Curt, sitting up, took a deep breath and said, “When we run into an unacceptable answer in research, we sometimes have a head session and play ‘worst case – best case’. In the first session, we put the worst interpretation we can on every list of information we have and see how far it carries – then we put on the best interpretation and run that through. Most of the time it’s neither worst nor best but a combination of both. Want to try?”
“Oh yes,” Sheila said with relief. “I’m so muddled over what we know that I’d be glad of any new approach.”
“All right. First we sort out what we’re looking for and stick to the subject. We’re looking for Elizabeth, so let’s not bring in any evidence that doesn’t pertain to her.”
“What about Baca?”
“I think that’s a dead end – and something that we couldn’t follow no matter how much we tried. The old guy is probably searching for your Aunt Betty and we can be fairly sure he won’t find her. But we can introduce him as supporting evidence.”
“But you’re saying…”
“I know, but if we can separate Ronald Aikens as an active participant in this case, I think we’ll have a better chance with Elizabeth. We can go back to Baca later.”
“Ok. How do we begin?”
“Let’s try worst case. Aunt Elizabeth moved into this house about a year ago and heard the voices right away. Used to dealing with a rational reality, she merely notes the occurrence, but makes nothing of it. Worst case interpretation – the voices had been here before she arrived – perhaps back to the time of the accident – Elizabeth merely walked into an ongoing occurrence. She left on one of her junkets, came back, and this time decided to investigate – the pistol incident – and caught the voices just leaving. Worst case interpretation – she either thought her mind was slipping, or as we thought in your case, someone was trying something. It is likely that she began, at that time, her efforts to trace the sources of the sounds, although, like you, she had little previous experience. From what I’ve learned about your aunt, she probably armed herself and slept on this sofa. But it was at this time also that she realized that, in innocence, she had written you about the incidents and had to retract that information. How? – by pretending to be a fluttering old dotty – i.e. had one drink and heard the voices – then the TV set turning itself on and off just to aggravate her. We don’t really know how many times she heard the voices. In the meantime, after witnessing the phenomena several times, she grew more perceptive of the sounds – just as you did – and finally recognized one of the voices as that of her brother – whom she thought had been killed. Think of how Elizabeth would have analyzed it! Dead men don’t talk, ergo, Ron is alive and if not responsible for the creation of the sounds, is a participant. Big question – Why?”
“She hires Ernesto to track down the only people she knew of who had worked with Ronald and who might know something of what happened in the past twenty-four years. Unless she came across something about Ronald that we don’t know about, her only hope is to begin a search for them, and from 1961 onward, Ernesto reported that two of the three associates of Ronald had died suspiciously only after a short interval, about six months following the accident - Worst case interpretation – Ronald or Phillips had killed them to hide something. We don’t know if Elizabeth knew about Ronald’s machine – the one the FBI man, Williams, let slip when I was driving him to Hawkins’ place – but let’s assume she did.”
“Isn’t that a big assumption?”
“Maybe. But we don’t know how discrete Ronald was when he was developing it, back in 1960 or so. Ronald could have talked to her about it then. Remember, we’re on worst case.”
“All right, but if we don’t reach any conclusions, we’d better start over from here.”
“Granted. Now, Ernesto has discovered where Phillips is hiding – in Escondido – but while making contact, mysteriously disappears. Did Ronald and Phillips kill him? Or was he killed by ‘foreign agents,’ who seem to be camped around Phillips’ home? Worse case interpretation – Ronald and Phillips killed him in order to continue whatever they’re doing. Big question – What are they doing? Obviously something important enough to have the FBI and foreign governments interested. Important question: Why did Elizabeth have Rodriguez investigate the fates of the hospital workers? What could they possibly have to do with Ronald’s activities? Damn, Sheila! Do you realize?…”
“What is it, Curt?
“Think of it – everyone Ronald even saw that night died, disappeared, or committed suicide within a few months of the accident!”
“What about Phillips?”
“The newspaper accounts mention only Barrows helping Ron that night. I’ll bet the driver of that government vehicle that caused the crash has disappeared or committed suicide also! This is something we’d better consider later. But, back to Elizabeth. She obviously had a reason to suspect something had happened to the hospital attendants – worse case interpretation – she is now convinced that her brother is a murderer or has some means of driving people to suicide or flight. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that Elizabeth, knowing about Ronald’s machine, would connect the machine with all those deaths and disappearances? If so, she obviously, regardless of the dangers, had to see Phillips to find out about it.”
Curt paused, started to continue but instead, got up and paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. Finally, he gave up. There was too much information to correlate – they had too much evidence which pointed to too many possible conclusions.
Sheila watched Curt struggle to make sense of it all with mixed feelings. She didn’t believe Ronald was alive and doing all the things Curt had suggested, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t think of any other explanation. But she knew she was in love with Curt, and felt guilty about resenting the time they were devoting to finding Elizabeth. She knew they had to do it, but she wished they could forget it for awhile. A sudden, remembered pain struck her in the right elbow and she instinctively began massaging it.
“Is anything wrong?” Curt asked.
“I had bursitis – tennis elbow – about a year ago and it feels like it’s coming back” she said with an apologetic laugh. “I guess all this mental exercise is having physical repercussions.”
“I agree,” Curt said, sitting beside her. “I’ve got to stop. I’m giving myself a headache. Can we skip ‘Best case’ until later? Besides,” he continued, “I’ve got to call Santa Fe and the FBI. May I use your telephone?”
Even while placing his calls, Curt was greatly troubled. Slowly, a picture was emerging about the whole affair, about Elizabeth’s and Baca’s disappearances, the voices, and the fates of all who had seen Ronald Aikens twenty-four years ago. The picture was hazy, just beyond reach, but he knew there was something ominous there nevertheless.
Hawkins answered cheerfully informing him that there would be no need to make a deposition to the authorities about Williams’ wounding. The FBI, he said, had taken care of everything. Williams is doing fine and wanted to see him whenever he got to Santa Fe again. The local FBI agent in Albuquerque professed ignorance about the whole affair and suggested Curt come to his office to talk. Curt replied that he was just trying to touch all bases and he might drop in sometime.
As he rang off, he tried to recapture the thoughts he had had about the case and found it surprisingly difficult. It was as if he had to start from the beginning every time, reassemble every piece of evidence, rejoin them together and rethink his conclusions. Those conclusions his mind pointed to were threatening, yet vague and unseeable. Yes, he reminded himself, they were still half-baked; he had had no chance to test them rigorously against the evidence, so he decided not to reveal them to Sheila. He had the feeling that, if they were valid, they would cause her much pain.
They ate dinner that night in a picturesque restaurant in Old Town. Their table was next to an enormous
, gnarled tree that grew right through the ceiling. Sheila had been chatty and vivacious all evening, telling him about various episodes of her life in New York and he loved every minute of it. Only on one occasion did she stop and ask soberly if discussions about the case were taboo. At his nod, she dropped the subject and refocused on the illogicalities of New York society life. Curt also talked about his life in San Francisco, surprising himself by remembering minute details of various incidents that had occurred years ago. It was a relaxing, and happy evening for both of them.
That night as he prepared his report to Myers, Sheila was upstairs happily arranging Elizabeth’s room for them. It seemed only proper. This was the room where they had discovered their love and she knew that Elizabeth would be pleased that such joy and happiness had happened there. When Elizabeth returned, she thought, she would move out with Curt wherever he went anyway. Except for the flare-up of her tennis elbow, she had not felt so well in years, and the emotional satisfaction she enjoyed with him had made her life exciting and wonderful.
Downstairs, Curt put the finishing touches on his outline before he dialed Myers.
“Lots of developments tonight, Myers,” he said after the usual preliminaries. “I think I’m beginning to get a handle on these cases.”
“Want to hear what we have on Ronald Aikens first?” Myers asked.
“Wait until I’m through, I’ve done some work on him from this end.”
When he finished, Myers gave a low whistle.
“I see why you wanted that information on Ronald Aikens. Anything Elizabeth is interested in is fair game. But isn’t it stretching it some? After all, what could she hope to find out after twenty-four years?”
“I’ve got a notion about that,” Curt answered, “but it’s really wild. You noted that everyone connected even marginally with the accident either disappeared or committed suicide? – Well, Baca and Elizabeth have disappeared – and they both heard what could have been recapitulations of what happened that night. That’s really marginal, I know, but…”
“Well, if you want to go that route,” Myers interrupted, “haven’t you and Miss Cavanaugh heard the same thing?”
Curt felt a cold chill come over him and he hesitated before answering.
“My God! You’re right!”
“If I had reason to believe you might be on to something, I’d tell you to get the hell away from there.”
“Do you think Ronald Aikens’ machine might have something to do with it?”
“If it does, and remember, I haven’t agreed with your conclusion, I don’t know how you’d find out. Our report on the team of scientists, Abrums and so forth, stops when they went to work at Kilgore Laboratories in Los Alamos. Everything else is highly classified.”
“There’s still Phillips…”
“Yeah, but he’s under protective custody. You’d have a hard time getting close to him. Incidentally, we found out that Phillips and Elizabeth Aikens were engaged in 1960, but broke it off shortly after the accident.”
“Maybe we could use that as an opener. Did Phillips ever marry?”
“No, or at least not as far as we could find out he didn’t. Just looking him up was a hassle. You might have some luck finding out about Aiken’s machine from Abrums’ widow, Delores. She’s living in Greeley, Colorado on 37th Street. But don’t hold your breath; she’s sixty-four years old and might not remember much. Barrows never married and we can’t find any close relatives. We did find out how he died, though. Apparently he tried to run through an iron door and broke his neck. And to make the whole thing more bizarre, his body was stolen. Maybe you could call that a suicide, but he was in a rest home and all that.”
“That is weird. Give me the name of the rest home though. Maybe there are records or something.”
After receiving the information, Curt hung up, but sat at the bar trying to think out the impact of Myers’ findings.
As he walked to the sofa and sat down, he tried to ponder the problems. There were simply too many pieces floating around to make any sense unless Ronald’s machine occupied center stage. But the notion that a machine built twenty-four years ago could still affect people in the present was almost too much to accept. What kind of machine? Where was it? What did it do? Accepting the importance of the machine, however, could explain everything – the agents following him, the voices, Elizabeth’s inquiries, even the willingness of Moscow to surface the moles they had planted years ago. Phillips was the only source he had left to discover what he was looking for, but Ernesto’s and, maybe Elizabeth’s fates were not inviting. If they couldn’t do it, how could he?
As Sheila descended the stairs and entered the living room, she thought of the many times she had harshly judged friends of hers who professed sticky, emotional responses they had had towards their male friends. How she had laughed at their self-deception and exaggerated statements! Now, here she was doing the same thing. Betty Friedan wouldn’t like this, she thought, but, maybe Friedan had never experienced it. Thinking of Friedan’s appearance, she guessed why that might be so. But Curt had aroused in her feelings she had never felt before, had made everything she touched, or saw, or smelled, seem more intense, more real. It was as if she were entering a new life. Nothing much mattered except her relationship with this man.
Curt, sitting with his hands folded behind his neck, saw her enter the living room and smiled. Patting the sofa seat beside him he said, “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Sheila.”
The next morning, as he drove west on I-40 towards Escondido, he tried to sort out the situation. He had been to see Williams in Santa Fe, and finding the man open and receptive, told him about his problems trying to contact Phillips. Williams, who knew Curt was no danger to national security, was more than willing to help. He knew some of the agents watching Phillips and also some of the foreign agents in Escondido, and gave him a note to deliver to Bill Rabold, the agent in charge. While this might clear Curt with the FBI, and even though the success of his trip to Escondido depended upon whether or not Phillips would see him, he felt some glimmering of hope that he might be able to accomplish his mission. The rub was that he felt uneasy about leaving Sheila in Albuquerque.
They had talked seriously about developments in the case, although Curt had not revealed the possibilities of danger that might be surrounding them. It was Sheila’s suggestion that he go alone to California while she tried to find out what she could about the driver of the vehicle that had forced Ronald Aikens off the road. She had also thought it important that the conversation between Ronald and Frank Barrows in the living room be monitored more carefully.
“It was clearer the third time, Curt. If I could just concentrate, I’m sure I’ll be able to understand what they’re saying – and if I can do it, we might find the key to the whole case right here!”
Intellectually, he agreed with her, even if it meant they would be separated for three or four days. Emotionally, he disagreed altogether. He was so caught up in his love for her that he didn’t want to be apart even for a minute. He couldn’t tell her of his fears for her safety, or of his own, for that matter. It would have meant the collapse of her hopes of ever finding Elizabeth. For the way Curt saw it, anyone, and that included Sheila and himself, who had crossed the trails Ronald Aikens had blazed twenty-four years earlier either disappeared or committed suicide within six months of crossing. He believed that, unless he found an answer to it all, Sheila and he would be in mortal peril in just a few months. It also meant that it was unlikely he would find Elizabeth. Like so many others, the nurse, Baca, and probably the driver of that army vehicle, Elizabeth had “disappeared.”
A sudden thought hit him. Maybe Frank Barrows had figured it out also. Maybe that’s why he committed himself, hoping to escape “disappearing.” But why should he kill himself by running into a locked, metal door? It didn’t make sense.
If human m
anipulations were behind it all, and if the human were Ronald Aikens, how the devil did he do it? Forgetting the problems an eminent scientist would have faced dropping out of sight all those years, and forgetting the necessary equipment that would have to be invented and built to produce such effects, how would Aikens have been able to predict that Elizabeth, Baca, Sheila and he would be at the right places and times to witness and be affected by whatever the machine did? Moreover, who was the intended victim – Elizabeth? Baca? Sheila? Those people in the hospital? – Barrows? Abrums? Could all of this have been happening for twenty-four years without any news of it appearing in the papers? While Curt knew some people in San Francisco paranoid enough to believe that the CIA or KGB was responsible for practically everything that happened – even unusual weather – he could not believe that any government agency could cover up something as sensational as this. No, he thought, the only possibility was that Ronald Aikens had invented a machine that was blindly involved with all that had been going on.
But was Ronald still operating that machine? There really was no proof that he was dead. His death certificate had listed “laboratory accident” as the cause of death, and the police report, which Rodriguez had read to him over the phone, had added little. His body, presumably, had been “destroyed” in the accident, but how destroyed is destroyed? Wasn’t there anything left? He had not had time to visit the cemetery where Betty was buried to see if there was a grave for Ronald as well, but he would leave that for the future. After all, even after twenty-four years, if there were any remains of Ronald’s body buried near Betty, there should be some way to determine what had killed him.
Curt wrenched his mind away from this disagreeable theory and tried another approach. All right, he told himself, think about the supernatural. If these manifestation were ghosts, and Sheila’s house and Baca’s cave were haunted, was this enough to cause the results he had discovered? Would they make Baca younger? Would they make Elizabeth fly off her rocker and go searching for Ronald? Moreover, could ghosts frighten or change people enough so that they would commit suicide or disappear? Curt relaxed in his seat as he realized how ridiculous his thoughts were. If ghosts exist, he thought, no one has observed them well enough to chart their behavior or effects on observers. With a grin he concluded, on the other hand, that if all observers of ghosts or ghostly manipulations disappeared or committed suicide, they’d have precious little time to write up a report, and hence, we would know nothing about them. Well, he thought, with the first trace of humor he felt that day, if he couldn’t find a logical explanation of all this, in the months he had remaining, he would write up such a report. With a shrug, he gave up his foray into supernatural explanations. He’d count on Phillips. Disturbingly, however, he reflected on the fact that he was still working on the assumption that events that happened years ago were influencing the present. I’m playing the ghost game whether I like it or not, he thought grimly. Maybe I’m going bats too.
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