. It was his elbows.

  He used them to anchor his arms as he folded them in front of his trim torso and leaned toward me. Once again, I found myself interpreting the gesture. This one seemed to signal a decision on his part to persevere against my irritability.

  He started with a question. A weird one. “Are you aware that Wide Sky Country is pockmarked with old Atlas missile silos?”

  I answered by holding up one finger on my right hand and two fingers on the other. Yes, I knew about the twelve massive holes in the ground, any one of which could have fired a nuclear warhead at the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

  He wasn’t through.

  “And do you know what some of Flagler’s finest have made elaborate plans to do with one of those empty silos?”

  He took the blank look on my face for what it was. Total ignorance.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  That was when he told me about the Ezekiel’s Wheel group’s plan to build an elaborate holding area for extraterrestrial visitors in one of the silos.

  If Flagler ever hosted the alien visitors that Professor Huntgardner had so often predicted, they were going to be transported to the silo. Taken into its 180-foot-plus depths. Entrapped behind the heavy interior doors at the bottom of the stairs. And left entombed forever.

  Once again, a look of disbelief flashed across the table. This time, it originated from my face.

  My visitor got to his feet and leaned against the wall. “Like I said, it’s time to put an end to his nonsense.”

  For the first time since we’d entered the room, I was no longer thinking about how much time was left on the clock. “So you need to tell me who you are.”

  “I’ll do that, but first, there’s someone I’d like to ask to join us.”

  He teased his smartphone out of his pants. Waited a few seconds and spoke a few words. “The party will be with us shortly.”

  Chapter 63

  I made no effort to hide my surprise.

  Not when she walked through the door without knocking. Not when she pulled a chair around to my side of the table and sat down. Not when she placed her faux leather tote bag on the floor beside her chair. Not when she looked in the direction of the room’s other occupant and addressed him. “About time, Garrick.”

  Drasher shot me a glance before looking back at her. “I know, Special Agent Steele.”

  Angie was in no mood to be polite. “You may have put him in unnecessary danger by waiting.”

  He knew better than to push the issue. “So I just learned. No more secrets, at least between the three of us.”

  She snorted. This was something she often did when she smelled a rat, an incompetent, or a schemer. In this case, judging from what she said next, she considered Drasher the third. “You wouldn’t know how to go about not having secrets. You’ve been underground too long.”

  Drasher had placed his phone on the table. He was flipping it back and forth. “Can’t argue. Like I told Sheriff Luke, it’s one reason I’m here. Feels like it’s time to come in from the cold, at least where he’s concerned.”

  I cleared my throat. “Obviously, you two have met.”

  Got dual nods.

  Now it was my time to play the politeness card, less I lose my cool. “Obviously, you, Garrick, have other employment besides your day job.”

  That brought a hands-thrown-skyward “what can I say?” gesture from Mr. Pretty Face.

  The other person in this conversation looked like she was about ready to sit on her hands. “And, obviously, the two of you have had conversations before about our problems in Abbot County.”

  Drasher waved a palm at Angie, and she met it with a wave of her own. Neither spoke, but then I could surmise that speaking was something they both liked to avoid. Drasher because there were apparently a lot of things he still wanted to keep secret. Angie because she’d realized there were things she should have told me much sooner. And she had to be wondering what else Drasher had bothered to tell me about himself and his presence in Flagler.

  I pressed him. With a guess. “You’re actually FBI?”

 
; “Sometimes I wish.”

  “CIA?”

  His head shake said no.

  “Defense Intelligence Agency?”

  This time, his head did the metronome thing. Moved in a brief arc. Meaning what? I guessed yes and no. He confirmed it. “Closer. But the fact that you and I are even talking about this should tell you I’m not with any of our national intelligence agencies. Because you don’t have a security clearance.”

  I acknowledged that.

  “Angie and I have been working to get you one. Really all that’s left is for you to fill out the paperwork. But I don’t even work for the government. If I did, I’d probably never be able to tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

  “So you don’t do secret work at all?”

  “Oh, but I do. Let me explain what an IRAD is.”

  “IRAD?”

  “Stands for Independent Research and Development.”

  “Sounds a private company.”

  “Exactly. It’s a kind of private CIA, though nowhere near that elaborate. Or that big. Or that visible, believe it or not. The Defense Department uses them all the time — just not for this purpose.”

  “So who runs yours?”

  Drasher glanced at Angie. She raised her eyebrows and gave her head a tiny tilt. His call. “One of our major U.S. aerospace companies runs it.”

  “And its purpose is what?”

  “First and foremost, to cover any government official’s ass that needs covering.”

  “Sounds like a big job. Any particular ass-covering specialty?”

  He unleashed a huge sigh. Laid his hands in his lap. And entwined his fingers. More silence. Maybe he was deciding on his answer. Or deciding whether he was going to answer. Or deciding whether to abort his whole mission.

  Then he seemed to realize he’d already crossed this Rubicon and needed to get to the point. “We operate at the bottom of the rabbit hole.”

  “No idea where to go with that.”

  Drasher said his private intelligence agency’s responsibility was to investigate UFO sightings, legitimate or otherwise. In the U.S. or anywhere else in the world when something interested them. Sightings by civilians, military personnel, local law enforcement, pilots, or, as had once happened, the governor of Arizona. Sightings by anyone. But especially, sightings by anyone who might be intimidated by the noxious attitudes in the federal government.

  That was the rabbit hole.

  The need for it could be traced all the way back to Roswell. Within hours of that momentous summer day in 1947, the generals who ran the Army Air Forces were running for cover. Petrified by the fear that anyone might think they thought they were dealing with a real UFO crash.

  Lying about what had happened in the remote New Mexico countryside. Confiscating every piece of evidence of the crashed UFO they could lay hands on. Warning witnesses of the most drastic penalties if they ever breathed a word about what they had seen. Insisting that people should forget that their lying eyes had seen anything.

  Seventy-plus years later, he said, little had changed. To this day, nothing spooked officials at all levels of the American government more than being accused of treating UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors as real possibilities. Thus, the rabbit hole.

  He couldn’t — or wouldn’t — tell me which POTUS had created the IRAD solution. Said Truman would have if he’d thought of it. Or Eisenhower. Even Nixon.

  “But one of them finally realized we needed a rabbit hole. Literally. A hole in our intelligence capabilities where serious UFO and alien visitation researchers could disappear and deal with their data in total privacy. That’s what IRAD does. It’s been the only way to get around the official timidity and look seriously at the evidence.”

  “Your IRAD squad. It’s been active in Flagler for a while?”

  “We’ve come and gone and come and gone and, now, we’ve been back for three years. Chalk it up mostly to the erratic Professor Huntgardner and his claims about his fragment. They’re like Tootle the Little Engine — they just keep going. And coming. And now they’re getting people killed. One of our people too to our profound regret.”

  The shock in my voice was genuine. “One of your agents was killed in Flagler?”

  “Your tenth victim at Professor Huntgardner’s house. Wyatt Donovan was his name. One of our best undercover people. Had a degree in physics, incidentally. Infiltrated the Unus Mundus Masters group about two years ago. Unless you’ve figured it out, we still don’t know what happened to him. And we weren’t able to tell you anything for fear of blowing our cover.”

  Drasher’s bombshell revelation about his slain agent put our meeting on a different heading. But it would have gotten there anyway. Because of what he said next.

  “You’ve had one other direct exposure to one of my guys. Pretty sure you didn’t know it, though.” He said his spook had installed a clock with a hidden surveillance camera on one of the walls in our locker room.

  I knew about the clock. The so-called manufacturer’s rep had said the company was donating one to every department in the courthouse. I’d suggested they hang ours in the locker room because it had available wall space.

  Until now, I didn’t know that the donation story was a fabrication. And that the manufacturer’s rep had been bogus. Or that a spy camera had been part of the package. Or that it had been installed because Drasher was beginning to suspect that the sheriff’s department’s hands might not be clean in Abbot County’s ongoing bloodthirsty shenanigans.

  Drasher said the camera was hidden in the zero in the number ten. The tiny camera lens captured anything that moved within its 120-degree viewing range. The images were then stored on a SD memory card.

  The removable cards were one of the reasons that he and the special agent had planned this meeting. He had some of the cards in his briefcase, but the current card was still in the clock.

  Before we looked at anything stored on them, he wanted to raise one more issue. He wanted to know if, in my investigations into “all of Abbot County’s troubles,” as he put it, I’d ever come across a particular person.

  The mysterious author’s pen name was the Prairie Canary.

  Chapter 64

  While I’d not been told about the spy camera in the clockface, Angie must have been. And she should have been in the loop on other issues of importance in Drasher’s investigation. But I wasn’t seeing confidence of that on her face.

  On the other hand, Angie had kept secrets from him. She’d known about the Prairie Canary because we’d both read the Canary’s letters to my father — the ones stuffed in No Cock Crowed Box No. 6.

  I didn’t know what Drasher had conjectured about Angie’s willingness to confide in him, but I’d detected more than professional collegiality between the two since Angie had entered the room. Now, courtesy of the long-departed Prairie Canary, he was about to get another inkling of how he might have misinterpreted their relationship.

  Where I was concerned, it couldn’t be clearer. Neither of them had chosen to make me a full partner in probing Abbot County’s criminal matters, whatever their reasons.

  Drasher’s motives for this were obviously professional. Already, he’d made it clear that he had one of the strangest jobs in American governmental spook-dom. Or was it non-governmental spook-dom?

  But the extent that the woman I loved had gone to avoid leveling with me was an eye-opener.

  We’d have to talk about it. At length. In private. When our buddy on the other side of the table had crawled back into his rabbit hole.

  My other trust problem was more immediate. How much, if any, of the information in my father’s No Cock Crowed boxes should Angie and I share with Drasher?

  Neither Angie nor I had responded to his question about the Prairie Canary.

  He took that to mean we didn’t know anything about her.

  He
moved on.

  “Luckiest thing, in a way. But then again, who’s going to know more about the history of a place than the local librarian?”

  I watched while Angie took a breath. She knew as well as I did what Drasher was about to tell us. He’d found the Prairie Canary’s manuscript. In the county library.

  It was all I could do to keep my balance in my chair.

  I wanted to know everything Drasher knew about the Prairie Canary. Had already framed my response in my mind. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t just sashay into the library and ask if they had any secret files.”

  I wasn’t expecting his reply. “Kind of did, actually. Asked if they had any materials about the county’s history that didn’t circulate.”

  Interesting.

  I’d never have thought about doing this. And I’d known Miss Ruthie Kollberg, the county librarian, since I was in the third grade.

  “You did this because the idea fairy in the rabbit hole suggested it.”

  Drasher reacted with a contrived chuckle. And decided a smart-ass question deserved a smart-ass answer. “No, I did it because I love sniffing other people’s unwashed underwear.”

  Angie blushed. I found myself tongue-tied with embarrassment. Not with him. With myself. That was dumb, Sheriff. You need to get this back on track, pronto, Tonto. I tried a compliment. But it landed like a pig’s grunt. “Brilliant idea — who’d have thunk it?”

  He was still smart-assing. “Nobody but a student in junior high school English, most likely.”

  Angie rode to the rescue. The way she sent a blocking shoulder in my direction signaled she wanted Drasher to think she was diverting all her attention his way. “The Prairie Canary, she was an author?”

  Her intervention put his agitation on the sidelines. “A really talented one. I’ve not read anything quite so spellbinding since I read . . . well, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club. Or maybe Ruth Wariner’s The Sound of Gravel.”

  I was a reader. I’d read both those works. Both were engrossing. Emotional, deeply personal books. But how odd that he’d cite works by talented authors who’d grown up in wildly unconventional circumstances. One in a dysfunctional east Texas oil patch family. The other in a polygamist cult.